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Community
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Art for the future and for now.
BY LOIS WADSWORTH
The visual arts are alive and well represented in
Eugene, as many people confirmed last Friday night, drawn outside
by the splendid weather. Earlier, the Eugene City Club brought photographer,
sculptor and installation artist David Joyce and UO Associate Professor
Leon Johnson to talk about the future of art to a rapt audience. It
was inspiring to hear these two accomplished artists and teachers
discuss their ideas of involving the community in the making of art.
Probably Joyce's best known local public art is his
235-foot long mural of 178 life-sized photographic cutouts of flying
people at the Eugene airport. Joyce said that 1989 project represents
the Eugene community of the time, but there were many more people
who "flew" for his camera than he could use. Since then, he has created
public art projects for Portland; Lacey, Wash.; Phoenix, Ariz.; and
Norfolk, Va. And now the Internet. Check out his website for the Self-Portrait
Project at www.HeSheMe.us and send him your photo.
Johnson's local art organization, Creative Materials
Group, made Faust Faustus, a multi-media performance art/installation
piece that included video and still photography, paintings, original
music, hand-crafted jewelry, costumes and exquisite props for the
actors. Previously, Johnson held two group installation projects at
the Timbers Motel downtown, near the bus station, to which hundreds
of people responded. He sees public involvement and the contributions
of many artists from different fields as crucial ingredients in a
revitalized art scene downtown.
The UO "MFA/02" exhibit at Oveissi and Company's gallery
is very interesting and sophisticated. Naomi Kasumi shows her visual
design project in a video. The artist writes Japanese characters on
paper; prints are made from a copper plate. The artist places pinwheels
made from her paper in the ground in a natural, wooded area. The wind
blows, and the pinwheels turn, making a soothing sound in this a lovely
scene.
Robin Seloover's fiiber art — "repetitious stitching
on paper" — is white-on-white paper squares that are quite beautiful
and formal. She calls her work "an attentiveness to the state of uncertainty"
and writes that she aims for a balance between "conscious decision/pattern
making and something less driven by intention."
Nick Dong's metalsmithing work — two gender-inflected
measuring devices — is a precise expression of American culture
that evokes humor and thoughtfulness in equal measure. He writes that
he wants to "provide people a wider and more liberated point of view
of our diverse society." Certainly enlarged mine!
At White Lotus Gallery through July 6, oil paintings
by Xue-Sheng Her reflect the folk customs of the people from his village
in north central China. I'm drawn into the paintings by the faces
of the people, but I'm delighted also by their everyday and special
activities — taking care of animals, celebrating the new year
and performing opera. The simplicity of the houses and surrounding
landscape reminds me of northern New Mexico's comforting earthiness.
At Provenance until June 30, "Community Squared" feels
spontaneous, inclusive and collaborative. Small wood squares from
some 300 artists (pro and amateur) hang around the room, expressing
an idea, a dream, a joke, a self-portrait, a design, a message, a
figure or a landscape. Each block is distinctly its own, yet all together
they say that in Eugene many people make art as creative play, an
activity we never outgrow. Pick up a square and share!
These and many other shows await your pleasure. And
don't forget Maude Kerns Art Center, where Mark Clarke's retrospective
fills the gallery with his excellent Oregon landscapes, figures and
abstract paintings through June 28. Time is running out for you to
catch the distinguished exhibit by Megan O'Connell, Rebecca Urlacher
and Libby Wadsworth at the Jacobs Gallery. The show comes down June
15 to make way for the June 21 opening of "Buckaroo!, Arts and Artists
of the Oregon Ranch."
Finally, although EW Calendar usually lists
out-of-town art shows of Eugene area artists, this one is too far
away. Recent work by Jerry Ross will be at Galleria dArte La Borgognona
in Rome, Italy. He's holding a studio sale June 13 and 14, 6-8 pm,
at 2773 Baker Road (or enter from the house at 2740 Onyx Street),
hoping to help defray the costs of shipping large canvases to Italy.
Winds of Change
Nature
gets a bigger role at Hendricks Park.
BY RACHEL
FOSTER
In 1997, the city of Eugene began felling potentially
hazardous trees near the eastern boundary of Hendricks Park. Although
their removal was partly triggered by neighbor's concerns about falling
trees, other nearby residents and park lovers were alarmed by the
felling, and questioned whether it was justified. In response to their
concerns, the city stopped removing trees and formed a committee to
study the issue. As a result of the committee's work, City Councilor
Laurie Swanson-Gribscov was able to persuade the council to commit
up to $50,000 for a long-range management plan for Hendricks Park's
trees and forest.
Work on this plan was underway when, in March of 1999,
a freak windstorm tore up Summit Avenue and brought down many trees
near the eastern boundary. The garden in that area was devastated,
several nearby homes were damaged, and two huge Douglas firs smashed
through the roof of the old Wilkins Picnic Shelter. A week later,
as I stood at the top of Summit Avenue with tears in my eyes, I noticed
someone had pinned a sign to the remains of the shelter. It read "NATURE
BATS LAST."
"Twenty-four 100-year-old Douglas fir trees fell,
mostly within one half hour," says Michael Robert, head gardener at
Hendricks Park. "Although this full-moon storm had a devastating effect
on Hendricks Park, the uprooted trees provided an amazing laboratory
for studying the combined causes of tree failure." Some trees had
suffered root loss where they were paved over with asphalt, or stood
in wet soil compacted by nearly 100 years of park use. But the biggest
single cause of failure was the size of their crowns. "The wind accumulated
volume as it coursed up Summit Avenue, and it was the direct wind
in their sail that was responsible for the trees' failure," says Robert.
There was little or no correspondence between the trees that fell
and the 80 to 100 trees originally slated for removal in a 1997 study.
The Hendricks Park Forest Management Plan was accepted
by the council in January 2000. While it does allow for continuing
some individual management of vulnerable trees (including "light,
spiral pruning in their tops to reduce the sail) the plan generally
calls for managing the park as a dynamic, successional forest leading
to old growth, rather than crisis management of individual trees.
The plan put a stop to most irrigation in the area around the picnic
shelter to help stabilize the trees there, and lost Douglas firs are
being replaced with more "wind-firm" species such as Oregon white
oak. The plan also recommended establishing a garden of native plants
around the shelter that can handle summer drought. The framers of
the plan gave this garden a high priority, seeing it as a "living
bridge" between the cultivated Rhododendron Garden to the north and
the natural forest area to the south.
The Native Plant Garden got a considerable boost when
it caught the attention of Jerry Blakely and his wife, Mary Rear Blakely.
A committed teacher, gardener and lover of native plants, Mary was
dying of cancer. The Blakelys felt that the garden would make an ideal
memorial to her life. After Mary died in 2001, Jerry Blakely started
a fund to make the garden a reality. With the help of volunteers,
he and the park's assistant gardener Ginny Alfriend, a longtime champion
of native plants, have been working on the garden all spring. The
garden was dedicated on May 4th of this year, as camas lily and native
iris bloomed around the restored shelter. Some woody ornamentals in
the area will be removed over the next few years and used to help
rejuvenate the Rhododendron Garden, but some 40- to 50-year-old rhododendrons,
gifts of the founders of the Garden, will be left where they are and
hand-watered.
Execution of the Management Plan relies heavily on
community involvement. For instance, it recommends "an aggressive
program" to remove the English ivy that covers more than half the
forest floor. The non-profit Walama Restoration Project, together
with volunteers, took out several acres of ivy along Fairmount this
winter, with impressive results. Who would have guessed so many native
plants were hanging on under that blanket of ivy? A native plant nursery
is also being established at the park with help from the community,
especially as an educational opportunity for local youth groups .
Now, Ginny Alfriend and the newly formed Friends of
Hendricks Park are looking for volunteers to adopt a plot within the
native garden for weeding and maintenance. Contact Alfriend or John
Moriarty at Hendricks Park, 682-5324, about
volunteer opportunities. You can
view the Forest Management Plan at www.ci.eugene.or.us/PW/parks
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