 |
  |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||
|
Visual Art: Dance: Theater: Theater: Sports: Outdoors:
Playfully
Absurd Bright joyous colors, folksy characters, absence of perspective and deliberately naïve renderings confer at first glance a childlike quality to Eric Petersen's hand-colored etchings and gouaches at the White Lotus Gallery through Dec. 4. This impression is never negated with subsequent viewings yet is subverted at every turn, which makes for a much more interesting, if at times unsettling, exploration.
Printmaker Petersen is a punsmith. To describe the genesis of his works, it suffices to quote Samuel Beckett's Murphy: "In the beginning was the pun." Puns rely on homonyms, words that sound the same and may even be spelled identically but possess different meanings. A punster thinks on two planes at once and in punning makes two or more levels of meanings coexist, or at least alternate, as in figure-ground reversals. Puns give us a fresh look at language and remind us of its ambiguity and arbitrariness. They're also playfully absurd, with a penchant for irreverence and the potential for transgression. They can be a source of poetry and insight when the unexpected merging of two competing references opens up a new perspective. Puns are present in Petersen's visual images, which are born of a wide range of verbal associations. Such verbal origins are often made explicit in the work's title, as in the etching Sheep of Fools, which features a sheep steering the large wheel of a boat. In Hooked on Flyfishing Again? Petersen relies for inspiration on the various meanings of the title words and their thematic associates, which leads to the pursuit of several intersecting paths. The associative process is not linear but tends to branch into tangents. Thus the word "fly" leads to a butterfly, a reference to Lord of the Flies and fishing lures of peacock-feathers. "Fish" spawns a fishing-net pattern, a fish dish, a rainbow trout that in death becomes a rainbow, a zodiac sign (Pisces) and a symbol of Christianity, which leads tangentially to a reference to the rising of Christ ("He rose"), out of which a visual pun is born: a climbing rosebush. Bull Market uses verbal and visual associations with the word "bull" from a bull-elephant to a Viking entering the bullfight scene on the strength of his bull-horned helmet. References to such artists as Goya and Picasso, who also dealt with this theme, further enriches the network of associations. Meanwhile, some puns indulge unabashedly in the purely frivolous, as with the "two-tired" matador on a bicycle.
Other works are more enigmatic, as when the source of Petersen's imagery reaches deep into his own psychology in a process of self-analysis. For example, the complex third panel of Flight of the Moth Triptych reminds us of the limits to what we may share of our own psyche. Ultimately, however, it matters little how well we follow the artist's train of thoughts, because when we look at Petersen's etchings, we are faced foremost with a visual whole. The logic of visual composition provides a new order and structure to elements born of wordplay or psychological probing. Out of the compositional integrity of the visual scenes, viewers supply new narratives. Petersen delightfully fosters a plurality of interpretation by maintaining a high level of ambiguity. His is a seductive world. Bright colors beckon. An element of surrealism and magic enchants. A cast of anthropomorphized animals, hybrid creatures and folk-tale characters such as mermaids and Gingerbread Man recur. Sometimes this world is purely whimsical, as in A Sheep at the Wheel, Three Rings for the Family Tree and King & Queen of Eggs. But more often, there is a subversive side. Gingerbread Man wears horns, or appears with a cookie in his belly — the result of a cannibalistic act. Religious imagery and symbolism abound, often with a transgressive twist. Sowing Hearts of Lions features a "naughty angel," a monkey with wings, breasts and ambiguous genitals. A moose plays "bingo and jackpot the way they're always doing in churches," in the artist's words. The bingo game displays birds and bees, and the jackpot is a cherub. Angel-Food Cake offers a similarly rich mix of religious and sexual imagery, albeit in a lighter vein. Santa's Last Supper or a Carpenter's Nightmare is a spoof on Christ's last supper, in which Santa sits in for Jesus. Three angels on a pin are "persecuting" a sheep caught between a saw-toothed shark and a hammerhead shark. All these works share an innocent look, which disarms and charms, despite the underlying complexity of the themes. Petersen's highly idiosyncratic work deserves savoring.
If
the Shoe Fits
Imagine a series of sultry days evolving into weeks, months and years in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1950s and early '60s. Celebrated writer Eudora Welty cares for her ailing mother and brother, attending to them and slowing, but not abandoning, her craft. Picture Welty — photographer, writer, and erstwhile nursemaid — bringing sips of water up steep stairways. As she tends to her family, in her imagination Welty develops the one piece she will produce during those eight years of care-giving: The Shoe Bird, 1964. This fanciful de-light was written after Welty received accolades for her literary contributions but before she railed in print against the assassination of civil rights worker Medger Evers. Perhaps the brief novel written for children alleviated Welty's day-to-day worries, as she reached into a magical world where a parrot helps other birds try on shoes. Whimsical and inventive, The Shoe Bird is a classic, and both children and adults can enjoy Dance Theatre of Oregon's reprise of their 1998 musical theater adaptation of Welty's tale. With 22 cast members, DTO's The Shoe Bird introduces audiences of all ages to Arturo the Parrot, a sprightly character who investigates whether or not shoes really are "for the birds."
First adapted into a ballet in 1968, the dance work premiered in Jackson, Miss., with Ms. Welty an ardent fan. DTO's Pamela Lehan-Siegel was that production's original Nightingale. With Southern ties to the Welty estate, which granted the rights to stage the book to Ms. Lehan-Siegel, the current production features original music, theater and dance. Considering the fortitude of a company such as DTO, one might look to the words of a noted Southern pragmatist, Welty herself, who said: "Never think you've seen the last of anything."
A
Squawk from the '60s "The Squawk isn't about the war, or being a hippie or anything. The squawk is just a squawk. You can squawk whatever you want. A squawk is a good thing, it's a positive thing to do that people can get behind. It's a Prankster tradition. We're trying to squawk the American squawk."
That's how Ken Babbs, co-hort of Ken Kesey and an original Merry Prankster, explains the upcoming Squawk at Tsunami Bookstore Saturday, Nov. 20 ($1). The event will feature Babbs, Izzy Whetstine, Merry Pranksters, and a host of others from the wild '60s. "We've done this before, so we know what we're doing. We're like a sand-lot basketball team that plays in the mud. We come up with the chants, the cheers, the baskets at the last second, with musicians playing right along with us, dropping the ball with the clarinets." The performance art event kicks off at 7:30 pm with Izzy reciting the poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg, backed by a jazz trio. As he says, "a good jazz group makes all the difference." Following that, Babbs will read excerpts from his latest novel Who Shot the Water Buffalo? which chronicles his experiences as a chopper pilot in the early days of the Vietnam War. He sees plenty of parallels between that war and the present one, claiming "that was a bogus war, and this one is, too." The performance ends with a group Squawk about the Vietnam War. Babbs mentions that he sees the youth of today as involved, or even more involved, than they were in the '60s. His fame from that era is still apparent. He thinks it's "amazing how many kids are aware of the hippies and the Pranksters, because of the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The book's still being reprinted every year. We've been finding a whole new generation. We've been finding a whole new generation for 40 years now. "Over the past 35 years people have been asking about the movie we were making when we were on the bus trip. Tom Wolfe mentioned it in his book. We did finally get a couple of the videos done. The bus was set up for 16mm film and then video. We hope to record the Squawk, and we hope a lot of people will show up. It's something that's never been done before. It's something new and different."
Gettin'
Crazy with Aristophanes Cross politics with wacky, musical theater and Greek plays and you get Good Morning Athens. It's not a play for everyone. If you lack a sense of humor, don't bother. If you're a Bush supporter, you might be offended. If jokes and parody with blatant sexual innuendo ruffle your feathers, skip this one. For everyone else, Good Morning Athens, showing for just one more weekend, is an impressive production full of wit and verve. Writer Sean Keogh wrote the script and score while he was an undergrad at the University of Wyoming and the production at UO is only the second time the play has been performed. Director Jack Watson first saw it at a drama conference where the play was so well received the University of Wyoming cast went on to perform it at the Kennedy Center. Friday and Saturday night those original cast members were in the audience singing along and shouting out lines, which only added to the raucous and fun atmosphere that filled the theater. Keogh was inspired by Aristophanes' anti-war play Lysistrata when he wrote Good Morning Athens, which takes its name from a TV show hosted by characters Medea (Marissa Neitling) and Aristophanes (Stevo Clay) who chronicle the events of the play in a show within the show. The basic plot is that the women of Athens decide to withhold sex from the men as a way of protesting the Peloponnesian Wars. The play is very time specific. The lead male, Gen. Tantalos, is a parody of George W. Bush and actor Joe Oyala makes the most of it. That's where things start to get really funny. He blinks excessively. He uses words that don't exist. He even has lines taken from the recent debates and election such as "I approve this message," that Watson and his crew added to the script with Keogh's blessing. Other gems include the reference to the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima), "You're either with us or against us," Gen. Tantalos giving the peace sign with both hands to the audience, and so much more. The choreography for the two dances by the conscripted group of soldiers that follow Gen. Tantalos everywhere he goes are absolutely brilliant. They step lively like a chorus line, they prance, they fawn. It's fabulous. The costumes are a bit strange and do little to enhance the plot line. Cassandra (Margie Kment) , a fortune teller/seer in the original play is portrayed as a bride and is swimming in the ruffles and pleats of her dress. Lysistrata (Sarah Griner), or Liz as she's called, the lead female role and also Gen. Tantalos' wife, manages to overcome her bad wig with great acting and an impressive, lusty, full-throated voice that carries the show. "This play is written for a younger audience but in performance, it has had a very broad appeal," Watson said. When Keogh saw the performance last weekend he sent Watson an excited e-mail at 3 am telling him all the ideas he'd gotten from the performance and about his plans to update the script. You see, this play hasn't officially been published yet. So get out there and be one of the first to see the show that may very well come to define the absolute craziness of politics in 2004.
Adrenaline
Powered Pull out the rock boards and get hiking. Winter is here, ushered in yet again by a new crop of movies so intense you'll leave the theater with your heart pounding, ready to launch off a cliff. With weeks to go before the lifts roll, two new movies showing in town this week will leave you on your knees praying, no … begging, for snow. Start your weekend early Thursday night at The McDonald Theatre with Yearbook, the new one from Matchstick Productions. Then Saturday check out Teton Gravity Research's newest, Soul Purpose. Every year these two production companies push the limits further, going bigger, higher, steeper and deeper and this year they bring out the big guns. Shane McConkey, who many credit with inventing the sport of skiBASE jumping takes it to a whole new, gut-wrenching level in Yearbook. In May 2004 McConkey teamed up with 23-year-old pro skier JT Holmes and Matchstick Productions and went looking for the biggest, scariest close-out lines they could find. The trip ended with a jump off the Eiger in Switzerland, a mountain that has claimed numerous lives in mountaineering accidents. Under clear blue skies McConkey throws a double front flip off the Eiger. If the term "sick" originated from people watching something that made them feel all icky on the inside, then the term applies here. The film features pro skiers Seth Morrison, Shane McConkey, Mike Wilson, Mark Abma, Ingrid Backstrom, JT Holmes, Sarah Burke, and Chris Davenport to name a few. They get medieval on your ass with enough huge drops, narrow lines and waist-deep snow get the adrenaline flowing faster than Eugene's winter rain. But not all "action" films are created equal and when it comes to drawing the rowdiest crowds and bombing the craziest lines, TGR's flims and their athletes are in a class by themselves. Their newest, Soul Purpose, is no exception, and plays Saturday, 8pm at WOW Hall.
With sections shot in Bulgaria, Stowe, VT, Russia, Jackson Hole, and Corvara, Italy, they traipse across the globe and come back with enough footage to keep you barely breathing for an hour. Erik Roner pulls off a seriously scary skiBASE jump sequence when he launches off a 3,000-foot cliff, gets part of his chute stuck under his arm and swings around in a sharp 180, missing the massive rock wall by inches. Soul Purpose seamlessly moves between sections with skiers and boarders, men and women, park and backcountry. And that's the way it should be. No patronizing nods to Victoria Jealouse and Meg Oster, two female forces to be reckoned with. No little blurbs on how skiers and boarders are getting along great these days. No. Soul Purpose is all about the rush, the adrenaline, the insanely steep, narrow and deep lines and the huge, huge air. One element of the film that's particularly cool is that the athletes narrate much of it, often reading from diaries and journals they kept while filming. Another section that sets Soul Purpose apart is the avalanche sequence shot in Mica Creek, B.C. They start small. Jonny Law sets off a small slide right as he drops a 45-foot cliff but emerges grinning. Then another one. And then the big one. The music drops out and all you hear is growling howl of thousands of cubic feet of snow and the panic in the voices of the crew as they look for the skier. If there is one criticism of Soul Purpose, it would be that this footage makes it looks like everyone just walks away from an avalanche unscathed. Anyone who's ever desperately followed the faint beeping of a transceiver with just minutes to save the life of a friend knows that's not true. Snowboard legend Jeremy Jones easily has the best line in the film after dangling from the helicopter in a harness to get to an otherwise inaccessible chute. The film has a sweet section with Victoria Jealouse, hands down the best female freeride snowboarder out there. Soul Purpose features Bend local Sage Cattabriga-Alosa as well as Micah Black, Chris Collins, Candide Thovex, Jamie Pierre, Tanner Hall, Jeremy Nobis and others. By the time the credits roll and you catch your breath, you'll be aching for those first turns. Let it snow.
Road
Trip National Forests make up half the land area of Lane County, and the entire eastern third of our county is managed by the 1.7 million acre Willamette National Forest. It's public land — land that all Americans own, but residents of Eugene/Springfield get to enjoy it the most.
The best way for people to experience the Willamette is to do a day hike or backpacking trip on the 900 miles or so of trail found in the Lane County portion of the forest. But if you're hosting relatives from out of town, have small children, or just want to see a big chunk of scenery in one day, plan for a day driving the Aufderheide Memorial Drive, one of two National Forest Scenic Byways found on the forest. The drive is a 150-mile round trip from Eugene, with plenty of short hikes and points of interest to get you out of the car along the way. You can easily spend a day or even two making the trip, but most people will want to give themselves six hours or so. To get there take I-5 south from Eugene/Springfield for approximately three miles. Take the Oakridge/Klamath Falls exit (Exit 188A). Stay to the left onto Hwy. 58. Take 58 for approximately 31 miles. Just before the Middle Fork Ranger Station, take the sweeping left at a sign for Westfir. After less than half a mile, cross a bridge over the Middle Fork and take a left at the T-intersection. After 1.75 miles you come to a four-way intersection in the village of Westfir. You can pick up an audiotape tour of the drive at either the Middle Fork Ranger Station or the Westfir Lodge Bed and Breakfast (it's easy to find). Simply return the cassette at the McKenzie or Blue River Ranger Station on your way home. The first sight is the covered bridge at Westfir, called the Office Bridge. At 180 feet in length, it's the longest covered bridge in Oregon. Continuing straight at the four-way intersection, you'll follow the congressionally designated Wild and Scenic North Fork of the Middle Fork Willamette River. In eight miles, on the right, there are some signs with interesting information about turn of the century railroad logging. Past the sign, the road takes you through a scenic rock-lined gorge. About 27 miles from Westfir, pull off on the right and take in Constitution Grove, a very short and gentle loop trail through a 200 year old forest. The loop was created in 1987 to commemorate the signing of the Constitution, and the trees — all roughly the same age as the Constitution — bear plaques engraved with the names of the original signers. The loop intersects the North Fork trail at two places. Hiking counter-clock wise on the Constitution loop, ignore the first North Fork trail intersection, but consider taking the next intersection heading upstream. This easy path will take you past monstrous old-growth Pacific yew and western red cedar before you lose the trail in a swamp in about a mile. Back in your car, the road will soon make a sweeping turn to the north. There's a partially hidden pull-out to the right at mile 30 that makes a good spot for a picnic. You'll also find a trailhead for the Shale Ridge trail, a fantastic hike through the Waldo Lake Wilderness that takes you to Moolack Lake and eventually all the way to Waldo Lake itself. From here, the Aufderheide climbs steeply to a 3,600 ft. summit at the Box Canyon Camp at mile 32. There are trailheads for several different hikes into the Chucksney Mountain Roadless Area. Box Canyon camp has a replica of an historic fire guard station and several buildings constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps dating to the Great Depression. Leaving Box Canyon behind, the Aufderheide descends along Roaring River, before meeting the South Fork McKenzie River. The South Fork section is like a tunnel through miles of spectacular old-growth forest. To the east is the French Pete arm of the Three Sisters Wilderness, protected by Congress in 1984. French Pete and Rebel Creek campgrounds are your jump-off point for trails of the same name, both highly recommended. There're lots of great camping and picnic spots before Terwilliger Hot Springs at milepost 51. The springs are almost always overcrowded. From Terwilliger it's just seven miles or so to a junction with Hwy. 126 and a 45-mile trip back to Eugene. Be sure and ride your bike to work for a week to make up for the long drive!
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
