UNDERGROUND
ART
Eugene's
under-30 artists are breaking the surface, with or without help:
Part I
By
Ben Fogelson
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SHAWN
MEDIACLAST IN LINE WITH THE VIRGINS AT HIS MUSEUM OF UNFINE
ART.
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If you're toeing the curb
where Willamette Street meets 8th Avenue, never mind which corner,
you'll find yourself in the area that the Downtown Events Management,
Inc. (DEMI) — the same organization responsible for that "Community
Art Project," the hell-spawned fiberglass ducks — calls the
Eugene gallery district.
This district plays home to the Jacobs, Karin Clarke
and White Lotus Galleries, each displaying anything from embarrassingly
high priced o'evres you wouldn't buy for a quarter, to delightful
creations of artistic humanity that make you wonder how quickly
the alarm would go off if you just up and grabbed one. Yet this
"gallery district," which focuses singularly on visual art by established
artists, is thought of as the Eugene art center, the heart and pulse.
However, another section of our community, represented
in only the barest manner by this axis, is super-actively producing
art across a wide spectrum: dance; visual; written; spoken —
not solely what can be hung on a wall or poured in a foundry. Voila,
the Eugene arts scene run by those under or around the age of 30.
That youthful scene is intense, diverse and crucial.
With it, Eugene is romantic, happening and vibrant. Without it,
we're boring, duck-loving shmucks.
Here's a tour of the Emerald City's vital art underbelly.
FEINSTEIN'S
MUSEUM OF UNFINE ART
537
Willamette St., 683-7357
North of the Hult center and some expensive ceramic
frogs, enter Shawn Mediaclast's glass storefront.
The museum is a combination of a couple thousand
CD cases (a connoisseur's selection of many musical genres you never
knew existed, as well as the more contemporary), racks of clothes
suitable for the dork-warrior (vintage dresses, plenty of polyester,
odd and cool, old T-shirts, shiny second-hand shoes and boots),
four walls jammed full of local works of art, all stuffed in a small
room complete with glass counter, behind which are all the various
types of tabaccy you could possibly cough at.
Inside the counter there's a mix of products; for
example, on one glass shelf, from left to right: a Yuban-sized tin
of Monastery Incense; a stack of Swift Charcoal Lighting Tablets;
a 50-count box of Swisher Sweet cigars with only six lonesome brown
stogies remaining; three cardboard boxes each containing one Bugler
filtered cigarette-making machine; and a long, straight, stacked
rainbow of shoe-shine sized Manic Panic hair-dye containers.
Behind the counter stands Shawn Mediaclast, collage
artist whose work has shown at Maude Kerns' Temporarily Maude Gallery,
the WOW Hall, My House and Phenomenon Hair Salon. Shawn's a thin,
spectacled young man, and he's flipping through his collection of
music (tune shoplifters will only score an empty jewel-case), looking
for "something," he mumbles, that will help him think. In a moment,
after an "of course" look crosses his brow, he's nabbed Sun Ra's
I Pharo. It begins flowing from two speakers set on either
side of a black television, which silently portrays a psychedelic
collage of colorful images edited by local videographer Sabrina
Siegel. On the countertop sits a photocopy explaining Feinstein.
An abridged version might go like this:
Arthur Feinstein was a 13 year-old who left his
family in Europe, arriving in 1917, at the age of 19, in Rerun,
Wash., where he opened a "gallery of the absurd" called the Museum
of Unfine Art. Among other events and activities, he fed food coloring
to midget cows that then pissed improvisational urine-color paintings
for a perplexed logger community. Confusion changed to intrigue
and entertainment as Feinstein won what support he needed for his
alternative venue, allowing him to endure while hosting vaudevillian
events and selling tobacco to help finance the museum's operations.
Feinstein retired in 1970, but in January 2002,
after six hard months of working seven days a week and corresponding
with faraway Feinstein's family, Mediaclast opened the second and
only other existing Museum of Unfine Art, carrying on Feinstein's
legacy of providing an alternative to "the snobbery of high art,"
using tobacco sales to subsidize rent payments. Since then he's
unfailingly rotated bi-monthly exhibits of art from all ages, providing
a venue for many artists hitherto underrepresented. Feinstein's
is a prime example of one of Eugene's new and newly energized eclectic
art venues. Because of its non-traditional and seven-day-a-week
approach, it's become a hub, to Mediaclast's satisfaction, around
which many artists of all genres who share a growing "do it yourself"
sentiment, spin. Much of Eugene's youth art community relies on
this DIY concept.
Mediaclast, hyper-intellectual, nervous-yet-friendly
and down-to-earth all at once, says "There's a strong DIY sense
here. That's where there's not a need or strong desire to fit the
establishment; not an interest in achieving by someone else's standards."
As to why DIY is growing in popularity here in Eugene,
says Shawn, "There's no illusion that the town gallery scene is
going to take risks on young artists," and on his efforts to bring
artists together, he says "I think it's happening. There's a perception
that there are more possibilities in Eugene than before."
JAWBREAKER
GALLERY
415
Monroe St., 345-8621
Head north past Feinstein's and roll toward the
sea on 5th Avenue. Stare at cops who speed around the blind turn
onto Olive Street, causing citizens departing the Down to Earth
parking lot to slam on their intimidated brakes. Once past the highway,
jog onto 4th Avenue and continue to the home of Elizabeth Kreutzer
and Felix Miles, AKA the Jawbreaker Window Gallery and Community
Arts Space.
On either side of the entrance are expansive bay
windows, allowing two-week runs by local artists to be displayed
hanging and sitting before the leisurely viewer. Local arts posters
(punk-rock at the Soul-sol, erotic Valentines poetry-reading at
Foolscap) make a patchwork upon a green door between the panes,
and from a note pad dangles a white string attaching a pencil, with
which anyone can write notes for call-backs on displaying their
art.
Gain the first-floor interior, take in the bohemian
junk-pile art studio and find Kreutzer (a friendly, outgoing arts
organizer), Miles (Cheap Art artist/messenger and part of the Kitchen
Syncopators jug band), and, Huck Noun (also with the Syncopators
and a Cheap Art herald), displaying pieces of Cheap Art on a clothesline.
Besides creating a venue and arts workshop area
in the first floor of their domicile, providing the public with
space for multi-medium fund-raisers, musical events and vaudevillian
performances, Kreutzer, Miles and Noun (Noun doesn't live there,
but one gets the impression by he does how he leans on things),
are proliferators of an "art for anyone" movement called Cheap Art.
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PIECES
FOUND AT JAWBREAKER GALLERY, TESTIMONY TO THE CHEAP ART MOVEMENT.
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Cheap Art, a concept developed by Vermont Bread
and Puppets grassroots theater troupe artist Peter Shumann (also
responsible for the large-scale puppets standing tall in the Eugene
political activism scene and Oregon Country Fair), is "making something
out of nothing; bringing meaning to what's meaningless," according
to the darkly winter-clothed Noun, who worked, played and created
with Shumann in Vermont along with Miles, the two of them then delivering
the Cheap Art Movement to Eugene. "Shumann's the root," says Noun,
displaying more Cheap Art in his hands.
It's on paper and cardboard, scraps of wood or bark,
things you can pick up anywhere. Cheap Art takes "less money and
time" says Kreutzer, laying out dozens of pieces, anything from
an inked rendition of a dictionary's anatomical drawing of a animal,
to a political cartoon drawn on what looks to be the back of a cereal
box, to layers of glued paper, cardboard, wood, moss and other basic
materials, surrounding something hidden, peeking out from within.
The trio doesn't let the movement sit idle. Last
December they held a Cheap Art sale at Morning Glory Café,
most pieces ranging in price from $1 to $3, the ceiling set at a
lofty $10 for a piece by Noun (though Kreutzer bought it back to
donate to, she says sideways, "the Jawbreaker permanent collection").
They also saw the evolution of their vaudevillian music, skit, fire-dancing
and shadow puppet troupe, the "Cardboard Songsters" (in '97 and
'98), into the present Cardboard Theatre Collective, an endeavor
promoting the Cheap Art Movement through all cardboard-set theater
performances, incorporating silent films played to live scores by
local musicians.
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Jackie
Holmstrom
"I
don't know anyone who shows in galleries."
But
you know a lot of artists? Yes.
What
does your art do for you? Eventually it'll support me,
but now it satisfies my need to decorate my environment.
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The Jawbreaker represents a melange of Eugene art,
where creative locals provide the juice. "We're not a non-profit,"
says Kruetzer. "We're just a neighborhood project that runs on people's
interest, their own inspiration."
"People at our events go home and make art themselves,"
adds Noun.
And the inspiration is spreading, even morphing.
Foolscap Books was planning a Cheap Art convention for a time, but
the simultaneous hurrah and raised eyebrows of those at Jawbreaker
prompted Foolscap to change the name to "Starving Artist Convention."
Prices will be kept under $100 (though most works will be under
$20), something you'd never see from Noun or Miles, who hold a deep
affinity for the Bread and Puppets concept of Cheap Art; its ubiquitous
creation; it's modest message of mega-availability.
"It's a part of what we'll be doing all our lives,"
says Noun with Miles nodding, "spreading the movement."
FOOLSCAP
BOOKS
780
Blair Blvd., 681-9212
In addition to supporting the art-under-30 crowd
by means of hanging work and hosting the Feb. 23 Starving Artist
Convention, certain nights at Foolscap reveal a raging, sweaty,
riotous hub for young written-and-spoken word artists.
Feb. 15 is Poetry Slam VI, in a series of nine slams
to choose four poets who will represent Eugene at the National Poetry
Slam in Chicago.
"And next up is Nathan Langston …" The wild
crowd, stacked in horizontal row(s) sits like cheering children
clapping yelling, and one poet, in the back, wearing black, stepping
through spaces between metal chair legs, careful not to trip on
his own feet, people smiling, remembering the last time they heard
him read his poems; maybe Monday at the Buzz, maybe just
the other night at Morning Glory, maybe both, who cares? He's good,
and he's stepping back and forth at the mic, smiling a patented
Langston smile, wide and toothy and white. "All I'm asking for,"
he reads, his voice raising and falling like a radio ridden under
a series of several short reception-blocking bridges, "is a good
place to sit / as galaxies of trip hop diversity / spin around me
and all of these / colorful crowds of humanity / getting funky on
jungle beat blues …" And the crowd, some rocking, all timing
the words in their heads, stays dead quiet, 'til the microphone
screams its sudden silence.
The crowd erupts! Hands beat together and yells
fall from stacks of Foolscap books, people on the ground, people
in chairs, up against the walls, each and every wall, cheering for
the poet and wondering who next from the list will be called?
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Cosmo
Cole
"I work
in all mediums."
If
you sold $100 of your art? Uh … probably I'd get
one of those big packs of pastels, and a nice … what
do you call it? An easel."
If
you sold $1000? "I'd probably get started making a studio."
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Typically a slam runs in rounds, where most poets
read more than once and the final rounds are for the highest scorers.
At the Buzz and Morning Glory cafés, however, the reading scene
is more neutral; they're readings, not slams, without the in-your-face
competition. Some people get cheers, but everyone gets claps. At
Foolscap it might be easier to leave the stage disappointed with
a performance or a score, but no one, such as is reputed to happen
in East-coast slams, is booed off after baring their soul.
And they bare it to the buns. Eugene poets dig deep;
spectators are quiet enough to let you hear a tear drop when someone
talks about abuse, world-sadness, confusion, pain. There's plenty
of it, and the more they practice the deeper they get and the deeper
they get the more they slam. And thank god, they don't forget love,
happiness and sex.
The scene's taking off like a reunited lover's sprint
off the plane. "We had a couple of benefit jams last spring with
UO students," says Marietta of Foolscap, "and there was a huge turnout.
It was remarkable. I'd been having open mics once a week but they
didn't have the vital energy we were looking for."
But the energy's there now. With a grant from the
Lane Arts Council, Foolscap began this year's competition, a first
for Eugene; with a small door-charge and averaging 100 people per
slam, it looks like it'll support itself next year. And give thanks
to the dozens and dozens of artists who make the scene alive: people
like Nathan Langston; Jhan Khalighi; Olivia Pepper (the vegan-hopeful
formerly known as Quail Dawning); Sam Rutledge, Eli Kreigh and Hunter
Blackwell; some of the most active artists of any age on the Eugene
streets and stages. It is they, who among others, via involvement
with numerous righteous projects such as CORE Women's Performance
Collective, The Experiment, Core Star, My House, keep the Eugene
scene vital by stimulating spaces that support a fleet of other
young artists.
Take My House for example.
MY
HOUSE
1136
W. 5th Ave. 344-4066 www.notmyhouse.com
Basement venues, Eugene's got 'em. To discover established
locations for basement concert venues you've got to ask around,
but My House, the old Whiteaker house run by Marc Moscato and his
three cohorts, is all about putting the word on the street. They've
opened up their own domicile to spread the DIY word, and damned
if they're not going to have a wine-cellar for nothing. They're
proud of their underground (literally) scene; really proud.
"If there's anything cool going on outside my basement,"
laughs Moscato, I think it's a welcome addition to the Eugene scene."
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Sumer
Eberhart
"I think
this town's grass-roots enough; there's enough shows, but
to be respected as artists, that's totally different."
Where
has your work shown? Morning Glory, Jawbreaker and Feinstein's,
and I was just offered a show at Mother Kali's.
How
do you pay the bills? I'm a dish-warrior.
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Marc understands that the artistic energy's out
there for the collecting/sharing/presenting, and with some effort:
putting in a P.A. system, many-a-chair, lighting and areas for production
and educational activities, he and his housemates have themselves
a venue.
Though music and spoken-word are staples of My House
offerings, film and written-word (often in theform of 'zines) have
no below-Earth venue in Eugene to match Moscato's dungeon. Film
tours routinely pass under the floor under the roof of My House;
'zine writers discussing and reading their works, filmmakers screening
it.
The Copy and Destroy 'Zine Tour just came through,
bringing with it Seattle's 'Zine hero (the boy-trapped-in-a-girl's-body
Urban Hermit), along with Alex Wrekk, Joe Biel and other Portland
writers, into a combination performance/ tour storytelling sale
with Eugene talent such as Olivia Pepper on the mic, in front of
a thick, appreciative crowd who lifted their legs for Mediaclast's
roaming, snorting pug.
If you've never seen a 'zine table, it goes like
this: When the touring artists set up and reach into their Army
surplus backpacks, each coming out with huge armfuls of 'zines for
display and sale, some as tiny as a roll of Hello Kitty toilet-paper,
some novel-sized and shiny (like the Urban Hermit's new The Flow
Chronicles), the table takes on an almost ethnic feel. Red,
white and black seem to be the chosen colors, mostly photocopied
and screen-printed with stark, simple-yet-aesthetically pleasing
designs for cover art. Little stacks sit next to big stacks; if
'zinester takes it seriously, it's rare not to have copies of all
a particular 'zines past editions on hand. A do-it-yourself button-maker
rests idly by to make yourself $1 pins, and one of the artists (whose
'zines center on gardening northwest herbs) has set up a selection
of her homemade salves. The crowd shuffles by and by again, adding
to their collection, supporting their fellow artists.
And that's pretty much what the Eugene under-30
art scene is about; a thriving mass of stand-up, highly respectable
individuals, who, having awakened in a society whose back is turned,
are supporting one another.
And that's not all.
In February read Underground Art, Part II,
discover venues, city programs, as well as under-30 theater and
dance, high-school art and the burgeoning swath sliced by the undeniable
hip hop-and-graffiti artist eruption
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"I've
never judged people's art. I like kids' art."
How
do you pay the bills? Well, I'm kind of freeloading, living
at home.
If
you sold $100 of your art? I ought to spend it on helping
with the food bills, but I'd probably spend it on records,
but I probably wouldn't 'cause I'm not that bad.
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UPCOMING
UNDERGROUND
Upcoming shows at Feinstein's include: Feb.
1-14 Leslie Erickson; Feb. 15-30 Honey Vizer and Tracy Doherty;
March 1-14 Dave Snider; March 15-30 Mr. Random; April 1-14 Kelly
Newcomer; April 15-30 Swedish Robotica.
Upcoming art events at Jawbreaker include:
Sundays: Cheap Art workshops 1-3 pm, and 3 pm rotating 1 hr. workshops
some weeks: 1/26 Beg. French; 2/2 Beg. Guitar; 2/23 Belly Dancing;
3/2 Canvas Stretching; 3/9 Figure Drawing; 3/16 Ind. Movie Show;
3/23 Picasso Slideshow. Future events also include: 3/22 A Cardboard
Theater Production; 6/8 Artists' Sidewalk Sale; and each full Moon
will be a Full Moon Café, serving dinner with live entertainment.
Don.
Upcoming events at Foolscap include: 2/14
Erotic poetry open mic w/ Mood Area 52; 2/15 Poetry Slam VI; 2/23
Starving Artist Convention; 3/8 The Experiment's "Eye and I"; 3/15
Poetry Slam VI Play-Off round I; 4/19 Poetry Slam VII Play-Off round
II; 5/17 Poetry Slam Finals.
Upcoming reads at the Buzz include: Every
Monday, 9 pm.
Upcoming reads at Morning Glory Café include:
last Thursday of the month, 6:30 pm. Also, a related poetry-slam
assembly is 12:30 pm, Churchill High School.
Upcoming events at My House include: 1/31
Benefit concert for Nightride, UO assault prevention shuttles; 2/1-2
Silk-screening workshop; 2/14 V-Day "Love or Hate" open film screening;
3/1 Scratch-animation workshop; 3/2 Crackpot Crafter short scratch-animation
show; 3/8 Zine making workshop; 3/9 Big Film Series hand-processed
film show.
Upcoming MLK poetry slam: 1/24 with Womb
Dialectic, 5 pm, Gerlinger, UO.
The
artist,
living
artifacts.
Art
I Fax.
I
fax art to god,
and
she sends me her heart,
but
lost bodhisattvas continue to stumble
down
cement sidewalks.
Cities
are free museums,
but
the displays are enslaved behind bars
of
misunderstanding,
where
children miss standing —
under
—
trees.
—
From Lost Citadel,
by
Jhan Khalighi