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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE EXQUISITE GORGE PROJECT

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

– Louise Palermo, Curator of Education at Maryhill Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding inspiration, sorting out questions and answers.

He listens. We should look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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