Avert your gaze. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter have jettisoned the Large Smelly Boys and are having a romantic interlude abroad. In the meantime, they have temporarily outsourced the blog to their chief travel correspondent, who makes friends wherever he goes — this time to Bruges, Belgium.
By JoJo
Two significant figures in Portland arts and culture have died, and we express our appreciation to them and our condolences to their friends and families.
Harold Schnitzer, the prominent businessman who was a major supporter of the Portland Art Museum and many other organizations, died early this morning at age 87. In the past several years he and his wife, Arlene, have given $80 million to Portland and Oregon causes — an immense reinvestment. They were also astute and generous art collectors; Arlene founded the important Fountain Gallery that gave a commercial kick-start to the Portland art scene. D.K. Row has this report at Oregon Live. UPDATE: The Oregonian has filed this much expanded obituary on Oregon Live.
Janet Bradley, co-founder and for all of its years the vital organizing force behind the puppet company Tears of Joy, died unexpectedly yesterday, April 26. She was a warm, practical and generous woman, always behind the scenes but well-known and well-liked in the performance community. Tears of Joy is a company for kids but it’s also always been hooked in with some of the most innovative international practitioners of the art, and Janet’s openness and determination had a great deal to do with that. We don’t have a lot of details, but her daughter, Emily Alexander, posted this yesterday on Facebook:
My warm and perfect mother, Janet Bradley, passed away early this morning. She was, as you know, a vibrant, electric, and beautiful woman. Her passing is a shock. The cause can best be described as a birth-defect of her aorta that none of us, including my mother, knew about. She was an elegant queen with a green thumb who could turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. And she truly loved and enjoyed her life. My mom was my very best friend, and a second mother to my children. I am so grateful to have had the time we did.
UPDATE: Michael Griggs, executive director of Portland Taiko and a longtime close friend of Bradley, sends this:
“Janet collapsed at work Monday afternoon, was rushed to Legacy Emanuel hospital and underwent surgery at 2 p.m., but died at 2 a.m. from a previously undetected congenital problem with her aorta.
“Janet was a leader not only in Portland and Southwest Washington, but nationally in the world of puppetry and performing arts touring. She was a tireless advocate for performing arts for children and arts education, and she will be greatly missed by her many colleagues, friends, and the Tears of Joy family and friends.”
A celebration of Janet Bradley’s life will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, May 16, in downtown Portland’s Newmark Theatre.
Contributions to Tears of Joy in Janet’s name may be made to:
Tears of Joy Theatre
323 N.E. Wygant St. #201
Portland, OR 97211
www.tojt.org
503-284-7540
Portland interdisciplinary artist Nan Curtis is the 20th recipient of the annual Bonnie Bronson Fellowship Award. There’ll be a free public reception for her from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 25, in the Gray Lounge of Kaul Auditorium at Reed College.
“My Mom’s Cigarette Wrapper,” 2009
By Bob Hicks
Don’t call them. They’ll call you. But you really do need to pick up the phone.
“My cell phone rang at 8:30 at night,” Portland artist Nan Curtis recalled the other day over coffee at inner Southeast Portland’s J&M Cafe. “My kids had just gone to bed, and — I didn’t know that number, so I didn’t pick it up.”
Then her land line started ringing. This time Curtis figured something must be up, so she answered.
It was Christine Bourdette, the Portland sculptor who was the first recipient of the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship Award 20 years ago and is chair of the Bronson fund advisory committee. Congratulations, Bourdette said. We chose you. Oh — and you can’t tell anyone for two months.
Just like that, Curtis joined a distinguished list of Oregon artists who have been named Bronson fellows. In order, the fellows include Bourdette, Judy Cooke, Ronna Neuenschwander, Fernanda D’Agostino, Carolyn King, Lucinda Parker, Judy Hill, Adriene Cruz, Helen Lessick, Ann Hughes, Malia Jensen, Christopher Rauschenberg, Kristy Edmunds, Paul Sutinen, Bill Will, Laura Ross-Paul, MK Guth, Marie Watt, David Eckard, and Curtis.
“Those are totally the artists that I grew up beneath. It’s a pretty cool list of people,” Curtis said.
By Laura Grimes
Dear Mr. Scatter,
I finished dusting my balls, recurating them, and I added an avocado pit to the collection. Can you guess which one it is?*
I know you think I just lobbed you a big fat softball (I have two in my collection) so you can make a smartass comeback, but then I would just have to emphasize softball, so let’s leave it at that.
By Bob Hicks
Quit fooling around with Photo Booth stretchy faces on your new iPad: time to get serious about this shutterbug thing. April is Portland Photo Month, aligning itself with the biannual Photolucida portfolio extravaganza, and high-quality photo shows are all over town.
On Saturday, a big handful of Pearl District galleries will be open late for receptions, generally until 7 in the evening and generally with the featured photographers on hand. Get details at the Portland Photo Month Web site, which has the advantage of also being an excellent virtual photogravure of what’s going on this month. You’ll also find listings of various artists’ talks: for instance, the excellent nature photographer Ron Cronin speaks at noon Saturday at Augen Gallery.
Mitch Dobrowner/Blue Sky Gallery
In print: Meanwhile, I have brief reviews in this morning’s Oregonian A&E section of several gallery shows: Sean Healy’s small-town cultural lament Upstate, which involves a lot of cigarette butts, at Elizabeth Leach; Isaac Layman’s big manipulated household photos, also at Leach; Eirik Johnson and Julie Blackmon’s radically differing but equally appealing photos, at Laura Russo; and Kentree Spiers’ small bright semi-abstract landscapes at Blackfish. Pick up a dead tree and check it out, or see it online here.
Previews of coming attractions: This afternoon I’ll be having coffee with artist Nan Curtis, this year’s winner of one of Portland’s most coveted arts prizes, the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship Award. We’ll be passing along some of what she has to say. A public reception is coming up 6-7:30 p.m. Monday, April 25, in the lounge of Reed College’s Kaul Auditorium.
Last week I sat down with the excellent Portland actor Michael Mendelson (he’s opening soon in The Cherry Orchard at Artists Rep) to talk about his newest passion, the Portland Shakespeare Project. The new company, for which he’s artistic director, opens this summer with one of the Bard’s best comedies, As You Like It, plus a staged reading of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Compleat Female Stage Beauty, a comedy about English theater in the days when men and boys still played the women’s roles. More to come.
Finally, Mr. Scatter is getting ready to embark on yet another expedition into the wild and woolly northlands, on beyond the concrete canyons of Microsoftia and into the frontier territories of Bug and Jam. Who knows what wondrous unanticipated adventures might occur?
Allen Ginsberg/Elizabeth Leach Gallery
By Bob Hicks
Tonight is First Thursday, the monthly gallery walk when spaces across town (but mostly downtown and in the Pearl) throw their doors open and hope at least a few party-hoppers will drop back soon to actually buy something. There are lots of other openings as well, of course, but First Thursday is the marketing focus. And thanks to Photolucida, April is Portland Photo Month. We ran this incomplete guide in this morning’s Oregonian; check it out.
Here are a few Scatter possibilities:
By Laura Grimes
The story so far: The Pantsless Brother has been on a whirlwind tour of Europe, dubbed the Sleep-Is-Not-an-Option Tour, to see 16 Vermeer paintings.
The goal: To take in the final 12 Vermeer paintings that The PB hasn’t seen, out of 34 (some say 36) paintings in the world that can be viewed.
How whirlwind? Ten cities in two weeks.
How sleepless? Nine cities in nine days, but that’s just the Vermeers.
What’s the news? Another unexpected twist put a crimp in his plans.
By Bob Hicks
How quickly the worm turns.
Less than a month ago, in a post detailing the ouster (or resignation: stories varied) of the legendary archaeologist Zahi Hawass as Egypt’s powerful chief of antiquities, we made this observation: “(T)he revolution is real, and Hawass, barring yet another turnabout, won’t be making any of its crucial decisions.”
Well, the turnabout’s happened. As Kate Taylor reports here in the New York Times, Hawass is back in the saddle, reappointed by the new prime minister, Essam A. Sharaf. Hawass has made his share of enemies over the years, and was held in suspicion because of his close ties to the Mubarak regime, but was also known as a fierce and effective defender of and spokesman for Egypt’s cultural treasures. Plus, he’s a wily fox.
Separately, antiquities inspector Sarah Marei, one of the people trying to deal with safeguarding the nation’s collections during and after the revolution, wrote this piece for The Art Newspaper decrying the looting of museums and archaeological sites. “(T)he police presence vanished in the revolution and has yet to return to the sites,” wrote Marei, who’s been working in Giza. “The individual initiatives on the part of site inspectors and the townspeople from the remote areas is often the only current protection afforded to some of the world’s most unique and magnificent monuments.” Marei kicked up a bit of controversy by suggesting that collectors and institutions outside of Egypt might be providing a ready market for the looters.
*
Good Korean dance: I have this review in this morning’s Oregonian of the South Korean contemporary dance troupe Laboratory Dance Project, which is finishing a three-night run on White Bird‘s Uncaged series. It’s a good company with excellent dancers and fresh ideas, and the Portland run is its West Coast premiere. Final show tonight (Saturday), 8 p.m., Lincoln Performance Hall.
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Photo: The Great Sphinx, still partly buried in sand, ca. 1880. Wikimedia Commons.
By Bob Hicks
You might have noted that today is April 1, also known as April Fool’s Day.
That accounts for the headline above.
But we’re not foolin’ about the picture. Artdaily reports here that this 1932 poster of Mickey Mouse, when he was a mere mouseling only 4 years old, pulled in $35,850 in a recent Heritage Auctions sale of vintage movie posters. Overall, the auction notched $1.5 million in sales, which also included a 1953 Paramount half-sheet for The War of the Worlds and a primo 1938 Boris Karloff Frankenstein.
Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters we can think of other ways to drop 35 grand — a term or two of college tuition for one of the Large Smelly Boys, for instance. But we admire the passion that drives a collector to such extremes.
If the folks at Disney will pardon the expression, that’s a mighty mouse.
One question: Is it OK to tack it to the bedroom wall?
By Laura Grimes
“Am I sleepy yet? Not a chance. Sleep is for sissies.”
The Pantsless Brother continues his Sleep-Is-Not-an-Option Tour in chasing Vermeer paintings all over Europe. If you missed my first gobsmacked installment, check it out here. (That’s not hyperbole talkin’.)
He’s on a mission to see all 34 (some say 36) Vermeers that can be viewed. Before his trip, he had (only) 12 left on his list. He had nailed down a relentless schedule to see 16 Vermeers in 9 cities in 9 days. (I can’t believe I just typed that, either.) His full tour is 10 cities in two weeks.
