Several large wedding ceremonies were held over the last weeks in New York City in the Orthodox Jewish Community, despite the city’s requirements of social distancing and federal recommendations to avoid large groups. As of last Saturday more than 240 participants registered as fallen ill, in three clusters in Borough Park and Williamsburg. Not only is this a tragedy for the families and neighborhoods involved, but the insistence on large communal events is also sparking fears of anti-Semitic reprisals.
Blaming the Jews is, of course, nothing new. (I am not endorsing holding mass weddings right now, mind you, even if religious laws are cited to justify them. Last I looked, a primary pillar of Judaism is the value of life, which allows all kinds of abandoning of rules associated with Shabbat, fasts, etc., when a life is to be protected.) I am more interested in the fall-out from irrationality and behavior in the face of looming, uncontrollable diseases.
Here are some of the historical facts. Jews were persecuted in huge numbers, whole communities, whenever epidemics broke out (and particularly through out the mid-1300s with the first wave of the Black Death), accused of malevolent well-poisoning. This was done by the local gentile populations even if the Church or the worldly rulers warned against it, partially driven by the convenient fact that the confiscated belongings of the murdered would be distributed among the villagers. Hundreds of Jewish communities were massacred, even though as a group they had been harder hit by the plague than most. Their constrained living quarters in ghettos and lack of access to clean water made them a sitting target for the fleas that brought the disease.
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Blaming the Other is, however, not a preoccupation solely reserved for non-Jews. There is plenty of evidence of irrational accusations to be found in Jewish history as well. Natan M. Meir, the Lorry I. Lokey Professor of Judaic Studies at Portland State University, is about to publish a book that lays out in great detail how Eastern European Jewry resorted to fear management via scapegoating marginalized figures in their own communities. Stepchildren of the Shtetl, The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939 will be published in July, 2020. Assuming we are still home-bound by then, it might be just the right thing to read when we need to convince ourselves that things could always be worse….(Having spent some time with Natan when we were both panelists discussing text and translations of Jewish sources, I can vouch for the passion and learnedness he brings to everything he tackles.)
It seems that during the 1866 cholera epidemic, some Hasidic communities “declared that Jewish women wearing crinolines and earrings were to blame for the epidemic,” with physical attacks on them following in short order. More generally, Rabbis blamed adultery as causal factors with some stories told that adulterers, reported by community members, were killed to help abate the disease.
And then there was the magical thinking tied to a completely different approach: the cholera wedding also known as the black wedding, believed to mitigate the impact of the scourge. (Excerpts from a review of the upcoming book here )
“The cholera wedding generally involved finding two of the most marginal residents of the town (whether orphans, beggars, or the physically handicapped) and forcibly marrying them, usually in the cemetery. The cholera wedding, also known as a shvartse khasene (black wedding) or mageyfe khasene (plague wedding) was presented as an ancient Jewish rite, but Meir argues, it was a newly invented, modern response to what was then a newly arrived disease. Because it was a late-developing belief and not textually based, the mechanism by which it was believed to work is open to interpretation.
The last one we know of over here, happened during the flu epidemic 1918, in Winnipeg, “at one end of the Shaarey Zedek cemetery in the city’s North End, a ceremony that drew more than a thousand Jewish and gentile guests, with a minyan of 10 Jewish men conducting a funeral for an influenza victim at the other end of the graveyard.”
The cholera wedding didn’t have one single interpretation. For example, some rabbis felt it was efficacious because helping to marry off a needy bride was a great mitsve that would please God, all the more so for the marginal of the community who were unlikely to marry in any case. However, what comes across in many of the appalling descriptions of the forcibly married, and their reactions to each other, is that the act was far more callous than charitable. But it was enabled by traditional attitudes around communal charity. Those who had relied on it were seen as being, quite literally, property of the townspeople and thus had no say when their (previously reviled) bodies were needed to protect the town.”
Who owns whom, and who owes what is a topic that really emerges in many contexts in these pestilential times, beyond issues of magical thinking, religious beliefs and despairing search for ways to ward off the worst. We’ll look into more of that during this week in the context of economy and power structures. At least that’s the plan.
Music from London-based She’Koyokh which will bring a spring into your step on another lonesome Monday.
If I could only visit to photograph you all dancing while liberally applying disinfectant to the surfaces of your homes….
There is an Outside spread Without & an outside spread Within Beyond the Outline of Identity both ways, which meet in One: An orbed Void of doubt, despair, hunger & thirst & sorrow.
– William Blake, Jerusalem (1818).
Let me not mince words: I despise the term outsider art. Yes, I know the definition is loose – it can refer to anything, from art by those not trained as artists, or not affected by a particular culture, or living on the margins of society, or living with a disability or mental illness – often in any possible combination of all of these. And yes, I know we are stuck with the term, since it has taken on a life of its own ever since people started collecting this art. It is part of a commodity market always on the look-out for something new, something striking, something that money can be invested in.
Marker work by Lindsay Scheu
Lindsay Scheu
The very fact that you call some artists “outsiders,” (including those living with disabilities, who are our family, our neighbors, our clients and, yes, our friends,) perpetuates a tendency toward segregation rather than integration, to the loss of all involved. All, that is, but cutting edge curators and collectors who boost their bottom line, staging art fairs and exhibitions of the few among the legions of creative “outsiders” who somehow make it to the top of the art market.
Shannon Anderson
One might argue – and people do – that the invitation to show and sell outsider art removes some of the stigma that is associated with being different from societal norms, and alleviates the poverty that is often correlated with the struggle to make it as a person living with disability. Well, if the art is good enough to break through, why add to it a diagnostic label, triggering stereotypes of illness which we know to be still so pervasive? A bit of frisson? A bit of a kick that you are now leaving the comfort zone? Why invite the demarcation painfully experienced in real life at the boundaries between norm and not-norm into the language, perpetuating it?
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In the 19th century they called people like William Blake, one of the first and finest protagonists of this art genre, “madmen,” or eccentrics, not outsiders. They still used those words in the 20th century when psychiatrists started to write about the art produced by their patients in asylums. Walter Morgenthaler’s A Mental Patient as Artist (1921) and Hans Prinzhorn’s Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie und Psychopatologie der Gestaltung (Artistry of the mentally ill: a contribution to the psychology and psychopathology of configuration) (1922) made a splash in their time, leading to some cross fertilization with the emerging art movement of Surrealism.
Ceramic Studio – Mask by Mathew Spencer
Painters Jean Dubuffet and André Breton coined the term Art Brut, Raw Art, collecting innovative and sui generis works of art of those outside the mainstream. (A more detailed definition and a treasure-trove of art can be found at the Collection de l’Art Brut at Lausanne, CH.) It was not until the 1970s that the term Outsider Art was introduced, in a pathbreaking book with same title by Roger Cardinal. These days, variations abound. Marginal Art, or Art Singulier, are terms applied to anyone who is not fully included and shows novelty of expression or culture-independent vision. Closer to home we often find self-taught as a term being used to describe art produced by the above populations. In a society that values educational achievement as much as our’s, this seems to replace one stigma with another, but perhaps weaker one.
Caitlin Pruett
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Luckily, there are places of art being made and displayed, where terminology is of no interest, and where the creative experience of singular human beings rules the day. It was one of the most pleasurable moments in recent weeks when I discovered just one such place close by: The Portland Art and Learning Studio (PALS) in NE Portland. PALS is a program of Albertina Kerr—a local nonprofit that empowers people experiencing intellectual or developmental disabilities, mental health challenges, and other social barriers to lead self-determined lives and reach their full potential. The program is made possible by gifts and grants of the community. Check it out here: PortlandArtAndLearningStudio.com.
PALS Building on MLK
The building alone is inviting, and the staff, from a genuinely friendly receptionist, multiple instructors and interns, to the intensely engaged and perceptive Ass. Director Chandra Glaeseman, serves some 90 clients with visible dedication. Both Chandra and instructor Malcolm Hecht took time out to introduce me to the program and the participants and show me around the space.
Instructor Malcom Hecht
A large, industrial hall is divided into multiple work stations that offer about any creative activity you can think of. Ceramics, painting, fabric arts, digital art, music, writing, beading, you name it. Tables provide spaces to interact, have lunch or snacks, and be creative. Some corners allow for more uninterrupted time to make books, or paint. A 1:4 or 5 ratio of staff to clients allows for individualized attention. A loudspeaker system helps to remind people that their transportation has arrived and they independently move about.
Brian Moran in conversation with Quinn Gansedo Ed Case, Terrie Bush and Ed Papst enjoying lunch
The place is open to the public who can come and visit a brightly lit gallery that displays art both of local participants and traveling exhibits from allied organizations, like the Land Gallery in New York City, Creative Growth in Oakland, CA and Creativity Explored in Richmond, CA. Visitors can also peruse the works at the different artists stations and purchase them directly from the artist or craftsperson.
Gallery Space in the Building
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PALS was opened some 19 months ago and still has capacity to accept more clients. Glaeseman is an engaged, hands-on leader of the program. Educated at the Maine College of Arts, she went on to receive her MFA from the Rhodes Island School of Design in 2008, including a Sculpture Magazine Outstanding Student award and RISDY’s Award of Excellence, juried by Ian Berry of the Tang Museum. During stints as adjunct faculty at PNCA, Lewis&Clark College and Willamette University she added teaching experience to her artistic practice. I am glad she did not waste resources to pursue additional achievements in social work or clinical psych, since from everything I observed, interacting with people in a genuinely caring and simultaneously pragmatic eye-to-eye fashion comes natural to her.
Director Chandra Glaeseman
Chandra (a truly apt name, I thought, when I learned it means bright star in the sky) has multiple goals for the growth of the organization, goals that are actively supported by management, in particular CEO Jeff Carr at Albertina Kerr. Her vision, for one, is to help clients increase their autonomy, and to provide tools via any kind of creative practice, not just visual art, to achieve more independence. In her experience making art provides a skill set that is transferable to everyday problem solving, however non-lineal the process might be.
Jeanette Mill, concentratingJames Enos
Secondly, she also promotes an attitude towards risk taking which signals that failure is acceptable, even welcome. Providing a safe space to fail, a space free from judgmental criticism, secures learning. Best case scenario, it also increases self confidence and the tools to take on real jobs in the community that recognizes the ability levels achieved at PALS.
Ginger Matthews
Last but not least, the hope is to connect PALS’ artists to the outside world, participating, for example, at the Outsider Artfair in NYC, where progressive studios have national representation and organizations can network to support each others’ work in the field.
“Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.” – NYC-based German artist Hans Haacke, (2019)
Who needs NYC when we have Gallery 114 in Portland, OR, not a museum but an artist collective that was founded in 1990. Haacke’s views of the role of art institutions, and his artistic focus on the social, political, and economic structures in which art is produced, exhibited and purchased, seem to be a good reminder what progressive galleries can and should do: educate.
Ebullience – Getting ready for opening night at Gallery 114Gallery member and curator Diane KendallGallery members and curators Joanie Krug and David Slader in back
Gallery 114’s dedication to inclusion of less-represented populations is remarkable – whether they open their space to poetry readings by Street Roots vendors, or hang exhibitions like the one this month on display. The current show, Ebullience, presents the diverse creative outpouring from PALS’ artists. The title couldn’t be more fitting – the work on display lights up the gallery’s rooms that are tucked in the Souterrain.
Judy Nuding, Brian Beckham, Alister Bond, Jamond Williams, Steven Jean-Marie. Acrylic, Oil-pastel, and Paper Collage on Canvas. Detail below.
Sculpture, weaving, drawing and painting all hold their own, thoughtfully curated in cooperation with PALS staff, by artists Diane Kendall, David Slader and Joanie Krug (who as a volunteer at PALS saw the potential and made the connection.)
Endale Abraham, A Palacefit for a King, Acrylic and Graphite on CanvasLindsay Scheu Untitled Marker on Matte BoardRicky Bearghost, Untitled, woven Plastic, Wooden and hand-made Ceramic Beads, Leaves, AcrylicPaint. and Pom-Poms. Detail below,
The work might open new perspectives on how to view the world, a world not necessarily familiar. Viewing this world might shift the rigid boundaries between “us” and “them,” locating all of us on a continuum, rather than in disparate regions, inside for some, outside for others.
David Hunt Untitled (Waterfalls) Watercolor and Markers on PaperPALS Collaboration with EATCHO, Acrylic on CanvasJamond Williams Untitled, Watercolor, Graphite and Markers on Paper
Make time for a visit, in the gallery or at PALS’ studio space, it will brighten your day. There is an effervescent mood at both places right now that gives rise to hope: hope for more empathy, more understanding, for unbridled joy in making art and, importantly, for inclusion.
Gallery 114 – Ebullience
1100 NW Glisan Street Portland, OR. 97209 503-243-3356
Thu, Feb 6, 2020 to Sat, Feb 28, 2020
Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 12pm – 6pm
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Portland Art and Learning Studios Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-2 p.m. 4852 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. Portland, OR 97211 503-528-0744
There were at least two people in awe at Da Vinci Arts Middle School last evening while attending the Winter Showcase of Faubion and Harriet Tubman Middle School: this young lady and I.
As HTMS principal Natasha Jackson, in unison with teachers, staff and musicians from the other organizations, put it: People of all races and all backgrounds are coming together to celebrate art and the achievement of these young dancers who have worked hard to present an incredible program. Both schools have a diverse student population, with many languages on their website to get information to all those parents who have newly arrived. To see all those different faces merge into dance ensembles that became one in the movement really represented hope: for a future where unity fights back the forces of segregation.
The program was focused on African dance but also had some modern dance pieces put in the mix. Oluyinka Parsons- Akinjiola and Sekou Walker did a marvelous job with the choreography; I can only begin to imagine the amount of work they put into this to reach such a tight performance. The Sebé Kan drummers had one of the most energetic sessions I have ever seen them perform, but the glory belonged to the dancers. They have come such a long way and between raw talent and tremendous amounts of rehearsal they were really hitting it.
Even during the nightmare of any live performer, when the technical equipment that played the music (by Ella Mai and Burma Boy for the modern dance pieces) somehow decided to quit midstream, they continued to dance with poise when the life drumming simply stepped in and rescued that moment. Bravo!
Girls and boys, across middle-school ages, showed not just skill and an increasing repertoire. They were so full of passion, so clearly in the moment exuberant and letting it fly that the entire auditorium was humming with excitement. It was simply a joyful moment during these dark January days.
Dances originated from diverse traditions: from an Afro-Cuban background, from the Guinea independence movement, some honoring the Sousou ethnic group, others the Mandeng and the old Mali empire. I will let the photographs speak for themselves.
Last minute rehearsal and warm-up in the gym.Waiting for the stars to appear…
I figured we could all use a laugh on this dark Wednesday, so I’ll report on my Tuesday morning reading pleasure. Leave it to Stuart Jeffries from The Guardian to write about race and class issues in ways that were as likely true decades back and alas, will be for decades into the future. In the music/opera review section, no less.
This is a tale of two cities. In Birmingham, a screening of Blue Story, a gritty depiction of a fond boyhood friendship between two young black British men tragically sundered by gang-related postcode wars, sparked a mass brawl in the cinema foyer, unacceptably making girls queuing for a singalong to Frozen 2 run away in fear.
Unacceptable! Gaggles of tweens scattered on the streets of Birmingham.They might even drop their iPhones…
In London in October last year, a production of Siegfried, an opera about a tooled-up psychopath, similarly provoked fisticuffs. But which one got withdrawn from view? Was it Rapman’s directorial debut about Britain in crisis with a grime soundtrack for an audience of ordinary millennials and Gen Zedsters, or the Victorian opera promoting knife crime set in a ludicrous fairyland by an antisemitic megalomaniac, and served up for a demographic of hedge fund lawyers and couturiers to the royal family? Oh, have a guess.
Ludicrous fairyland by an antisemitic megalomaniac: a summary of Wagner in 6 words. Nothing else needs ever be said again.
It’s not far down the motorway from the Star City multiplex in Nechells to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, but in social terms there is an unbridgeable chasm between the two. It’s one rule for ordinary Britons and another for opera-going stiffs. Such is the madness of broken Britain in 2019.
Why confine it to 2019? Or, for that matter, Britain?
Oh come off it, you say. Wagner’s Siegfried, the third in his 15-hour cycle Der Ring des Niebelungen, isn’t about knife crime. You can’t use that to explain why Oxford-educated Matthew Feargrieve, 43, was convicted earlier this week for punching Düsseldorf-born fashion designer Ulrich Engler, 56, during a performance. City of London magistrates heard that Feargrieve had taken exception to Engler climbing into the front row and into a seat occupied by his partner Catherine Chandler’s tweed coat. Engler told the court he placed the coat in Ms Chandler’s lap after ascertaining she had not paid for the seat, while Feargrieve said that the couturier hurled the garment to the floor. Unless it was a particularly horrible coat, that sounds out of character for Engler, whose motto on his website is “Elegance is unchanging and timeless” and who has designed dresses for the Countess of Derby. But the fact is that Siegfried does promote knife crime. It opens with a character called Mime forging a sword at an anvil in his underground lair, to make it sharp enough for the eponymous hero to slay a dragon and steal its golden hoard. Later in Act One, Siegfried actually sings a song to his sword, namely Notung! Notung! Neidliches Schwert! (What kind of freak names his sword? That’s right: a Wagnerian one.)
OK, I take it back. More to be said about Wagner.
According to Engler’s testimony, when he was assaulted the conductor had already begun and the opera was about 10 minutes into its six-hour running time. No one in court, not even the beguilingly named Judge Zani, thought to listen to their Karajan recording of Siegfried to get a sense of the mood in the posh seats that afternoon. But I have. And the music is so febrile from the get-go, with Mime beating out a metallic tattoo at about 120 beats per minute, that it astounds me that the brawl only embroiled two people. Everybody’s nerves must have been a-jangle even before Siegfried entered like a proto-football hooligan with his demented preverbal chant: “Hoiho! Hoiho! Hau ’ein! Hau ’ein!”
“I had never seen someone looking with so much anger and terror at me,” Engler said of the attack. “While Mr Feargrieve was hitting me, he said: ‘How dare you talk to my wife like this?’ The only three things I said to this woman was, would you mind if I sat next to you again, have you paid for the seat, and that I was sorry.” Another case of Wagner-related madness? If so, it’s amazing the courts aren’t teeming with them.
Probably because most Britons take Oxford-educated stiff’s right to defend their (and their coats’) privileges as a birth right……
I’m not trying to exonerate Mr Feargrieve for the crime for which he was convicted on Monday and will be sentenced in January. Indeed, if the testimony of former physiotherapist Elaine McMaster, who was in the Covent Garden audience that afternoon is right – namely that Feargrieve and Chandler were swaying side to side to the music, and that Chandler was flicking her hair and being noisy – then hanging is too good for them. “People don’t behave like that in their local cinema, let alone in the Royal OperaHouse,” McMaster said sensibly.
What I am saying is that Covent Garden should immediately commission an opera called The Coat about the night in question, to explore how classical music rather than video games causes mindless violence. Possibly with a score by Harrison Birtwistle so unlistenable you’d climb over your own granny to get out of the auditorium.
Note to self: spare YDP readers any exposure to Harrison Birtwistle’s music in the future….
That said, what’s important to note is that fights at the opera are wrong, not least because they encourage headline writers to reference old Marx brothers movies they’ve probably never seen. As Roger Scruton argues in the The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, the takeaway from those many hours of Wagner is that, in the bleak Viking world of the Ring, despite its cast of crazily violent hammer-throwing and skull-smashing gods, is the reality of love and compassion made manifest by Brünnhilde’s sacrifice to her nutty spouse, Siegfried.
Strangely, that is very similar to the message of Blue Story, though the machete-wielding toughs who injured police officers at Star City and terrified the Frozen 2 demographic clearly failed to appreciate it. Blue Story’s writer and director Andrew Onwubolu, AKA Rapman, said his film is “about love, not violence”, adding: “I pray that we can all learn to live with love and treat each other with tolerance and respect.” That message can be taken in more cheaply at screenings of Blue Story than at the opera – and, despite last month’s controversy, the film can, and indeed must, still be seen.
Agreed. Here is the trailer. Frightening in its depiction of the reality of contemporary life as a poor Black man in Britain. And as distant from the Frozen 2 demographic’s reality as presumably your’s and mine. All the more reason to get informed.
Rapman makes an excellent point. This is, after all, the season of goodwill to all men. But not necessarily to small girls. In fact, the message I take from this tale of two cities is that it’s not Blue Story or Siegfried that should be banned, but Frozen 2. Surely that is something that most of us in broken Britain can get behind. As Boris Johnson so wisely said after last week’s general election, it is time to let the healing begin.
Can we PLEASE have more opera reviews like this one?
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Music today, in my continued attempts to separate my take on the product from my take on the producer, is, of course, a duet from Wagner’s Siegfried. Bruenhilde tells Siegfried of her eternal love and the fact that he can’t act on it without endangering his being a “hero.” Recorded in 1949 – when people still knew how to behave at the opera…..
If the above review did NOT make you laugh, then this German cheat sheet on the whole of the Ring cycle won’t make you either. As they say in this family of mine – Heuer humor, but maybe it’s not Heuer’s after all, but Germans – with – a – penchant – for – opera humor. And besides I would not have survived “Hausmusik” as a teen if not for strange jokes …(and no, I no longer play the cello.)
Photographs from last Friday’s walk along the Willamette river on a windless day, with the structure a possible stand-in for Mime’s smithy (the guy who fostered Siegfried, forever casting stereotypes of evil dwarfs.)
My thoughts have a tendency to wander through weird pathways – wouldn’t you know it, dear reader. Here is a map of yesterday morning’s procession, just for the fun of it.
A misty morning, moss brilliantly green…..
I started out to find a translation for the German word Moralpredigt: to sermonize from a moral high ground (there is NO dictionary translation…) because I intended to introduce the topic of gift giving in this consumers-on-steroids time of the year, with wagging fingers. (Never mind that I had broken my own vow not to buy anything in these December weeks before Hanukah and Christmas, because I found a perfect thing for the kids’ garden on Saturday.)
Literally translated, the German phrase says: first comes the guzzling, then the morals. Guzzling? Alternative words were given as feeding, gorging, devouring – all somewhat connected to the animal realm. Which is of course how some relate to the poor (who are so hungry that food comes before morals) – those animal who dare to steal the turnips from the masters’ fields….
Thoughts of turnips turned to thoughts of sugar beets turned to thoughts of molasses, since earlier that morning on my Sunday walk a friend had introduced me to the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. Ever heard of it? US Industrial Alcohol (USIA) had built shoddy tanks in 1915 to hold molasses used for manufacturing munitions and liquor. A tank fell apart, releasing all of its contents into the streets of Boston.
“More than two million gallons of thick liquid poured out like a tsunami wave, reaching speeds of up to 35 miles per hour. The molasses flooded streets, crushed buildings and trapped horses in an event that ultimately killed 21 people and injured 150 more. The smell of molasses lingered for decades. One hundred years later, analyses have pinpointed a handful of factors that combined to make the disaster so disastrous. Among them: flawed steel, safety oversights, fluctuating air temperatures and the principles of fluid dynamics.”
This, in turn, had me think about first comes the guzzling, then the morals bit in relation to the rich, rather than the poor. Let’s extract money first, safety comes later – if at all.
Which brought me to thoughts about the present state of affairs: with the sorry end of the climate conference in Madrid, we are once more reminded that we simply don’t learn from history, even if prevention, in this case, would protect literally humanity’s survival, rather than a single Boston neighborhood. As the Washington Post put it: U.N. climate talks end with hard feelings, few results and new doubts about global unity. Never mind that the existential real life consequences of this failure are not even mentioned in the headline…
Not learning from history, giving in to greed and courting disaster, then, were the bits that brought my thoughts back to where I started: the craziness of giving gifts just for the sake of – well, of what, indeed? We had the perfect analysis of the need to forgo consumption of goods that will loose their allure or their functionality, or both, in no time, already almost a decade ago. Gifts are bringing death and destruction to people and environments in developing countries: here is the link to the articleThe Gift of Death by George Monbiotwhich was supposed to be the heart of today’s post! It is bitingly funny and achingly sad.
Photographs are from yesterday’s walk in Tryon Creek, my Sunday morning routine.
An unusual capture of a pileated woodpecker and his turf in the mist from far away…
Music today is as far away from profit and greed as we can get. Field never got his recognition as the predecessor to Chopin’s development of nocturnes – and yet his pieces are as beautiful as they come.
We’ll get to the creepy part in a minute. First let me show you some photographs of a scene I encountered on another walk within the last 7 days (my theme for the week, as it turns out.)
Here I was, a good 2 weeks before Thanksgiving after which Portland has its annual tree lighting ceremony at the public square downtown.
Two monster trucks were parked on Pioneer Square, delivering the tree, and a load of tree branches. The tree was already erected, the branches were in the process of being hauled by a crane from truck to the ground.
First thing I saw was one of the lines holding the branches breaking, the load crashing down, back onto the flatbed of the truck, luckily with none of the workers in the vicinity.
What was going on? A friendly supervisor, standing next to the barrier keeping nosy pedestrians like me out, explained when I approached him.
They want the tree to have a spectacularly beautiful shape, so they saw off the lower branches and then nail them back on again after delivery, in ways that fills the lower space in a regular, geometric fashion, also using filler branches stolen from other trees. I guess irregular nature is not beautiful enough in this consumer oasis.
The whole process takes weeks, people busily bracing and hammering away to create this pyramid illusion.
I went home to look at what people consider “beautiful” for a tree. Up popped a site shouting its ware of artificial Christmas trees and linking, as you can see, to the appropriate Christmas attire.
I learned that artificial trees come in all kinds of sizes and three distinct shapes.
The full and fine….
The slim…
The pencil (with a Texas theme by the connoisseur of cute – where do they find these?)
And here’s the creepy part. I am now inundated with ads, no matter where I go on my computer, reading the news, opening Face Book, looking at instagram. All imploring me to dress up like a crazy elf and fill my Jewish home with the full and fine….
Here is the explanation. (The link from the Seattle Times also contains step by step instructions for how to get rid and block these stalker ads.)
When you visited Brand X’s website (to search for a blender, say,) the site stored a cookie on your device containing a unique identifier. Brand X hired multiple ad tech companies to do its marketing. The ad tech companies embedded trackers that also loaded on Brand X’s website, and the trackers took a look at your cookie to pinpoint your device.
The trackers can tell if you are interested in buying something. They look for signals — like if you closed the browser after looking at the blender for awhile or left the item in the site’s shopping cart without completing the purchase. From there, the ad tech companies can follow your cookie through trackers and ad networks on various sites and apps to serve you an ad for the blender.
Some of the ad agency proudly claim: don’t you prefer targeted ads, that are at least of interest to you, than the usual “spray and pray?” (Almost as good as connoisseur of cute…) Well, no, I prefer not to be stalked at all. As do, apparently, “according to a 2012 survey by Pew Research Center, 68 percent of internet users. They did not like targeted advertising because they do not like having their online behavior tracked and analyzed. Your browsing history can reveal a lot about you, including your health issues, political affiliations and sexual habits, so there are real privacy concerns.”
And now excuse me while I go seek revenge and clear out my cookie caches…
Music today is the appropriate sentiment:
Ha! Welch’ ein Augenblick!Ha! What a moment! Die Rache werd’ ich kühlen,My vengeance I will cool, Dich rufet dein Geschick!Your fate is calling you! In seinem Herzen wühlen,In its heart dwell, O Wonne, grosses Glück!Oh live, good luck! Schon war ich nah’ im Staube,Already I was nearly in the dust, Dem lauten Spott zum Raube,By the loud scorn robbed, Dahin gestreckt zu sein.There to be stretched. Nun ist es mir geworden,Now it is up to me, Den Mörder selbst zu morden.To commit the murder myself In seiner letzten Stunde,In his last hour, Den Stahl in seiner Wunde,The steel in his wound, Ihm noch ins Ohr zu schrei’n:To cry in his ear: Triumph! Der Sieg ist mein!Triumph! Victory is mine!
Last week I drove back home along Martin Luther King Blvd. from a meeting and saw numerous colorful and strangely dressed humans rushing towards the Convention Center. You know me. Curiosity has its way, always. So I found a parking garage and asked the first person I saw, what was going on.
Kumoricon! By her looks she must have thought I was an extraterrestrial, since I indicated that I had no clue what she was referring to. The annual celebration of all things Japanese pop culture and anime, which apparently has a large fan base in the Pacific Northwest, was slated for this weekend.
Off I went, and had the nicest encounters with strangely decked out, creatively clad, distinctively painted beings from a different universe. It helped that I am a patient woman – many had to get the gear in order, get rid of bowls of miso soup, stash away the iPhones, get out cardboard weapons, flick the wigs’ curls, don the gloves and assume the correct pose.
Honestly, there was so much laughter, excitement and joy around that it was infectious. I floated from sight to sight, although I declined to go to the heart of the action: the admissions price was a steep $70 at the door. No clue how these youngsters have breathing room for such an expenditure. True fans, I guess.
And not only youngsters. There were quite a few fans across generations. And lest you think it is all fantasy and escapism – or are, like this ancient mother, stuck in the ice-age defined by your kids’ Pokémon cards – I learn that there is reason to believe that manga and anime provide a forum for crucial and subversive thought in Japan. And that there is an ongoing controversy around issues of feminist thought and general issues inclusivity.
I know, truly, nothing about it, nor do I, honestly, care. I was just thrilled to see so many young people be creatively involved, telling me how they made their costumes or got their fake contact lenses, having a good time. As was I.
Did I mention I l o v e living in Portland???
Music today is NOT an expression of my taste, but in honor of all of these characters ….a song from Howl’s Moving Castle which I actually saw with the kids some 15 or so years ago. Now why that kind of music is matched with Japanese story telling is a mystery to me. Then so is much of the rest the world….
Last summer I chanced on a Lily Fest in the woods near Forst Grove. I reported here in July on the floral beauty I saw that day.
I also met two sweet young people who were selling home-made jewelry at the site. They had a collapsable stand and more wares in a trailer that they could use to replenish what sold. Their prices were astonishingly decent, the beads on offer covered a large variety, and their designs ranged from simple to elegant. They describe some of their work here.
Rhiannon and Cory Holbert caught my eye first and foremost because of the way they interacted with each other – it had LOVE spelled all over it. I mean this with all sincerity – sometimes you see couples who simply glow in each other’s presence, who talk to each other with their eyes, no words needed. That was the case here.
A later conversation revealed they have weathered hard times together, stabilized each other in overcoming obstacles that would have completely wrecked lives if encountered alone. Rhiannon has loved and worked with crystals since she was a child. Both now have full-time employment that is physical and hard, using the evenings despite fatigue to make their jewelry and spending the weekends on the circuit of small fairs and festival to sell their goods. More power to them!
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Crystals, semi-precious and precious gem stones applied to works of art have of course a long history. I remember seeing a collection of Fabergé eggs in the Ford Gallery on 12th ST/5th Ave right across from the New School. You could just walk in, no admission charged, and ruminate about these creations and their history (and escape the heat since the dark rooms were air conditioned.) The gallery closed late in 2014.
A strangely reminiscent modern alternative can be found here:
Before we are all in awe of such creativity, we should read about the politics of mining crystals, though. Yes, I know it’s Friday, and we don’t need any more bad news after an atrocious week, but I can’t help it. Developing countries’ lives are at stake, as is environmental degradation for our follies.
When you work mostly with your head, like I do, and are surrounded mostly by others who do too, it is often a revelation to meet those who work with their hands. Not that the head isn’t involved as well with them, far from it. But they have these additional skills of creating something of substance – as in can be touched!
When on location for a film project in Astoria, I encountered several young women who worked with their hands as a by-product of my being on set to photograph the film crew. They were, respectively, responsible for designing, sewing and repairing costumes, for make-up and generating certain looks, and for creating, maintaining and fixing props.
I wrote already earlier this year about my admiration for costume design and tailoring in connection with the PHAME rock opera. I have to repeat myself here: the amount of design, planning and execution that goes into the wardrobe of even a small film set, in this case, is exorbitant. You have to be constantly on call, constantly ready, and know everything from cutting patterns to the last bit of ironing on the fly. It is amazing what these seamstresses pull off.
Same, of course, for the mechanical work with props, particularly if they have moving parts and are abused during the film shoots by one too many handlers. You need your own tools, and be ready to create something that the director envisions out of nothing, more often than not, given the budget limits for these art movie operations.
No clue, how much employment there is out there, who gets the good jobs, how you find out about opportunity. Willingness to travel and be away fron your home base, depending on where the shoots are planned, is a must. I don’t even dare to think about health insurance… these young artisans are courageous indeed.
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Making something by hand is also a trend that has resurfaced in photography. And Astoria is home to a photographic gallery that has been at the forefront of showing these alternative process images.
Right now Lightbox has a truly cool exhibit that shows this kind of work in all of its variety. From the Alternative Visions prospectus:
“The alternative process “movement” which began around the 1960s was largely a return to 19th century hand coated processes as an alternative to corporately controlled gelatin silver paper. Today there has been a conflation of gelatin silver, C-prints, 19th century processes, and printmaking into the alternative process genre. Even digital means of image capture are now a part of this practice with some processes such as image transfer or palladium over ink jet which use digital printing in part. The hallmark of the field is that the end result is a hands-on, handmade print.
The entries into Alternative Visions represent a large variety of such processes. Entries ranged from cyanotype to gum, platinum/palladium, silver gelatin, Van Dyke brown, carbon transfer, photogravure, wet plate, tintype, ambrotype, lith, casein, chemigram, lumenprint, and wet plate collodion. The handmade print, taken into so many directions, is obviously alive and well.
Currently on view – detailed description in link below
You can see the show until the beginning of November. It is worth a trip to Astoria, just not on Sundays, when the gallery is closed. Many of us who have been associated with the gallery for years, both as supporters and as artists, are currently quite worried that the doors might be closed not just on that particular day of the week.
Like for all small galleries it is a struggle for them to maintain high quality work, a large listing of interesting shows and the basic capability of renting and keeping the lights on. In Astoria, a small town at the Oregon coast, there is simply not enough traffic of potential buyers who walk into the door at any given point in time. Nor is there a photographic community of sufficient size that local membership contributions could carry the day.
Owner Michael Granger, left, in conversation with photographer Ken Hochfeld
In other words, those of us, who can, need to step in. Or step up, as the case may be. You need not be a photographer to support the artistic and the educational role this gallery plays in the Pacific Northwest. If you don’t want to become a member, you can simply look at their website, where prints can be ordered, or make a small donation to keep something going that has brought nothing but value to all who have been exposed to its offerings. Paypal is your friend in the link above. Hey, I am your friend, if you don’t mind the fundraising effort!
For music today it shall be something that is an alternative process as well – at least when you are used to normative performances of baroque music. Enjoy!
Since I would dissolve into a blubbering mess of rage and tears if I wrote about politics this week I will turn to one of the more distracting things I can think of.
I used to have a file folder named Found by the Wayside. I’d stash oddsand ends in it, images I captured while doing what I like best: being a flâneuse with camera in hand. It now has an additional section: pictures of random encounters when being out and about in the world. Emphasis on random: the stories stored here are not about people I set out to interview or to photograph. I just happened to meet them while doing something else.
Sand Hill Cranes
Here is a good example. Last Friday, while trying to glimpse the first flocks of migrating birds on Sauvie Island to distract myself, among other things, from the Yom Kippur murders by a Neo-Nazi in Germany and the war and betrayal brought onto the Kurds, I chanced upon a man and his friendly companion who were painting the landscape at the end of a dirt road.
I don’t even know how the casual conversation of “Lovely day, seen any interesting birds?” morphed into an (hour-long) window into hearing about someone’s unusual life. A Vietnam Veteran, Dan Florea, by his own reports, shares his time between Israel, Equador and The Pacific NW, with plenty of travel with kayaks thrown in. In Israel he used to be a guardian of the border to Syria at night and paint during the day. iPhone documentation of the service gun was promptly produced; it has, now that he is in his seventies, been retrieved by the Israeli authorities. He wants to be buried with a view of the Columbia Gorge cliffs across from The Dalles because they remind him of the Golan Heights.
In Equador he teaches art. iPhone again, with colorful representations of flower market paintings, then scrolling to his portrait of a Portland Rabbi who looked like Ariel Stone to me, then scrolling to a photograph of his daughter in DC standing next to, I gather, someone who could be Madeline Albright.
He is the head of an art school that is tuition free, covers multiple disciplines and locations, and claims to be the first of its kind: an international pop-up art school. Teachers are volunteers who must have been successful as artists not teachers. I guess anyone can sign up to be a student. I cannot vouch for the quality of the education, but I guarantee it entails hearing a lot of colorful stories.
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Maybe not an international one, but we certainly do have another pop-up, free art school in PDX, the home school. Founded by Victoria Anne Reis and manuel arturo abreu it is now in its 4th year, with the artists currently in residence at the Yale Union. An interview in Willamette Week last year made it clear that these artists have a goal of subverting the traditional art market – a lofty goal when you consider the grant support they receive from RACC, YU, a Precipice Fund grant, funds from the Calligram Foundation / Allie Furlotti, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and a Rhizome Net Art Microgrant. They describe themselves: “We provide welcoming contexts for critical engagement with contemporary art and its issues with a curriculum featuring artist talks, exhibitions, monthly classes, poetry readings, and more.”
Mt. St Helen was visibleSo was Mt. AdamsAnd barely detectable Mt. Hood
There are clearly sources of access to art that are outside the familiar institutions of Pdx’s art scene. Last year Chuck Dillard, who is both assistant professor of collaborative piano and opera program music director at Portland State University, founded the Queer Opera Experience, a way to give queer students an inclusive platform to perform. It strives to rewrite antiquated, heterosexual, man-dominant narratives in ways that include diverse queer experiences.
The cranes coming in
Then there is Confrontation Theatre, a company that produces plays by and about the African diaspora. As you can see in the link, last season’s production line-up was impressive. I could not quite figure out what they are doing this fall.
The pelicans moving outThe geese never left
In any case, here I was, thinking about all the art offerings available in town if you dig a little deeper beyond mainstream. A reprieve from thinking about the state of our world. Against a background chorus of honking geese and trilling sand hill cranes who filled the skies, I felt ok for a little while.
Music today by Bob Marley whose album Confrontation gave rise to the name for the Theatre Company…
