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Visual Art: Dance: Theater: Books: Travel:
Light
and Space The Oregon landscape continues to be a vital source of inspiration for many artists. Mike Pease, an architect and artist recognized as a pioneer in the use of colored pencil in fine art, is among them, as evidenced by his outstanding new work at the Alder Art Gallery in Coburg. The show runs through Nov. 18.
Pease is a realist in much the same way the Impressionists were realists. His subject matter is the world around him at a given moment, given certain light conditions, and his object is to record this perceived world in terms of its light and dark values. "It's so easy," Pease said, "to get hooked on color when what really matters is the light and dark issue which is the structure of the picture. It's increasingly clear to me that in landscape what I care about is not just the physical components but light." To study light and value in a chosen landscape, Pease first starts with a watercolor sketch, a medium that requires him to deal with the image as a whole without focusing on detail. Pease shares with the Impressionists the use of unmixed primary colors over a light background but goes further in that he derives all the colors of the prism out of a palette limited to three pure pigments only, blue (cyan), red (magenta) and yellow.
Pease's colors are applied with visible strokes rather than blended in smooth overlapping layers as is more often the case with this medium. This allows for optical color mixing and also produces an impression of vigor and spontaneity. Pease's drawings are alive with color and texture. In this particular group of works, pencil marks come in several kinds, depending on the overall goal for the piece. "In this show there is a kind of debate going on about how best to look at a subject, " Pease said. The two Fall Creek pieces illustrate that debate clearly: in Fall Creek, Summer, I have used small, careful strokes to slowly and deliberately capture the richness of detail in this scene; in Fall Creek, September, I have used broad, quick strokes to capture the overall sense of the scene, deliberately avoiding detail." To further explore the image as a whole, Pease's pencil marks have lately extended beyond the regular hatchings that are still to be found in Fall Creek, September. In some of his paintings, he now has recourse to broad squiggly marks, and this is when his work is at its most impressionistic (the two Columbia River pieces, November Woods, Skyros).
However, Pease's work always retains a measure of objective realism absent in impressionism. His compositions are centered and classical, with traditional visual angles. Perspective is not flattened; instead, illusion of depth is emphasized. The landscape retains an architectural solidity. For Pease is not just concerned with light but with space and its construction. Size in and of itself has an inescapable impact and Pease's use of a very large format — unusual in the medium of colored pencil — is a striking development, especially when his large panels are combined into triptychs. Walking past one of these triptychs is akin to catching the view out of a triple-paned window — and what a view it is. River Bank Path begs us to go out there, inhabit that space, walk in it, leaves crunching underfoot, pungent earthy autumn smells in the air. And all around, that peculiar Northwest light, which, for all its different qualities, seems to arouse American painters the way the Mediterranean light did Europeans. The exhibit runs through Nov. 18. Don't miss it.
Movement
Never Lies As a town for dance, Eugene has terrific potential. I like Co-Art: Their show last year was irreverent and ballsy. Local star Alito Alessi recently received a Guggenheim for his danceability method. The Eugene Ballet Company churns out a consistent product that's as varied as their idiom can be.
We have a great concert hall, though I prefer to watch dance in more intimate surroundings. But the Hult has introduced some thought-provoking performances recently, most notably Pat Graney's "The Vivian Girls." And Eugene boasts two college dance departments that bring in fine touring companies and choreographers, while providing solid footing for any young dancer who wants to check out the terpsichorean art. A few of their graduates are even rooting themselves here, a noble effort to be sure, since this wild and wooly frontier doesn't offer much support to the up-and-coming. But there is also a systemic problem: well-seated complacency and the passive acceptance of mediocrity. Some of the work I've seen in Eugene — haughty, predictable fare — seems to lack any national or international awareness. These flaccid "new" works are extraordinary only in their disregard for craftsmanship. I am resolved in my charge to keep bringing dance to the table, and I hope audiences will continue to make inquiries, too. Not just to spend their money and time on a little culture, but to notice what they like, and what they don't: To push dance forward. At its best, dance is a breathtaking art form. At its worst, I would rather be having oral surgery. Here are three upcoming opportunities to see what you think of the local and regional dance scene: The first is En Masse Ensemble, a new artistic collective given reign to be, says Project Director Sarah Nemecek, "open to possibility." In this process of group discovery, according to Nemecek, each artist pushes his/her own creativity. As the resulting site-specific work unfolds, movement and musical moments transform the staged environment; in this case the many DIVA galleries. En Masse should be encouraged for their bold experimentation and clever utilization of space. Check out their collaborative experience, Domain, at 7:30 and 9 pm Oct. 21 and 22 at DIVA, 110 W. Broadway. Tickets are $5 per person at the door. And next week, don't miss A-Laska Dance: From Portland, a triumphant blend of fierce choreography and live music by East West Continuo. See highlighted article in Fall 2005 Bravo issue online. At 7 and 8:30 pm at the WOW Hall, 8th and Lincoln, Oct. 26. General admission is $10 at the door. And later, if you're in the mood to sample local works culled from the Eugene community, then head over the hill for the LCC Fall Collage. This potpourri features Rita Honka's reprising her gem of a duet "Familiars," this time with Amy Stoddard and Kim Vetter. Mutual-muses Bonnie Simoa and Walter Kennedy offer surprises. And look for new student works by Mandy Barba, Aaron Barnhart and the tireless Zapp Dancers at 8 pm Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28 and 29, at LCC's Performance Hall. $10 adults; $8 students/seniors.
Monkeying
Around with Evolution It's been 80 years since the 1925 Scopes Trial pitted Darwinism against creationism, and yet the debate still rages over religious doctrine being taught alongside science in America's classrooms.
Presently, a trial is being held in Pennsylvania over intelligent design theory's inclusion in public schools. Just last week a Harvard professor testified that teaching ID is "probably the worst thing I have ever heard of in science education." (Yet leave it to our not-so-intelligently designed prez to support teaching both theories.) With all this controversy, what better timing could the Hult Center's presentation of The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial, depicting the events of the Scopes Trial, possibly have? The performance stars Ed Asner, John de Lancie (who played the omnipotent Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation), Alley Mills (the mom from The Wonder Years) and North Eugene High School student Kyle Schnabel. Based on original court transcripts from the Scopes Trial, the performance doesn't take fictional liberties like the film classic Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy. It's all about the facts, ma'am. Being historically accurate, the play provides the audience with some surprises. For example the trial was somewhat of a publicity stunt to benefit the sagging economy of Dayton, Tenn. L.A. Theatre Works produces the show and is regarded as the preeminent radio theater group in the U.S. Sets are at a minimum, sound effects echo through the audience and actors use standing microphones, just as in radio. "The whole point of a radio show is that it throws the imaginative elements back at the audience. It focuses on the written word. Very quickly you'll lose a sense of [set]," says de Lancie, who plays defense attorney Clarence Darrow. "You will not be unlike those 1,000 people in the [1925] courtroom who were listening and watching." Whether you believe a god created humankind like Germans create luxury automobiles, or you think somewhere down the line of your descendents is a monkey who smells his soiled finger and passes out, there's something to learn from The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial. Or maybe de Lancie is onto something. "I had suggested that the narrator be a monkey," he says, laughing. Catch The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial 7:30 pm, Tuesday, Oct. 25 at Silva Concert Hall. Tickets are $20-$36 with discounts for students, youth and seniors. Call 682-5000 or log on to www.Hultcenter.org
Lend
Me a Tenor at Very Little Theatre VLT launches its 76th season with Lend Me a Tenor, a Ken Ludwig farce that focuses on the backstage antics of a struggling Cleveland opera company. The company has enlisted a world-famous tenor for its gala performance of Otello. But when the star falls unconscious, everything falls apart — from an apparent suicide and ardent backstage rendezvous to mistaken identities and dual Otellos performing onstage. Show dates are Oct. 21-23, 27-30 and Nov. 3-6 and 11-12. Purchase tickets by calling 344-7751.
Gift
of Intimacy ON THE WAY TO WATER by Scott Lubbock, Self-published, 2004, $12. "I walk, I listen, I write. These are the three things I do most of the time. That's how I am in the world."
Scott Lubbock, voted Eugene's favorite poet in EW's Best of Eugene polling this year, is a dedicated walker as well as a counselor and listener. His listening practice and his daily walks both inform his poetry. "My poetry grows from the combined process of thought and physical movement," he says. "Pretty much everything that ends up on paper has been fully composed while walking. That's where the rhythm from my poetry comes from." Sometimes, walking and landscape also supply subject matter, bringing about lyrical accents in Lubbocks's 2004 poetry collection, On the Way to Water. But even then, human relationships remain at the core of Lubbock's poems. By extension, these texts constitute explorations of the self, its desires and conundrums. They are tales of love, pain, loss, desire, dysfunction; narrative poems in which the protagonists are lovers, former husbands and wives, family members, friends, patients, strangers. They give a voice, or at least regard, to the wounded, the hunted, the downtrodden and marginalized. "A poem is meant to round up my experience but it's not necessarily history or autobiography," Lubbock cautioned. "I incorporate what I see, watch, listen to. I'm gathering information all the time so that they become part of my experience." A majority of the poems feature a first person narrator interacting with protagonists represented by the entire range of personal pronouns. The result is a complex choreography involving I and You and We, He and She and They, in constantly shifting associations and partnerships. As befits pronouns, their identities are unstable and permutable. The narrator's personas range from implied author to the status of "other." The addressee may be the implied reader, the narrator's lover, or a despised protagonist. The poems may be constructed as running commentaries often punctuated by questions, scenes as in a short story or drama, or speculation over a snatched fragment of conversation. Most poems give in to the urge to speak directly to a second person. This need to speak (and write) is born of a complex state of desire, a longing characterized as a "deep and eager thirst" that propels the narrator "on the way to water." Besides the title poem, a number of pieces probe aspects of this metaphor: "Mostly Water," "What He Hears," "Up River," "Bread Tells Hunger," "A Full Admission," "Concert/ Variations," "The Distance Between Oregon and Then" and "Concerto for Violin and Fly Rod." Tension arises out of contrary needs: Giving in, or letting go? Speaking, or observing and listening? Being together, or being alone? The narrator aspires to unite into a single element each pair of opposites within and without, thus finding his voice right at the "bleeding knot at [his] throat," and hearing "the single sound, thin and pure and / buoyant, that denies nothing." "The End of Writing" properly closes the collection with a challenge to the reader to not forget how vulnerable the poet has made himself by sharing his poetry. For what is said in those poems is intensely felt, unshielded, and a gift of intimacy. Lubbock's book is available at Tsunami Bookstore or from the author at P.O. Box 5250, Eugene, OR 97405.
BOOK NOTES: Oregon Book Awards Author Tour readings with finalists Carmen Bernier-Grand, Bob Welch, Maxine Scates and Laton Carter, 7:30 pm 10/20, Tsunami Books … Alice Fulton reads, 7:30 pm 10/20, Valley Library, OSU, Corvallis … Simon Winchester speaks, 7:30 pm 10/20, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland. $25, college/seniors $18, high school $5 … Myla Goldberg reads from Wickett's Remedy, 7:30 pm 10/20, Powell's on Burnside, Portland … Chris Crutcher (The Sledding Hill, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes) speaks, 4 pm 10/21, Downtown Library … Gregory Maguire reads from Son of a Witch, 7:30 pm 10/21, First Unitarian Church, Portland … Larry Kane reads from Lennon Revealed, 7:30 pm 10/22, Powell's on Hawthorne, Portland .. Poets Mark Conway, Beth Lylys and Nin Andrews read, 4 pm 10/23, Tsunami Books … The First Fiction Fall Tour presents Karen Olsson, Lisa Selin and Victoria Vinton, 6:30 pm 10/24, XV, Portland … Oregon Writers Colony presents the 2005 winners of the OWC contest "Short Stories … Both True and Imagined," 7 pm 10/24, Powell's in Beaverton … Editor Peter Maravelis and contributors to San Francisco Noir read, 7:30 pm 10/24, Powell's on Hawthorne, Portland … Actor Chris Elliot reads from his debut novel The Shroud of the Thwacker, 7:30 pm 10/25, Powell's on Hawthorne, Portland … Craig Lesley reads from Burning Fence, 7 pm 10/26, Knight Library, UO … A Reading of T.S. Eliot's "Four Quarters," 8 pm 10/26, Luna. $3-$5 … Sarah Vowell benefit event for Write Around Portland, 7:30 pm 10/26, First Congregational Church, Portland. www.writearound.org… John Witte, poet and editor of the Northwest Review, reads, 8pm 10/27, Knight Library, UO … David Wolman reads from A Left Hand Turn Around the World, 7 pm 10/27, UO Bookstore … An evening of ghost stories from Ghosts at the Coast: The Best of Ghost Story Weekend, Vol. II, 7 pm 10/27, Tsunami Books … H.W. Brands reads from Andrew Jackson, 7:30 pm 10/27, Powell's on Burnside, Portland … Davy Rothbart discusses Found magazine and reads from his short story collection The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, 9 pm 10/28, Sam Bond's Garage. $6 … Clive Cussler reads from Polar Shift, 7pm 10/28, Gerlinger Lounge, UO. 346-2442 … Dava Sobel reads from The Planets, 7:30 pm 10/28, Powell's on Burnside, Portland … R.A. Salvatore reads from Promise of the Witch-King, 1 pm 10/29, Powell's in Beaverton … General Janis Karpinski reads from One Woman's Army, 7:30 pm 10/31, Powell's on Burnside, Portland … "Writing Life: Should it Be Memoir or Fiction?" lecture by Jennifer Lauck, 6:30 pm 11/3, Baker Downtown Center. $10 donation for non-Mid-Valley Willamette Writers members … Annie Proulx, John Daniel, Clemens Starck and Elizabeth Woody read and sign, 7:30 pm 11/3, Tower Theatre, Bend.
Mi
Sono Perso Mostly, if it doesn't fit on the back of a postcard, you've said too much. This especially applies to the category of topics that includes "What I did on my summer vacation." But what if I told you Hotel La Palma didn't have a postcard? They didn't even have proper stationery, just fax face-sheets. So without the proper restraints of space, I've already said too much about the vacanza.
Words themselves have no survival value, I've concluded. This is based on experience. What use is speech if not for art? Consider our basic functions; eating, shopping, shitting and sex. Any of these functions can be achieved by grunting, pointing, smiling or swallowing. I bought a leather vest in Firenze, Italia. I went into a leather shop to buy one, rather than buying from a street vendor. After a minimal amount of pointing and grunting, the young Italian sales-woman ran out of the shop. Apparently, after some grunts on the street, she came back into the shop with a perfectly fitting black vest. After I paid for it, she baaaaaaed. It was an unnecessary baa, as I didn't really care if the vest was moo-leather or baa-leather. It was warm and soft. I'd already signed the VISA slip. What if I had felt guilt for the lamb's last words being repeated to me? It's like she ran out and killed some helpless creature, or was she mocking me or just celebrating the sale? One too many words was used. But it was an artistic expression, so I did not ask for a refund. I will now eat more lamb to justify the kill for the hide. That also means more wine to drink. Buying fancy pena e carta took what seemed like too much talking, and regrettably, no animal sounds; just a long, dry scratching sound like pen on paper. I felt like a citizen of a third-world country traveling with all my goods. The Milan Central station was built in 1931 and is a fascist monument, art-deco style. It looked huge and dark like a cross between something out of a Batman comic and prewar Moscow. Trains were lined up side by side on parallel tracks. Hundreds of people hurried and whistles blew. Announcements were made, shockingly, in Italian. Long lines to buy tickets for tired travelers, but at that point, after getting on the train, and now the conductor nods as he looks at our perfect tickets with the date stamped, I knew it would be OK. The lamb and calf were lost somewhere on the subway, but we were on our way to Genova. I tried to die crossing a street in Genova. I swear there was no traffic, so I started crossing in the middle of the street. I was swarmed by a hive of buzzing motor scooters. I didn't look at them or pause, as I know the stupid animal crossing the street has a better fate if eye contact is not made. Also, like the squirrels I run over, you only get the thump-thump if speed is varied. At Stressa, in our final few days in Italia, I observed a lost dog running back and forth along the boulevard. He ran faster and faster as the morning got warmer. He was lost. I recalled walking faster as well, a week earlier when I realized mi sono perso in a wilderness a mountain away from the Cinque Terra. The Cinque Terra is five towns on the western Italian coast. They are linked by boat, train and trail. Grape vines and rocky ground and hills and sea air link them. It's impossible to get lost on this five-hour hike, unless, mesmerized by the most incredible natural beauty of cliffs, towns brightly painted (hanging on cliffs), lemon trees, vineyards and frightening and wonderful Catholic shrines, stations of the cross, alters, ocean breeze, sunshine and the desire to climb up over the mountain and into a fog so dense that traffic was just … stopped and … crouched, like a pack of tired dogs sniffing the curb. I walked faster and higher, until near dark at a Catholic church on a Saturday night, I found water and a map. Then I got lost again. I was looking for a place to sleep in the woods. Finally a man at a dump made a sweeping motion of his hand, when I, so stupid and unable to even say I am lost, "mi sono perso," understood where Monterosso should be. I thought that part of my walk and my life had come to an end, until Mike Backus, a friend and Eugene artist, painted it for me in oil. I'm still lost in the hot Tuscan sun, of course. I'm lost in the sight of Borolo venting in a fat glass and the open bottled purple label, and in dusty sandals and bleeding toes and the smell of panic in a dog lost, and grape vines running on a hill and touching my adult children and wife in a now familiar, foreign country. The painted town of Manarola on a hot spring day smells of wet oil paint. Then to Stressa in the Italian Alps on Lake Maggiore, where I asked for a hiking map, and got 26 detailed hiking maps of the surrounding lake district and Italian Alps. I sat for three days gazing and dreaming of getting REALLY lost. Jeff Larkin, MD, is a geriatrician at PeaceHealth's Senior Health and Wellness Center on Barger.
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