If I Turn This Off Now We Will Go Into Darkness

Image courtesy simonfilm at morgueFile

Andrea Zittel rocks. 

I think that will serve as commentary aplenty for her lecture last night at PSU's Shattuck Hall.

There are undoubtedly finer writers with more nimble minds who can provide a comprehensive, heavily syllabled, dissertation on the work she presented over the course of the evening. I have opted to put my energies towards a low-brow rant instead.

I've been attending artist lectures since the days when humming slide projectors glowed hot in the back of darkened halls. With a couple exceptions, I can safely say that very few of the lectures in those days suffered from one tenth of the technical difficulties that plague modern presentations. Fancy laptops and digital displays may be the norm for every new speaking venue today, but you can tell that as a society we take for granted our mastery of these new technologies. Plug-and-play (which, by the way, was a concept that couldn't be realized until 1996, roughly ten years after computers entered the middle class home) continues to be about as easy as changing your oil— which is to say that anyone can do it, but few can do it without some unforeseen difficulty. 

So after some fresh-faced Portlander bumbled through what might be the most painful introductory speech I've ever encountered: rife as it was with "ums," random shout-outs for local artists, feeble fundraising plugs, and frequent confusion about which canned biographical tidbit he was meant to be reading, Andrea Zittel took over the podium. The audience visibly relaxed, and the fear that we might all have just been represented to a preeminent contemporary artist as West Coast bumpkins dimmed in time with the overhead lights.

Then the real trouble began. Ms. Zittel immediately realized that the image ratio of her slides was wrong. Such an observation is expected of a visual artist, although I doubt many of us in the packed lecture hall would have noticed. She started fussing with the settings and the screen went blue. Then it went black. 

The narrative ground to a halt as Zittel attempted to work through the technical difficulties and then, in slight frustration, she picked the narrative back up without any projection. Instead she hoisted her computer up and turned the screen toward the room. The artist lecture with 200 odd audience members became an inane library story-hour wherein only the ten closest people to Zittel were able to see the images on her laptop monitor. Despite her gently swinging the monitor in an arc to show the image to the entire crowd, it was impossible to make out any detail on a 15" screen when seated 12 rows back in a lecture hall. Was there no one who could resolve this aspect ratio debacle? 

Enter PSU IT guy (well, enter his speaking role anyway, as he'd been poking about at the podium for a few minutes at this point). Oh higher educated IT guy, explain to us simple art enthusiasts why things have gone so wrong: "Well, the old projector had this button you could push that fixed this problem and this new projector doesn't have the same buttons."* 

Phew! A wave of relief flooded over the room as the root of the difficulty was so brilliantly exposed. Granted, none of us grasped how to resolve this fundamental problem of button absence, but we felt better knowing that the foibles of our technologies could be quickly assessed and diagnosed.

Eventually things got back on track and Ms. Zittel was able to turn her attention to the task at hand— outlining a decade of artistic inquiry into an aesthetic of manicured simplicity. Those of us concerned with Portland appearing like a quaint artistic backwater slowly forgot the pathetic gaffs of the first half hour as we sat back and admired the prodigious output of a woman who might be better described as a fierce individualist rather than an artist. Had Zittel come of age in a time prior to Duchamp, she would have just been considered a kooky community eccentric rather than a purveyor of contemporary domestic aesthetics. 

In America today, where individuality is no longer a construct of idealism, but a marketing tool for moving cheap commodity, I suppose the only place a character as unique as Zittel might be appreciated is in the ivory tower of the art world. I was in the midst of considering this idea when Zittel came to a close and, with the slightest trace of hesitation in her voice, proclaimed with a slight nod towards her computer, "If I turn this off now we will go into darkness." 

I don't think she was afraid of the dark, she was simply afraid that we wouldn't be able to find the lights. And that might be the best metaphor to come out of her presentation. Obviously, she would be fine— 

We were the ones who needed some help.

*OK, this isn't a quote verbatim, but it is certainly close enough to be considered the gist.

Rockin

There are some things that humanity has historically been unable to resist. Gold. Silver. Puns. So I’ll just succumb and state that the Rice NW Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a real gem.*

On my second visit I was no less impressed with their vast collection of bewildering specimens from the clutches of the earth. Minerals that look as downy as cotton, as soft as ermine, as poisonously pigmented as American Apparel, fill case after glass-fronted display case in the untouched rambling 50’s ranch home of former logging baron Richard Rice.** A boulder sized thunder egg with an opal center greets visitors to the NW Mineral Gallery and one room in the main house cycles through different UV lights to demonstrate the hidden phosphorescence of some otherwise banal looking rocks. In the basement you’ll not only find the sweetest linoleum floor ever laid, but a fantastic collection of petrified wood (including petrified pine cones). I posted a few more pics on flickr should you care to explore why mineralogy has informed every hipster painter in the Pacific Northwest for the past five years.

If you have a weakness for small scale museums of oddities and obsessions then I highly recommend that you check out hiddenportland.com which has put together a charming little brochure of the finest rarely visited haunts of PDX.

*I’m not the only punny one. Check out this article where they manage to get in, “It will rock your mind and salt your appetite.” Why would they write that? And how could they follow it with the fact that the museum is only “a stone’s throw off Highway 26”? Funny how puns are only funny when you’re the one making them.

**Fact check please. I believe this to be true from some informative labels I read on my first visit but I was also monitoring twelve children during that visit and must admit the possibility that this may have weakened my recall.

Speaking of Lists

I find the strangest things sometimes. I’m no Davy Rothbart mind you, just someone with a tendency to stare at the ground.

More often than not I find lists. One of my more recent finds was this scrap of paper next to the library catalog. It instantly made my typed inquiry of “Volvo repair, brake light” seem a bit prosaic. I tried to conjure a picture of the woman who wrote this: respectably edgy, tattooed, pixie-like PDX mama (recent mama) concerned with jump starting Junior’s cerebellum while traveling the globe in dodgy hostels full of “real” people. As the portrait became more and more vivid I realized that this fictitious hipster parent that I was creating said more about my perceptions of Portland than it did about the actual person who might have penned the list. Almost immediately I began to feel a tad arrogant. Portland isn’t just a hotbed of young, Leftist, caucasian urbanites, and only a blatant elitist would state such a thing.*

I turned back to my search for car repair manuals. Naturally, all the Volvo items were checked out.

* A blatant elitist or Dave Hickey, who proclaimed Portland the land where, “the White People won” at a speech he gave here a number of years ago. Every person in the audience was mildly outraged in a socially appropriate manner.

Indy Adapted

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation might be one of the most profound cinematic experiences for a person just beginning to consider making films. An obsessive recreation of Spielberg’s classic created by three Mississippi adolescents over the course of seven years during the Eighties, The Adaptation proves that inspiration and determination are the only requisite ingredients to making a movie. Using a home video recorder, a host of friends from school, and a tremendous amount of handmade decor Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos, and Jayson Lamb managed to re-create nearly every shot in the film. The massive rolling boulder that chases Indy out of a South American ruin: they have it. The fire-fight amid a bar engulfed in flame: check. That crazy series of scenes where Indy wrestles a truck containing the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis and he falls down the hood, slides under the truck, and is drug along behind as he slowly crawls back on to the speeding vehicle: its in this movie, and it was done by a group of teenage boys without stuntmen! The sold-out audience at the Hollywood Theater gasped, cheered, and clapped at every iconic scene!

The Portland audience was comprised of a predictable demographic: the nerds were there, ready to bask in the achievements of fellow nerds who’d made good. The younger families were there so that parents might share a movie of their youth with their children. The hipsters were there, coiffed and hungry for another helping of elitist irony. They were perhaps the only ones disappointed. Those seeking a postmodern confirmation of a guilty pop-culture pleasure would find no support here. This was not a statement— it was an homage; and every minute of it was wonderfully sincere.

One left the theater aglow. Here was a validation that anything was possible. Life could be as large as we witness it on the big screen. We are all stars— if only we love something enough.

Timberline

I’ve often been told that Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. In fact, this was a common conversation thread throughout my years at Portland’s one and only craft college. It would begin with my telling a stranger I was getting a degree in craft.

There would be silence.

Then there could be a range of clunky questions seeking clarification, or there would be the question about Timberline.

“No.” I’d say, “I have not visited Timberline. Yet.”
And that would inadvertently derail that conversation.

After being an Oregonian for over a decade I finally wandered through Timberline Lodge. It contains many remarkable evidences of hand work; with the wrought iron hardware and massive hewn beams being the standouts. Over one doorway I spied a butterfly tenon larger than both my fists put together. Carved rams support chunky oak slab table tops and telephone pole beams are cut short and topped with friendly carved animals. A handmade cohesiveness provides harmony as well as quirky surprises on each floor of the lodge. In one side hallway I came across a simple wooden bench with protruding iron handles on one side and a single heavy metal wheel on the other so that the bench could be wheeled about if a new location was desired. I could not find another one. This singular bench made me wonder when we might again build buildings that would be erected to not just serve a function to the public but would also honor the ingenuity of a hand laborer.

As I see it, Timberline’s crafted beauty isn’t nearly as important as the sentiment that wrought it. In the bleakest of times for America a president saw fit to think outside of advisors, analysts, and political tradition to empower the impoverished. Among the hundreds of people working to fashion Timberline there were many who discovered previously hidden talents and were awarded not just a check, but with the feeling that their labor mattered. Simply stated, the New Deal valued its citizenry and unlocked their potential.

Critics of FDR’s plan proselytized the end of capitalism with the advent of the New Deal but I think of it as a very heart felt attempt to counteract an international crisis of economy and the subsequent feelings of worthlessness that it engendered.

Ultimately, government should not be just a gnarled web of mandates and bureaucracy; it should inspire and support the dreams of its populace. As a democratic population we should not allow our government to operate solely as a short-sided arm of disaster relief for the victims of its own inefficiency. FDR was not the primary culprit of a national economic downturn and many of his solutions to it live on today— can we have much faith that our current president will leave us with a similar legacy?

*Feeling it imprudent to take a camera on the slopes I turned to Flickr for an image. Fellow photographer Sherri Jackson graciously provided the picture above. It manages to capture not just the fantastic scale of the woodwork and masonry, but also reveals a bit of the impeccably considered lighting that exists throughout the lodge. Much thanks to Sherri.

The Itinerant Poetry Librarian

The Itinerant Poetry Librarian will avail herself of our couch for one more week before leaving to share her collection of “lost and forgotten” poetry with the citizenry of Seattle. Thus far the Poetry Library has been featured at the Independent Printing Resource Center (IPRC), Reading Frenzy, The New American Art Union, The Free Skool, In Other Words and outside the gates of Portland’s aptly named Portland Art Center.

A thorough explanation of the Poetry Library would require tremendous time and edits for accuracy by the punctilious pen of the librarian herself. Therefore, I will provide only a flavor of the benefits of membership.

The Poetry Library is a temporary installation of a varied, and rotating, collection of obscure poetic publications from around the world. During an installation all are welcome to join the library provided they are willing to abide by the Library’s Bye-Bye Laws while members of the library. Here is Bye-Bye Law 13, by way of example:

“No person shall behave in a disorderly, discordant or overly debauched manner in the library or use violent, abusive, or obscene language therein unless expressly invited and incited to do so by the Library Authority. The Library Authority takes no responsibility for matters and manners occurring from the above.”

Patrons are given a library card with which to check out materials and a free haiku upon joining. The Itinerant Poetry Librarian manages the checking in and out of materials and makes suggestions about readings patrons might enjoy. Upon the closing of the library all materials must be returned to the librarian. The library card, haiku, and a copy of the Bye-Bye Laws (if requested by the new member) are retained by the patron.

The Itinerant Poetry Librarian manages a thorough chronicle of her project which is open all hours.

Farewell

Last week I completed the paperwork that would accession “Interlude” into Portland’s public art collection. The decision to purchase the work was made by the Regional Art & Culture Council (RACC) on behalf of the city. RACC is one of the primary reasons that Portland’s art scene continues to thrive as they offer a host of grants to individuals and institutions of all creative disciplines.

Of all the works I’ve created in the past two years “Interlude” was the most difficult to complete and the work that I’m most proud of. For years I’d been keeping this low resolution image of the sun setting out the library window where I worked. It was one of those stormy fall days where the water whipped about in all directions as it fell from the sky and I felt fortunate to be among the quiet confines of the books and magazines. When the sun broke along the horizon the blackness of the storm clouds was made all the more apparent and having nothing but the Photo Phazer (an early digital camera that had been marketed to children, was held like a phazer from Star Trek, and had perhaps 5MB of total storage capability) I shot the scene through a rain-spattered window. The resulting image moved me. It was powerful in its mediocre representation of something so sublime. The blacks were mushy stains when the digital file was printed and the edges of shapes revealed the square corners of pixels more than the organic contours of nature.

When it came time to take on the challenge of converting this image into a drawing I opted to play down the digital origins of the image. The abstract composition of line and form took center stage and mushy blacks became silvery graphite. I did preserve the lack of clarity in the lower fifth of the image where a bramble of branches in shadow simply melded into one nebulous void of darkness, but ultimately the drawing was biased toward grandeur rather than technological mediocrity.

Such considerations might seem pedantic, but these are the musings that go through your head when you stare at a work in progress over the course of many weeks. These considerations are what grant “Interlude” some presence and they are made possible by idle days before windows- staring out at storms.