 |
  |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||
|
Visual Art: Dance: Gardening:
Clarity
and Space To celebrate the Jacobs Gallery's 20th anniversary, Tina Rinaldi, the gallery's director, invited Craig Spilman to curate an exhibition of local artists. Spilman, who draws and paints, retired last year from LCC, where he taught for 32 years.
Spilman designed the layout of the show himself, and in terms of its structural design, the exhibit is a success. Spilman opened up the gallery space by removing several interior panels. We may step back unimpeded to view the larger paintings. Spacing between works is ample. "One of my major goals was to avoid the usual tendency to overhang," Spilman said. "I selected fewer artists and less work." The grouping of large works on the south wall is particularly successful while the smaller pieces on the opposite wall work together harmoniously. John Bauguess' photographs, however, should form two units, not one. Little Girl With Octopus, a black-and-white print with a subtle repetition of tiny circular patterns in the foreground and an even subtler background of horizontals, demands its own space for full appreciation, while the other images, in color, together create an ironic visual essay. Visitors are likely to be familiar with the 17 established local artists represented, though not necessarily with the particular works Spilman selected. Some were barely finished before the show, others go way back. Most striking for its combination of intensity and bold elegance is Adam Grosowsky's untitled oil landscape. Great formal economy, felicitous proportions and contained drama fittingly provide this Mediterranean scene with an element of classicism. Tension between the three dimensional axes adds dynamism to the composition. The shape of the canvas, the elongated silhouettes of cypresses, the vertical tilt of the foreground plane, all contribute to the vertical thrust of the composition. At the same time, the few horizontals delineating fields, and the relative activity in the bottom third of the painting demarcated by the horizon line, serve to temper and, crucially, to anchor, this upward movement. Contrast in value that brings us deepest into the work, all the way to the natural limit of the horizon, where a low sun lights the sky white between the backlit, blackened cypresses. Tension between red and green complementary accents plays itself, announced in the foreground in the geometry of blues and orange-ochres, resolved further up in the softer shapes of the blue-dominated sky where just a tinge of yellow lingers.
High in symbolic intent, Lee Imonen's They Go Through Me, is also noteworthy. The length of this walnut-and-steel monolith is pierced with cones of various lengths whose halves are held together with teeth-like pins. A smooth wood finish softens the rough, textured surface. This is a truly three-dimensional piece that requires viewers to walk around it. Analee Fuentes' oil, Chinook, is a lovely exploration of nature many times magnified. With a cool, subdued palette of blues, grays and greens, she captures the shimmering slipperiness of the Chinook salmon scales. Below the fish's lateral line, a tender surface leads to the swirl of a fin. Sand, Silt, Sea is a good example of Mark Clarke's subtle acrylic glazes and efficiently minimalist landscapes. Man in Yellow, with its composition based on differently sized rectangles, provides a geometric treatment of its figurative subject. In Fragments: Mullein and Wind, Diamond Craters, Terri Warpinski beautifully evokes the movement of light as plateau grasses undulate with the wind. Spilman's selection for Kathleen Caprario, Transition Zones #3, is atypical of her past work. This cerebral piece forsakes Caprario's previous use of chiaroscuro and its emotional impact. The asymmetry of its cross-shape and the two discrete boat-forms are not enough to offset the repetition of verticals and horizontals at right angles and the result is static. Nor do I find La Vallée Les Grées representative of Margaret Coe's strong compositions. Jim Denney's The Culvert is a dominating presence and a dramatic example of kitsch. The culvert in question, a large depthless doughnut-shape floating over the surface, remains unintegrated and appears out-of-scale. I highly recommend this show — a flaw or two only highlight its ample qualities.
Choreographic
Constellations As if focusing a telescope on a distant galaxy, choreographers shape movement to transform our perspective. One degree of difference, and new realms of possibility emerge, even with the same building blocks of dance: shape, force and time. Relationships are illuminated. Connections are made to the remote past and the immediate present. Like optimistic astronomers, dancers push boundaries as they explore the limits of human possibilities. And as they pursue an understanding of what's to come, dancers delve also into what has been. A momentary interplay, a fascinating dialogue, between mentor and protégé, between past and future, can come to the stage through this kind of experimentation.
Walter Kennedy and Dancers will bring an evening of such invention to the Soreng Theatre at the Hult Center Nov. 12 and 13. In a tribute to the late choreographer Bella Lewitzky, along with new works by Kennedy, the performance promises to be as rare in these parts as viewing an eclipse on a cloudless night. Professor of dance at the UO and recipient of a prestigious research award, Kennedy is both determined and humble about the opportunity to gather professional dancers from across the country for this event. He is pleased to pay homage to his artistic "mom," Bella Lewitzky. "I grew up as an artist under her, because of her," Kennedy said. And he is eager to excite Eugene audiences about dance in its pure yet passionate form. Working with dancers in New York, Minneapolis and Los Angeles — his "best dance buddies" — and students and faculty from this community has provided Kennedy just the right atmosphere for creativity, he said. Dance making is just the beginning point for Kennedy, his lens for looking at seemingly disparate events, people and places. Dance has helped shape the person he's become. The breadth of Kennedy's performance suggests the scope not only of his own career but also the last half-century of dance making. Three reconstructions of pieces by Bella Lewitzky will be featured. A firebrand mover who first danced with Lester Horton, Lewitzky's incandescence as a performer was unparalleled. Strong, unmannered, starkly funny at times and always an individual, Lewitzky made significant contributions on stage and off. The Lewitzky Company, which she founded at age 50, probed the idea of dance possibilities, of physical versatility. Lewitzky looked for new ways to create, to learn, to relate to movement and the social solar system. Although her company made its farewell tour in 1997, her work continues to burn as brightly as a supernova. Kennedy has re-mounted three of Lewitzky's pivotal works. The first are two movements from the lyrical Suite Satie, a solo. It was the first piece to be set on Kennedy when he joined the Lewitzky company in 1980. The duet Pietas, 1971, expresses with iconic angularity the dignity of protest, a nation at war, its youth in rebellion. Kinaesonata, a solo, will be performed by veteran Lewitzky dancer, Lori McWilliams. The last piece has a direct tie to the Eugene community. In 1970, Lewitzky was in residence at the UO. She also held classes at South Eugene High School, searching for the edge, the connections, the new and the universal in a moment, a gesture, a line, a dance. As segue into his own contemporary dance work, Kennedy will offer Twilight Yielding, a solo from 1998. Other new pieces include Bridges/LA, a collaborative piece featuring Bonnie Simoa and video by Bridget Murnane and Kennedy. In this process-oriented inquiry, a conversation erupts between dancer and film projection, place and perspective, separateness and connection. And finally, in The Deep Field, Kennedy strives to make sense of seemingly unconnected movement, such as the stars and their alignment. Through anchors of the familiar and tested mapping and with optimism, dance-makers let us look at ourselves as people the way we gaze at the heavens. We see better the connections we can make among ourselves and the empty spaces that have always been in between.
Raising
Natives Driving out to Doak Creek Nursery on a perfect afternoon in October, there seemed to be no place I'd rather be than the Lorane Valley. The blend of pasture, vineyards and forested hillsides was irresistible. I turned off Territorial Road onto Jackson Marlow Road, and asphalt soon gave way to gravel. The road rose gently through a mile or so of meadow before plunging briefly into ferny woodland. The nursery was the last stop on the road, and as I parked near the house and garden I could see the nursery spread out below against a backdrop of mixed forest.
Cynthia Lafferty credited her sister and brother-in-law (who until recently owned Balance Restoration, a wholesale business) for the idea of a nursery selling container-grown native plants. Getting started was challenging, she said, but she already had a great love of native plants, so it seemed a natural choice. Cynthia (with her now ex-husband) started the nursery as wholesale only, but she soon learned that many homeowners were interested in fitting native plants into their landscape to bring butterflies and birds into the yard, so now she sells retail, too. A wide variety of trees and shrubs dominate the nursery rows, but she tries to maintain a mix of groundcovers, ferns and wildflowers as well. Herbaceous groundcovers included wild ginger, bunchberry, a fragrant native violet, a small sedum with bright green leaves and yellow flowers (Sedum oregonum) and coast strawberry. Among the woody groundcovers were some of the nicest plants I've seen of salal, creeping Oregon grape and kinnikinnik. She also grows the prostrate ceonothus 'Point Reyes' (native to California into southern Oregon) because, she said, it is such a successful groundcover for dry places. She pointed out a well-drained bank beside her driveway where she has successfully combined it with lavender (non-native!) and Douglas aster. Among other ceonothus species native to Oregon I spotted the evergreen buckbrush or greasewood (Ceonothus cuneatus). Cynthia told me that it is plentiful along a creek (named Buckbrush Creek!) on the southeast side of Mount Pisgah. Buckbrush is not well-known as an ornamental but it has the potential to be very useful in summer-dry gardens. I was pleased to see another attractive, evergreen shrub nearby. There is always a need for evergreen shrubs that don't get too big, and Oregon box (Pachystima myrsinites) is a sweet plant that grows to about four feet. Cynthia showed me some full, leafy one-gallon plants of Pacific ninebark, a tall deciduous shrub with white spring flowers that she said can take wet, heavy soils. Nearby was another pleasant native shrub that likes to grow along streams. Twinberry (Lonicera involucrata) carries yellow, tubular flowers distinctively in pairs. The flowers produce black fruit between bracts that turn red as the fruit ripens. Cynthia suggested mixing twinberry and Pacific ninebark with red osier dogwood to make a big, wildlife-friendly hedge. Willows are staples of native plantings. Shrubby Scouler willow is good for upland situations; Sitka and Hooker's willows are found in wet places on the valley floor. Young shoots of the more tree-like Pacific willow, Salix lasiandra, have yellow bark, changing to red near the tips. Cynthia said it can, like most willows, be cut back repeatedly to emphasize the colorful new shoots. Wetland willows are vital larval host plants for butterflies. (The popular non-native butterfly bush, Buddleia spp., is spreading into riparian areas and out-competing willows, and has recently been placed on Oregon's noxious weed list.) The native plant industry is relatively young, and Cynthia reported a certain amount of trial and error with growing methods. I was impressed with the quality of her plants, though. She ascribed much of her success to the use of mycorhizal preparations, but a few plants still prove difficult to propagate or to keep alive in a pot. She has had considerable success growing madrone and Oregon white oak to a useful size by raising them in tall, narrow containers that allow for growth of a taproot without harboring too much moisture. Excess moisture does not suit either species, and a stunted taproot can mean failure after planting. We had a chuckle about the fact that the colorful garden by Cynthia's house is almost all non-native. "Well, I've been gardening since I was a teenager and I just have a passion for all plants. I can come up here tired after working in the nursery and still be happy work in this garden. I just love it," she said. This spring, though, Cynthia planted up a nearby slope in the afternoon shade of an Oregon white oak with ferns, evergreen huckleberry and a few native perennials. "This is one of my very favorite plants," she said, fondling a tidy checker mallow named Sidalcea virgata. "It makes this low clump of foliage and sends up spikes of pink flowers, and when it is done you can just cut off the stems." It's a plant any gardener would love. Doak Creek Native Plant Nursery is certified free of sudden oak death. The nursery (83331 Jackson Marlow Road, Eugene) is open by appointment: phone 484-9206. Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author of All About Gardens: Tips and Commentary from the Southern Willamette Valley, a selection of her past columns from Eugene Weekly. The book (192 pages, paperback, with drawings by Diane Lewis) is published by Stone Pig Press and sells for $14.95. She will sign books Dec. 4 at Gray's Garden Center in Eugene (10 am) and Springfield (4 pm). Contact Rachel at 683-7427 for a list of book stores and garden centers where you can see her new book. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
