All posts by Bob Hicks

I've been observing Portland and its culture since 1974, for most of that time as a writer and editor at The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal. I finally left The O in December 2007 so I could spend more time hanging around coffee shops and catching up on good books. My journalistic wanderings have led me into the worlds of theater, dance, music, the visual arts, literature and food. I'll continue writing about those and broader cultural subjects for Art Scatter. They're terrific windows onto the great mysteries of life, and thinking about them makes the mendacities of our wayward national political culture a little more bearable.
Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music, Theater

Holy holidays, hipsters. Is it that time already?

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The Oregon Symphony's annual "Gospel Christmas" concert rocks the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

By Bob Hicks

It’s true. Mr. Scatter, in his semi-official capacity as regional chronicler of the wintry festivities, has published a pair of guides to holiday concerts and shows in this morning’s A&E section of The Oregonian.

Three weeks before Thanksgiving. But not, in Mr. Scatter’s defense, before Halloween. (And in that regard, ask Mrs. Scatter sometime how the giant gargoyle on the front porch came to have its ugly little plaster mug smashed in.)

Finn Henell as Pinocchio and Josh Murry as Gerard the Shopkeeper in The Portland Ballet's "La Boutique Fantasque." Photo: Blaine Truitt CovertThe Twelve Shows of Christmas gives the lowdown on a selection of Portland’s big-deal holiday events — things like The Nutcracker and Tuba Christmas, which are not only inevitable but also oddly alluring. The Scatter Family is sure to hit several of them.

Resisting the early arrival of the holidays? includes a lot of smaller, often quirkier shows that appeal to Mr. Scatter’s sense of seasonal follies, including the neo-Piaf band Padam Padam and the sackbutt-blatting Oregon Renaissance Band. It also evokes the not-so-sainted memories of Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Harry Simeone Chorale. You’ll have to hit that link button (or pick up your dead-tree copy) to find out how.

Continue reading Holy holidays, hipsters. Is it that time already? →

Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Onda calls it quits, Pander thinks big

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Henk Pander, "Leviathan," oil on linen, 69" x 101", 2009. Laura Russo Gallery.

By Bob Hicks

Bad news arrived this morning for Portland art followers: Alberta Street mainstay Onda Gallery is shutting its doors at the end of the year. I’ve always liked gallery owner Allan Oliver and appreciated his efforts to make a home in Portland for the art of Latin America. Three years ago Oliver sold the space to Pablo Merlo Flores, whose wholesale business, Pampeana, represents Latin American gift and craft items across the United States. Oliver continued as gallery director. I’m sorry to see Onda disappear, and wish Allan the best.

Poster for this month's Onda Gallery exhibit. The party's almost over, friends.Here are excerpts from his announcement:

After twelve years at the forefront of the Alberta Street renewal, Onda Gallery will close its doors at the end of the year. The holiday show, featuring art work from Pacific Northwest, Cuban and Ecuadorian artists, will be the last art event at the gallery.

After assuming sole proprietorship in 2001, Allan Oliver curated over one hundred art shows with their openings on the Last Thursday of each month. His mission has been to introduce the Portland area art public to fine artists from Latin American countries, many of whom have presented their work in person, and to young, emerging and mid-career Latino artists living in the Pacific Northwest. …

The public and media are invited to the gallery’s final party on Saturday, November 20, 6-9 PM.

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Today is First Thursday, which means new shows in a lot of the city’s galleries, and D.K. Row has several suggestions in this morning’s Oregonian on exhibits to hit. One to keep a special eye on is Henk Pander‘s exhibit of recent works at Laura Russo Gallery. That’s his painting Leviathan at the top of this post, and a leviathan is what it is — 69 inches tall and 101 inches wide.

Pander was born in the Netherlands and trained in the Dutch tradition, and he’s  been one of our most important artists for a long time. His technical skill is part of that. He’s also willing to go into psychological and social areas that are uncomfortable for a lot of artists and art viewers. As he gets older, his work seems to get even more profound. You may recall Martha Ullman West’s tribute to Delores Pander, his wife, who died in June of this year, and Henk’s piercing, loving, astonishing portrait of her that he painted the year before she died. I think we could be seeing some pretty amazing things in this show.

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ILLUSTRATIONS, from top:

  • Henk Pander, “Leviathan,” oil on linen, 69″ x 101″, 2009. Laura Russo Gallery.
  • Poster for this month’s Onda Gallery exhibit. The party’s almost over, friends.
Bob Hicks, Books, General, Journalism

Lost books: ‘Out of the Deeps’

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By Bob Hicks

About the time the icebergs started breaking off I realized that Out of the Deeps, John Wyndham‘s 1953 speculative-fiction thriller, was heading into some pretty interesting territory. The suspicion had been rising for some time that this was no ordinary, dated genre toss-off. But when I picked it up I’d had no idea it anticipated the global warming controversy by a full 50 years.

out-of-the-deepsI did have an idea it’d be an interesting read, at the least from a historical and sociological perspective. Wyndham (full name John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, born 1903, died 1969) was also the author of a novel called The Day of the Triffids, which I had never read but recalled vaguely as a pleasingly scary movie about an invasion of malevolent creatures from outer space. I happened upon Triffids on a shelf at Powell’s in a recent “rediscovered” edition, all tricked out in fresh literary wrap suggesting that someone at a publishing house somewhere thought it was worth a more serious look. It was selling for 16 bucks, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to put that much down for a gamble on an author I’d never read from a dubious pulp-genre background. But next to it was a used copy of Out of the Deeps for $2.50, and that, I decided, was worth the risk.

Continue reading Lost books: ‘Out of the Deeps’ →

Bob Hicks, General, Journalism

That ad insert? It’s a Brainstorm

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UPDATE: Prompted by reader comments on this story from the Corvallis Gazette-Times, Mr. Scatter checked the Web site of the Federal Elections Commission for expenditures by Jim Huffman, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate running against Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon. Huffman’s campaign has paid Third Century Solutions, the listed publishers of Economic Times of Oregon, $75,036 in five payments listed variously as “campaign management services,” “strategic consulting,” “media buy” and “printing.” That doesn’t mean that Huffman financed the ad insert Economic Times of Oregon — that money could well have been for other services rendered. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting money trail.

By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter was a trifle curious about a four-page newspaper-looking advertising insert that plonked on his porch this morning inside his copy of The Oregonian.

Feeling blue? The folks from the old Brainstorm mag hope you are.Economic Times of Oregon, it’s called, and the banner story on what may or may not be a continuing publication — it’s referred to as “Volume One, Issue 1” — is alarming, indeed: Oregon takes second in Hopelessness Index. Are things that bad? Well, Mr. Scatter just gives up.

Alongside this tale of cultural woe (and let’s face it: like most states, Oregon’s in an economic pickle) is a chart that measures both traditional and “total” unemployment rates — or what the publication refers to as the “Hopelessness Index.” The chart lists only 12 of the 50 states, and of those 12, the figure for Oregon is the fourth-highest, behind California, Michigan and Nevada. (North Dakota’s looking pretty good.)

So, Oregon ranks fourth out of 12 but second out of 50? Mr. Scatter is puzzled. A teaser on the cover asks the provocative question, “Are we getting the most out of school spending?” If the mathematicians at Economic Times of Oregon are products of the Oregon school system, we’d have to say no.

Which brings up the obvious, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid question: Who are these guys, anyway?

Continue reading That ad insert? It’s a Brainstorm →

Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Bid at the Bunyan: art with an ax to grind

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By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter loves his Lee Kelly, and is exceedingly fond of Buster Simpson‘s Host Analog, that ever-changing downed Douglas fir sprouting fresh growth outside the Oregon Convention Center.

Paul Bunyan statue in North Portland, by Victor A. Nelson and Victor R. Nelson, 1959. Photo: Cacophony/2006/Wikimedia CommonsAnd especially during this absurd election season, he smiles every time he sees Raymond Kaskey‘s renegade gambler Portlandia down on her knees, tossing the dice: private casino in the ‘burbs draining dollars from pockets that can’t afford it, anyone?

But when it comes to public sculpture in Portland, Mr. Scatter’s heart belongs to Paul Bunyan, that 37-foot-tall behemoth of a bearded logger stranded in the urban wilds of the Kenton neighborhood. (He is also partial to the rotating carton of milk doing a tilted twirl atop a roof on Northeast 20th Avenue, just a little south of the Interstate 84 overpass.)

The brawny Mr. Bunyan, erected in 1959 to help celebrate the centennial of Oregon’s statehood, is just a wood-chip or three away from Disjecta, the scrappy art center that hosts everything from a biennial art show to shadow-puppet theater to rock’n’roll. Two nights from now — on Friday, Oct. 29 — Disjecta is throwing a “Bid at the Bunyan” preview party offering a sneak peek at pieces by the 60-odd artists who’ll be part of Disjecta’s fourth annual art auction Nov. 13. Friday’s preview is 8-10 p.m., at 8371 North Interstate Avenue. It’s free, and you can start the silent bidding on pieces you like.

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Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Link: over the falls without a barrel

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Thomas Moran, "Shoshone Falls on the Snake River," 1900. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

By Bob Hicks

One of the things on our mind today is the great 19th century American painter Thomas Moran. Why? Because his iconic 1900 painting Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, all 12 feet wide of it, opens Saturday in a single-oil show at the Portland Art Museum. It’s on loan from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Mr. Scatter wrote about the show and the painting in this morning’s A&E section of The Oregonian. The main story, Window on the West, is about Moran and how he developed from a very good Hudson River School painter depicting scenes mainly in Pennsylvania into a grand-scale chronicler of vistas from the rugged West.

The second story, PAM chief sees multiple facets of one-piece show, is a lengthy interview with Brian Ferriso, the museum’s executive director, about Moran and the painting and the idea behind one-painting exhibits (which aren’t really solo shows: this one includes a half-dozen smaller Moran watercolors, plus a terrific, six-foot-wide photo of the falls taken in the 1880s). The online interview is a fair amount longer than the print version, and gets into some interesting areas you might like to see.

A nice bonus is this 14-photo gallery by Amiran White of the painting’s installation at PAM. It tells its own intriguing story.

A teaser from the Ferriso interview, this one about Moran’s fellow painter of the West Albert Bierstadt, whose 1869 painting of Mt. Hood is a treasured piece in the Portland museum’s American collection:

… Bierstadt in particular understood the marketplace. He would very much create idyllic scenes, sort of these manufactured landscapes that were compositionally well-shaped. The Mount Hood that we have that Bierstadt did, there is no such place. You can’t go to that place, because the lake that he depicted doesn’t exist. He’s added it.

I once gave a tour to some visitors when I was overseeing a Hudson River School show, and one of them said, “Now this is the kind of art I like. It’s real. It’s a real place.” And I said, “Well, don’t be too sure, because it’s not real. It’s a fabricated view. Don’t be fooled by what you see.”

Bob Hicks, General, Journalism

The emperor with no clothes hangs it up

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By Bob Hicks

A while back, in this post, we groused about the shocking unprofessionalism of the team of bozos that had taken over management of The Tribune Company, publisher of such flailing giants as the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the Baltimore Sun.

Illustration from Hand Chriastian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes." Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 - 1859)/Wikimedia CommonsWe were responding to David Carr’s report in the New York Times, laying bare the boorish behavior of the new guys on the block, whose obvious disdain for journalism and lack of respect for people in general seemed indicative of the moral morass that way too much of corporate life seems to be stuck in these days.

So, how about a modest celebration? CEO Randy Michaels, the overgrown frat boy at the center of the debacle, has resigned. Who knows what comes next, but it’s a beginning. You can read the Trib’s own report on the resignation here. And just imagine the celebrating in the newsroom.

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Illustration from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 – 1859)/Wikimedia Commons

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music, Theater

Curtains up, hit ‘The Heights’

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In the beauty salon, "In the Heights": Lexi Lawson, Isabel Santiago, Arielle Jacobs, Genny Lis Padilla. ©Chelsea Lauren 2010

By Bob Hicks

If the theater is truly the Fabulous Invalid, is any subsection of it any more fabulously ailing than the Broadway musical — and more of a fabulously unlikely survivor?

Before last night’s opening of the eagerly anticipated touring production of In the Heights at Portland’s Keller Auditorium, the last musical Mr. Scatter had seen was the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s glowing revival of She Loves Me, the masterful, small-scale 1963 romantic comedy by Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. (Mr. Scatter wrote about it here, and Mrs. Scatter expanded admirably on it, and the appeal of musicals in general, here.)

On the surface there’s not a whole lot of connection between She Loves Me and In the Heights, the 2008 Tony winner that Mr. Scatter took in with Oscar/Dennis. She Loves Me is a delicate love story based on a 1937 Hungarian play, Miklos Laszlo’s Parfumerie, and in style, sensibility and musical association it harks back to the heyday of central European operetta. In the Heights, with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, is a not-so-delicate love story that bursts with the Dominican-American flavor of Manhattan’s Washington Heights and takes its musical cues from hip-hop, soul, and the Caribbean sounds of salsa and meringue.

Still, the Broadway musical feeds largely upon itself — that’s both a weakness and an enduring strength — and as She Loves Me smoothly incorporated aspects of earlier musical forms, so does In the Heights echo some of the successes of Broadway Past. It represents a particularly successful response to the dilemma that producers, writers and composers routinely face: Broadway audiences want to see something different, but not that different.

Continue reading Curtains up, hit ‘The Heights’ →

Bob Hicks, Poetry, Theater

Vox at bat: poetry swings for the fences

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By Bob Hicks

Cy Young baseball card from 1911, the last of his 22 years pitching in the big leagues. He won 511 games, by far the most ever -- and lost 316, more than a lot of Hall of Fame pitchers won. Wikimedia Commons.Today we offer a quick link to Mr. Scatter’s review for The Oregonian, under his non de plume Bob Hicks, of Achilles’ Alibi, the latest evening of choral poetry from Eric Hull and his company Vox.

The program repeats this Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 22-24. Good stuff; catch it if you can. You can also read about Mr. and Mrs. Scatter’s previous visit to a Vox performance, in April.

As the review suggests, the poems of William Stafford are at the heart of this edition. But lots of other fine poets are along for the ride, and in honor of the baseball playoffs and impending World Series — like fresh apple cider and the ritual bringing-out of the sweaters, they’re part of what makes autumn special — we quote from one of them, May Swenson‘s bases-clearing double off the wall, Analysis of Baseball:

Sometimes
ball gets hit
(pow) when bat
meets it,
and sails
to a place
where mitt
has to quit
in disgrace.
That’s about
the bases
loaded,
about 40,000
fans exploded.

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Cy Young baseball card from 1911, the last of his 22 years pitching in the big leagues. He won 511 games, by far the most ever — and lost 316, more than a lot of Hall of Fame pitchers won. Wikimedia Commons.


Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, General

Here there be faeries: fantastic, isn’t it?

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Lucas Threefoot as the Bluebird in Oregon Ballet Theatre's "The Sleeping Beauty." Photo: Blaine Truitt Covert

By Bob Hicks

“People must love fairy tales,” the fellow said, and then he laughed, in something that sounded like happy, faintly embarrassed resignation. “Me, too, I guess,” his laughter seemed to say.

The man and his companion were standing behind Mr. Scatter’s shoulders, in a Keller Auditorium crowded with people on their feet, most clapping loudly and a few even whistling and stomping and shouting out, during Saturday night’s curtain call for the final performance of Oregon Ballet Theatre‘s The Sleeping Beauty. Next to Mr. Scatter, the Small Large Smelly Boy, who is rapidly developing into an enthusiastic and discriminating follower of the ballet, had also risen to his feet, although as always he declined to clap: that would be too demonstrative.

Continue reading Here there be faeries: fantastic, isn’t it? →