Art on the move: responding to crises – Oregon ArtsWatch

WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF LIFE-CHANGING TIMES, and in the faceof multiple crises remarkable work is being done. How do artists fit in? Sometimes, smack in the middle of things. Many news organizations have been doing excellent work of discovering the artists speaking to the moment and bringing their work to a broadaudience. Oregon Public Broadcasting, for instance, has been publishingsome sterling stories including the featureThe Faces of Protest: The Memorial Portraits of Artist Ameya Marie Okamoto, by Claudia Meza and John Nottariani. Okamoto, a young social practice artist who grew up in Portland, has made it her work not just to document the events of racial violence in Portland and across the United States: Shesalso, as OPB notes, crafted dozens of portraits for victims of violence and injustice.

People get so attached to the hashtag and the movement of George Floyd or Quanice Hayes, Okamota tells OPB, they forget that George Floyd was a trucker who moved to Minneapolis for a better life, or that Quanice Hayes was actually called Moose by his friends andfamily.When individuals become catalysts for Black Lives Matter and catalysts for social change there is a level of complex personhood that is stripped away fromthem. In her work she strives to give that back.

Okamoto also, radically, makes her work available to anyone who wants it. OPB notes that sheoffers her work online freefor nonprofit use,with a$10 suggested donation to the activist group Dont Shoot Portland.

In a piece by Eric Slade,Street Artists Transform Portlands Boarded Buildings With Murals,OPBalso has documented a movement to bring beauty to the streets in trying times. And inPain Fades, but Murals Remember People Killed by Police, The New York TimessZachary Small gathers images and meanings of artists responses to multiple slayings over multiple years across the nation.

MEANWHILE, AMY WANG of The Oregonian/Oregon Live has had two fine stories published in recent days. She wrotea moving memory of Portland writerRamiza Shamoun Koya, who died last week of breast cancer at age 49, and whose novelThe Royal Abdulswas published earlier this year by Portlands Forest Avenue Press. The novel, Wang wrote, is an elegantly multilayered and deeply moving story of a Muslim American family caught in the fissures of identity, immigration and race that were deepened by 9/11. And in35 books about race, recommended by black Portland writers, Wang talked with writers Intisar Abioto, Walidah Imarisha, David F. Walker, and Emmett Wheatfall to produce a small library of essential reading about Americas great divide.

MORE GOOD READING, FROM THE PARIS REVIEW: The literary quarterly magazine has unlocked several of its in-depth Writers at Work interviews from past years, offering free access to lengthy conversations with such important black writers asMaya Angelou(1990),Ralph Ellison(1955),Charles Johnson(2018),Ishmael Reed(2016),Edward P. Jones(2013), andSamuel R. Delany(2011). Ellisons comment from 65 years ago seems particularly pertinent to now: I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest. DostoyevskysNotes from Undergroundis, among other things, a protest against the limitations of nineteenth-century rationalism;Don Quixote,Mans Fate,Oedipus Rex,The Trialall these embody protest, even against the limitation of human life itself. And Reed, speaking of the highly politicalAmiri Baraka, whom he calls a great writer, also homes in on the importance of artistry and style, and how black artists have helped shape an American expression: He did for English syntax what [Thelonious] Monk did for chords.

THE STRIKING NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL UPRISING against police brutality and racial injustice has been dominating the news, even though the Covid-19 pandemic still rages, and indeed, is more destructive in the United States right now than almostanywhere else. In Oregon and across the nation lockdown restrictions, which have taken a huge economic toll, are easing, and no one knows what effect themassive public protests of the past two weeks will have on the potential spreading of the coronavirus. But reported cases are on the rise, and many health authorities are warning of a second wave of infection that could be worse than the first.

Such things have been on the mind ofHenk Pander, the Dutch-born and -trained painter whos lived and worked in Portland since 1965. On Wednesday morning in his Southeast Portland home studio hefinished his newest painting and signed his name to it. Maybe hell do a little touchup here, maybe a little change there, but probably not. I dont like to overwork these things, he explained over the phone on Wednesday afternoon.

Much of Panders work carries forward the rich tradition of history painting, and in a wayPlague Ships Fleeing the Burning City of Caffa. Ca 1347does, too. It reimagines an actual devastation during the Black Death years of the 14th century in the trade-center city of Caffa, on the Crimea, in what is now Ukraine. The seeds of the painting were planted a few years ago when Pander picked up a copy of John Kellys 2005 history of the Plague yearsThe Great Mortality, at Powells City of Books, and then took bloom with the rise of this years pandemic. We should be grateful that this is notTHEPlague, which began in eastern or central Asia and spread across the Middle East into Europe and beyond, killing by varying estimates 30 to 60 percent of Europes population, Pander commented.

Learning more about the historical calamity, Pander said, gave him an opportunity to make a painting about the current Covid-19 crisis without including such things as face masks: Its a vision, a fantasy. Youve got the burning of Rome in it, for crying out loud. He studied etchings of the ruins of Rome by the 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and looked up the designs of Plague flags from ships during the Black Death. What he was looking for was a sense of devastation and ruin, and that included adding the year 1347 to the paintings title: By giving the date it gives it a kind of authenticity. You can look it up and discover the full story, he said.

Still, this is an unfinished story. Panders painting may be finished. The pandemic is far from it.

THE PANDEMIC AND THE AMERICAN RACIAL CRISIS, along with a tense and unsettling political season, have shaken business-as-usual in many ways: The sense that the new normal, whenever it emerges, will look very different from the old normal is strong. This holds true in the arts world as much as in the culture at large. Weve seen in recent days nationaluprisings in the world of theater, where major artists of color including Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lin-Manuel Miranda, David Henry Hwang, Viola Davis and Quiara Alegra Hudes have signed a letter decrying racism in the industry, andin the world of poetry, where the president and board chairman of the richly endowed Poetry Foundation have resigned after an open letter signed by more than 1,800 poets and others criticized the Foundations response to the Black Lives Matter movement. As poets, we recognize a piece of writing that meets the urgency of its time with the appropriate fire when we see it and this is not it, the letter said in part.

OTHER FALLOUT HAS BEEN MORE PERSONAL, particularly in the case of pandemic-imposed isolation. InFocusing in Isolation, Portland photographer Pat Rose talks with five prominent Oregon photographers Ray Bidegain, Jamila Clarke, Jim Fitzgerald, Heidi Kirkpatrick and Angel OBrien about how the lockdown has or hasnt affected their lives and their work. How can we all not be changed by this? OBrien comments. The whole world has been upended, and any sense of stability has been erased..Now we are all having to deal with these innumerable humanitarian crises, but without hugs, without the closeness of friends and family. This is the first of two parts: Look for the words and works of five more photographers next week from Rose.

THE WORLDS TURNED VIRTUAL DURING LOCKDOWN, even more than it already was, and inAccounts to follow: Irresistible colorsShannon M. Lieberman continues her exploration of the Instagram accounts of Oregon artists, this time coming up with some colorful recommendations in the work ofDon Bailey, Ernesto Aguilar, and Meghan NutMeg, a trio of artists who, Lieberman declares, draw viewers in through their irresistible profusion of color.

ANINEVITABLE CHANGE IN THE ARTS LANDSCAPE WILL BE A SHAKING-OUT and reorganizing of organizations and how they go about their business. On Thursday the Oregon Cultural Trust reported results of astatewide survey of arts groups that reveals a devastating impact of Covid-19: The majority of Oregons cultural organizations are facing suspension of operations or permanent closure, the Trust declared. The Trust projects a revenue loss of more than $40 million statewide to arts groups by the end of June, with the arts & culture sector of the state economy being hit disproportionately hard by the crisis, especially in rural communities with little access to relief funding.

WILL BIG AND LITTLE ARTS GROUPS BE SCRAPPING for the same vastly reduced pile of money? Former Portland Opera General Director Christopher Mattaliano, inWill Portland protect its Big 5?, his essay for ArtsWatch thats spread far and wide,argues for a big picture look beyond the pandemic. Hecriticizes the citys smaller is better ethos and argues that the major groups the opera, Oregon Symphony, Portland Art Museum, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Portland Center Stage at the Armory should be considered anchor institutions that establish a strong cultural foundation for the city and provide an anchor for other important, smaller-scale arts organizations and local artists to coexist within a rich arts ecology. Mattalianos essay feels like the beginning of an important conversation that almost surely will reveal sharp differences of opinion: Expect to hear counter-arguments soon.

EVEN WHEN THE NEWS IS GOOD, IT SEEMS, ITS ALSO PARTLY BAD. Last week the Portland Art Museum, which has been closed since March 14 and bleeding money because of lost income,announced plans to reopen the second week in July. At the same time, it also announced that because of the hole already shot in its budget, it will lay off 51 full-time and 72 part-time workers. The museum hopes that many of the layoffs will be temporary.

Composer and vocalist Damien Geter, performing with Portland Concert Opera.

PORTLAND COMPOSER AND SINGER DAMIEN GETERS newest project, his large-scale workAn African American Requiem, seems to have one foot in the Black Lives Matter movement and the other in the pandemic crisis. Its deeply concerned with the roots and meanings of the black experience in America and its world premiere has been delayed because of the coronavirus. WithBlack music is the center of American culture, Charles Rose begins a three-part interview with Geter on what the music is and why it takes the shape it does. The Requiem, Rose declares, remains poised to become a landmark achievement both for Portlands musical culture and for American music as a whole. Commissioned by the choral group Resonance Ensemble, its a full-length choral and orchestral work that was to premiere in concert with the Oregon Symphony, along with Resonance, the gospel choir Kingdom Sound, and poet S. Renee Mitchell,and was to be broadcast live by Portlands AllClassical radio andNew Yorks WQXR. After the Symphony was forced to cancel the remainder of its current season, the premiere was rescheduled for January 22, 2021. But the Requiems here, ready and waiting, and the anticipations building. On adding texts to the standard mass, Geter says in part: I wanted to use something that related directly to the black experience and the experience of black Americans I chose I Cant Breathebecause its such a prevalent thing in this world. Whenever someone says it you instantly know what theyre talking about.

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Art on the move: responding to crises - Oregon ArtsWatch