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Visual Art: Outdoors:
Mayor's
Art Show
Once again, a vast and interesting array of media and genres is represented at this year's Mayor's Art Show at the Jacobs Gallery. The show runs through Oct. 21. PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND PRINTS Among portraits, D. Brent Burkett's Wendell's King and Tone stands out. Despite non-traditional media (acrylic, oil-crayon and gold leaf), in terms of style and content, Burkett's large painting harks back to earlier times. Impressionistically conveyed through energetic strokes, the details are vivid, the characters — a farmer and his two horses — alive. Yet subtly subverting the vibrant realism is the golden light that bathes the entire picture and betrays the nostalgic glow through which this bucolic world is viewed. Hoa-Lan Tran's watercolor Sisters #2 displays the artist's usual sense of composition, which relies in part on the interplay of areas of single color contrasting with areas of decorative organic motifs (flowers, leaves, butterflies). The scene is viewed from an unusual aerial perspective and the flat plane of the canvas is emphasized. These are all elements that modern painters such as Matisse learned to use to great effect from studying Oriental art. Tran, who was born in Vietnam to a father famous for his painting, studied both in her native country and at the UO, and is in a unique position to unite Eastern and Western modes. Somewhat reminiscent of Gauguin's approach, Barry Geller's acrylic Third Times a Charm benefits from its appealing simplicity of composition and color scheme (earth tones, red and blue). Geller's female nude sits in a relaxed un-posed position with elbow on knee and chin in hand. Landscapes abound. I was particularly drawn to Peggy Spiess' untitled acrylic for its energy and fantasy. Elevated to the status of tall trees, red chards sway against a bright, tumultuous, white-and-blue sky. The close-up composition adds to the monumentality of the chards as we must imaginatively expand them beyond the painting's frame, yet a wonderful sense of rhythm, movement and lightness is preserved. With delightful humor and gentle irony, Spiess presents us with an unusual vantage point from which to view our world. Lee Fischer's Sunday Morning Oaks outlines leafless branches against a sky whose early sunlight still retains a moon-at-night quality. More traditional in inspiration are three acrylics: Lynn Ihsen Peterson's Road to the Coast, suggestively rendered, with a poetry of movement and color; Craig Erickson's finely detailed, photographically realistic Heceta Head; and Robin Hostick's fine, slightly impressionistic rendering of Spencer Butte. Still-life and interiors are also well-represented with, for instance, Joy Descoteaux's oil Antique Crocks #3, whose reflected light has a lovely quality. Walt Stevens' large oil, Still Life on Drafting Table, provides a photo-realistic view of the artist's studio. In Home for the Holiday, Virginia Mae Sands plays with self-referentiality by including, within her Prismacolor-pencil rendition of a room, a fragment of the drawing which earned her the Best-of-Show award in last year's Mayor's Art Show. A number of works in naïve style are included, such as Sara Glater's whimsical bas-relief of cast-and-embedded paper with metal found-objects, Oh to Smell the Roses, which humorously represents a cowboy lassoing a giant flower. Kenneth Tripp's oil Divided We Fall is the sole politically engaged work. Stylistically, as well as in its reliance on text and its use of three canvas panels to create a large landscape-format, the work borrows from murals, graffiti and contemporary comic-strip's aesthetics to deliver its caustic message on such topics as war and the TV media. Non-representational works are a minority this year. Kathleen Caprario's oil Gates of the Shades is characteristically flawless in composition but uncommonly somber for the artist, who is known for her striking rendering of light in her chiaroscuro drawings. Here blacks are relieved only by grey and red accents and light is absent. The square format and safety glass accentuate the dark mood and the sense of being shut in. This is a powerful piece. Quite different in mood is the explosive spiral of colors in LiDoña Wagner's acrylic Rebirth I, which shows the seeds of order in the hopeful chaos of rebirth. Margaret Coe's oil Primativo (Juror's Choice) and Sally Jo Schwader's tiny acrylic Our Trip to John Day transform studies in composition into abstract landscapes. In terms of prints, the tiny wood-engraving Incentive
displays Susan Lowdermilk's technical mastery and wit, next to
Jeff Seltzer's surrealistic Inspiration. Suzanne St.Cyr-Ponsioen
uses a solar-plate relief technique for her quirky portrait-of-a-woman-with-wardrobe.
Germaine Bennett's etching-and-aquatints Nora Ascending,
printed from four different plates, depicts
PHOTOGRAPHY Diane Etzwiler's No Way Out juxtaposes three Polaroid-emulsion lifts, repeating the same image of a Hawaiian burned forest to create a striking landscape in sepias, browns and blues. The verticals of tree trunks are perfectly balanced by the horizontal format of the overall composition, while the wrinkles and tears in the thin emulsions contribute a tactile element and enhance the vivid mood of the scene. Robert Schofield's underwater scene in The Yearning for Truth is endowed with dreamily erotic quality. My husband Eric Pederson's popular larger-than-life close-up of an African Bull Elephant's head displays the rough texture of the animal's crackled skin and its sad ancient gaze. The black-and-white silver gelatin print was sepia-toned and subtly hand-colored with photographic oil paint to create warm tones and "enrich the emotional quality of the textures." Another popular elephant portrait, which hangs at the Salon des Refusés at DIVA, would have made a splendid counterpart with Pederson's at the Jacobs Gallery. Do Mi Stauber's exquisitely detailed The Landscape of Patience uses fine-pointed colored pencils to faithfully render the creviced skin and wise gaze of this intelligent animal. Stauber's layering of colored stipples (up to fifteen layers) provides a deep and smooth complexity of tones and shows what excellence this underappreciated medium can achieve.
THREE-DIMENSIONAL ART Ken Herrin is a navigator with a travel case for journeying through his dreams. Atlas of My Dreams: Folio II (Best of Show award) is meticulously assembled from timeless materials – hand-made paper, silk ribbon, India ink, brass pegs and fittings, wood… These are his tools for creating dream-world maps of dreamscapes. For Herrin is not interpreting his dreams but carefully charting them. His cartography connects elements by means of pegs and thread located in the doors of the case. In the main compartment, a stark and exaggerated perspective leads to the distant black doorway to the beyond. Beverly Soasey's lovely shadow box, Know What You Prefer, in which text fragments play a crucial role, reminds us of what's at stake when injunctions on proper womanly behavior are followed blindly. John (Teach) Girard's unorthodox Metamorphicycle, created entirely out of wood (over 750 pieces) possesses humor and panache, while Dan Chen's bronze Rooster II stands with utter realism on a wooden fence-post entwined with vine. Unsurprisingly, Stephen White's light sculpture Drifting III is exquisite. Delicate, organic forms flare up like fluid inflorescences on a driftwood vine. As with Ingres' famous Grande Odalisque, a long torso doesn't detract from Karen Washburn's lovely ceramic reclining nude with its subtle shino glaze. Meanwhile, the elegant classicism of Rebecca Urlacher's porcelain Sun Vase achieves sculptural quality. Bradley Reinman and Thomas Dalton's Tabl V.2.0 belongs to "a series of interactive design projects that explore form and function." The presence of a keyboard appears neither functionally nor aesthetically motivated and the overall project is only minimally interactive, but the combination of circuit boards, light rods and hardware creates an intricate miniature world. It evokes the aerial view of a modern city grid, with its complex, hard-edged industrial beauty. Glass is represented in fused-and-slumped form by Chris Paulson's iridescent Herringbone Platter and as cast sculpture by Olga Volchkova's Living Orchestra. Blurring the distinction between arts and crafts are James Carpenter's handsome hurdy-gurdy and, among fiber works, Janet Hiller's clever Rhythm and Hues with its vibrant op-art quality. Video art is included this time, with Jaylene Arnold's short black-and-white Ophelia piece. David Campbell and Margaret Coe's respective oils, Look! and Primitivo, and Sharon Dursi's mixed-media sculpture Pandora's Piñata, earned Juror's Choice awards. The Mayor's Choice went to Carolyn Rubenstein for her untitled watercolor of children climbing a fence. The jurors were retired UO ceramics-art professor and ceramicist George Kokis, Salem artist Nancy Lindbergh and Eugene painter and retired art teacher Mike Van. The Mayor's Art Show essential companion, The Salon des Refusés (DIVA), will be reviewed next week, as will The Mayor's Show of Teen Art (Maude Kerns Art Center).
Waldo
Lake Trail There are more than 500 named lakes in the Willamette National Forest, but there's only one Waldo Lake. Waldo is one of the world's most outstanding natural features. At more than 10 square miles, it's the largest natural lake in western Oregon, and the second deepest. Because of the large size of the lake relative to the size of the basin it drains, and because it has no permanent inlet, Waldo contains some of the purest H2O in the world.
Waldo's vast volume of water is what scientists call "ultraoligotrophic" — a fancy word that means that the water is very unproductive, supporting little or no biological activity. The bottled water you buy at the store is probably dirtier. Fall is the ideal time to enjoy Waldo. Shrubs and hardwood trees are turning crimson and gold, but more importantly, the mosquitoes have mostly died off. Camping during the height of the mosquito season from late June to early August can be thoroughly miserable. To get to there, drive Highway 58 east from Oakridge. Three miles west of Willamette Pass, take a right on Waldo Lake Road (FS 5897). There are three campgrounds between mileposts 6 and 13 from which you can launch a boat, or start a hiking or biking trip. One of the best ways to get to know Waldo is a mountain bike trip on the Waldo Lake trail, a 22-mile loop that circles the lake. Start off at the North Waldo Campground and head west. The first part of your trip takes you through the eerie bleached white trunks of the 1996 Charlton Fire. After four miles or so, you'll cross the lake's only outlet, the North Fork of the Middle Fork Willamette River, which flows through the 37,000-acre Waldo Lake Wilderness to its confluence with the Middle Fork Willamette 40 miles downstream. From here, turn south along the west side of lake, which has several moderately steep grades and few views of the lake itself. There are better views around Shadow Bay at the south end of the lake. From here you can cut up to the road you drove in on, or continue north on the trail to your vehicle. The total trip ought to take most experienced bikers four to six hours, unless you stop at one of the lake's many sandy beaches for a swim and a long lunch. If you have access to a sailboat or sea kayak, the trip out to the middle of the lake is unforgettable. All the sun's rays except blue are absorbed by the deep water, leaving the water an intense indigo hue. Bring a large light-colored rock with you and drop it overboard — you'll be able to watch it spiral to the bottom of the crystal clear water to an astounding depth of more than 100 feet. Waldo is no ordinary lake, but the Forest Service treats it like it is. Current management plans allow gas motors on the lake and heavy recreational use of the lakeshore. Scientists believe that the combination of these activities is slowly eroding the world-class water quality. To their credit, the Willamette National Forest is planning to change the rules to protect the fragile lakeshore and phase out gas motors. They need to hear from you, so as soon as you get back from your hiking, biking or boating, send an email to comments.pacificnorthwest-willamette@fs.fed.us and let the Forest Service know there's only one Waldo and you want it to stay that way.
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