November
2008
· IN THIS ISSUE ·
Pilgrim at Home
By Kim Stafford, RACC Fellowship Winner in Literature, 2008
(The Regional Arts & Culture Council is thrilled to award this year’s Individual Arts Fellowship in Literature to Kim Stafford. RACC selected Kim through a rigorous and competitive application and panel review process, and he will receive $20,000 for his work. Given his mastery of the written, spoken and sung word it seems fitting to let Kim tell us about what he has planned. --Eloise Damrosch)
Something mysterious happens when you get a call from the Regional Arts & Culture Council that begins, “Are you sitting down…?” The news that lightning has struck, that you have been chosen to receive a creative Fellowship for a year of focused work in art, leaves a scorch mark on the heart, and quickens the pulse to danger level. Many tributaries from your life now come rushing into one. It’s time to work in service to the culture of our region.
But couldn’t this happen without the fellowship? Couldn’t an act of will swell the river of your creative attention? Yes, and this is what I tell my writing students every day: Choose your calling. Recognize what is at stake. Establish your creative practice. Find friends who can help you seek your most authentic imperative to create….
Strangely, though, I have found it hard to be selfish like that. Is that the right word --selfish? To focus one’s attention on writing, painting, photography, dance or some other semi-self-indulgent discovery process can run against the grain of a work ethic that has kept me at a college for 25 one-year contracts, that urges me to take on almost every little job that comes my way. To turn aside from at least some of that clamor in favor of pure creative time requires a high-torque psychic shift. Now I must turn to art first, and fit my obedient life of labor around that kindled flame.
Can you tell I’m giddy? I’m babbling. But I do want to witness for this mystery: We say we love art. We say we want to experience cumulative practice toward haunting structures of discovery, to be carpenters in the brash crew for making a City of Art. But we defer --or at least I have long deferred --total attention to creative discovery. I work part time at Lewis & Clark College, and part time at the Pacific Northwest College of Art…and I respond to several dozen requests each year for additional small jobs in writing and teaching here and there.
My project for the RACC fellowship --Pilgrim at Home: Local Encounters Beyond the Epoch of the Car --is to wander. My project is to venture on foot or by bike or bus to Powell Butte, to the deepest shadows of Forest Park, to neighborhoods and river banks, to the source of stream, path, intuitive whim --and there to report in writing on the people I meet, what I learn from resonant places, what wants to be said through me, and to consider what our local experience might be like after the era of the automobile.
Somebody has to do it. How might we tune our culture in a new way to find pleasures and be citizens without this beloved machine we live for?
A friend once took a sabbatical in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He wandered the streets with his notebook, trying to be like Faulkner, he thought, to be a writer of stories that would hold up to the master’s way. But in the wee hours on Decatur Street one night he encountered the street musician they call Bucket Man --the one with drum sticks and five-gallon plastic pail for wild syncopation every day at Jackson Square. Without warning, rapid fire, Bucket man demanded of my friend: “Why are you here? What have you learned? Have you put yourself in danger?” Then Bucket Man disappeared, and my friend wandered on with a new agenda for his seeking. These three questions from a familiar stranger became an assignment for the writer in service to his city.
My plan is to open my attention to what the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gassett calls “meditations,” or “exercises in intellectual love,” or “salvations” --short evocative reports that strive to save places that speak, people who witness, ideas that beg to be considered as we all seek kinship with each other and the earth.
All it takes, really, is a notebook, and the freedom to turn aside.
To read more about Kim Stafford’s Fellowship Award visit www.racc.org/fellowshipstafford. Also visit Kim’s site at www.lclark.edu/~krs.
From RACC Executive Director:
Eloise Damrosch
Let’s Celebrate and Pull Together
In its October 3rd issue the Portland Business Journal named this year’s top 25 business donors to the arts, celebrating Portland General Electric at #1, followed by Bank of America/US Trust, Key Bank, Standard Insurance and Wells Fargo. In an accompanying column, PGE Vice President Carol Dillin said, “Arts and culture contribute tremendous value to our region’s economic development and quality of life.” RACC salutes our community’s generous businesses for their contributions to the arts, and for offering workplace giving campaigns for their employees, all to help ensure a vital arts and culture community.
History and experience have taught us that in the face of disaster people naturally turn to the arts for solace, strength, inspiration, and hope. Many remember the free concert spontaneously offered to the public by the Oregon Symphony right after 9/11. Today we face a new challenge - that of serious financial uncertainty - and during this time it is essential that arts and culture not only survive, but thrive.
National economist Jeremy Nowak has called for our country’s most creative people to now lead efforts to help get us through these difficult times, and to keep the public’s hope and strength alive. It will take the financial wizards, the best of our electeds, and our strongest business leaders to find smart solutions to the tough problems. The rest of us must work together to support and lift up the creative community as they keep our spirits high and hopeful.
Join us on November 13th as we celebrate business giving to the arts at the NW/BCA Breakfast of Champions, and please do what you can to support the arts this fall. The arts need us, and we need the arts now more than ever.
Eloise can be reached at edamrosch@racc.org.
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Candidates’ Stand on Art & Culture Issues
RACC and Northwest Business for Culture & the Arts asked run-off candidates for local elected office about their positions on important arts and culture issues. Visit www.racc.org for their responses. You will also find a link to the arts positions of Barack Obama and John McCain, the two presidential candidates. For voter information visit www.sos.state.or.us/elections. Be sure to vote by Nov 4th.
Donate to the Oregon Cultural Trust
The Oregon Cultural Trust is a statewide cultural plan to raise significant new funds to invest in Oregon’s arts, humanities and heritage. Before the end of the year, be sure to donate to your favorite Oregon arts and culture groups, then make a matching donation to the Oregon Cultural Trust in order to claim a 2008 tax credit for 100% of your Trust gift. Visit www.culturaltrust.org for details.
2009 RACC Artists Workshop Series
 From January through June of 2009, RACC is offering 10 professional development workshops for artists in all disciplines who reside in the tri-county Portland region. These workshops are offered as part of RACC’s commitment to provide relevant and
affordable learning opportunities that help artists become more successful in their careers. Sessions include public art submission how to, marketing, legal concerns for artists, grant writing, new media formatting and a panel discussion with local gallery representatives and curators discussing artists’ resumes and portfolios. For an updated schedule and to register, visit www.racc.org/workshops or call 503.823.5111 or email info@racc.org. Registration opens November 17, 2008.
Nov 6 First Thursday at City Hall: Music Matters & Stitch by Stitch
The November City Hall Art Show is centered on the notion that Music Matters and it will highlight local artists and their representations of our local music community. Come enjoy the sights and sounds of our local music scene: band photographs, paintings, concert poster art, and music memorabilia. Live performances will feature some of our best, brightest, and youngest musicians. Also on exhibit Women Helping Women: Stitch by Stitch, a collaborative quilt which showcases the work of women from Darrai Noor, Afghanistan and over 25 American women artists from the Women’s Caucus for Art and Rubia. 5-7pm at Portland City Hall, 1221 SW 4th Ave. The event is free and open to the public.
The Shadow City, at the Portland Building from Nov 10 - Dec 5
Photo by Aaron Rogosin |
RACC presents this temporary installation by Portland artist Gabe Shaughnessy. Based on an idea that began as a temporary art installation at Diversion, the 2007 Regional Burning Man Decompression for Portland, Shaughnessy is presenting the familiar image of a city skyline with recycled building materials playing a major role. Portland Building Installation Space, 1120 SW 5th Avenue, 7am - 6pm, Monday through Friday. For more information, click here.
Come to Art Spark Nov 20th
Join RACC on the third Thursday of every month for this networking of artists. Laika will be the host and show some sneak peeks of their new animated feature film. Art Spark is from 5-7pm at the Living Room Theaters, 341 SW 10th. Visit www.portlandartspark.com.
ART at RACC
Currently on display at RACC is artwork created by four 2008 Marylhurst University BFA recipients. Photographs by Sara La Du and Rhonda Forsberg, paintings by Rieko Warrens, and prints by Claire Strickland (at left her Water Mediation). The artwork will be on display and open to the public until January 31st throughout RACC offices and conference rooms at 108 NW 9th, Suite 300.
Current RACC Opportunities
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Public Art Opportunities
- Gateway District Public Art. RACC invites US artists/artist teams to submit qualifications for a public art opportunity in Portland’s Gateway District. The art budget is $60,000. To apply for this project, go to www.callforentry.org. Deadline: 11/17/08
- Portland Building Installation Space 2009-2010 - artists/teams in Oregon or Washington can submit proposals for temporary installations in the Portland Building. Six installations will be featured in one-month installations. $1,000 honorarium. Visit www.racc.org. Deadline: 12/1/08.
- Portland Building Installation Space 2009 - art students/teams enrolled in an Oregon college/university can submit proposals for temporary installations in the Portland Building. Three student installations will be featured in one-month installations. $500 honorarium. Visit www.racc.org. Deadline: 12/1/08.
November Events Funded in part
by RACC
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Portland Youth Philharmonic: Fall Concert
Nov 11
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, SW Broadway at Main, Portland, 503.223.5939
www.portlandyouthphil.org
The Portland Youth Philharmonic, America’s first youth orchestra, opens its 85th Season with the Fall Concert and newly appointed Conductor and Music Director David Hattner (pictured).
Portland Youth Philharmonic receives General Support funding from RACC
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White Bird’s Uncaged Series: Kidd Pivot
Photo by Chris Randle |
Nov 12-15
Kaul Auditorium, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock, Portland, 503.245.1600
www.whitebird.org
In Lost Action, Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite has assembled a dynamic group of seven dancers who sculpt space in real-time, working inside a form - dance - that is constantly in a state of vanishing.
White Bird receives General Support funding from RACC
“Uncaged Series” was funded in part by a RACC Opportunity Grant
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Shu-Ju Wang: Relay/Replay~ Artist’s Books that Illuminate the Creative Lives of the Elderly
Nov 15-Dec 31 John Wilson Special Collections Central Library, 801 S.W. 10th
Dec 1-14 Rose Schnitzer Manor, 6140 SW Boundary Street
Portland artist Shu-Ju Wang spent eight months working with four seniors at various stages of memory loss. Through conversation, painting, printmaking, and collage, she engaged these delightful individuals; together they created artwork that became the foundation to this collection of artist’s books.
This project was funded in part by a RACC Project Grant
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Angelle Hebert: Grub, a full evening of contemporary dance
Nov 13-15
IFCC, 5340 N. Interstate, Portland. 971.221.2518
www.rubberteeth.com
Grub explores the complexities, oddities, and layers of group dynamics, human relationships, and the relationship to self. In a world where human contact is no longer a necessity for survival, disconnection and isolation thrive, causing individual existence to drift and obscure from reality and manufactured experiences become dominant.
This project was funded in part by a RACC Project Grant
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Tears of Joy Theatre: The Jungle Book
Photo by Kathy Fry |
Nov 14-30
Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, Portland, 503.248.0557
www.tojt.org
Explore the Indian jungle with Mowgli as he tries to discover to which family he belongs. Monkey? Wolf? Man? The audience participates as members of the wolf pack as this powerful play unfolds.
Tears of Joy Theatre receives General Support funding from RACC
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For
a listing of many more events in the
metropolitan Portland area funded in part by RACC see
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