Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Browsing Category

Art

Floating into Fall.

· Weaving Time: NUNO – Textiles of Tradition and Transformation at Portland Japanese Garden. ·

If you are interested in textile design and live on the West Coast, you are currently in luck. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) just opened a major retrospective of works of the collective design studio NUNO, headed by Reiko Sudō. Textile Alchemy: The Art of Reiko Sudō & NUNO presents over 100 limited edition textiles, many of which are drawn from LACMA’s collection, including sketches, raw materials, tools, mock-ups, and prototypes. At the center of the exhibition hall is a retail store that allows visitors to purchase items associated with the studio, a recreation of the original 1984 NUNO shop offering textiles, clothing, and accessories. Rather than being irritated at the consumerism urged on visitors, we can celebrate that this arrangement stresses the fact that NUNO’s creations are primarily about function. Their beauty and innovation non-withstanding, these fabrics are meant to be applied, whether in wardrobes, interiors or as architectural design features.

Closer to home, Portland Japanese Garden features a smaller, compact presentation of the output of the studio, artist and artisans. Weaving Time: NUNO – Textiles of Tradition and Transformation is a lovely introduction to these famous Japanese fabrics. The visitor is not only offered a rich visual environment, but also encouraged to experience the fabrics tactilely, using our sense of touch to understand the variability of much that is produced by NUNO. Reiko Sudō is clearly not just en vogue, but also in last month’s Vogue, which featured an informative biography of the designer, who traveled a complicated path despite her stunning talent and visionary energy.

The Pavilion is filled with large, colorful cubes, suspended from the ceiling. They slightly sway and shift when the sliders to the outside are open, creating an impression of floating in space. Each stands for one of eight regions of Japan that are associated with distinct styles of textile production, with the cubes’ respective six sides covered by cloths representative of a region. It is an efficient use of limited space.

One of the side walls holds samples to touch, and explanations about the points of origins for these fabrics. The other side wall informs visitors about the processes used to bring traditional ware into modernity, including cutting edge chemical and physical processes revolutionizing the production of fabrics that combine beauty with function.

The choice of the Portland Japanese Garden exhibition title – Weaving Time – seemed fortuitous to me. It includes both variables that are special about Sudō and her collective: a look backwards aimed at stewardship of traditional process and a leap forwards in employing cutting edge new technologies to produce futuristic materials. For the newly opened David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, for example, she created a set of curtains that guaranteed transparency but also protected art work from harmful sunlight. The sputter-plated chrome textile they created is fire-resistant (the codes are rigorous), and has an interesting metallic sheen, in both matte and gloss varieties. No wonder they went for the Alchemy exhibit title – there is something about the fusion of materials and her and NUNO’s role as catalysts. I still like “our” title better, though, since the preservation of history is such an important role in a world that tends to ignore the old crafts at best, and relegates them to the dustbin at worst.

The curtains in front of the Garden’s Pavilion are made of nore material. The way they swayed and softened the view of the surrounding landscape while still somewhat transparent, was the best transition to the fall garden that I could imagine.

I consider this time in the garden as floating into fall. The softness of the coloration is not yet superseded by the full saturated fireworks of color change. Leaves seem tentative,

floating in sunshine and shade alike,

or gathering on the many water features.

Yet there is still solidity in the canopy, with only the occasional renegade leaf starting its earthbound descent.

Curtains and cubes around and within the pavilion echo that visual or perhaps even emotional impression.

***

I reached the Japanese Learning Center at the end of my walk. A small portion features NUNO textiles caged in bamboo, created by master woodworker Chūzō Tozawa of Hinoki Kougei. The row of paravents are entirely monochromatic and meant to evoke the Pacific Northwest’s rainy season.

The cynic in me often wonders if these titular allocations are made to please a specific audience – I could have just as well bought the idea that these fabrics relate to the snow at Fujiten, Niseko or Hakuba Valley, or the cherry blossoms’ shades of white. Better to ignore the labeling and immerse myself visually – these fabrics are etherial and almost hypnotizing if you stare at them for a long time. Again, despite their objectively static nature in those frames, they can induce perceptual floating if you hold your gaze just long enough.

***

I’ll let others debate where the boundaries are between design and art. For the record, her work’s status as art remains complicated for Sudō herself. “I want to make textiles that move people, emotionally,” she explains. “But fundamentally, I really want my fabrics to be used.” (Ref.)

It is the case, though, that fiber arts have made a huge impact on the art scene across the last decade or two, with their visibility ever rising. That can include the use of specific textiles to create installations, as Sudō herself did with Adrian Gardère, for example, for MUJI stores (she sits on the Board of the company.)

Reiko Sudo and Adrian Gardère Koi Continuum (2026) Photocredit Phillip Reed

More often it means the use of any kind of fiber in ever more creative configurations, with myriad processes employed. (For a quick overview of the variability of contemporary fiber arts, check out this, examples ranging from cute to uncanny.)

One intellectual and artistic lodestar for the fiber arts is the Fiber Arts Biennale From Lausanne to Beijing, showing the most accomplished artists at the museum of Tsinghua University in China. Interwoven Horizons, the most recent 13th Biennale, stated as a profile:

This edition explores the convergence of fiber art within material culture, ecological ethics, and technological evolution, examining how the fiber medium carries tactile experiences and cultural heritage in contemporary expression while bridging local and global contexts, tradition and future.

Seems to echo much I’ve learned about NUNO’s approach. Here is a link to the exhibition view (embedded in the conference report.) The images are stunning.

You have to travel a bit less – Leeds in West Yorkshire, rather than Beijing – to see a current exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute, that shows the sculptural qualities fiber art. One of my favorite contemporary fiber artists, NYC- based Sagarika Sundaram exhibits Reservoir . The center piece of the show is a 23 ft (7 meters) felted structure, Blue Mountain 2026, which looks to me (I’ve only seen photographs) more like a wave, and thus leads us back to floating. Spectacularly beautiful in its drape and undulations.

I am bringing up the global context because I have repeatedly felt that the exhibitions I review at Portland Japanese Garden, even though dedicated to Japanese artists, bring themes and creative processes to our attention that overcome insular preoccupations. Just like the microcosm of a sculptured and carefully maintained Japanese garden reflects the larger configuration of nature that surrounds us, the small but smart exhibitions we encounter in the Pavilion address themes that cross borders. Questions of material culture, cultural heritage, historical correlations or the impact of a globalized world on nations’ development are all raised from various artistic perspectives. For me, who loves the garden as a natural place, its role as a stimulant for thought through art and design has taken on an almost equally important value. Some exhibitions more so than others, of course, but then again, some seasons register more so than others. The current one is a favorite: floating towards fall.


1 Comments

Art(sWatch) on the Road: Some Thoughts.

Last week OregonArtsWatch offered a roadtrip for some 20 participants to explore an exhibition at Clackamas Community College, the Museum at Warm Springs, the High Desert Museum, and various galleries and studios in eastern Oregon. Superbly organized, it provided glimpses into a wide range of artworks, art forms, encounters with artists and art administrators. For those able to attend, there was also the chance to see a play, hear a concert, and have a conversation with Ellen Waterston, current Oregon Poet Laureate from Bend.

A truly fun as well as educational trip. I was able to participate in some of these visits, having to cut short the trip when I started feeling under the weather.

What I marveled at: so many artists, such community efforts to gather and support the arts, so much success in preserving regional traditions and practices on various levels.

What I was surprised by: the focus on animals by the overwhelming majority of the art I encountered. I have never seen so many owl, raven or horse representations congregate on so few square miles in my life. Before anyone jumps to conclusions that I mean this condescendingly – let me differentiate. I wondered not about what I saw, but what I didn’t see.

Animals have played a role in art since people started to put paintings on cave walls. Originally likely provided with informational or spiritual intent by prehistoric societies, they later served as props to indicate status, or were meticulously drawn to inform about the natural world. They were used as codes for religious or political narratives, or simply depicted for the love of them. If you check out the animals in art overview by the MET, their 600 some items are stunning in their diversity and detail across the ages.

If animals are part of your cultural traditions, then their representations have symbolic value or help younger generations to preserve tribal knowledge.

Elizabeth Woody Sisters of Compassion 1 (1994) – part of the current exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum celebrating Lillian Pitt: Art, Memory, Home.

If your goal is an introduction to regional history and ecosystems, fauna and flora, then representing the relevant species is important and educational.

Battle of the Elks at High Desert Museum, Bend, OR

If your work is concerned with how we abuse our environment and how nature tries to find ways of healing, telling the story via a bit of animal magic is a compelling tool. (For PNW readers, run, don’t walk to Hilary Pfeiffer’s current exhibition, Microclimates, at the Alexander Gallery at Clackamas Community College. One of the most interesting shows I’ve seen in a while. More on that at some later point.)

Hilary Pfeiffer Timber (2026)

Artist Statement:

What are the reasons, though, for so many people who simply depict animals? An expression of emotional attachment, a love for nature the artist wants to share, a bit of escapism from the realities around us, focusing on whimsical distractions? Where is the line where whimsey crosses over into Kitsch?

Not that I mind whimsey in these times – here is one of the cutest examples that I was shown….

Owls ruled the back alleys of Bend, in public art.

Birds were a mainstay at up-scale galleries, and collaborative studios.

The High Desert Museum offered another example, Art in the West, a Fine Art Exhibition and Online Auction (still open for bidding!) that helps fundraise for artists and education programs. Look for yourself – here is the entire collection.

Todd Horton How to Craft a Poem (2026)

Critters galore, some of them exquisite, some leaving you wonder. One of the few contemporary works dealing with cultural/social issues was Frank Buffalo Hyde’s, a gifted painter and astute observer whose art I first encountered in New Mexico in 2017.

(The museum itself has excellent coverage of native history as well as the plight of immigrant workers in a terrific special exhibit –  Miguel Almeida: Las Manos que dan de Comer (The Hands That Feed), just to be clear. I am talking here about what a call for art received as contributions.)

Karen Straight Stillness (2026) (needle and wet felted wool painting)

I am not asking for the presence of the likes of artists like Frida Kahlo, Kaethe Kollwitz, Carrie Mae Weems or Barbara Kruger, to name a few famous ones who deal(t) explicitly and predominantly with the issues of their time. But why have the current ecological disasters, from water shortage to wild fires across the West, the depletion of fish runs, the threat of species extinction, or the deportation of so many who were successfully and seamlessly integrated into communities, not made a proportional appearance? Any appearance?

There is a case to be made that depicting what you love – animals – might preserve your sanity in times that are challenging, to say the least. You focus on something positive and of value, rather than threats. It might also provide imagery of what is worth fighting for, once you return your focus to the realities of a country, or an administration that puts extreme stress on the environment and skimps protection for what is vulnerable within.

Yet I wonder: Are more directly political artworks avoided because we are saturated with bad news and need distraction, or are they absent for fear of stepping on toes? And are they avoided by artists, or are they limited by those who select artists for showing?

***

The road trip did not provide the answers. It did, however, offer one exception to the rule when we were invited to visit Scalehouse, a collaborative for the arts in Bend. 

The 501(c)3 nonprofit organization was the brainchild of master printmaker, professor and arts advocate Patricia Clark, one of the instrumental co-founders who believed that creativity was not just a beneficial but an essential part of meeting the challenges of contemporary life. Some 15 years ago this group of innovators decided to create something more than exhibition space: they hoped to provide a platform for creative and intellectual exchange between artists, designers, scientists and community at large. Their programs include gallery space, an art lab education program, public art projects, and Bend Design, a conference that assembles problem-solving workshops, talks and films to instigate new ways of thinking for the future of design. Since 2015 thousands of participants have benefited from the offers. 

In their own words: “Scalehouse promotes collaborations through a multidisciplinary and contemporary lens, encompassing visual and performing arts, architecture and design, film and storytelling, conceptual art and activism. From exhibitions to talks to the annual Bend Design conference, our programs catalyze a creative synthesis that’s impossible in isolation.”

The main gallery featured works by the community’s young. I spent my time, however, in the adjacent Patricia Clark Studio, which provides 6-months residencies to 2 artists with free workspace. One of them, artist and graphic designer Lona Owemo, has created a multidisciplinary collaboration between several local poets, the community at large and Owemo’s own visual representations of the poetry in chapbooks. 

Drawings of Lona Owemo on Studio Wall

Mirrors of Dissemination was first revealed on the last day of April, National Poetry Month. Eight local poets read from their work in the studio, poetry that had been collected into chapbooks that Owemo designed and furbished. The public was invited to read or record their own reactions to the ideas on the walls of the gallery, which also hold many of the artist’s own graphite drawings.

Here is a typical example of the chapbooks, featuring poetry by Mello Versiz, a transplant from Queens, NY, who provides a contemporary voice with scathing insights and occasional truly lyrical phrasings despite fraught subject matter (heavily copyrighted, so I will not publish a poem.)  

The figures looked to me like ever more abstracted versions of cubist portraits, reminiscent, for example, of Diego Riviera’s output once he had moved to Paris. I couldn’t decide if fractals were also at work. I looked up the definition: In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. In philosophy, Fractalism is a concept, roughly, that everything is connected to and communicates with everything else. 

Diego Rivera Young Man with Stylograph – (1914)

Whatever applies, the project’s title certainly pointed to communication: Mirrors of Dissemination. Dissemination has its root in Latin, the scattering of seeds. A seeding of ideas, here, harvested by diverse audiences. Connection between communicator and listeners is not the only one, however. Mirrors have taken on an ever-central role in the visual arts as tools for communal interaction between artist and viewers.

Originally used as props, just like animals were, mirrors shifted from being depicted objects to becoming integral parts of the art works. You have the infinite reflections of Kusama’s Infinity mirror rooms.

I was photographing a Kusama installation at The Broad, L.A., I think in 2019

You have Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Mirror Paintings which use reflective surfaces, making the viewer part of the painting once they step up to look. There are Graham Caldwell’s mirrors, which reflect unstable fragmentations of the observer, to mention just a few.

Graham Caldwell Mirrors – I photographed myself in them at the Arsenal Art Contemporain Montréal in 2018.

The artist, the work and the audience are interacting, destabilizing the role of the creator and producing a communal output instead, however distorted by the chosen lens. 

Owemo’s portraits are obviously not using actual mirrors, but the artist’s choice of title and the fragmentation of the portraits urge us to construct a percept rather than rely on a provided one. There is a collective, interactive dimension, then, that echoes that of the poetry project overall, as well as the general philosophy behind Scalehouse’s contribution to the Eastern Oregon community. 

Thoughtful work, managing to draw us away from our constant preoccupation with self – as found in the various captured depictions in reflective surfaces so prevalent on social media – towards thinking about what others are about or have to say.

Grateful that the ArtsWatch road trip made the introduction! 

0 Comments

Plums

We went plum picking this week before the rains set in. An afternoon as good as it gets – with a happy three-year old bouncing around the orchard,

a happy baker filling her bags with ripe, juicy fruit,

a happy photographer relishing saturated colors, happy bees and wasps providing constant noise in the background, late summer sounds.

Some of the fruit trees not so happy, alas, the heavy load ripping branches right off the stem. What got flung into the nearby grass looked like late season Easter eggs.

Plums are one of the earliest fruit domesticated by humans, over 2000 years ago in both China and Eastern Europe. They can be dried and thus kept for lean times. Both fresh and dried plums have enormous nutritional value and are helpful for digestion. They are filled with antioxidants which helps combat inflammation in the body and also protects against cancer. They contain quercetin, a type of polyphenol that can improve heart health and brain function related to memory. They are also packed with potassium which helps bone health. A study of postmenopausal women who had prunes in their daily diet found lower rates of bone loss and improved overall bone health. Plums against osteoporosis! They do contain a lot of sugar, but apparently also a chemical that prevents sugar spikes in your blood.

And, of course, their beauty provided models for painter throughout the ages, as you can see below.

Lest you think I have changed and stick to the happy stuff – here are some thoughts that occurred to me after our outing, elicited by an article in Vox that I’ll summarize below.

The urge to eat locally produced food – and what is more local than U-pick farms? – has increased, given the many food-borne illnesses we have witnessed blossoming under the Trump Administration. There isn’t a day where there is not another food recall. Since May, the United States has seen more than 17,000 lab-confirmed cyclosporiasis cases, likely a huge undercount of what is happening in the general population. People have died from listeria infection brought on by cottage cheese, salmonella outbreaks originated in eggs and jalapeños. Frozen blueberries have been contaminated with e-coli, leading to highest warning level recall last week. Alfalfa sprout sickened people, contaminated with salmonella AND e-coli.

There are several factors contributing to these outbreaks, not just the administration’s decision to sharply curtail its ability to monitor for and respond to these outbreaks. Between the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture, which also oversees food safety, and several related agencies, more than 11,000 workers have been lost.  The CDC, which helps respond to outbreaks once they start, has lost about a quarter of its workforce from January 2025 to October 2025. The federal government also shut down several national monitoring programs for foodborne illness in 2025—including for the cyclospora parasite specifically. The state and local agencies that surveil for and respond to food outbreaks have also faced staff cuts because they depend on the federal government for their funding. 

The more general factors for the increase in illnesses we are seeing, are related to climate change, however, and the fact that we rely on globalized food chains. Warming temperatures across the globe increase humidity which helps both salmonella and e coli to thrive. Cyclospora has historically been found in subtropical climates, but now it grows inside the US as well. With warmer temperatures in more northern regions, it is likely to become epidemic here.

In addition, “the sometimes international trip from the farm to the store for a bagged salad kit offers multiple moments for potential contamination, including tainted irrigation water, local wildlife excrement, and poor storage practices, making it possible for dangerous pathogens to take hold before a person even buys their groceries.”

Carefully choose where you get your lettuce from, then, and buy full heads. Better still, get your vitamins with grilled vegetables, with heat putting an end to the offensive buggers. Best: live on prunes! Oh, I wish we could.

Jacob van Hulsdonk Still life with grapes, apricots and plums 17th Century


William Henry Hunt (1790 – 1864) Plums Date unknown by me

HENRY ARCHIBALD MAJOR Plums 1883


Jean-Simeon Chardin Still Life with Plums (1730)

Louise Moillon Still Life with Plums 17th Century

Unknown Early 20th century

Sasja Wagenaar Plums (2022)

Postcard from Provence

Music today is by Dvorak, celebrating natural beauty.

1 Comments

SAVE THE DATE!

Please join me for the opening reception of Fragility, a series of photomontages in dialogue with Lacing Communities Together at the Columbia Gorge Museum.

The Lace project celebrates both, the heritage art form of lacemaking and a community of people dedicated to preserving traditional skills and/or elevating them to new forms fit for this century. Under the auspices of Australian artist Maggie Hensel-Brown, lace guilds in the PNW, and the engaged team at the Columbia Gorge Museum, a lace installation will be revealed in September.

People from all over the world have sent lace triangles to be included in a huge compilation – as of this point, there are over 380 of them to be sewn together…. Local libraries in WA have offered workshops and get-togethers, for people to learn the art form and find community with others around them. Details can be found here.

My contribution to this communal effort, other than a wonky little triangle,

was the inclusion of lace of all kinds into photographs of landscapes.

“Fragility: This 2025 series of photomontages grew out of ongoing concern about insufficient environmental protection. Fauna and flora in these landscapes – photographed predominantly in the Pacific Northwest – are endangered. Climate change and the renewed threat of industrial extraction of resources, forests and minerals alike, will do irreparable harm. I thought the ephemeral nature of clouds and the fragility of lace were fitting symbols for why we need step up in our efforts to turn things around.”

The photographic exhibition is on view now, ongoing through late fall.

The joint opening reception with the Lacing Project will be

Friday September 11, 2026 5:30 – 7:30 pm.

Columbia Gorge Museum

990 SW Rock Creek Dr, Stevenson, WA 98648 (near Skamania Lodge)

Hope to see you there!

2 Comments

Wasp Love

Wasp

When the honey, fruit and flowery tablecloth were whisked from the table in one sweep, it flew off with a start. Entangled in the suffocating smoke of the curtains, it buzzed for a long time. At last it reached the window. It beat its weakening body repeatedly against the cold, solid air of the pane. In the last flutter of its wings drowsed the faith that the body’s unrest can awaken a wind carrying us to longed-for worlds.

You who stood under the window of your beloved, who saw your happiness in a shop window – do you know how to take away the sting of this death?

by Zbigniew Herbert

***

Imagine entering a small garden, overgrown paths lined with lungwort. A humongous fig tree granting shade, a few vegetable beds exploding with the smell of ripe tomatoes. Sun dappled verdant corners, whimsical ceramics catching the light here or there.

Red calla lilies shining like little lamps eager for attention, chicken contentedly clucking in a coop next to the persimmons, fruit still green.

Your eye is caught by the plum trees, laden with fruit, some ripe on the ground, the purple skin of Italian prunes encasing glimpses of gold where the fruit has split open.

A feast for wasps, and wasps were what I came for.

An art book about wasps, to be precise.

Let me hazard a guess: your first reaction upon hearing the word “wasp” was not entirely positive. Pesky yellow jackets interfering with your labor day picnic, stings that not too infrequently hurt like hell or even lead to anaphylactic shock, visions of angrily buzzing swarms of insects building their dreaded nests too close to the eves of your house.

Wasp nest, displayed in the artist’s studio.

You would not be alone in this assessment, and surely not the first one. Already in 300 bc, Aristotle insisted ‘Hornets and wasps … are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.’

A recent scientific study published in the Royal Entomological Society, found that people across 46 countries really had it in for wasps. They are universally disliked much more than bees or other insects. The public associates them with negative terms like angry, painful, dangerous, scary, and those sentiments map onto relative research efforts: wasps are significantly under-studied. Across 40 plus years of thousands of papers published in entomological journals, more than 80% cover bees, and not even 20% wasps.

Paper fold drawing our attention to common reactions.

Consequently what we know is relatively little, and what little we know is not communicated sufficiently to open people’s eyes to the utility of wasps for humans as well as their general importance for ecosystems as a whole.

From the studio collections.

Just a few facts: the wasps that bug us – the yellow jackets, the hornets – represent less than 1% of the stinging wasps, the species Vespines. Wasps belong either to social or to solitary species – the latter containing many more species, in fact hundreds of thousands of them, who do not sting and live quite separate from human contact areas.

Folded paper telling a story.

Wasps have several functions. Like bees, they pollinate our crops (although to a lesser extent.) They excel, though, in helping get rid of parasites. They regulate populations of arthropod pests and vectors of disease, decompose organic matter and improve soils. Important contributors to maintaining biodiversity, then, and now severely threatened, just like bees. Agricultural practices (use of genetically modified seeds, pesticides, etc.) habitat loss due to encroaching urbanization, and climate change all contribute to endangering these guardians of our ecosystems.

Eco prints of plants frequented by wasps.

Our implicit bias against wasps can only be remedied, if we change the rhetoric of fear to a rhetoric of love. For that to happen, we need to be familiarized with what there is to love: the beauty, the amazing survival mechanisms, the intricacies of wasp life cycles, and last but not least the tremendous ecological services these insects render. Which brings me to the owner of the enchanted garden described above, artist Diane Jacobs who has just finished creating a book celebrating all things wasp, the culmination of years of study and creative exploration of the subject.

***

Jacobs received an MFA in printmaking from San Francisco State University in 1996. and was awarded multiple prizes, fellowships and residencies in the years since. Her work – prints, sculptures and folio books – can be found in museums (The Portland Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the De Young Fine Arts Museum,), and educational institutions (The New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Alberta, University of Chicago Library, University of Miami, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, Yale, and Stanford among them.)

Artist Diane Jacobs.

Her newest book intends to educate us about wasps and show the intrinsic beauty of Apocrita, those narrow waisted insects that populate pretty much our entire planet. Wasps and their environments are represented in stunning detail and through a plethora of artistic processes. The deeply serious intent to help us overcome our antipathies by getting to know the various species and their quirks, is often softened by using more whimsical means to do so.

Pop-up structures vie for attention,

Pop-ups.

paper layers inviting hands-on folding and unfolding to reveal ever more details are hidden in various pouches along the folios.

Paper folding for multi-surface info presentation.

Miniature sculptures made of natural and artificial materials expose the delicateness of wasps’ body parts, and also point to means of helping identification.

Beads and plant materials (thorns from a defunct dragon tree) sculpted into antennae.

The work evolved through Jacobs’ friendship with naturalist and photographer Kate Taormina, their shared interest and separate expertise cross-pollinating a successful collaboration. The joint project started in earnest during Jacobs’ 2024 residency at PLAYA, located in extremely remote Lake County in Oregon. The prestigious PLAYA residencies foster interaction between international artists and scientists, true to the belief of the organizers (and many of the rest of us who happen to have a foot in each of those camps!) that interdisciplinary exchange helps shape new ways of seeing the world, ultimately enhancing our approach to conservation. The concept of the book evolved over time. Now each page affords glimpses into a different universe, some pleasantly playful, others creating a sense of awe given nature’s diversity.

Whatever I learned about wasps, I learned even more about what can happen when an artist puts their mind to a singular pursuit of topic, but is open to embracing a huge number of different representational processes. Some of them surely needed to be acquired long after formal education had run its course.

Woodcuts in paper windows.

Just look a the list of processes and materials that the artist provided, all used to create the 16 hand-made copies of this book – one already snapped up by Yale University.

” Materials and printmaking techniques for this project include reduction woodcuts, wood engravings, mono print, lithography, photogravure etching, stitching, beading, hand painting, pressure printing, collage, polymer plates, book cloth, ceramic wasp, beech wood, unique eco print, and glass petri dish. Papers include Kitakata, handmade abaca, kozo, Gampi, mino washi, masa, Rives Lightweight, rayon, and Tyvek. All text on pages is handset and letterpress printed. Some booklets are letterpress printed from polymer plates and some are handset.”

So many artists who have had a successful 30 year career really stick to the tried and true, their developed expertise, even their general subjects. To embark on new fields of learning, as well as new processes that require tolerance of potential imperfection, takes courage. Jacobs, for example, was introduced to photogravure etching only 3 years ago, during a workshop at Mullowney Printing. Also fairly recently she learned how to do wood engraving. For Wasp Love alone the artist was going to carve 8 little wood engraving blocks. “It took me a bit to get in the groove.”

Wood engraving.

Yes, it takes courage, or at least an absence of vanity in pursuit of a greater goal. In this case helping nature to survive human indifference, or, worse, capitalism’s endless extractive exploitation, by deconstructing one stereotype after another.

Jacobs’ book Wasp Love is a marvel, not least in the way it balances education with art to be appreciated in its own right, independent of the book’s subject. Pacific NW audiences will be able to see and explore a show copy next February at The Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. It will be shown together with her wasp-related sculptural work and a series of her eco prints, as well as installations and paintings by Susan Murrell and my photomontages, in the context of Collective Effervescence. The exhibition is dedicated to our love of and fear for nature.

Pop-up folio.

***

Replacing the rhetoric of hate with the rhetoric of love – not an easy task. One of the obstacles lies in the psychological nature of hate, compared to love. For hate all you need is a simple, stereotyped target. There is “the enemy,” out to get us, in a zero-sum game of one side wins, when the other side loses. “Wasps are aggressive and hurtful.” Simplistic ideas like that are much more easily communicated and adhered to, than more complex ones.

It’s more difficult to convey the many aspects of multidimensional targets – endless species of wasps, a variety of functional advantages outweighing the occasional sting by a minority of Vespines. Complex concepts defy our desire to stereotype by means of their sheer diversity. You need to learn and integrate so many different facts. Which is made even more difficult by the reality that our old feelings were negative and now need to be recalibrated (in comparison to just sticking to your culturally transmitted biases that ruled the world across time.)

Wood engraved plates.

Art is enormously useful here. It can try and break the cycle of negative stereotyping in many different ways.

There is poetry. If we go back to the beginning of this post, you have Zbiegniew Herbert’s poem that subtly reminds us of the similarity of wasps and humans, not elevating one species over another. Rather than showering us with facts, and patronizing demands to let go of prejudice, its symbolism offers something that speaks to our emotions. Are we not all familiar with the feeling of being trapped in certain realms of our existence? Are we not all hoping against hope, to the last breath, that moving forward at all cost will bring us to a longed-for future, no matter how much we bang our heads against the wall? Because we look in the mirror, the observed death causes a premonition, a sting that cannot be resolved. Could it be that wasps are us?

Paper fold in book pocket.

Then there is literature. What comes to mind are Ursula LeGuin’s brilliant musings published some 40 years ago in The New Yorker. We are told that a woman is un-naming all members of creation, a woman who we later learn is Eve, about to leave Adam and the garden of Eden, unhappy with having been named in certain ways. The idea is that a name usually allows for categorization and/or stereotyping. Its absence will lead to equality not impeded by artificially drawn hierarchies.

“The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunnelling away.

…

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. “

The merging of equals, affiliating through emotion, becoming extremely close: could it be love? As always with LeGuin, of course, there’s an undercurrent of brusqueness below the witty narration, pointing to the power naming has for those on top of social or gendered hierarchies.

Trial paper folding in the studio.

And finally, there is visual art. Jacobs’ book radiates joyfulness, in its colorfulness, playfulness with hidden and revealed shapes, its use of surprise perspectives. You cannot help but find these folios emotionally rousing, no matter how concept-driven and filled with scientific facts they are. The book might not manage to induce love, admittedly. But surely it ignites strong admiration for a life form that is so much more complex than we had known. A first step away from hate or fear.

I’ll take that in a heartbeat.

Or a wingbeat, as the case may be.

Snippets in Jacobs’ studio.

1 Comments

Particulate Matter

Giuseppe Arcimboldo Fire (1566)

The allegory of Fire combines objects that are related to fire. The cheek is formed by a large firestone, the neck and chin are formed by a burning candle and an oil lamp, the nose and ear are contoured by firesteels; a blond moustache is formed by a crossed bundle of wood shavings for kindling, the eye is an extinguished candle stub, the forehead area is a wound-up fuse, the hair of the head forms a crown of blazing logs. The breast is composed of fire weapons: mortar and canon barrels together with the respective gunpowder shovel and a pistol barrel. Prominently positioned in the picture is the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, beneath which the imperial double-eagle can be seen: a clear reference to the Habsburg House and the beneficiary of the series, Emperor Maximilian II. (Wikimedia)

***

The winds shifted, and we, the lucky ones in a city not yet burning, have been exposed to smoke coming from the fires in the region. Over 50 wildfires in Oregon alone, with fire season still lasting many more months. I pretty much stay indoors all day and night, with air purifiers running 24/7 and masks handy, when the little light starts to glow red. As of this moment our AQI is 159. Red zone, unhealthy for all, not just sensitive, groups.

josepha jane battlehooke the great fire of london

Josepha Jane Battlehooke The Great Fire of London (1675)

The light is hazy orange, the sun burnt red when rising, plants and tree contours in my yard obscured by a thin layer of smoke. It brings back terrifying memories of California stays in 2020 and 2024, not to mention the familial proximity to the Eaton fire and the losses it caused last year.

Herri met de Bles – Fire of Sodom, (1545)

What are we inhaling from all this smoke?

“Wildfire smoke is a complex mixture composed of water vapor and numerous pollutants, including, gases (e.g., carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen [NOx]), organic compounds (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [PAHs]), volatile organic compounds [VOCs]) and particulate matter (PM). Of these pollutants, PM is one of the main components found in smoke and there are decades of research documenting that exposure to PM is associated with serious health effects.” (Ref.)

And that is before even touching the issue of ozone pollution exponentially worsened by wild fires.

We are talking about exacerbation of asthma and heart failure and premature death here, potential  impact on brain function, and pulmonary inflammation and transient reductions in lung function. All this long after your intermittent raw throat and burning eyes are gone.

'The Burning of the Houses of Parliament' Joseph Mallord William Turner

J.M.W. Turner The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, (1834)

What can we do? Leaving for healthier regions is not an option for most people, be it because of local obligations or lack of economic resources. Staying inside depends on the ability to cool off spaces without having to open windows. The EPA advice page tells people to go to the mall, the library, museums, sports arenas or senior centers. Hmmmm. Ever tried that if you are houseless, or working, or have a family with small kids?

hubert robert the fire of rome

Hubert Robert The Fire of Rome, July 18, 64 CE, (1786) 

I decided to remind us that people during much of the history of the world were afflicted by fires, and somehow managed to go on. Painters clearly have been drawn to the visual drama of urban fires, and delivered eye witness accounts of sorts. Misery loves company, I guess.

The Burning of the Mansion House, Queen Square, Bristol, William James Müller, 1831-2

William James Müller The Burning of the Mansion House, Queen Square, Bristol, 1831-32

Poets, on the other hand, are drawn to the psychological implications of traumatic, wide-ranging fires, and consequences that often remain obscured because they are too scary to think about. The poem below is timely, then, even if written 8 years ago, reminding us what it is that we are inhaling these days.

Francesco Guardi (Venice) Fire in the oil warehouses at San Marcuola (1789)

Particulate Matter

By Molly Fisk

“I wrote this poem after the Camp Fire was contained in Paradise, CA, where 85 lives were lost. I live 50 miles away. A friend was running the domestic animal housing operation for the survivors at a nearby county fairground so I was in close touch with stories about the devastation. We’d been wreathed in smoke for weeks and something about her stories and the smoke caused me to think more specifically about exactly what we were breathing in. I’m a literal person. Plus the linguistic link of particulate to particular struck a chord.”

L'incendie du théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique le 13 juillet 1827 - Artvee

Antoine Félix Boisselier L’incendie du théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique le 13 juillet (1827)

Why did we ever think we would be the exception to the rule? Particularly when ignoring the warning signs about climate change and building urban enclaves ever closer to nature in infinite hubris?

Those of us on the periphery of the fires should really not complain too much – my knees buckle when I think of all the evacuees and the fire fighters and personnel involved day and night in dangerous and arduous work with inevitable health consequences. So many of them prisoners who are more or less not having a choice to be exposed. My immense gratitude goes out to them, and my heart to those who are directly affected.

great fire of chicago

The Great Fire at Chicago Oct. 9th, 1871. View from the west side, Gibson & Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio), c. 1871. Source: Library of Congress, Washington DC

Music today is Debussy’s Feu D’Artifice

dresden wwii ruins

The gutted city of Dresden, the result of firebombing, photograph by Richard Peter, 1945. 

1 Comments

Circus meets the Culinary arts: A tasty Treat.

The weather gods were grumpy on Monday. No amount of pleading stopped the wind and pouring rain. They relented on Tuesday, a good thing, since it was the second and last day for the circus in town, slated for an outside performance. Not only that. It enabled the students of the McClaskey Culinary Institute at Clark College to shine and show off what they learned during the two-year career program in culinary management.

Alex Zavala Contreras

All this was made possible by an extraordinary collaboration organized and nurtured by the Clark College Foundation. Ruth Wikler, the foundation’s inaugural Director of Arts Programming, Partnerships, & Philanthropy, has extensive roots in the circus world. She invited Cirque Kikasse, based in Quebec, to bring their unusual mode of operations to the Pacific Northwest. The small band of highly talented acrobats works out of a food truck, which serves its original function before and after the show. It transforms, with the help of a few props and a trampoline, quickly and seamlessly into a stage for an energetic repertoire of juggling and acrobatics, in, under and on top of the truck.

For the first time in its history, the circus was joined by students training in the culinary arts. They developed the dishes and drinks to be served, and tended to the lines of hungry spectators, eager to grab a bite before the show. Chef Earl Frederick, the Director of the McClaskey Institute, and Service Lead Lucy Winslow were on hand to supervise and cheer on their charges.

Chef Earl Frederick

Lucy Winslow

The poutine, filled with either beef or mushrooms, was a hit, and the special drink (the usual beer for which the truck is known not served to campus students) was visually enticing – the capstone project of graduating student Alex Zavala Contreras. I should have tried it all, but had my hands full with the camera…

Alex Zavala Contreras

Students at the Clark College program have benefitted from a transformative gift by Tod and Maxine McClaskey that revamped the facilities and allows learning in state-of-the-art teaching and dining spaces, serving food to people on campus as well. The interdisciplinary encounter of these students with the arts is a next step up in reaching out to the community. By all reports, the collaboration was very much appreciated by participants from all sides.

I have always strongly believed that student participation in interdisciplinary settings opens minds and activates curiosity about the world that eventually feeds back into motivating a deeper learning of one’s own discipline. It brings people together as well, strengthening community. And in this case it made the artists quite happy, getting a break from working the bar/windows before a physically challenging performance.

***

Cirque Kikasse was founded by Hugo Ouellet-Côté and William Poliquin-Simms who have both decades of circus acrobatics and management under their belt. The idea of a self-contained truck that can travel across North America and provides entertainment and services for people’s festivities, parties, events of any kind, is both brilliant and pragmatic.

You don’t have to erect tents, schlepp endless structural parts, rent trucks etc. to be able to perform. You can feed people or ply them with special brands of beer even when the weather is so bad that you are unable to perform.

Should I get clothes matching my car?

William Poliquin-Simms

Hugo Ouellet-Côté

But the curiosity of that kind of “stage” should not draw our attention away from the actual performances. The 5 members of the crew who I was able to observe, were accomplished in their interactions. The show has assigned characters to the acrobats which require some acting, a funny story line here or there. It is choreographed to grab your attention for any one of the artists, when the others need a breather, or time to set up. There are occasions when pauses are filled with jokes, somewhat muted ones last Tuesday clearly geared to the audience – I assume some more political fireworks are in the repertoire when appropriate.

Left to Right: Hugo Ouellet-Côté, William Poliquin-Simms, Antoine Morin, Jérémie Saint-Jean, Adèle Saint-Martin. (I hope I got the names right!)

Of course the physical skills, the bravura when it comes to balancing acts 35 ft in the air on towers of rickety chairs tall, outshone whatever pleasure was derived from the contextual actions, slap-stick or the considerable showmanship during set – up of the actual acrobatics. They know what they are doing, and they are doing it very, very well.

It was not just my heart – that of a veteran circus goer – beating faster, as it turns out. The audience around me was rapt, and you could basically hear the communal intake, holding and then releasing of breaths when some particularly risky feat up in the air was safely accomplished. Some people had never seen a live circus before, as I overheard. Kids were already practicing their climbing skills, ready to join…

Antoine Morin 35 ft in the air.

There is something magical and unique about outdoors live performances (free ones at that – thank you Clark College Foundation!), when spectators are not confined into seats, able to shift vantage points, able to congregate with large groups of friends and enjoy their food.

I think I felt that doubly so given my own longing to experience live performances of any kind. Since the pandemic I have not been able to visit concerts, theater, or any other event with a large public inside, and have missed it deeply. It is simply different to see something in the moment and feel the connection to the emotions or reactions around you, than to watch even the best footage alone on a screen.

Jérémie Saint-Jean

Adèle Saint-Martin

I have written about circus before – its function, its promise, its idiosyncratic role as an art form. This week a different thought was prominent when I saw these artists push their physicality to extreme borders. Perhaps it was triggered by the ongoing discourse about physical power and masculinity in this country. Or by the fact that it is explicitly linked to military prowess by those in the administration concerned with and enthused by war. (Which is absurd, isn’t it, when war fare no longer depends on personal combat, but the ability to steer a drone or maneuver a jet…)

Physical strength and agility in the context of (imagined) masculinity is often associated with power – with dominance, prerogative, supremacy. The physical power that I observed in Tuesday’s circus performance – by both men and woman, no less – had none of those characteristics. It was tied to joy, the sheer joy of pushing boundaries, pulling some impressive tricks out of the hat comprised of all of those muscles, sinews, bones and brains tuned into precise and timed movements.

Flexibility ruled, not rigidity.

Coöperation made the feats possible, lightyears away from competition, so often found in the (sports) arena where we usually get to watch physical prowess.

What a difference. What a relief. What a treat!

Let’s hope they return soon, to better weather for the entirety of their stay.

3 Comments

The Unknown City.

“Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
‘But which is the stone that supports the bridge?’ Kublai Khan asks.
‘The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,’ Marco answers, ‘but by the line of the arch that they form.’
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: ‘Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.’
Polo answers: ‘Without stones there is no arch.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

***

I should have known better and visited The Unknown City group exhibition at PLACE earlier. Now there are only a few days left for you local readers to decide if you agree or disagree with my assessment that the show is well worth exploring. Three days, to be precise, it closes this Friday afternoon, June 12th, with a reception. A quick shout-out then (not a formal review), to lure you into action!

The concept, developed by organizer and curator Horatio Law, is an interesting one. Take some 40 or so local photographers (split into two randomly assigned groups), all over 60 years of age, allot them a 3-6 ft wall space and ask them to display work that relates to the theme of subjective visions of Portland, OR. I had seen the work of the first group, some 4 weeks ago, on line. Decided I could not write about it since I am friends with several of the participants, friendly with others, not entirely objective. Looks like nobody else did either, maybe we are all too chicken to step on toes in a closely knit community?

On this rainy Monday, however, a dear friend, who had recently returned to Portland after a 7 year absence, and I decided it would be fun to look at captures of her former home turf. For this second group as well, I knew about 50% of the contributors, some closely. Others were completely new to me, despite the small local community. I threw caution into the wind because this show really deserves some attention.

PDX yard vistas by Barbara Gilson

The rules were simple: fit into the given space and pin prints to the wall. Artist decides how many, in what format or size, colored or black&white, carefully printed, or close to photocopies or postcards. The enormous variability along many dimensions can either be fun, or distracting. As it turns out, the curation worked well visually, without becoming too busy.

Lucy Capehart

As is always true in group shows, some work draws your attention, some leaves you cold, some is a real discovery, some entices (or bores) with familiarity. My reactions to the displays were mainly driven by two perspectives: did I like the photographs in and of themselves (yes, in many, many instances.) Did I think they sufficiently connected to the claimed inspiration for this exhibition, Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities? Here the pool got much smaller. From the introduction of the exhibition:

Calvino’s novel puts the explorer Marco Polo and the isolated Kublai Khan into a room, with the former telling stories to the latter, who is starved to learn about the world. Many cities are evoked, Anastasia, Despina, Diomera, Dorothea, Fedora, Isidora, and Zora – all in reality describing Polo’s beloved hometown Venice. The conversations are structured in a complicated interactive pattern related to memory and desire, allowing the author to delve into the psychology of how these two functions shape each other and are intertwined in our understanding and depiction of the world.

The chapters contain overall place and object – specific descriptions for each of these imaginary cities. The person(s) involved were predominantly the traveler, the observer, in his particular relation to what he saw.

Ken Hochfeld with a caption for his Leaning series: “At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.” -Norman Maclean

I had expected to see place-specific photographs, then, something that was identifiably related to Portland, or could have been, although not necessarily prototypical landmarks. How did objects or, more predominantly, portraits of persons that could have come from anywhere, unless identifiable local favorites, fit the bill? Some of those were among the strongest photographic work, as it turns out, and so unsurprisingly offered for display. But the link was missing for me.

Phil Harris

Then again, I could go back and be reminded of Marco Polo’s admonishment contained in the Calvino quote at the beginning of this column:

“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,’ Marco answers, ‘but by the line of the arch that they form.’
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: ‘Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.’
Polo answers: ‘Without stones there is no arch.”

Brian Foulkes – one of the longtime chroniclers of the city, whose work I’ve known for over 30 years and admire for its hints of melancholy and humor, often within the same piece.

The work on the walls at PLACE does form an arch, an accumulation of many stones projecting diversity of both, the city itself and the perspectives taken by these many astute and sensitive observers. And they certainly depict change and growth, in this regard echoing something Calvino or his mouthpiece Polo strongly value. In another chapter (4) on cities and memory, the town Zora is introduced, a town that cannot be forgotten because it stays static for memorization. Polo concludes:

“But in vain I set out to visit the city: forced to remain motionless and always the same, in order to be more easily remembered, Zora has languished, disintegrated, disappeared. The earth has forgotten her.“

No such fate in store for our Portland, and no mandate for memorization either, given that we can rely on so many photographers preserving the reality, quirks and evolution of the city.

Jim Lomasson

Obviously I am just showing a few samples – looking at the whole bodies of work (and in full sizes) is much more revelatory. Recommended! You have until Friday…

Kim Stafford

PLACE: 735 NW 18th Ave Portland 97209

Closing reception June 12th, 2026 4-7 pm.

1 Comments

Why is small never enough?

The weather has made it possible, nay, required, to be out and about lot. Last week I went on several walks, one of which was meant to visit the birds but I encountered an explosion of wildflowers instead.

Nothing particularly special – everything particularly beautiful in its unassuming presence.

Which had me thinking again about how artists portray flowers, from the early botanical sketches that served as tools for learning about the plants of the world and their function,

to the symbolism contained in medieval paintings or Victorian floriography, speculations about the secret meaning of flowers.

You can see it in the pre-raphaelites painters: Lawrence Alma-Tadema, for example, rendered the tragic tale of Emperor Heliogabalus watching his guests suffocate under a shower of rose petals (in the old story they happened to be violets – death by flower, who knew….). The artist chose the species specifically for its association with corruption and death, but the subject, I wager, for the ability to paint something big….

Lawrence Alma-Tadema The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888)

It seems to be never enough to just depict a simple flower as is, in an attempt to convey the sense of joy it inspires, hanging out in the meadows, at the forest borders, in modern times as well.

Photographers choose particular flowers that lend themselves to an emphasis of form, stark contrast, like Imogen Cunningham’s calla lilies or magnolia blossoms, abstracting an essence. If they do photograph less defined flora, they often apply post processing filters to give the image a mysterious hue.

Imogen Cunningham Two calla lilies (1920)

Edward Weston Purple leaved flower

20th/21st century painters go big – man, everyone always goes big these days, abstracting the plants or unifying them to the point of un-recognizability.

Real daisy meadow…

Takashi Murakami Field of Smiling Flowers, 2010

And then there are the installations using actual floral parts, either collected over time, or grown into absurd topiaries…. again, nothing won’t do unless humongous. (I was introduced to this work by an article asking: why did Jeff Koons make a giant puppy? I, too, wonder about that…)

Jeff Koons Giant Puppy (1992 to present )

Even one of my favorite contemporary artists focussed on nature joins the trend (I will write about him and his work one of these days in full).

herman de vries 108 pound rosa damascena at the 2015 Biennale Dutch Pavilion

Don’t get me wrong – there is a meaningful place for large works, no doubt. An important place. But the tendency to use subjects that are small and make them big in either size or accumulation seems to imply that that is the locus of awe – when really it should be felt when you encounter the miniature version indefatigably sprucing up the landscape under natural, often adverse conditions.

I fear that the preoccupation with spectacle really leads to a withering of our ability to detect, appreciate and protect what is small. Just like wildflowers being classified as “weeds” had to make room for more showy varieties, or blossoming meadows were replaced by spectacular lawns, truthful depictions of something unassuming gains no attention when placed next to artificial elevation of a subject.

Give me a tiny aster anytime…. and give me depictions in a format that I can take home, hang on the wall, enjoy every day as a reminder of the reality of beauty in the world, and my role as its steward.

Here is a sampling of what I saw:

Music today echoing some happiness.

2 Comments

The Kids are Alright.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.— Plutarch (often misquoted as William Butler Yeats.)

***

Finally, finally I made it to the Portland Art Museum, recently reopened after extensive architectural additions. I had heard nothing but positive reports about the ways two existing buildings are now connected by a glass pavilion. Can confirm that the design and execution, carried by a millions-of-dollars fund raising campaign, really work. Nothing glossy or ostentatious about them, overall functional and, from some perspectives, beautiful. A detailed account of the project can be found in my Oregon ArtsWatch colleague Brian Libby’s interview of the architects here.

I had not come for the novelty, though. Nor the David Hockney: Works from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation. exhibition – I was never a fan. Or the Rick Bartow exhibition – with few exceptions, not my cup of tea. (Probably heresy to admit that in this town.)

My visit led me to the basement, or what is officially called the lower level of the North Wing. I wanted to explore the HeART of Portland Visual Art Exhibition, featuring over 100 works of students in our public schools, from Kindergarten to 12th grade, and a collaborative art project, Windows of Our Future, inspired by the Museum’s new Rothko Pavilion and the Hockney exhibition. I had read about the Museum’s vision to strengthen its youth and community outreach, investing in more education, and making space for programs in the revamped buildings. What a terrific development, particularly in economically distressed times where art education is one of the first things to be on the chopping block.

For the 2026 youth exhibition, every visual arts teacher in town was invited to pick one student’s work from their respective classes. In addition, some 2500 kids worked on the Windows of Our Future project, covering a glass wall of the remodeled Lana and Chris Finley Learning Studio.

Art ranged from works on paper – drawings, painting, prints, photography – to fabric art, collages, mobiles and sculptural exploration.

Must have been a bear to hang – and was beautifully done so! Hats off to whoever had to tackle works by an age range of 5 to 16 or so years, differing degrees of talent, – some impressive, others compensated by remarkable enthusiasm, and subject matters ranging all over the map.

Each piece was offered with information, provided either by the teacher or the student themselves. Very helpful for those of us no longer adjacent to art education, with kids long gone. I found the thought processes of the students almost as fascinating as the levels of sophistication exhibited in some of the works themselves.

One can debate whether this is a representative sample – after all the professional art teachers selected likely the best of the year’s output – but does that really matter? What convinced here was the freshness, the passion that kids put into their work, the insights into curricula that introduce many different forms of art and artists as a starting point for the students to find their own voice.

What impressed were multiple references, by teachers and students alike, to the importance of process, of exploration rather than insistence on perfect outcomes. Some of the works carried a sense of wonder, sometimes about the world, sometimes about the artist’s own capacity to pull something off to their liking.

I felt wonder, that’s for sure, being in the presence of so much imagination, creativity and conceptual ideas. In short: in the presence of art, embraced by a generation of young people ready to launch their talents into the world.

***

I had some time left and skimmed through the current photography exhibition, Together, a theme focussed on communal actions and relations. As per usual, the selections from the archives, including recent acquisitions, were soundly and predictably curated. Once, just once, I would like to be surprised, though, by what is included, or who is left out up there. (Speaking of surprise (and I digress): the 2026 Artists’ Biennial: The Price of the Ticket at Oregon Contemporary holds some serious eye openers. Ox is only open on the weekends, but I highly recommend planning a visit.)

Simone Leigh Sentinel IV (Gold) (2021)

Walking back to the entry level, I passed through Here we Are, smartly chosen works of contemporary art from the museum’s collection. It was poignant to read curator Sara Krajewski’s helpful outlines of thematic subjects of these accomplished adult artists, some of them quite famous. Many themes completely echoed what I had seen an hour earlier in the students’ works: “sense of self and identity“,  “relationships to place,” “the human connection and the creative process.” Confirmation that some foundational and universal issues forever work their way into art, regardless the age (or stage) of the artist.

Carrie Mae Weems Painting the Town #1 (2021)

William Kentridge Dancing Couple (2003)

Then again, everything here was quite big in contrast to the students’ ability to pull some punches with small-sized formats.

Elias Sime Tightrope: Eyes and Ears of the Bat (1) (2020) Reclaimed electrical wires on wood.

And not a full critter in sight (unless I missed it) – in contrast to the fascination expressed in the younger students’ offerings. So many animals, so many versions. I wonder if something gets lost on the way by growing up, and a preoccupation with fauna labels you in some ways. Come to think of it, equine depictions wended their way through art history, from the paintings of aristocrats’ steeds to the horses of August Macke. Not all had to be “Monarch of the Glen”-type roaring stags, or the sweet avians of the Dutch Golden Age. Rousseau’s jungle creatures, or Picasso’s bulls anchor us in the recent past. So maybe I am just picking up a coincidental lack of representations, in no way typical for adult artists?

Paul Klee, move over…..

***

A photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans dominated a wall. His abstract work is done without a camera – he uses chemical solutions on different papers and exposes them to light waves, sometimes manipulating the canvas in the process. During a retrospective of his work at MoMa 4 years ago, he was compared to a genius by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker, and every other critic, trying to find superlatives from brilliant to extraordinarily gifted, joined the chorus. I happen to agree, the man is a phenomenon with the camera. In fact, a postcard of one of his photographs has been hanging forever on that sacred space reserved for portraits of grandchildren, a.k.a. our fridge. A constant reminder of what to aspire to, in front of my eyes on a daily basis.

Wolfgang Tillmans Greifbar 50 (2017)

Yet I also concur with critics’ cautiously uttered sentiments, that his abstract work is less impressive than his representative photographs, although I would not go as far as to say they belong into the lobby of boutique hotels, as more belligerent voices suggested.

I think one of the problems about the abstract works is the fact that important pointers contained in the titles get lost in translation. Look, for example, at the signage for the PAM acquisition of Greifbar 50 (2017).

It talks about free style swimming, and a gay bar in Berlin by the name of Greifbar, a pun on fondling opportunities at a bar. (The bar at Prenzlauer Berg happens to have closed its doors permanently after the Covid pandemic, one of the last joints that offered pornographic films in the front room and a dark room in the back notorious for wild nights, open sex and a leather scene.)

Greifbar, however, also means “within reach,” a desired goal or object about to be on hand.

The term ultimately only makes sense in the context of the name of the series of abstracts Tillmans has been exploring. The series is called FREISCHWIMMER, which has nothing to do with free style swimming. Instead, it refers to one of the most coveted items of a German childhood, a badge received after passing a municipal swim test. Success required 15 minutes in the water with breast stroke and back stroke, diving for an object at 2 meter depth, jumping into the water from a certain height and answering some water safety questions. Once you had that piece of fabric in your hand (often in the form of a little seahorse to be sewn onto your bathing suit,) you were allowed to enter public pools on your own and swim there without adult supervision. Freedom beckoned!

We would spend endless summer days with friends at the pool, prepubescent or just entering puberty. During the 60s and 70s, long before the internet and TV offered plenty of nudity, it was a place to see people in various stages of undress, to touch each other surreptitiously in the crowded water. We would lie on closely spaced towels in the meadows around the pool, apply coconut oil to each other’s skins, and watch people disappearing behind the public rest- or changing rooms, for what we could only wildly guess at at the time, where “kissing” was the height of illicit behavior (I earned my Freischwimmer badge at the age of 10.) We would feel our bodies cooled by the wind when biking back home late afternoons all those years, damp swimsuit under cotton dresses. It was utterly physical, it was fluid in terms of developing an understanding of our own sexuality, straight or gay, it was a taste of independence, a new stage of life, freer, more agentic, adulthood with its assumed perks seemingly within reach.

I can see how Tillmans, a master of representative depiction, yearns to find new independence in an abstract medium. I can see the seduction of exploring new ways of expression that might potentially recreate the sense of discovery of who we are and what we can pull off, reliving younger ages when the world was still seemingly open. I can also speculate about the acknowledgement provided by hindsight, that much of what developed in us was caused by elements of chance, now reproduced with the processes he uses to generate these enormous abstracts. So many possible interpretations, but free style swimming not among them.

***

Serendipity ruled when I left the museum, ready for one last shot capturing Ugo Rondinone’s sculpture at the 10th Ave exit. The Sun encircled a school bus, a golden halo surrounding a stand-in for education. More power to PAM, fostering new generations, instructing them in the making or experiencing of art, kindling independent thinking and creativity. I very much hope that stamina and/or funds are sufficient to succeed with their goals. It would be to the benefit of all of us.

——————————

Artist for the title image:

2 Comments
© 2026