Monthly Archives: March 2009

Books, Environment, General, Vernon Peterson

Stanley Crawford: the definite article has its “the day”

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“He had learned to step to the side of the day.”
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“And I’m pretending that it’s paradise”
Van Morrison, “Golden autumn Day”

This was back before “back in my day” turned into “back in the day” (which, according to Nathan Bierma, occurred in the mid-90s); that is, before our personal nostalgia had to be the best nostalgia ever. In any event, it was back then that we almost rented a farm. Well, a rundown farmhouse and garden plot, not the 40-acre alfalfa field out back, or any of the outbuildings either. This was 1973. We passed on the farm, passed on paradise. And I now learn, via the “back in the day calculator,” that this time was smack into my the day, which rolled through between 1972 and 1978. Fortunately, I don’t have to wonder what I missed.

asset_medium1972, it turns out, was the year Stanley Crawford published his short novel, Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine, revived now by the Dalkey Archive Press. I did not know the book then, but its spirit animated our discussion of the farm, a daydream of paradise that spiraled through the what-ifs and why-nots of post-original innocence, though not to the extent of imagining tying our marriage to an ocean-bound garbage scow, purchased “for a song, garbage and all, rot, stink and a flock of squabbling seagulls,” this rich compost layered with soil and planted with trees, flowers and vegetables, a new Garden of Eden, stocked with goats, birds and bees, and for forty years a home to a new Adam and a new Eve, afloat across the earth’s seas’ temperate zone, free from country, cant and commerce, and called the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine.

This dream of dropping out and staying out might ring bells with those who had time on their hands back in that day, as will the tension between the sexes memorialized in the Mrs Unguentine’s memoir, written after her husband drops drunk over the side of the barge for the last time. She isn’t to be trusted in everything she says about her old man, alternately drawn to and repelled by him, as she’s alternately worn out and invigorated by the alternative lifestyle. It’s one thing contemplating the miracle of the egg; it’s another mucking out the chicken coop.
Continue reading Stanley Crawford: the definite article has its “the day” →

Bob Hicks, Cities, Environment, General, Theater, Visual Art

Scatter links: Yes, we still cover actual art

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The Importance of Being Earnest/PCS/OWEN CAREY

I’ve been writing so much about art politics lately, some of you might have forgot that Art Scatter also writes about arts and culture. That’s our main goal, actually. It’s just that all this politics stuff keeps happening.

In fact, between bouts with the Oregon Legislature (which didn’t seem to notice I was in the ring) I’ve been writing a fair amount about exhibits and performances. But not here — mostly for The Oregonian. So in lieu of writing something fresh (I’m a little tired, and I have other assignments due) I’m going to link to some of those stories.

First, though, a tip of the Scatter hat to Owen Carey, one of the unsung heroes of Portland’s performance scene, whose photographs have been documenting the movable feast of the city’s theater scene for decades. It’s more than documentation, really: It’s collaboration, and a distinct artistic contribution on its own. Like a great dance photographer — Lois Greenfield, for instance — Owen has the gift of disappearing even as he captures the perfect moment of movement that defines the style and liveness of a show. The photo above, from Portland Center Stage‘s current production of The Importance of Being Earnest, is a brilliant case in point: the airiness, the bubbles, the froth of the tea as it flies from the mouth of Gwendolen (Kate MacCluggage) while Cecily (Nikki Coble) sips daintily away, perfectly encapsulates the mood of Oscar Wilde’s comedy. If only the production had done the same!

Now, on to those links:

What if they gave a Depression and there weren’t any artists to record it? From Monday’s Oregonian, this piece about a small exhibit at the Portland Art Museum of WPA and other national arts program works from the 1930s and early ’40s, along with some comparisons to the Madame de Pompadour special exhibition and a bit on some paintings in the museum’s permanent collection by some of the Pompadour artists. The online caption, by the way, is wrong: That’s not a Joseph Stella, it’s a Maude Kerns.

Hayley Barker at The Art GymNeil Simon, American comedian: Also from Monday’s Oregonian (the full review ran online; a shortened version ran in print) is this look at Profile Theatre‘s production of Simon’s 1992 play Jake’s Women, a morose comedy about a guy whose marriage is falling apart — but also a play with a fascinating, Pirandellian subtext about the nature of writing and observation. Simon argues, therefore he is.

In the deep dark wood something wild and woolly waits: From last Friday’s A&E section of The Oregonian, this review of a couple of linked exhibits at The Art Gym — Wolves and Urchins, with work by Wendy Given, Hayley Barker and Anne Mathern (that’s Barker’s elegantly hideous monster in the illustration to the side, and Mathern’s wide-eyed photograph at bottom); plus Warlord Sun King: The Genesis of Eco-Baroque, a collaboration by Marne Lucas and Bruce Conkle.

The world is flat, and other artistic fables: From last Monday’s Oregonian, this review of Mixografia, an expansive exhibit at the Portland Art Museum of prints from the Los Angeles press and graphic arts center that’s created a name for itself by coming up with a technique to create prints that have three dimensions — in other words, multiples with height and depth. Nice trick — and artists from Ed Ruscha to Helen Frankenthaler to Louise Bourgeois and even sculptor George Segal have taken advantage of it.

He’s a real nowhere man, living in a nowhere land: Isn’t he a bit like you and me? Finally, from the Feb. 13 A&E, this essay about the planning disasters of our urban edges, prompted by a viewing of the architectural constructs of artists Jesse Durost and John Sisley at Fourteen30 Contemporary gallery, along with a consideration of the imaginative work of architect Robert Harvey Oshatz through the prism of an exhibition at the AIA Gallery. A bit of a hybrid piece of writing; maybe even a leap too far. That’s Scattering, friends.

Anne Mathern at The Art Gym

Bob Hicks, General

Oregonian to Legislature: Hands off the Trust fund

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Enough is more than enough, The Oregonian’s editorial board declared this morning.
Licence to thrill
In an editorial headlined Hard times no license to rob the arts, it takes the Oregon Legislature to task for its hijacking of $1.8 million in donated money to the Oregon Cultural Trust, in addition to other failures to respond to the multiple crises facing the state’s cultural institutions.

Calling the heist of the Trust’s money a “snatch-and-grab,” the editorial board calls for the Legislature to restore the $1.8 million to the Trust. And it goes further: It criticizes the Obama administration for proposing stiff new restrictions on philanthropic gifts to nonprofit groups — new rules that would limit tax breaks to individuals but also potentially dry up funding to groups that desperately need it:

The Obama administration doesn’t get it, either. The administration has included in its tax plan a proposal to cap the tax credit for philanthropic gifts to nonprofits, including arts and culture institutions. Fine, raise income taxes on the wealthy, but why, just when things are getting awfully hard out there for nonprofits, reduce the incentive for people of means to help them survive?

This is good to see. Maybe we’ll get some traction on this thing yet.

Bob Hicks, General

Hey, Eugene: Thanks for standing up when it counts

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The State Legislature pulls a heist.

I’m tired of the Oregon Legislature-raiding-the-Oregon Cultural Trust story. You’re tired of it. We’re all tired of it.

Unfortunately, as the Legislature moves on from the distress of trying to plug an $855 million budget hole to the mind-boggling challenge of filling an estimated $3 billion shortage for the 2009-11 cycle, the pattern’s been set. The Legislature appears to have got away with its $1.8 million hijacking of Trust money — it’s not tax money — and is sure to notice there’s another $10 million or so sitting there just waiting to be grabbed. State Democrats (with friends like these, etc. etc.) have made it clear they’re using the bash-the-arts card to establish their credentials as tough guys on the budget, even though they must be aware that by confiscating money donated in trust they are violating every normal rule of fiscal stewardship and are very likely trashing the Trust for good. That’s as in, trashing a state program that until now had actually worked as it was intended.

So, keep on the alert. This game is far from over.

In the meantime, thank goodness for Eugene. Oregon’s Second City gets it. (I know Salem’s passed Eugene in population and is technically No. 2, but Salem is also the seat of state government, and I’m feeling a little peckish on that subject right now, so in terms of intellectual and ethical heft, Eugene gets the nod). While The Oregonian has largely ignored the Trust raid issue except for fellow Scatterer Barry Johnson’s tough questioning on his Portland Arts Watch blog, the Eugene Register-Guard has been reporting it hard and also editorializing. So I want to say, thanks, Eugene, for doing your job.

Here is the Register-Guard’s editorial on the subject, and here’s a news post from this morning from the Yamhill County News Register, not exactly a paper with overflowing resources but one that’s willing to cover the news. Both are worth perusing. Thanks, R-G and NR. Keep up the good work.

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Illustration: From Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs, J.M. W. Silver. Litho, 1867. Project Gutenberg via Wikimedia Commons.

Dance, Film, General

The week that was in dance: fusion and confusion

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Trey McIntyre Dance/Chris Riesing

Friend of Art Scatter Martha Ullman West got back to Portland from a lengthy stretch in Kansas City, where she’s been researching a book on ballet legend Todd Bolender, just in time to take in one of the Rose City’s busiest dance weeks in quite a while. Here’s her report — and thanks, Martha, for Scattering!

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Portland Dance Journal, Saturday Feb. 21 through Friday Feb. 27, 2009

I didn’t realize it until I sat down to to write this Scatter post, but what we had in Portland last week was fusion, fusion, fusion, and some con-fusion. It was not a week for purists, that’s for sure — from Oregon Ballet Theatre to the Trey McIntyre Project to Tuesday and Wednesday night’s performances at Reed College by Pappa Tarahumara, a Japanese company that performed what it claimed was a version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, this one set in rural Japan in the 1960s.

Moreover, critic and historian Marcia Siegel was in town to give two lectures to Portland State University’s dance history students on fusion in ballet, and also to teach composition students in the same place. In addition, she showed two extraordinary films, Carolyn Brown’s Dune Dance and Merce Cunningham’s Biped. She also led a session with Reed students on how to write about dancing, based on the Pappa Tarahumara performance. And if you haven’t read Howling Near Heaven, her recent book on Twyla Tharp and her work, or The Shapes of Change, a book published in 1979 that is an indispensable part of my library, go and do so immediately.

Herewith a log of sorts:

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Saturday, 8 p.m.: I go to opening night of Oregon Ballet Theatre and the premiere of Christopher Stowell’s Rite of Spring. The program opened with Peter Martins’ Ash, with Yuka Iino and Chauncey Parsons in the principal roles and doing a sparkling job of dancing them. Bang off, the company showed how well-schooled it has become under Stowell’s leadership, how fast and how accurate in its technique: In Ash the dancers contributed artistry to what is basically an aerobic workout danced to an unstructured score.

"Rite of Spring," Stowell/Stravinsly/OBT. Blaine Truitt CovertGod knows Stravinsky’s 1912 Sacre du Printemps, played brilliantly here in its two-piano version by Carol Rich and Susan DeWitt Smith, is structured. Its lyrical beginning builds to a pounding crescendo in music that is still startling for its highly stylized brutality.

Seeking to do something new with Vaslav Nijinsky‘s anti-classical ballet about a primitive Russian fertility rite that calls for the sacrifice of a Chosen One (female, it’s almost needless to say), Stowell, assisted by Anne Mueller, has come up with an episodic narrative that is more about 21st century Americans and our seemingly endless search for community and catharsis than anything else. Or is it an episodic narrative? It’s definitely episodic, but the narrative may be up for grabs.

Michael Mazzola‘s movable-set-piece walls contribute to this effect, as do his lights. But on opening night, while I was impressed with the dancing and the production values, I was also more than a little mystified by Stowell’s intentions, and glad to know I’d have a chance to see it again.

Continue reading The week that was in dance: fusion and confusion →

Bob Hicks, Cities, General

Legislature takes its ax, gives state culture 40 whacks

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It’s over. As Oregonian political writer Harry Esteve reports here on Oregon Live, the Oregon House has just passed its down-to-the-skeleton emergency budget by a vote 0f 37-22. The vastly pared budget, identical to the version passed Tuesday by the Senate, includes the expected raiding of $1.8 million in direct donation — not tax payments — to the Oregon Cultural Trust. Gov. Ted Kulongoski is expected to sign the new budget early next week.

So that’s that — for now. And if nothing else, it diverts some of the spotlight from State Senator Margaret Carter, who’s lucky that people in Oregon are mostly pretty polite, or her performance on Tuesday might have gone viral by now.

Cicero Denounces Catiline: Fresco by Cesare Maccari/Wikimedia CommonsLike her fellow Oregon state legislators, Carter — chief of the Senate’s budget committee — is stuck in a politicians’ nightmare. The economic catastrophe has forced her and her colleagues to make deep budgetary cuts guaranteed to prompt howls of anguish and cries for their heads. Nobody knows exactly where this thing’s going, but the best guess is that before cuts the state budget hole is $855 million right now and will be $3 billion for the 2009-11 cycle. That’s a lot of enchiladas. Legislators face the distressing challenge of dealing with a situation that has no good solutions: Whatever they do, on some level it’s going to be wrong.

So it’s no wonder they get testy. And in announcing the state Democrats’ lockstep approach to the new budget, Carter got testy, indeed, as reported by David Steves in the Eugene Register-Guard:

“There are those who are whining all over the place about ‘you cut this and you cut that,’ ” she said, wiping away mock tears during a speech on the Senate floor. “The fact is that we had to cut. That’s why I call this the shared cut and shared responsibility model.”

A few places picked up on the mockery right off the bat, including fellow Scatterer Barry Johnson on his alternate-universe blog, Portland Arts Watch.

When I reported here Tuesday on the Senate’s budget bill I skipped Carter’s little performance of pique because I wanted to concentrate on the issues. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this IS one of the issues, and an important one.

Politics is a messy and often ugly process, but one good thing to remember is this: If you’re going to pick people’s pockets, at least apologize to them and treat them with a little respect. What you don’t give, you don’t get back.

Among the “whiners” for whom the senator shed mock tears: advocates for homeless people and schools; 911 emergency system workers; university officials. Greedy fat cats, all.

And, of course, artists and their supporters, who for some reason seem upset that the Senate grabbed $1.8 million they contributed voluntarily to the Oregon Cultural Trust on the state’s promise that the money would be used for cultural purposes only and would be strictly separated from the state general fund. We discussed the moral and legal implications here, although the legal ramifications are much murkier than they appear on the surface: As with George W. Bush, apparently, if the Oregon Legislature does it, it’s legal.

I don’t believe Margaret Carter is the callous person her comments on Tuesday made her appear. I do believe it’s easier to make tough decisions that have bad consequences if you can imply that the victims of your actions somehow deserve it. The whiners. The me-firsts. The selfish cultural types who think we owe them the world.

Continue reading Legislature takes its ax, gives state culture 40 whacks →

Bob Hicks, Cities, General

Done deal in the Senate; on to the slashing in the House

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The Oregon Legislature makes some radical cuts/Wikipedia CommonsOver at Culture Shock, which has been keeping a close eye on the Oregon Legislature’s efforts to bridge the budget gap, Culturejock has just reported the state Senate has OK’d a budget that, among other things, grabs $1.8 million specifically donated to the state for use by the Oregon Cultural Trust — money that was supposedly legally separated from the state general fund. The story is from the Eugene Register-Guard.

Now it’s on to the House, where a vote is expected by Friday — and don’t expect a sudden turnaround, but do continue to register your protest. We are watching a particularly unsavory — and quite possibly illegal — sausage being ground. Sometimes that’s what state legislatures do. Culture Shock’s coverage has been excellent. Its most recent post is must-read, including some informed conjecture about possible next steps. Don’t skip the comments.

Bob Hicks, Cities, General

In the Oregon Legislature, a matter of broken Trust

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This is exactly what was never supposed to happen. This is the breaking of the devil’s deal the Oregon Legislature made to keep the culture lobby off its back.The pickpocket, in formal attire/Wikimedia Commons

This is what happens when an entire state thinks that “fiscal responsibility” means tax kickback checks to citizens in flush times, $10 corporate income taxes in all times, trying to balance the state budget on a two-legged stool (property and income taxes, but no sales tax to keep the stool from tipping over), and a pig-headed refusal to recognize — in Oregon, of all places — that you need to plan for a rainy day.

Don’t look now, but it’s pouring.

And that’s why the Oregon Legislature, trying desperately to fill the gigantic hole in the state’s budget, is cribbing money from every place possible — including the Oregon Cultural Trust, as we reported in this earlier story and as political writer Harry Esteve explains in this morning’s Oregonian.

Let me be clear: I don’t blame the Legislature for looking at every penny available from every source as it tries to deal with this fiscal crisis. It’s a no-win proposition: No matter what our legislators do, on some level it will be wrong. This is a debacle made partly at the national and international levels, and partly by Oregon’s long history of pretending it can have a little bit of everything in life without having to pay for most of it. Now the piper’s at the door, demanding to be paid. And it’s the Legislature that has to figure out how to do it.

What’s depressing is that we’ve been down this road before. And the Oregon Cultural Trust was set up to ensure that in the toughest of times — which once again, we seem to be entering — vital cultural projects and organizations won’t be cut off at the root.

The deal the Legislature made on the Trust when it passed enabling legislation in 2001 was essentially this: Culture in Oregon will be pay-as-you-go, but we’ll help. We’ll establish a small beginning balance, we’ll sell cultural license plates to help fund the Trust, we’ll provide a nice tax break for contributions to cultural groups, and we’ll administer the thing. And then, please, leave us alone.

What that means is that every cent from cultural license plates and donations to the Trust has come into the state coffers with a clear, specific and supposedly inviolable earmark. The money was given for cultural purposes and no others. Using it for any other purpose is a moral violation of trust, and probably a legal violation as well: There is long legal precedence in the United States in favor of donor intentions.

Picking the Cultural Trust pocket, even in times of extraordinary fiscal crisis, is foolish in the long run in three ways.

First, once burned, twice shy. Why would anyone donate to the Trust again once it’s been made clear that the state can and will take the money and use it for something else? That precedent surely will strangle the Trust and cripple or even kill it.

Second, this can’t be legal. If the Legislature ends up appropriating this $2 million-odd for other purposes, it almost certainly will be slapped with a lawsuit. And how much will it cost for the state to defend a suit it will probably lose?

Third, who you gonna trust? Not the Legislature, which has broken its word. Not the governor, who says it’s OK. The erosion of public trust in government is a problem with serious consequences for democracy — as trust goes down, more and more people simply tune out, choosing not to take part in the political process at all. For government, trust — even trust shaded with skepticism — is vital. Break it and you’ve broken yourself.

For some background on the beginnings of the Oregon Cultural Trust, on how we got to this point, and on how frustratingly familiar today’s “news” sounds, read on:

Continue reading In the Oregon Legislature, a matter of broken Trust →

Books, General, Music, Vernon Peterson

Being in song: to be born again just in time

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“I’m mumbling mumbling
And I can’t remember the last thing that ran
straight through my head”

Van Morrison, “Ballerina”

flyerEvery Monday, new music lightens our dreary drive to Eugene and back. New releases come Tuesday so there’s a week’s delay and anticipation that figures into the mix, too. Yesterday it was “Sweet Thing,” the fourth song on Van Morrison’s new Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, before he was clearly mumbling – clearly mumbling, words as sounds tumbling and rolling out of his chest and throat — and we knew it was going to be a great drive. Astral Weeks (1968) has tracked this Scatter’s nearly forty year marriage and yesterday as the music washed over us, in scat-time to occasional shower, we were driving South Dakota back roads, not down I-5 and back. We didn’t even get to Keith Jarrett’s new Yesterday, which will now be next Monday or later.

Recorded last November, all the Astral Weeks songs are here, in different order and with some improvisations: Astral Weeks Beside You Sweet Thing Cyprus Avenue The Way Young Lovers Do Madam George Ballerina Slim Slower Slider – play them in your head — plus “Listen to the Lion” from Saint Dominic’s Preview (we listen to that every July 4) and “Common One,” one of those mystic church-Swendenborgian things we put up with to have the rest of Morrison.

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So when we got back to Portland I opened Austrian novelist Peter Handke’s My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay, to read the part about the singer, Morrison in disguise. Morrison sang one of Handke’s lyrics on The Philosopher’s Stone and one of the photos of Morrison on his Back on Top (another great album with those chilling, barely registered, barely mistimed backing vocals by Brian Kennedy) is on the jacket of My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay. (Connectedness is all.) But long story short, “Being in song was the original condition for him,” says the narrator of the singer. Being in song. And: “It seemed to the singer as if something in him was beginning to heal, something which, although he had sung about it again and again, he had not even wanted to have healed.”

It’s that perpetual “beginning to heal” we listen for in Morrison, and if someday his voice sounds healed I don’t know what we’ll do.

My wife, this morning, mumbling “To be born again . . .”