Desperately Seeking Salem

When was the last time you strolled the galleries of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, on the Willamette University campus? Last month? A few years back? Never? Seriously? You’ve never even BEEN there? There’s one major world-class art museum in this town and you haven’t shown your ugly mug there since you’ve been in Salem?

My fugly mug was there last week — and let its toothy smile tell you it’s time to revisit Hallie Ford.

In fact, get thee to Hallie Ford tomorrow night for the opening of the museum’s new rotating permanent collection. If you’ve read my column this month, you know that I think the revamp of the old gallery spaces there is a knockout. But maybe I’m just blowing hot air? (I’m not). Decide for yourself. It’s not often there is not-to-be-missed public opening of a revamped gallery featuring new works by some of Oregon’s most important artists.

For a primer on the new exhibition, called “On the Edge” (insert more specific subtitle here), read Professor Roger Hall’s shakedown on Pacific Northwest Art here.

And to mingle with the hoi-est of polloi, or maybe just some really engaged and interesting Salemites interested in art, you might want to go to the public opening, tomorrow night, 5-8 p.m.

I hope there’s wine and cheese, but if not, I’ll settle for another chance to look at Robert Hess’s “Passage.”

I’ve got a problem. When I go to art fairs, I tend to lump some artists into Inspiration, Perspiration and Mediation.

Inspiration: I could make that, and I just might.

Perspiration: I would have to work very hard and a long time to afford that.

Mediation: I will have to convince my husband that we need this $500 original portrait of an Edward Gorey-esque Cookie Monster.

Then there is a fourth group of artists that leaves me flummoxed and my digital camera’s flash card empty,  artists that are so good at what they does that I feel uncomfortable taking a photograph of their work.  Generally these are people doing something so remarkable and so unique that I couldn’t for the life of me duplicate it — ever.

And I want it — oh so bad.

Melissa Stiles is one of those people.

A Portland-based former architect who decided to stay at home with her children and create structural jewelry that might add some really nice lines to my face, Stiles probably had the sexiest stand at the fair. She had a display of scores of sound jewelry designs, every single piece of which I would wear.

Here are a few other fine stand-outs that were really great, but perhaps not so stellar as to induce me into an art-viewer’s stupor:

Kevin Eslinger – I want your Cookie Monster! And not just the $30 print, but the $500 original!

Rachel Austin — I want one of your luminescent map paintings!

And more than anything else, Vicki Banks, I desperately want your $1,300 bronze scarecrow! I look at this woman’s work and it is imminently clear that she is someone who really sees the world.

Also, I would like a scallop-edged forest green medieval-looking bathrobe that makes me feel like Cate Blanchette in Elizabeth. But I need the size large to actually be large enough to fit me.

I’ve been a lover of art fairs since I was a 17-year-old brooding would-be ceramic artist, undiscovered, unimpressed, oh so unhappy. I like to think I spent the best days of my youth attending the art fairs in Lancaster County, Mt. Gretna, PA, and later in Des Moines, dreaming of a life of traveling from fair to fair, hawking my wares to support my process.

Later, after interviewing quite a few major American craft artists, it became clear to me that I never would have survived the schedule of producing and selling, producing and selling.

These days I’m more of a watcher than a judger. And I can’t wait for the chance to take in all of the stands at the Salem Art Fair and Festival, which is happening this weekend. When we moved to Salem, any mention of this event was like a happy little footnote to all of our conversations:

“Well, we do have a great art fair…”

I’ll be the judge of that.

I mean, I’ll keep my eyes open.

What I’m looking forward to most:

Ken Peterson’s cheeky sculptures
Figuring out the genre distinctions of “cottage crafts”
Marina Teraud’s fantasy prints
Melanie Habets femme-tastic fashions
The sensuous lines of La Chaussee blown glass

And of course, discovery, discovery, DISCOVERY!

The retrospective exhibition of works by mixed media artist Robert McCauley, currently on view at Willamette University’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art, doesn’t sound that impressive, or really that inventive, on paper:

“Rapids and Pools”

“Robert McCauley is a Mt. Vernon, Washington artist who explores the 19th century notion of “Manifest Destiny” and its impact on the indigenous cultures and environment of the western United States through paintings, drawings, installations, and mixed media works. Organized by Director John Olbrantz, the exhibition features 24 works from public and private collections in Washington, California, Idaho, and Illinois.”

But then again, that’s why it’s mixed media. You really have to get down to the three small university galleries to get the full effect of Mr. McCauley’s big f-u to 19th century’s more destructive values.

Take, for example, the work pictured here, called “Missionary Gifts” (1994), consisting of  stacked boxes labeled with things like “English language and names” and “conceptions of wealth.” It would be just another ironic commentary on how modern societies reinterpret the cultural values of the past if it weren’t so graceful in its execution — with each box closed snug and packed primly on top of the next as if by the hands of a Methodist minister himself.

The entire collection is like this — fiercely provocative and funny in a really satisfying, intelligent way. But it also struck me as a deeply personal body of work, one that never strays too far into autobiography to be inaccessible.  One work in the center gallery was particularly haunting, capturing the murky depths of stormy lake where four of the artist’s friends once drowned.

But my favorite remains “A Brief History of Monochromatic Painting.” McCauley believes that the roots of abstraction existed in nature long before artist discovered them. He points this out, convincingly, in a portrait of a polar bear whose multi-hued “white” fur is boxed out to create a mini-abstract portrait of its own.

Or as McCauley says it:

“If not careful, one could be examining the color white with a magnifying glass unaware of the general proximity to the polar bear.”

I love it.

Tucked in one corner of the southeast gallery, almost hidden from plain view, the curators have also displayed one of the more stirring and honest artist’s statements that I’ve read. Mr. McCauley is clearly no fan of the gobbledygook masquerading as erudition that many artists try to pass off as a statement.

While some of the placard phrases in the exhibition come across as a tad pedantic, I can say I’ve rarely felt a visual artist speaking so directly at me through words as well as his art.

TIP: THE MUSEUM IS FREE ON TUESDAYS! I suggest that everyone working near the museum take next Tuesday and visit the exhibition during the lunch break. Who needs food when art can sustain you.