Maryhill Museum’s planned print day of its Exquisite Gorge project is approaching fast. Hopefully there is a chance to portray each and every one of the participating artists and their work before August 24th. Let me introduce today another one of the print makers who I had a chance to talk to in the last several days.

——————————————————————————————————————

THE EXQUISITE GORGE PROJECT

“…a collaborative printmaking project featuring 11 artists working with communities along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River from the Willamette River confluence to the Snake River confluence to create a massive 66-foot steamrolled print. The unique project takes inspiration from the Surrealist art practice known as exquisite corpse. In the most well-known exquisite corpse drawing game, participants took turns creating sections of a body on a piece of paper folded to hide each successive contribution. When unfolded, the whole body is revealed. In the case of The Exquisite Gorge Project, the Columbia River will become the ‘body’ that unifies the collaboration between artists and communities, revealing a flowing 66-foot work that tells 10 conceptual stories of the Columbia River and its people.”

– Louise Palermo, Curator of Education at Maryhill Museum

______________________________________________________________________________

Imagine being told since the time you sat on your father’s knees that you are a descendant of Lewis & Clark. Lewis AND Clark! Being regaled with lively tales of hardship and adventure, what is a little girl to do but fall in love with the outdoors and embrace most forms of risk-seeking ventures – it is practically written into your DNA. Well, perhaps not practically but theoretically. Who knows about the factual truth of the family lore?

It would not matter, in any case, in my opinion. Aren’t many of us guided by narratives that make perfect sense of our lives and motivate us, regardless of being based on facts? Who needs 23andMe – there is power in (potential) myth!

(There are, of course, also facts in the history books – Lewis never married and had no children, and died as a suicidal alcoholic despite having been awarded the governorship of the Louisiana Territory after the successful mission of surveying it from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Not exactly great-great-grandpa material. Maybe he had siblings?)

The person I am referring to is Molly Gaston Johnson, an accomplished artist and educator who has at least two things in common with Lewis & Clark for sure: she, too, traveled here from the East coast to see new vistas and she never shied away from challenges that life threw her way. She had never been to the West coast before and was eager to explore yet another natural and artistic environment within a short window of time before she had to return to send off her firstborn to college.

*

The woman, based in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, is a fascinating study in contrasts. I met her in the courtyard of Hood River Valley High School on a day where blustery winds twirled dust all around us, momentarily cooling an intense sun. Sitting in limber posture on her wood block, the ease with which she bent her spine was the antithesis to her steely concentration on the carving. Unassuming, warm, seemingly lacking in any vanity, she did not reveal spontaneously that she has a rather stellar set of accomplishments. I had to pry, the not so subtle art of interviewing.

Educated at James Madison University under the tutelage of renowned artist Jack McCaslin she received a full fellowship to study and earn her MFA in printmaking at Ohio State University. Here is a condensed bio that shows her impact on art and education ever since:

“She has worked in museum education at Washington, DC’s Corcoran Gallery of Art, taught printmaking to graduate students at Virginia Tech’s school of architecture, worked at the National Endowment for the Arts managing federal partnerships focusing on youth and prevention issues, and currently teaches art history, treks all around New Jersey as a teaching artist, and is developing an Art and Literacy initiative in a partnership between the Newark Museum and the Newark Public School system. She has received many awards including recognition with a New Jersey Governor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Artist in 2012.”

Much of Gaston Johnson’s work has been concerned with helping other professionals, at institutions as well as in educational settings, to embrace art and art making as a teaching tool, even in domaines that are not necessarily thought to be related to art. From plugging artists into prison education, to persuading traditional STEM classrooms that art can help to communicate concepts, she has focussed on education as well as the professional development of others. Details about the YoungAudiences program that makes use of her talents can be found here.

Her own printmaking studio, Social Animal Press, in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, where she practices woodcut, lino-cut, silkscreen and intaglio forms of printmaking, is just one part of these diverse endeavors, some more unusual than others. After Hurricane Sandy, the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, for example, she received an individual artist grant by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Arts Horizons for an art project placing handmade tables throughout the devastated city of Ashbury Park for providing spaces to talk and grieve together. 

*

There is a stillness in and around the artist when she is at work that stands in stark contrast to the whirlwind mobility required in her professional life, raising two daughters while trying to make a living as an artist. A semblance of this contrast can be found in the design of her wood block which depicts swirls of wind, a fluidity across scalloped rather than straight edges, compared to the solidity of the region’s mountains, the rigidity of some lines of speech incorporated throughout and, of course, the unperturbed flow of the Columbia river.

There is a subtle sense of humor hidden within various symbols which are also exploring contrast. The viewer is invited to discover, as one example, the dipper bird who can fly, but dips for food under water, placed above the constellation of the Big Dipper. My kind of stuff, in other words, as anyone who has ever seen my montages will remember, some more appreciative of this streak than others…

*

Gaston Johnson’s section 3 of the Columbia river includes the Bridge of the Gods. Here, too, we find a juxtaposition, one of formation and dissolution. In geological terms, it was a landmass created by a landslide in between 1100 and 1250 AD, functioning as a massive dam that connected what is now Oregon and Washington. During the last Great Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake in the 1690s – folks we are due for another one, don’t postpone dealing with that earthquake kit which has been on your list for ages! – the bridge collapsed, creating the Cascadia rapids that we see today.

The Native American narrative around the Bridge of the Gods has a more poetic explanation, involving love triangles among the region’s mountains, feuding competitors, doomed brides, a guard on the bridge who could not prevent disaster and the eventual downfall of it all. A detailed telling can be found here.

Nature forms, nature dissolves; art can document if the artist is sensitive to change and the power that comes with fluidity, even in the context of eons of geological rumblings. Gaston Johnson’s woodblock wonderfully reminds us of this heritage.

*

The words included in the carving were selected from many insightful haikus offered by some 70 or so students at Hood River Valley High School, the community partner for this portion of the project. Guided by Carol Birdsell, Art, English and Humanities teacher, the students shared their perception of the area and what those environments mean for them personally.

Birdsell was at work as well on the Sunday I visited, trying to perform miracles in the few days left before school starts, to get the new classroom set up and emptied of chaos.

Wandering through the deserted building I was once again struck by how much individual contributions of teachers and staff affect successful education. There was much in the room and hallways that spoke to this point.

There were also the rules for traffic etiquette – I guess a lot of kids drive themselves in an area where they are widely dispersed.

Everywhere, though, there were signs that indicated how much this educational environment is trying to empower students. It also looked like art is taken seriously.

I have no knowledge about this particular school, but in general art and art history (as well as music) education are among the first subjects to get the axe when financial strain for an institution becomes overwhelming. Some teachers simply pick up the slack, others are too overworked or administratively hampered to do so. But the burden rests with them.

Even though the public generally agrees that art instruction is a necessary part of overall education, fewer and fewer students are exposed to the arts. An NEA report from almost a decade back confirms the shrinking numbers, and it has only gotten worse since. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) already confirmed that those worst affected are – surprise – schools with higher percentages of minority students and those designated under NO Child Left Behind. Newer reports show this disparity as well.

This is true despite the fact that we have now scientifically controlled studies that confirm our intuitions, providing some hard data for the people holding the purse strings (for the full report go here):

“Through our partnership with the Houston Education Research Consortium, we obtained access to student-level demographics, attendance and disciplinary records, and test score achievement, as well as the ability to collect original survey data from all 42 schools on students’ school engagement and social and emotional-related outcomes.

We find that a substantial increase in arts educational experiences has remarkable impacts on students’ academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Relative to students assigned to the control group, treatment school students experienced a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others.”

The fundamental purpose of education goes beyond the basic areas of instruction. True education helps to create citizens who can think independently, critically, and place themselves in a historical context that defines what values we hold or should pursue. People like Gaston Johnson who work in dual roles of artist and educator know that all too well. I wish she didn’t live so far away and could bring her expertise to bear on our own rural or urban communities with underserved school districts and join those already at the frontlines here.

During a time where intolerance is on the rise and democratic values are clearly under attack worldwide, we should be particularly intent on providing the best possible education for all. Art is part of that endeavor. Let us not hesitate to support it.

Last week I met a guardian of both the past and the future.

A conversation with Greg Archuleta, artist, educator and now Cultural Policy Analyst for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde made his calling abundantly clear. On the one hand, as an artist and educator, he is focussed on preserving the traditions and knowledge of the past. On the other hand, he is also intensely engaged, both as an educator and a community activist, in protecting conditions needed to extend that past into the future.

We met at the Portland offices of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in the context of looking at his and his students’ work on a wood block carving for the Exquisite Gorge project put on by Maryhill Museum. He and several of his fellow carvers will be among all those who gather on August 24th at the museum for the public printing of the aligned 4×6 blocks by means of a steamroller, if the weather complies.

——————————————————————————————————————–

THE EXQUISITE GORGE PROJECT

“…a collaborative printmaking project featuring 11 artists working with communities along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River from the Willamette River confluence to the Snake River confluence to create a massive 66-foot steamrolled print. The unique project takes inspiration from the Surrealist art practice known as exquisite corpse. In the most well-known exquisite corpse drawing game, participants took turns creating sections of a body on a piece of paper folded to hide each successive contribution. When unfolded, the whole body is revealed. In the case of The Exquisite Gorge Project, the Columbia River will become the ‘body’ that unifies the collaboration between artists and communities, revealing a flowing 66-foot work that tells 10 conceptual stories of the Columbia River and its people.”

– Louise Palermo, Curator of Education at Maryhill Museum

——————————————————————————————————————–

Archuleta was born in Portland and grew up on unincorporated farmland near Gresham. He hails from the nations of Clackamas Chinook, Santiam Kalapuya, and Shasta, and is a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR). After receiving his degree in journalism and political science from the University of Oregon he worked as a consultant in various positions for the CTGR and developed his artistic practices. An accomplished artist, he has had his work shown in various galleries and notable exhibits, including at the Portland Art Museum.

Much of his time and efforts as an educator went into developing the Lifeways program, an immersion program into the culture and history of the tribes of Western Oregon. This is also where fellow award-winning artist Greg A. Robinson (Chinook) teaches, who participates in the project as well; you might have admired his recent public works – a five foot diameter bronze medallion and two basalt carvings representative of the ancient traditions of the Chinookan people – which adorn both sides of Tilikum Crossing in Portland, Oregon.

The Lifeways program offers hands-on cultural learning covering many aspects of life essential to Native American culture; Archuleta teaches traditional skills and cultural knowledge, from ethnobotany, carving and cedar hat making to Native art design and basketry. A notable range, if you ask me.

Many of these topics appear in the design of the wood block that represents Section 1 of the Columbia River Gorge, at the confluence of the rivers so vital to this region. The plants that were essential staple for the tribal diet, the Camas and the Wapato tubers, found their way onto the board. The fish, salmon and lamprey eels, as well as clams can be spotted. Often you see a depiction of any of these coupled to a reverse appearance in space – a traditional representation of the real world and the spirit world.

*

Plant identification, instructions about traditional use and food resourcing are an important part of the curriculum at Lifeways. Archuleta is a soft- spoken, reserved man, but becomes very animated when the conversation turns to the ways in which this knowledge is of utmost importance and essential to preserving tradition. Moreover, the foods in question are all imperiled in one way or another.

For one, there are the fish and the dams. Or is it the dams and no fish? The dams were erected during a time when economic pressures called for cheap electricity (among other to produce aluminum) and reliable water levels for commercial barges to navigate the river. Roosevelt’s signing of the Bonneville Project Act in 1937 gave the facility administrator (under the control of the United States Department of Energy) the authority to take any steps necessary to complete the dam and ensure its efficiency, “by purchase, lease, condemnation, or donation” (United States BPA, 32). The decisions regarding the disposal of personal property rested solely on the judgement of the dam’s administrator. This clause of the Act made the destruction of forty traditional Indian fishing sites as well as homes and towns possible. And the dams killed the fish, precursor to other ecological disasters.

The devastation to fish runs was lasting and eventually acknowledged; in the last decades the BPA has invested heavily in fish restoration, which has not yet worked enough for the wild life to be lifted out of the Endangered Species Act. For a more recent, detailed, terrific summary article go here.

Salmon are also negatively affected by the steady increase in temperature in the Pacific waters to which they return. In addition to global climate crisis, local issues with land use contribute to the disaster. Runoff from farms and poor forestry practices lead to diversion and disruption of stream flows, and increased sediment in streams where salmon spawn, reducing their odds of survival when they reach the ocean.

*

Important plants are endangered as well. Traditional staples like the Camas lily (Camassia or Quamash) have been under siege from invasive weeds, and the bulbs may have stored toxic residue from pesticides used to combat reed canarygrass and meadow foxtail that engulf the fields. Archuleta works with METRO to apply traditional ecological knowledge to fight the invaders – actively seeking to guard the food supply for future generations.

Then there is Wapato, a sacred first food found in wetlands, swamps, marshes and along the rivers. It once grew in abundance in our region; if you find it now you might want to have it tested before you eat it: The USDA lists it as not palatable for human consumption because it absorbs metals and other pollutants in the water.

Long years of industrial activity have contaminated the lower Willamette River with PCBs, PAHs, dioxins/furans, pesticides, and metals. The affected ecosystems, so important to Native American nations, are in dire need of restoration. The most polluted stretch of the river was designated a Portland Harbor Superfund Site in the year 2000. Several tribes – the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe work with consultants, the EPA, the City of Portland and the DEQ on site cleanup – a process that has at times faced serious obstacles.

*

Students were busily at work at the wood block, ranging in age from 19 to somewhere north of 70, from beginners to experienced craftspeople. The carving session was interrupted by frequent visits to the communal table laden with food. Everyone brought something, from self-caught wild Alaskan salmon to the first huckleberries of the season, from pizza to donuts, wild rice and grapes – a feast.

I envied the ease and visible friendship of members of a group dedicated to making art – as a group for whom the representations held shared meaning. Much laughter and teasing, helpful instructions about process, and even a rare, brilliant smile by Archuleta when newly arrived students entered the room and were greeted after a long absence. The sense of community was palpable; the devotion to the task at hand equally strong.

*

In something of a comedy of errors and numerous mixed signals, I had gone a week earlier out to Grand Ronde thinking I would meet the artist there. It was a fortuitous mistake since that way I had time to visit Chachalu, the tribal museum and cultural center of the Confederate Tribes of Grand Ronde. Just like the Lifeways program, the museum is part of a cultural development project, trying to conveying the history, traditions and cultural knowledge of the past, and guiding next generations to their future. (I have written about the current exhibition here.)

The museum does – and does well – what is so direly necessary: change the dominant narrative about Native Americans and their history, a narrative that is often derisive or objectifying (think mascots!) and built on stereotypes and half-truths about the 5 million Native Americans across more than 600 sovereign Native nations among us.

In the voice of Suzan Shown Harjo, (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee,) a long-time policy advocate: “Narrative change is necessary today! Without it, we remain erased, invisible, out of sight, mind and heart. With it, we gain visibility, contemporary understanding, greater voice and respect.

The museum houses exhibits, archival material for research, rooms for conferences and workshops. Here we can learn about the strength of tribal history, the values central to the way of life – the attachment to place and tradition – and the resilience of a culture that has seen more than 500 violations of treaties through the ages, by federal and state governments, corporations and individuals. We can witness the revitalization of a nation after the loss of land, forced relocation, and assault on their language and ongoing destruction of their sacred places.

And speaking of a new narrative and museums: A new exhibit – This IS Kalapuyan Land –  opens on Thursday, August 15, 2019 at the Washington County Museum. Guest-curated by Stephanie Littlebird Fogel (Kalapuyan, Grand Ronde), it is meant to point to the differences between Native and non-Native versions of history. From the press release: The exhibit questions what information is presented as “fact” and how the museum context shapes what the audience learns. “Ultimately, I want to challenge the way we recall our shared histories,” states Littlebird Fogel, “and examine how biased narratives can be perpetuated through archeology and academic institutions like museums and universities.” Among the contemporary artists who will be displaying are:

Carol Haskins (Grand Ronde)
Don Bailey (Hupa)
Nestucca (Grand Ronde)
Nicole Haskins (Grand Ronde)
Jason Cawood (Klamath)
Derrick Lawvor (Klamath)
Angelica Trimble-Yanu (Oglala Lakota Sioux) , Phillip Thomas (Chickasaw), DeAnna Bear (Eastern Band Lenape)
Jana Schmieding (Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux), Whitney A. Lewis (Chehalis), Tincer Mitchell (Navajo)
Lindsea Wery (Chippewa)
Joni Millard (Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Crow) Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe)

*

The art which emerged in front of my eyes during the carving session contains all the elements needed to gain a better understanding of Native American culture. The focus on place is shared with many of the other representations of the various sections of the Columbia River Gorge in the Exquisite Gorge project. The symbols of sacred foods and representations of origin stories provide an exclusive narrative of strength and adaptation. It echoed something that Archuleto had impressed on me repeatedly during our conversation: “My people are not stagnant. They always knew to adapt and incorporate objects and practices that allowed them to survive.”

I left that evening thinking that I hope the rest of us, those who are non-Native Americans, can adapt too: let go of our stereotypes, don’t undermine binding agreements, protect sacred sites, become allies.

Art might help pave the way.

“Alchemy – noun : a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way.” (Merriam-Webster) 

The English word alchemy has its historical roots in the Greek term chēmeia (the Arabic article al was added later when the word traveled across the Mediterranean world) referring to fluids and pouring. Long before the science of chemistry entered the scene, alchemists mixed liquids to create gold or cure diseases, seeking some sort of transformative power.

The term came to mind when I visited with Mike McGovern, yet another artist selected by the curatorial committee at Maryhill Museum for the Exquisite Gorge project, tasked with providing a wood block print representing a particular part of the Columbia Gorge. He will be among all those who gather on August 24th at the museum for the public printing of the aligned 8×6 blocks by means of a steamroller.

______________________________________________________________________________

THE EXQUISITE GORGE PROJECT

“…a collaborative printmaking project featuring 11 artists working with communities along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River from the Willamette River confluence to the Snake River confluence to create a massive 66-foot steamrolled print. The unique project takes inspiration from the Surrealist art practice known as exquisite corpse. In the most well-known exquisite corpse drawing game, participants took turns creating sections of a body on a piece of paper folded to hide each successive contribution. When unfolded, the whole body is revealed. In the case of The Exquisite Gorge Project, the Columbia River will become the ‘body’ that unifies the collaboration between artists and communities, revealing a flowing 66-foot work that tells 10 conceptual stories of the Columbia River and its people.”

– Louise Palermo, Curator of Education at Maryhill Museum

______________________________________________________________________________

McGovern sure mixes it up. Not liquids, mind you, but everything else you can think of. Snippets of words, bits and pieces of sounds, slivers, shreds, scraps, slices, segments, morsels and fragments of ideas or visual impressions, all bent into new configurations. The evolving amalgam could be a page out of a graphic novel (on steroids, given the size of his work) with a large inventory of ideas, but also an invitation to detect the various style elements derived from generations of prior artists. Add to that aesthetics borrowed from his more contemporary passions, the world of heavy metal, skateboarding, tattoo and graffiti – and voilà, there emerges a transformation that is indeed, if not mysterious, quite definitely impressive.

*

Born in Portland, OR, as one of 9 children into an artistically inclined family, McGovern attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art where he studied photography and printmaking and earned a BFA in photography in 2004. He graduated in 2009 with his MFA in printmaking from Northern Illinois University where he studied under Michael Barnes and Ashley Nason. For the last 10 years he has been teaching art at PCC Rock Creek Campus and spent summers in residencies working, among other things, with young people from under-served populations.

His board, covering the Columbia River section 8 from John Day to Arlington, is highly stylized. Part of that can be traced back to the earliest influences on him as a budding artist. From his father, Donlon McGovern, who carved wood since he was initiated into the craft by native American artists, McGovern adapted a version of the Northwest style that finds its place in a border pattern. His mother’s influence reveals itself in repeated work with linear demarcations, absorbed when watching Jean McGovern make stained-glass windows during his childhood.

Imagery gleaned from the Gorge, the wind turbines, the smoke from last year’s substation fire that he happened to be witnessing during a residency in The Dalles, fill the board. Representations of quails, raptors, sturgeons, cherries and wheat form a rough-hewn quilt.

A bee, a moon and a sunflower are adapted from drawings by Sebastian and Issa, students at Wahtonka Community High School which is a community partner in the project.

The school approaches education for some 60 9-12th graders with a hands-on, project-based learning environment, a strict code of rules and clear behavioral expectations, providing a chance to gain a regular Oregon State Diploma when other avenues of education have been closed off for good. McGovern must be a good fit with the reportedly intensely dedicated teachers and staff, having much to offer that the teenagers can relate to.

*

In addition to the images, there are ubiquitous words carved all across the board. Many of them emerged from conversations with the students. Others came about as free associations while starting to carve, dipping into a stream of consciousness bubbling up from the immersion in the Gorge environment.

Central is, of course, the river that runs through it all. It contains two faces or masks that seem to be breathing important words across the water: confluence; trust; voice; community. I don’t know if this was intended, but they struck me as the essentials that one wishes could re-define relationships among the diverse populations of the Gorge in light of a difficult history – if that history can be overcome at all.

*

McGovern is fascinated with masks, both prevalent in Native American and indigenous Polynesian art, and also feels a strong affinity to the work of another European group of artists: the German expressionists, first and foremost Max Beckman, Karl Schmitt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde and Käthe Kollwitz.

The influence of a movement devoted to convey subjective experience rather than to copy reality is clearly visible in McGovern’s work. The Expressionist method of using lots of contrast, flat shapes and jagged contours is echoed in his style of carving: a raw treatment of the material rather than traditional refinement, chunky slashes rather than subtle illustration.

Within the context of their time, the first decades of the 20th century, Expressionists were set on reflecting the political reality of the European suffering associated with the war that was and the next war yet to come. At the same time they were set on distorting reality in their art, focussed on emotional reaction instead.

Printmaking lent itself to the political aspect of the Expressionists’ work: it was cheap, quick, and posters could be easily multiplied and distributed. Pictures combined with words were thus spread amongst a population that had no access to the floods of imagery that we are overexposed to these days. It was a tool for information, for warning about war mongering, for calling on solidarity during a time where nationalism in the service of fascism was on the rise. As a means of communication to promote or condemn political causes it went beyond the original goals of the artists who rejected naturalism and impressionism in their predecessors: the goal to delve deeply into the emotional core of human experience beyond the surface of aesthetics. (Here is a link to a comprehensive introduction to Expressionism published in the context of the 2011 MoMa exhibition German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse.)

Perhaps it is no coincidence that printmaking experiences such a revival in our own political times, with artists willingly resuming the burden of all those who undertook protest against forces that were overwhelming and seemingly invincible.

*

There is, of course, always the question of appropriation: where does one cross the line from affinity to copying, from reverence to disregard for ownership? The question has actually become much less of an issue for me after a visit earlier this month to another printmaking show at the Rhode Island School of Design: Vision and Revision, at the RISDMuseum in Providence, RI. Brilliantly curated and thoughtfully explained, the exhibition presents work of printmakers and those in their footsteps, delineating the ways old work has been adapted to new times. I learned much. Here is the blurb from the catalogue:

Visions and Revisions tells the story of the invention, reuse, and revival of traditional printmaking techniques throughout the history of that groundbreaking medium. From the very beginning, printmakers have been keenly aware of their artistic lineage, repeatedly confronting and transforming earlier achievements. In addition to emulating their contemporaries, printmakers have consistently revived historic techniques, often overcoming considerable technical challenges to adopt an established aesthetic and adapt it to their own needs. With artists ranging from Albrecht Dürer to Mary Cassatt, from Rembrandt to Kara Walker, this exhibition highlights the astonishingly creative results of repeated encounters with authoritative precedents, celebrating the enduring dialogue between “old masters” and modern and contemporary artists.

Adopting an aesthetic while mixing it up with a modern twist or contemporary content, envisioning, revisioning, – there’s alchemy for you!

*

In the late 1970s some friends and I regularly fled the harbor city of Hamburg to take up residence on a working farm in Tating (pop. 983), a hamlet near the North Sea. In exchange for serious labor, on the fields and milking cows – yes, I once milked cows, and no, it’s not romantic – we were fed and housed for days on end by the aging parents of one of us, who direly needed help. The woman of the house was goddaughter to Emil Nolde, the expressionist painter. Several of his oil paintings hung in the entrance hall and living room; because insurance costs were astronomical, the uninsured art was tied to nails in the wall with heavily knotted metal wire to prevent theft. When the thatch-roofed farmhouse went up in flames in the early 80s, few of them could be rescued because the wires could not easily be disentangled.

I don’t remember the paintings in detail, just that I was in awe of the emotional power of the color; I was also, at the time, completely unawares of the fact that Nolde was a Nazi and anti-Semite notwithstanding the fact that his own work had been banned as degenerate. New scholarship around his political stance recently led German chancellor Angela Merkel to dispose of two of his paintings that hung in the chancellery and to return them to some museum when an occasion arose to do so without too much fanfare.

I do remember clearly, however, how restorative it was to spend time at a place filled with beauty, away from the daily stress of my professional life.

Dylan McManus, the artistic director for the Exquisite Gorge Project, provides exactly that opportunity for artists who need time to focus and immerse themselves without distractions. He and his wife and children live on a working cherry tree farm in the hills above The Dalles. His LittleBearHill studio offers residencies to printmakers and other artists, enhanced by the fact that they can not only work in peace with the relevant equipment but also have the chance to talk to a like-minded artist. It was here where I met with McGovern to talk about his approach to the wood print.

McManus’ work has focused on how perceptions and expressions of masculinity are shaped by culture, how self-image embraces attributes that are seemingly demanded by the stereotypes we absorb, and how behavior is ruled by cultural expectation. Exploration of violence is a topic of great interest to him.

The artist’s father worked for long stretches in Africa and reports of atrocities committed even by under-age soldiers preoccupied McManus from early on. His series on child soldiers uses ground diamond dust as a medium reflecting back on one of the many sources of internecine violence. In other work, he has portrayed war veterans, often using gun powder that he sets on fire to accentuate contrasting edges and fields.

McManus’ interests and knowledge of the world of printmakers, his facility with the craft, his hospitality and the way he is deeply tied into many aspects of the Gorge community make him really a linch-pin to the Exquisite Gorge project. In my two short visits out at LittleBearHill I experienced him as a tender and attentive father to his young children. The same can probably be said for his shepherding the project along.

*

On my way home after the interview I decided spontaneously to stop by at the Bonneville Power Dam and take a close look at the locks and the Columbia river. It had, of course, to be the day where my old vacuum cleaner was stashed in the car boot – having been declared defunct that very morning at the repair shop by a depressed looking clerk eager for a sale. The security guard at Bonneville looked annoyed with me wanting in some 20 minutes before closing time. Then he had to check out that my old Shark was not a drone in disguise, despite my emphatic denial that I transported either those or weapons. He eventually waved me grudgingly through when vacuum-hood was securely established.

His suspiciousness, my amusement: The river didn’t care.

The river doesn’t care if we are a violent species, or an industrious one, or one that makes art. The river doesn’t care about what we do to it, or how we represent it or exploit it or guard it, what we feel towards it or how we write about it. The river will run, dammed or not, for much longer than we all will be around. It will seek its course, it will face sunrise in silver and sunset in gold, no alchemy needed. It will echo the seasons, it will rise and fall, it will nourish.

What a comforting thought.

“The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.”

W.B. Yeats wrote these words in the sixth section of his poem Meditations in Time of Civil War, longing for bees. The structures were crumbling, symbol of the destruction wrought by Ireland’s civil war in the 1920s, and rebuilding was direly needed. I was reminded of this poem and the restorative role it assigns to bees, when meeting with Steven Muñoz last week for a studio visit and an art talk in White Salmon, WA.

The print maker is the fourth of several artists who I visited during their participation in the Exquisite Gorge project which accumulates individual wood prints for a final printing by a steam roller in late August at Maryhill Museum. If the wait until then seems too long, you can attend an earlier opening of what promises to be a different, extraordinary print exhibition on July 13th at the museum.

———————–

Muñoz is a man who walks, talks, breathes, and, for all I know, sleeps and dreams bees. A mere century after Yeats’ lament, with the structures crumbling again, this time destroying the very fabric of nature on which the bees and all who rely on them depend, his work is a call to action.

The artist grew up in New Mexico, exposed to cultivating nature from an early age on at his grandparents’ Alfalfa farm. He received a BFA with a concentration in printmaking from American University in DC in 1998 and is currently the Director of the Lee Arts Center, a program of Arlington Cultural Affairs. As chair of the Board of City Blossoms, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering healthy communities by developing creative, kid-driven green spaces in neighborhoods that would not otherwise have access to gardening, Muñoz nurtures not just plants – although he does that, too, as a master gardener.

His love for bees has organically grown in the context of seeing what damage non-organic farming and commercialized apiculture has wrought. In the age-old tradition of print makers everywhere who serve as clarion calls for things amiss in the social or political fabric of their time, he draws our attention to what we are about to lose. In turn, the insects themselves attend to him – multiple photographs confirm that the artist attracts them, being literally, physically, peacefully visited by bees.

Muñoz’ approach to his section of the Columbia River Gorge (Browns Island to Miller Island,) involved meticulous research of the flora that is endangered by the decline of pollinators. As it turns out, the widespread meadow death camas (Toxicoscordion venenosum) is dependent on a sole insect that can pollinate it: a mining bee called Andrena astragali. If this species is destroyed by agricultural chemicals or changes in climate that affect reproduction or survival, the game is over for the plant as well. I do not have to spell out the chain reaction for any of the imaginable similar scenarios involving all bees as pollinators.

His woodblock depicts this mining bee about to approach the plant; it took over a month and a half for the drawing alone to be executed. He then spent several week in White Salmon, away from his patient husband, dogs and East Coast bees, to undertake the carving of the woodblock.

.—————–

The importance of bees has been known since time immemorial. Well, spelled out at least since Virgil told us about the God Aristaeus. Responsible for the cultivation of bees, wine and olives, he was punished with the death of all of his bees for coveting Orpheus’ wife Euridice and causing her death when she stepped on a poisonous snake while fleeing Aristaeus’ advances.

We might also want to think through the rest of that myth: Orpheus thought he could rescue his beloved from the underworld, restoring her to life. No such luck: man’s impatience and doubts destroyed one last chance for a happy ending. Parallels to our current trajectory, anyone?

Here is Virgil’s Georgics, Book IV with details on ancient beekeeping that might be of interest. Less poetic in style, but rich in scientific substance are the writings of a more contemporary champion of bees, Thomas Seeley. A biologist at Cornell University, he is the ultimate authority of swarm intelligence, the pooling of individual decisions that, in some form of distributed process, produces a collective outcome that is beneficial to the group. Aptly, he calls it Honeybee Democracy.

Some simple principles underly the emerging wisdom of the group, for instance when they try to find a new home each year which needs to have both, an appropriate size and appropriate levels of protection. The first principle concerns enthusiasm, which in turn triggers attention. Bees who come home from exploration of potential sites display differing levels of enthusiasm, expressed by dancing with differing degrees of passion. The more passion the more fellow bees will go out to inspect the site. The second principle is flexibility. There are rules of communication through dance that allow second wave scouts to make up their own minds and contribute to the collective decision that way. In the end whoever recruits the most bees to be excited about a single site will maneuver the swarm in that direction.

————————

I cannot judge how much distributed decision making led to the engagement by Muñoz’ community partner in the print project, the White Salmon Arts Council. I can vouch, however, for that group’s enthusiasm and flexibility. Their support for the artist ranged from housing him for weeks on end, lending him a studio to work in, taking care of everyday needs, providing a space to show and sell some of his other work, and invited him to give a talk to the community to alert one and all to the cause. They were flexible when I showed up and certainly welcomed me in and helped me gather essential information.

The range of creative focus was definitely distributed, from print makers to weavers, jewelry makers to ceramic artists, painters and more. I have photographs and glimpses of the work of only a few but they are indicative of the variety I mentioned.

The evening was moderated by Sally Gilchrist, whose prints brought “saftig” to my mind – the German “saftig” refers to something juicy, the yiddish “zaftig” refers to voluptuous round curves, both often used in reference to something quite appealing. I had coincidentally seen her work on the walls of Henni’s Kitchen and Bar in White Salmon a week earlier and it remains a mystery if my discreet drooling was induced by coveting the art or the best Burger I’ve had in a long time….

Sarah Morton-Erasmus is currently president of the Arts Council and the jewelry she makes has etherial qualities. In contrast, her organizing is pragmatically down-to-earth and geared at increasing the public representation of the group, from Art Walks, to Art Chats to mentoring programs for local High School students and further artist residency programs.

Kristie Strasen has done some remarkable work as a textile designer and colorist, but I was very much drawn to her weaving which brings elegance to the home-spun material. She was by all reports an especially kind host to Muñoz as well.

Others who could not attend the Art Chat but were described as instrumental for the public work of the Arts Council are Meg Bradford, an art collector and owner of Cor Cellars, who according to Morton-Erasmus puts on some of the best events in the Gorge at her winery, Chelsea Heffner, the owner of Wildcraft Studio School, Ben Berger, an art enthusiast and a financial planner with a back ground in the tech industry and last but not least Charlie Kitchings, who is an art dealer and solid resource with connections to Seattle and Los Angeles. 

I mention all these individuals because of my stern conviction that individual engagement is the glue that holds communities together. Particularly in times of absence or decrease of public support for the arts the resources, connections, help and input provided by groups like these matter ever more. The role played by community partners in the Exquisite Gorge project cannot be overstated even if attention is geared towards the artists who provide us with much food for thought and the museum which had this terrific idea in the fist place. Three cheers for volunteers!

————————–

On my way back from White Salmon in the evening, I got stuck, seemingly for hours, on I84 because of a crash in Troutdale. Mahler’s 1st symphony, conducted by Kalmar, was playing on the radio and in the lane next to me was a trailer filled with frightened calves. Between the bovine stench, the overly accentuated cuckoo calls coming from the clarinet, and the calves’ all but rhythmic banging against their trailer walls, oh, did I long for softly humming bees. My thoughts were drawn back to Yeats and his assessment of what the world needs in his poem:

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

Muñoz’ art serves as a timely reminder of what is needed to repair the world. We, just like Orpheus, might not get a second chance.

How does an artist decide which questions to raise and which, if any, answers to provide? How does an educator reach their audience and communicate innovative ideas hoping to stir up responses that foster curiosity and open or change minds?

I wondered about this when meeting Neal Harrington, the third of the print makers to be portrayed for Maryhill Museum’s Exquisite Gorge project: To recap, he too is one of 11 artists who in collaboration with community partners are carving woodblocks filled with ideas about individual sections of the Columbia River. All of the blocks will be aligned and printed by a steam roller at the museum on August 24.

THE EXQUISITE GORGE PROJECT

“…a collaborative printmaking project featuring 11 artists working with communities along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River from the Willamette River confluence to the Snake River confluence to create a massive 66-foot steamrolled print. The unique project takes inspiration from the Surrealist art practice known as exquisite corpse. In the most well-known exquisite corpse drawing game, participants took turns creating sections of a body on a piece of paper folded to hide each successive contribution. When unfolded, the whole body is revealed. In the case of The Exquisite Gorge Project, the Columbia River will become the ‘body’ that unifies the collaboration between artists and communities, revealing a flowing 66-foot work that tells 10 conceptual stories of the Columbia River and its people.”

– Louise Palermo, Curator of Education at Maryhill Museum

I visited with Harrington at the Farmers’ Market in The Dalles last Saturday where he, together with folks from his project community partner, The Dalles Art Center, made it possible for the public to catch a first glimpse of his wood block. He is both an educator and an artist, dual roles that can compliment each other but might also compete with conflicting goals or resource allocation. He is also a musician in a band named Black Sabbatical. No wonder I was hooked.

With an MfA from Wichita State University, and tenured faculty at Arkansa Tech University in Russellville, AK, Harrington exhibits several of the hallmarks that make, in my mind, for a great teacher.

He has an easy way with jokes (Hey, kiddos, let me grab your attention…)

He is deadly passionate when it comes to conveying substance (Think, folks, think!)

And, importantly, he knows how to listen (Tell me again?).

The last one matters enormously – it allows you to gauge the status quo of those who want or need to learn, and to respond at the appropriate level, easing their load or equipping them with challenges. (Mind you, my criteria are derived from a small sample, but then again, how many great teachers do you encounter in your lifetime?)

Harrington certainly listened to the community feedback in his conversations at The Dalles Art Center and elsewhere about what people wanted to see in his representation of Section Five of the Gorge: Rowena to Browns Island. “Don’t just focus on the usual, the cherries, the grapes, the wheat barges, include what matters for the future!”

Part of the future arrived in The Dalles in 2006 when Google opened their first data center, joined last year by a second one, providing direly needed employment opportunities. They have invested $1.8 billion in their facilities and have been a generous neighbor:

In their own words: “Since 2008, we have awarded nearly $2.5 million in grants that impact Wasco County and more than $10 million in grants to Oregon nonprofits and schools in areas that we’re passionate about, including science and technology education, carbon reduction, and access to the internet.”

Harrington listened and came up with a wildly imaginative design that married the past to the future, leaving us grinning in the present: Columbia River Gorge fauna and flora are represented within an arrangement that echoes old canned salmon-tin labels, with one of the ospreys ubiquitous to the region at the center of the block, taking off with a mouse in its talons: a computer mouse that is connected to a mother board.

Once you get over the surprise and amusement, you can go on to appreciate the intricate nature of the intertwining parts, the respect for both history and nature, the sheer richness of the drawing. It is a sight to behold.

_____________________

As an educator you should listen to others. As an artist you have to listen to yourself, often ignoring extraneous demands or Zeitgeist pressures. It helps when the inner voice is deeply rooted in preoccupations or beliefs that shape your view of the world and are longing to be externalized. Harrington’s passions were built on exposure to Greek mythology and American Roots music.

What is it about small town boys and girls and Greek mythology? I envision Rapid City, SD, where Harrington grew up, not exactly as a teeming cultural hotspot. Forgive my stereotyping, it was encouraged by a look at the city’s website where next to Mt. Rushmore a cement dinosaur park and a reptile garden were announced as the main attractions. The same – somewhat small-town, isolated location – was true for the men who really brought Hellenism with all of its facets to renewed prominence in the West many centuries ago, in far away Germany: Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Heinrich Schliemann. I have written about them here and here respectively. It was true for me, too, growing up in a middle-of-nowhere German village after WW II and for several of my philhellenic artist friends across the globe.)

My theory (again with small sample bias) is that Greek mythology delivered the equivalent of what Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or, in the gaming and cinematic realm, the Legend of Zelda or the entire Marvel enterprise currently provide: fully structured universes with a set of characters, a set of rules, daring breaking of rules, magical powers, and importantly, unhappy endings, all of which allow you to escape, to adopt a different cultural identity and to engage in downward comparison. (Hey you might be bored to death, but at least you didn’t have to roll that boulder up a mountain or have your liver pecked for all eternity…. ) Of course that German preoccupation with tragedy, and the associated emergence of German idealism did not end well: cultural historians like Fritz Stern argued that it paved the way for the success of fascism. A story for another day. But, oh, how mythology can be harvested for print making!

———————-

Harrington listens. He listens to music that is another font of inspiration for his art. Growing up with friends whose names were James Poor Thunder, Lawrence Ironcloud and Tammy Little Bear, he was early on exposed to different perspectives of the American Dream. American Root music clearly provides a narrative that Harrington’s art picks up and renews. Series like his Bootlegger Ballads or Hard Travelin Man are testimony to my point.

He listens to his 13-year-old daughter who cannot live without once seeing Ariana Grande live in concert, and chauffeurs her for that trip which turns from three to seven hours in the car, being held up by recent floods in the Midwest. He listens to and comforts his young son whose mom is Chinese, coming home from school perplexed that his classmates mistake him for a Mexican and nudge him to speak Spanish – apparently that particular Arkansas slice of the world is divided into Whites and Hispanics only.

And then he listens to Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and preferably Todd Snider (born in Beaverton, OR no less, and for me a new discovery.)

Finding inspiration, sorting out questions and answers.

He listens. We should look.

I have on previous occasions written on this or that aspect of Maryhill Museum in WA which I like to visit as often as I can. An eclectic collection of paintings, fashion, artifacts of some Eastern-European aristocracy (Queen Marie of Romania), chess sets, native American basketry, 80 or so works of art by Rodin, displayed in an old Manor house with a fascinating history of its founder, beautiful grounds and a sculpture park – it has all drawn me for many a decade. In fact I remember when they still had peacocks roaming the manicured lawns and discreetly placed signs, warning you of rattlesnake danger, should you step off the paths…

This summer I have the best ever justification for more repeat visits, carbon footprint be damned (it is a 2 hour drive from Portland after all): the museum has a fascinating project called Exquisite Gorge under way which promises both, a distinct process and an exciting outcome for all of us interested in learning about as many local artists as we can and celebrating the history and beauty of the Gorge and its people. Here is the description of the brainchild of Lou Palermo, curator of Education at the museum, who has been instrumental in connecting artists and communities throughout the Columbia River Gorge.

“…a collaborative printmaking project featuring 11 artists working with communities along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River from the Willamette River confluence to the Snake River confluence to create a massive 66-foot steamrolled print. The unique project takes inspiration from the Surrealist art practice known as exquisite corpse. In the most well-known exquisite corpse drawing game, participants took turns creating sections of a body on a piece of paper folded to hide each successive contribution. When unfolded, the whole body is revealed. In the case of The Exquisite Gorge Project, the Columbia River will become the “body” that unifies the collaboration between artists and communities, revealing a flowing 66-foot work that tells 10 conceptual stories of the Columbia River and its people.

I plan to visit with as many of the contributing printmakers and communities involved in the process as is feasible between now and August 24, when the collaborative efforts will be revealed and united via a giant steam roller at Maryhill Museum. I hope my reports will allow glimpses into the diverse, creative power all around us that we so rarely have a chance to observe directly, documenting the thinking about and carving of each of the 10 segments allotted to the individual artists. And of course I can’t wait to be part of that grand finale in August, interviewing Palermo in depth on her curatorial vision and her ability to forge alliances across diverse populations.

———————

Last week was off to a great start: I got to meet Jane Pagliarulo in her beautiful Atelier Meridian in North PDX which she co-owns with Barbara Mason (with whom she also shares a leadership role in Print Arts Northwest (PAN) a non-profit that has advocated the art of printmaking through exhibitions, professional development, and educational programs for almost 40 years here in Portland. (Photographs throughout are from the Atelier.)

Pagliarulo is a Master Printer with a life history that could fill several life times, or be made into one of those movies where you long to be the heroine – except you don’t have a smidgen of the energy displayed by this artist, or the courage to try so many independent ways of living – well, I don’t in any case. Educated at UMass at Amherst and Exeter in England, she traveled and worked extensively in Europe and eventually did fine art printing in Santa Fe, NM.

Before you know it, she was an outdoor guide and independent survey forester in OR where she also taught printmaking as an Artist in Residence in Hood River County schools. She co-founded a printmaking workshop in the Alpinee Hut in Hood River from 2000 to 2006. And now she manages the studio here and prints for other people as well as her own art while donating time, knowledge, materials and skills to various education projects, and raising a 12 year old. No wonder she recently received an award that was established in honor of a truly generous person and has been given to those acknowledged to contribute deeply and freely to community.

Her fierce devotion to nature and her extensive skill with a variety of printing techniques – lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, and photogravures – as well as her connection to the Hood River community, made her the perfect choice for being assigned that section of the river. The baltic birch panel is ready and set to be carved at the shop – I will report back when the design materializes!

————————-