Vermeer: Whine, wiener and wrong

"Girl With a Glass of Wine" by Vermeer. Image courtesy of Essential Vermeer.

By Laura Grimes

“Am I sleepy yet? Not a chance. Sleep is for sissies.”

The Pantsless Brother continues his Sleep-Is-Not-an-Option Tour in chasing Vermeer paintings all over Europe. If you missed my first gobsmacked installment, check it out here. (That’s not hyperbole talkin’.)

He’s on a mission to see all 34 (some say 36) Vermeers that can be viewed. Before his trip, he had (only) 12 left on his list. He had nailed down a relentless schedule to see 16 Vermeers in 9 cities in 9 days. (I can’t believe I just typed that, either.) His full tour is 10 cities in two weeks.

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Bronc bustin’ the Code of the West

Buffalo Bill circus poster, ca. 1899. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C./Wikimedia Commons

By Bob Hicks

So it’s happened. Oregon’s House of Representatives has officially endorsed the Code of the West, a business opportunity ridin’ hard out of the hills of Texas into the hearts of legislators from Cheyenne to Salem. A trademarked moral compass, as it were, ready-made for tryin’ times. Keep ‘er simple. Keep ‘er pure. And please buy the book.

Before the Code becomes part of Oregon law, the state Senate must also consider the bill. Bet on its passing. In tough times, this is quick and easy symbolism, roughly on the order of naming an official state lizard or proclaiming State Barleycorn Growers Appreciation Day. And basically as harmless, although the Code has whomped up a bit of consternation among people who point out that the settler ethic didn’t work out so well for, say, the native Americans who were here before the place was called the West. Or the Chinese and Japanese settlers who made the mistake of thinking they were free to carve out lives of their own on the frontier. Or the black families legislated brusquely elsewhere by Oregon’s strict exclusion laws.

Still. That was then and this is now. The cowboy code, if historically imperfect and a tad romanticized (and isn’t all history imperfect and much of it romanticized?) is not a perversely unreasonable document. It appeals to the virtues of good old-fashioned common sense. It’s also considerably shorter, easier to understand, and vastly more entertaining than the Oregon State Building Code. By comparison, the Code of the West is downright literature.

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Vermeer: Sleep-Is-Not-an-Option Tour

The Music Lesson, (De muziekles), c. 1662-1664, oil on canvas, The Royal Collection, Buckingham Palace, London. (Image courtesy of the Essential Vermeer.)

By Laura Grimes

It started innocently enough. A simple email from The Pantsless Brother last year pointed out that a Vermeer painting owned by Queen Elizabeth II would be on rare public view in London this spring. The last sentence: “We have to go back.”

I laughed. He was always being funny. As much as I would have loved it, I couldn’t really afford another extended vacation with my brother in London like we enjoyed last spring. To see just one painting?

Then, in early January, I got a note as I was having lunch with our mutual mother. The PB forwarded me a flight confirmation with this personal message: “Are you in? $568 roundtrip: Seattle to London, Zurich to Seattle. The first Hobgoblin is on me.”

I’m sure all I read was, “$568. London. Hobgoblin.”

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All fired up: from out of the kiln’s belly

A selection of finished pieces from the March 2011 firing of the East Creek Anagama Kiln. Photo: Brian Feulner/The Oregonian.Brian Feulner/The Oregonian

By Bob Hicks

Art Scatter regulars may recall Mr. Scatter’s adventures with the East Creek Anagama Kiln in the Coast Range foothills outside of Willamina, where he attended a firing earlier this month at the invitation of Nils Lou, the noted potter and teacher who’s been doing these firings since 1985. Mr. Scatter told the story twice — in this piece for The Oregonian, with photos by Motoya Nakamura, and in this more detailed piece for Art Scatter, with photogaphs by Richard Yates.

That was fine, and fun. But the question remained: What were those 500-odd pieces going to look like once the 2,400-degree Fahrenheit woodfire died down and the flames had done their job? Last week, three of the participants — Cindy, Don and Mya Hoskisson — motored into Portland from their home in the Willamette Valley town of Dallas and brought a small sampling of the results into The Oregonian’s photo studio, where yet a third excellent photographer, Brian Feulner, took studio shots of them. His photos, and Mr. Scatter’s brief story, are in the How We Live section of Monday’s Oregonian. You can pick up a copy of the real printed-on-paper deal, or see the feature online here at Oregon Live, with even more photos.

Sure, art is process. But sometimes it’s good to see the finished work, too. Go ahead. Check ’em out.

Portland arts for Japan: $267,000 plus!

By Bob Hicks

The Oregonian’s Kelly House reports on Oregon Live that Sunday’s two-show Japanese disaster benefit at the Aladdin Theatre has raised about $250,000 for Mercy Corps‘ relief efforts. Congratulations to organizer Stephen Marc Beaudoin, Aladdin general manager Tom Sessa, all of the performers, and the 1,300 people who bought tickets for the sold-out shows. Added to almost $17,000 raised in an earlier event sponsored by Portland Taiko and Portland State University’s Department of Music, that’s $267,000. And there’s been more from other corners. Plus, you can still contribute directly to Mercy Corps. Congratulations, Portland. Let’s keep it going.

‘Good Citizen’: when it did happen here

A Japanese American unfurled this banner the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Dorothea Lange photographed it in March 1942, just prior to the man's internment. Wikimedia Commons.Japanese American storefront, 1942. Dorothea Lange

By Bob Hicks

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis published his novel It Can’t Happen Here, about the Hitler-style takeover of the United States by a power-grabbing populist president. The book’s title was satiric. Lewis meant that it very much could happen here, and if we didn’t pay attention, it just might.

On February 19, 1942, scant weeks after the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the rounding-up and “relocation” of Japanese American citizens, mostly from the Western states, into internment camps for the duration of World War II. More than 140,000 people, all of them uprooted from their ordinary lives, ended up in the camps.

Minoru Yasui, the real-life hero of "Good Citizen."On March 28, 1942, little more than a month after the roundup had been set into motion, a young Japanese American man named Minoru Yasui — he’d been born on October 19, 1916, in Hood River, and earned his law degree from the University of Oregon in 1939 — walked into a police station in Portland and dared the officers to arrest him for breaking curfew. They obliged. Yasui landed in jail and eventually in a relocation camp. Yasui wanted to test the constitutionality of the internment law, and his case finally went to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that his arrest and incarceration were legal. Yet he kept fighting, during and after the war. He was a Good Citizen.

On Monday, March 28 — 69 years to the day after Yasui’s arrest — Artists Repertory Theatre will present a staged reading of Good Citizen, Portland writer George Taylor‘s play about Yasui’s good fight. The play, which is still getting a few revisions, is a finalist for the 2011 Oregon Book Awards. It’ll be performed at 7:30 p.m. on the theater’s Morrison Stage; tickets at the door only, suggested donation $8.

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Links: weaving, ‘BoomCrackleFly,’ more

By Bob Hicks

A few Friday hot links to go with your early-weekend bagel and eggs:

Laurie Herrick, "Three Giraffes," 1970. Linen, cotton and wool, 72 x 32 inches. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art, gift of Ken Shores; 2006.05.01. Photo: Dan Kvitka.

Leave ’em hanging: In this morning’s A&E section of The Oregonian I reviewed Laurie Herrick: Weaving Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the new show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Herrick was a prominent loom weaver in Portland beginning in the late 1950s; she died in 1995. And she was well aware of art trends, as her ca. 1970 Op Art wall hanging Three Giraffes, shown here, attests. Teaser: “If Jackson Pollock created action painting, this is action weaving.” Read the review here.

Coolest-sounding show in town: Speaking trippingly on the tongue, that would be BoomCrackleFly, the brashly smooshed-together title of Charise Castro Smith‘s new play, which opens tonight at Miracle Theatre.

On Blogorrhea, Mr. Mead Hunter has a crackling-good interview of his own with Smith, in which he questions her, among other things, about how the theater is going to pull off the vision of “people bobbing in a world covered in water.” To which, in part, she replies: “I think one of the great things about theater is the fact that if an actor stands on stage and says something is true, then at that moment it’s true. It’s the huge imaginative possibility of theater to call all sorts of things into being with language.” Read the interview here.

Paper dance: What’s old is new. What’s outre is cool. We’re talking newspapers. The printed page. Good old-fashioned hold-it-in-your-hands-and-flip-the-page minimalism. Who’s reviving this retro craft? Why, Portland’s contemporary dance scene, that’s who (or what). We’ve been hearing rumors of the impending birth of a local dance newspaper, and now Marty Hughley has the inside scoop on Oregon Live (which is the not-printed version of the printed Oregonian). It’ll be called Front. Read the story here. And read Alison Hallett’s take on The Mercury’s Blogtown here.

Lanford Wilson, R.I.P.: The noted American playwright, whose many works were frequently staged in Portland, died on Thursday at age 73. Wilson‘s career spanned Off-Off, Off, and Broadway in addition to lots and lots of regional productions, and ranged from early hits such as The Hot l Baltimore to his Talley Trilogy (Talley & Son, Talley’s Folly, Fifth of July) and the high-octane Burn This. Several seasons ago he was the featured artist for Profile Theatre, the Portland company that spends each of its seasons exploring the works of a single playwright. At a time when household-name playwrights are pretty much a thing of the past (is Edward Albee the last of that breed?) Wilson was one of the noble practitioners who have kept the fabulous invalid alive and vigorously kicking. Read Margalit Fox’s obituary for the New York Times here.

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Laurie Herrick, “Three Giraffes,” 1970. Linen, cotton and wool, 72 x 32 inches. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art, gift of Ken Shores; 2006.05.01. Photo: Dan Kvitka.

Thursday only: Art for Japan benefit

The benefit events for Japan earthquake and tsunami relief keep coming. This just in from Charles Hartman at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in the Pearl District:

ART FOR JAPAN
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, Augen Gallery, Froelick Gallery, PDX Contemporary Art, Pulliam Gallery and Nazraeli Press invite you to please join us for ART FOR JAPAN, a fundraising event to benefit Mercy Corps’ Japan relief fund.

Thursday March 24th, 5 – 9 pm
1100 NW Glisan Street, Portland, OR 97209

We wish to do something to help right away and at the same time honor and recognize the artistic and creative importance of Japan. We are banding together, hosting a modest event to raise money for Mercy Corps’ Japan relief fund. Each participating gallery will have on view and for sale art by Japanese artists as well as artists who feel they have been influenced by Japanese culture.

25% of sales from this event will be donated to Mercy Corps/Peace Winds Japan.

A good opportunity, for an essential cause, featuring several front-line galleries and the fine-and-applied-arts Nazraeli Press. Check it out?

Trikes, gnomes, and boating for love

By Bob Hicks

While Mrs. Scatter is off in the creeping undergrowth of the northern rainforest hunting gnomes, Mr. Scatter is sitting at home pondering the plausibility of the electric bicycle.

Could this be the Mr. Scattermobile of the future?Nay, nay, not just a bicycle. An electric three-wheeler, with neat little wire basket in the rear, a vehicle fit for the odd grocery trek and the regular coffee-shop run. Could it be? Might Mr. Scatter don a plaid neck scarf and houndstooth riding cap and sport about town at a dashing 17 mph, shouting wild-eyed imprecations at crows and chihuahuas to clear out of his path if they value wing and limb? Might this be fitting familial payback for a garden suddenly lurking with warty-nosed painted gnomes?

... and could this become Chez Scatter's new Large Smelly Gnome? Photo: Ioannes.baptista, Wikimedia Commons.Ah, one can dream, as Jack does in the play Jack Goes Boating, just opened at Artists Repertory Theatre. And sometimes, if a person dreams a dream that is simultaneously quite large and very small, that dream might come true.

Mr. Scatter is not speaking of Mrs. Scatter’s dream of being featured in an eight-page pictorial splash in Better Gnomes and Gardens. He is speaking of Jack’s simple yearning for his one true love, which, after all, is a common enough dream, if not one all that commonly fulfilled. And that Jack must endure unlikely trips to the hospital, a marital catfight by his two best friends and some excruciating swimming lessons with little relief other than a sturdy patience and the occasional hit off a mighty bong only goes to show that when grace arrives, it’s a good idea to be ready and willing to receive it.

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