1999
Oregon Biennial
Portland Art Museum 1219 SW Park Ave., 228-5611
Aug. 1-Sept. 19
Museum admission, $4-$7.50
The show's opening takes place 6 pm Saturday, July 31.
Swallow Press' billboard will be located at Southeast 7th
Avenue and Madison Street and will be visible to drivers crossing
the Hawthorne Bridge.
Biennial artists will discuss their work at the museum Sundays
in August at 2 pm.
Every two years the Portland Art Museum blesses us with the
Oregon Biennial, a snapshot of the state's current arts community.
Getting into this exhibition is a coup for both new and seasoned
artists. It's one of the only times contemporary Oregonians
get to see their work in the museum. The Oregon Biennial is
also kind of like high school; it gathers an enormous variety
of types under one roof and calls them peers. It's rare you'll
see another art exhibition--particularly one in a museum--whose
participants span so many genres, purposes and stages in their
careers. There are the swaggering seniors who've been around
the biennial block and the giddy freshmen who are surprised
as hell to see their work in such hallowed halls. We asked
a pack of these artists to hang out in the cafeteria with
us and dish about what it's like to be chosen for the sweetest
extra-curricular activity on campus.
CAST OF PLAYERS
|
|
Kristan Kennedy and C. Topher
Sinkinson are the young hipsters who formed the
artist team Swallow Press in 1996--Topher is the quiet
one. Their biennial entry is a billboard
in Southeast Portland, the fourth piece in their series
"How Billboards Help Us," which explores the reclamation
of memory by placing nostalgic images on billboards.
The billboard obtained for the biennial is located near
the Hawthorne Bridge. To accompany it, inside the museum
a slide viewer will flash pictures and text at regular
intervals, re-creating the experience of quickly passing
an image on a billboard. |
|
|
Sarah Ellen Taylor is
a first-year biennial student. You can count on her
to come up with the sassiest book covers in the school.
A printmaker, she has lived in Portland for six years.
Her project is an installation of 17 tarot
cards, which will be laid out for biennial visitors
to handle and interact with. Instead of images of kings
and swords, the black-and-white etchings depict coins
or hair barrettes, making archetypes of everyday objects.
|
|
|
Lucinda Parker has
earned a varsity letter in biennial--she's been in it
five or six times (she's stopped counting). An abstract
painter whose large canvases emphasize expressionism
and gesture, Parker gravitates toward shapes that have
emotional resonance and describes her two pieces for
this year's biennial as containing "poignant
flying forms." She has been in Portland for 36 years
and teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
|
|
|
Michael Knutson is
a big man on the art campus. This will be the fourth
time his geometric expressionist paintings
have been in the Oregon Biennial. A painting teacher
at Reed College who calls himself "an old-fashioned
painter," he has lived in Portland since 1982. |
|
|
Heidi Schwegler is a bold biennial freshman,
the kind who could start wearing chalkboard erasers
as earmuffs and everyone else would follow. She moved
to Portland after graduating from the University of
Oregon last year. She was trained as a metal smith
and jeweler, but she's used those skills to make art
that is content-based, not just decorative. In the
biennial, she will display 45 of her "mouthpieces,"
bright, candy-like objects designed to fit in the
mouth--kind of a cross between a microphone and a
pacifier. They look like functional items but have
no real purpose. Displayed in a glass case, the mouthpieces
are fetishized, creating in us a desire to acquire
them, whether or not we need them.
|
|
|
Martin Houston and Gene Faulkner are
the guys always slinking around in shop class after
school. They've created an installation of six pieces
specifically for their first biennial. Each piece
consists of a View-Master attached to
a vertical pole. The View-Master, which can slide
up and down the pole to adjust to the viewer's height,
will be stocked with a wheel of photographs of the
biennial show itself, taken on different days during
the hanging of the show. This provides a way for viewers
to experience the same exhibition at different points
in time.
|
|
|
Kathryn Kanjo is the teacher everyone has
a crush on. As the Portland Art Museum's curator of
contemporary art, she chose the artists for the exhibition.
She has been with the museum for 3 1/2
years, and this is her second time curating an Oregon
Biennial.
|
Willamette Week: Why did you apply to the
biennial?
Heidi Schwegler: I'd have a hard time showing my
work in Portland because of the nature of my work. After
being here for a year, it seems like there have been one
or two venues where this type of work will actually be shown,
and I figured this would probably be one of them.
 Kristan
Kennedy: Topher and I applied in '96 and were turned
down--rightly so, I think. We were fresh out of school and,
I think, a little naive in our work. The process of forming
Swallow Press has definitely catapulted us into a different
section of reality; we're like a business. We were excited
to have the opportunity to have Kathryn look at our work,
because she's one of the first curators to put on a show
at the museum that we've responded to.
Lucinda Parker: I've been here a long time. I've
been in a lot of biennials, and I've not been in a lot of
biennials, and so every time I apply I think, "Why am I
putting myself through this again?" I do it because I firmly
believe that people who have been around a long time and
had a lot of exposure should still expose themselves to
a curator and be told yes or no. And if you think it gets
any easier when you've been around longer, you're wrong.
Michael Knutson: I apply to every biennial, and it seems
like they take me every other time. I guess I think of it
as civic duty. I was talking to people in the last couple
of weeks who don't apply, haven't applied for years. It's
a problem, and it puzzles me. Some of them, I think, don't
get around to it; others don't want to feel left out and
be once more rejected.
Martin Houston: When I said to Gene that we needed
to get slides to put together this proposal for the biennial,
it was like, "Yeah, whatever." And then when we got it he
was like, "You're kidding." We were totally surprised we
got it.
Gene Faulkner: Yeah, my work has been somewhat on
the back burner for a couple of years because I work in
the field so extensively [Faulkner is also a commercial
photographer]. I cannot show my own work as much as I should.
So I was somewhat passive about it. The collaboration with
Marty was a great strength for me because of the inspiration
that we get from each other.
Sarah Ellen Taylor: A lot of my work as a printmaker
has gotten pushed to the side as I do other projects with
art besides just making art. So the best thing for me about
getting into the show is that it's a big kick in the ass.
Doing work in the studio is unpaid, and I really need a
deadline or an award or a client or something to get me
in there. The best thing about groups shows, and definitely
the best thing about this show and all the young people
in it, is that it really is a shot in the arm. It's helped
me tremendously this month to make being in the studio a
priority.
 Lucinda
Parker: I think the biennial is very important because
it's one of the few open-ended places for a group of people
to show who aren't in galleries. It's the opposite of the
blockbuster thinking that the museum sometimes suffers from.
There's a whole host of people saying, "It doesn't cover
everybody, it doesn't cover me," but nevertheless it does
cover this place. It looks different every time you see
it.
Kathryn Kanjo: You were speaking about what sponsors
like in an exhibition. This show was actually something
that sponsors wanted. Their support enables us to tour it,
and they like that kind of exposure, that statewide presence.
When you place it in other museums around the state, it's
good that it's in those cities, but it also stops them from
doing that sort of presentation themselves on the local
scene.
Lucinda Parker: When you take the biennial down
to Ashland or Eugene, do you get complaints that there weren't
a lot of artists from those areas in the biennial?
Kathryn Kanjo: Yes. But of course, the way that
the entries shake out, 75 percent of the applications were
from Portland.
Lucinda Parker: But you didn't say 75 percent of
the people who get in were from Portland...
Kathryn Kanjo: More like 80, 84 percent.
WW: Do you think about that when you're making
your selections? 
Kathryn Kanjo: No, not really. That's the beauty
of alphabetizing. The format is that I look at it artist
by artist and object by object. But I have the application;
it's not blind.
WW: Marty and Gene, how do you think your
work stands up in a museum atmosphere? Is it weird to think
of it being in a museum?
Martin Houston: We'd actually done kind of a version
of this piece up in Seattle. It was really a reaction to
that exhibition space--it was all white. It looks incredibly
spare, for one thing, but once people figure out that they
can actually touch it, that they can actually use it, somehow
the spareness goes away.
Gene Faulkner: I find that the piece, before you
interact with it, somewhat intimidates you. Once you go
participate in it, it's very user friendly. Because of the
View-Master aspect, it has a nostalgic part to it, and it
also lets people actually handle something in the museum,
and I like that interaction. It can be adjusted for any
age so it's age-friendly. At one point, the viewer is down
low and at another point, 10 minutes later, it might be
moved up high. It's kind of interesting to see that interaction
in a gallery or museum space.
WW: Kristan and Topher, this is a museum
show, but your piece is completely out of the realm of the
museum. How do you see the two locations interconnecting?
Kristan Kennedy: It's very important to have the
billboard off-site because that was the original concept
of the project, to attack the viewership that doesn't go
into the museum. It's not a Burger King ad, but it could
be. We like to play with that, and the only way we can is
if we stick within the billboard vernacular and it's out
there on the street. The accompanying text and visuals in
the museum are their own individual piece. There will be
cards with an image of the billboard and an address on the
back, so people can go visit the billboard.
Heidi Schwegler: The only other place where I could
imagine my work is in an examination room. I see a lot of
similarities between the format of the examination room
and the museum in terms of it being very controlled. The
walls are painted very pristinely--the atmosphere is similar.
There is a certain objective relationship going on between
the viewer and the painting, or the doctor and the patient.
WW: Lucinda, both you and Michael teach.
Do you see your teaching influence on the art scene?
 Lucinda
Parker: There are a couple of my students in the biennial,
but I wouldn't claim to be their most important teacher--that
is a dangerous claim to make.
Michael Knutson: Well, most of my students leave town.
Lucinda Parker: A lot of mine are around, because
I teach at PNCA. I think it's exciting, even if the student
goes in totally the opposite direction that you do--that's
good, maybe even better. I'm not there to make a whole bunch
of people work like I work. I love it that my students are
going in other directions; it's flattering. I once had a
student tell me he had a nightmare that he was in an empty
gallery and was making paintings like me.
WW: Would your biennial pieces work in a
gallery scenario?
Sarah Ellen Taylor: I don't have gallery representation,
but I will say that I have tried to show this body of work
in Portland galleries, but the galleries have always backed
out. It concerns them that my work is not saleable. I think
it's great that the museum is available to show work that
it hasn't been possible to show in commercial galleries.
Heidi Schwegler: I think the only other option is
something like PDX Gallery. It seems like they're consistently
representing people who create not market-based work.
Lucinda Parker: I don't consider my work market-based.
Heidi Schwegler: Neither do I.
Lucinda Parker: Well, I'm just telling you, I'm
represented by a gallery, and I don't consider myself market-based.
WW: Lucinda, what would your ideal biennial
be? Would it represent a whole bunch of different genres,
would it focus on one more than another, or would it be
blind to genre?
Lucinda Parker: I hope it would be blind to genre.
You just pick the stuff that really spoke to you. I would
assume that's what Kathryn did.
Michael Knutson: My ideal biennial would be in New
York or somewhere not in Portland, somewhere larger. That's
a fantasy I've had for 30 years.
Lucinda Parker: Every time I get in a show I think,
"This is going to change my life," and it doesn't usually
change my life. It changes certain things about your life,
but more subtly than you had hoped. You work alone and you
have this kind of wonderful vision of somehow breaking through,
and then when you do, you think, "Well, now that I've done
that, what am I going to do?" It's back to the same life--my
studio, myself, my problems, my work.
Michael Knutson: In every biennial I've grown to
intensely dislike particular works of mine. I never show
slides of any of it. I have destroyed two of the paintings
that have been in previous biennials and later repainted
others of them. Based upon my previous experience, I worry
about which pieces I show will then inevitably be thrown
out. I always get intense creeps when I see my work out
in a gallery.
Lucinda Parker: But there's something out there
that's good for you. You know, if you don't ever show your
work, you don't ever see it objectively. It's that split
second when you first see it hanging. You walk into a space
and you think, "Oh my God, who the hell painted that?" It's
so hard to get an objective point of view of art when you
make it, because you become so impassioned about it in order
to make it. Then when you see it, all your passion is there
for you to see, but not everybody else is seeing it unless
you've somehow done it right.
WW: Kristan, if you were pronounced ruler
of the biennial, what would you do to change it?
Kristan Kennedy: I'm excited that the group is small
and that I really do think it is representing little pockets
of activity around Portland. I think that Topher and I see
each other as part of a larger group of people, of peers
who are working outside of the gallery system and getting
their own events and funding for projects that really move
them. We would like to see more of that. More performance,
maybe, or bigger installations--not being afraid to give
a bunch of space to someone who wants to fill a room with
chattering teeth or something.
Sarah Ellen Taylor: I feel this show says a lot
about what's going on. There's a lot of people doing things
like 'zines or work that bucks the idea of galleries. Recently,
I walked down the street and there was a newspaper stand
in the middle of the sidewalk. I walked around it, and then
I turned back around and realized someone had made it and
put it there, and there was art work and stickers inside.
They had gone to all the trouble to find this object, change
it and put it right in the middle of the sidewalk where
someone on their way to get beer would stop and look at
it and think.
Lucinda Parker: It's interesting to look at old
biennial catalogs and see how they do and don't overlap.
It's a whole series of people pursuing things, some of which
succeed, in retrospect, some of which don't. I'll look at
an old biennial catalog from, say, '68, and I'll see a wonderful
painter who I really liked, and I never saw them anything
from that person again. It's somewhat the vagaries of fashion.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published July 28, 1999
|
