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BY D.K. ROW
243-2122 EXT. 313
You may not know him by name, but you've probably seen him around. Sculptor, curator, former gallery assistant and--next to Thomas Lauderdale--maybe Portland's most prodigious man-about-town, Paul Arensmeyer is a man of many faces. Though he's one of the art community's most multifaceted talents, Arensmeyer didn't start out in the realm of the visual arts. Born in Choteau, Mont., in 1960, Arensmeyer attended Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., where he received a degree in, of all things, business administration. Hard to believe now, but his first job after graduation was selling copier machines. In the early 1980s, while living in Seattle, Arensmeyer attended a First Thursday gallery walk. Soon, he began making art himself. Arensmeyer spent the remainder of the decade working as a trade-show contractor, eventually relocating to Portland because of his job. In 1992 the company he worked for folded, and Arensmeyer, throwing caution to the wind, set out to make a living as an artist. Since then, he has immersed himself in one visual art project after another: exhibiting his sculpture in group and solo exhibitions; curating shows, notably The Tool Show for PICA; and, in perhaps his most visible position, working as gallery assistant at the Quartersaw Gallery for four years. (Arensmeyer left officially at the beginning of 1998.) His curious eye and quick, hammy wit have been colorful additions to an otherwise monochromatic Pearl District scene. But what may really set Arensmeyer apart is his utter reasonableness in a professional and social climate dominated by incestuous cliques and entanglements. No matter what direction the prevailing winds are blowing, he goes his own way--a rare thing today. Earlier this month Arensmeyer sat down with WW visual art critic D.K. Row in the Heathman Hotel lobby bar to talk about curating, John Buchanan and the "booming" Portland art world. Willamette Week: You look at art in three totally different ways. One as a commercial prospect, one in the purist form and one in the curatorial capacity. Does it ever seem schizophrenic to you? Paul Arensmeyer: That's a good observation. I think a lot of people don't realize that I do operate in three entirely separate ways. When I'm in my studio, I'm in a vacuum, I'm just doing my own thing. The original reason I wanted to work in a gallery was so that I could use art to support myself while I got rolling making my own art. Now what I enjoy most about working in the gallery is helping other artists, helping them move their careers along. If you had your druthers, of the three, which is the most gratifying for you? Doing my own sculpture, absolutely. Being an artist. Curating isn't as gratifying? Oh, it's definitely gratifying. If I had to select only one, any of the three would be hard to give up. In some ways curating is a lot like sculpture in that I'm gathering elements and putting them together in a finished product. But in the end it's not personal enough? It's still certainly personal, but what makes my own sculpture more gratifying than the others is the experience of being in my studio in that vacuum and just going. I certainly stop and clap my hands at what artists bring me for curated shows, but it's still not the same rush as when I finish a piece that I'm happy with. A lot of people think that the visual arts are going to experience a boom here, a renaissance. Do you think it'll happen? "Art boom" is such a nebulous term, because who's ever really seen one? From what I hear, Portland is becoming somewhat known as a place to find good art. And I think good art is coming out of Portland. How would you compare it with the
situation five years ago? I think the biggest indicator that we've got a healthy market here is that a number of galleries that opened three to five years ago are still open. You don't find that in Seattle and San Francisco. Is Portland a good place for a young artist to begin a career? Well, yeah. You look at that set of galleries. That's largely who they're pushing--working artists. I do think it's a good place to get a start. Outside those of us in the art world, most people's exposure to art comes through First Thursday. Do gallery owners still think it's an important thing? Obviously they see a value in it or else they wouldn't do it. The value in First Thursday is not sales-related. I think the best thing about First Thursday is that people who aren't really part of the art world realize it's a casual place where you can just walk in. They're not highbrow. You don't need an appointment. And they start looking at art. That's where I came from. Isn't it mostly a social event? It's certainly a social event, but it gets people coming into the galleries. It gets people who never really look at art in that habit of coming to galleries. But like I said before, if it gets people to start to look at art and start to understand it, then it's worth it. There's a cynical viewpoint that what is happening in Portland is what happened in Seattle. That the boom commercialized the scene there and a lot of artists went elsewhere to show. Do you see that happening here? I don't see that happening here. I don't know if it was exactly commercialization in Seattle that forced artists to show elsewhere as much as a lack of galleries. Artists do come to Portland a lot from Seattle because there aren't enough venues there. It's not that Seattle has second-rate artists, it's that there just isn't room for them. Another big difference is that in Portland, we have to work harder to sell art. We don't have as big a population that can just drop cash on paintings or sculpture. So we have to cultivate that market. Consequently, it makes us friendlier. You can walk into Seattle galleries and not have more than three people say hello to you all day. They just don't seem to care that you're there. In Portland, the galleries are much more friendly, much more comfortable to walk into. They're more likely to answer your questions even if they don't think you're going to buy. One criticism of art in Portland is that it's a little bit provincial, not really savvy. You've been exposed to art all over the country. Do you think that that's accurate? I think that in the Northwest, we're basically isolationist, which means we don't pay a lot of attention to what's going on in the rest of the country. I think it makes art from the Northwest fresher. I think artists in the Northwest, for the most part, are in that same visual vacuum that I talked about. They're doing what they do. They're not worried about whether they fit the New York trend or the L.A. trend. Art's not fashionable. It's not about what everyone's painting this year, what everyone's wearing this year. The whole thing about constantly comparing us to New York...I mean, fuck New York. I think we're better off. I think you get more art that's true to itself because of that isolationist tendency. Let's talk about PICA. You've worked with them. What sort of difference have they made in the city? I think they've gotten a lot of the younger audience out supporting the arts that were not before. They've rejuvenated some activity among an older set, the PCVA (Portland Center for Visual Arts). One of my favorite things about PICA is that it's gotten performance artists and visual artists intermingling, which I didn't see happening in Portland before. That's been one of the best benefits for me, getting involved with other types of artists to understand the differences in how they get their creative energy out there and how I get my creative energy out there. And it's just brought a ton of great stuff into Portland that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. We have one museum in Portland, and I think one of the pressures of being the only museum is the desire to be all things to all people, and that inevitably means you're going to fail. What role should the museum play? That's a good question. It's almost an impossible question. Right now, I look at the museum as being John Buchanan. John Buchanan came to Portland to take a museum in pretty poor financial shape, and he fixed that part of the museum. And that basically means doing whatever he can to bring a ton of money to the museum. That means bringing in "blockbuster" shows, shows that appeal to the masses. The China Tombs. I went and saw it, but it didn't jazz me. The Egypt show that's coming up, that's not gonna jazz me. Chihuly? I enjoyed the Chihuly show. It didn't change my life. It didn't change the way I look at art, but I enjoyed seeing it. And I don't know how it's doing financially but I'm sure it's making good money. That's what John Buchanan came here to do, and he's doing a good job of that. So you think it's sort of a necessary evil to have these kinds of shows at the museum? Absolutely. You have to remember that the art museum isn't just for us who are actively involved in the art market. It's nice that the museum has shows that appeal to a broader audience. If it were just our art museum, it'd be...it'd be nice! [laughs] But any museum's function is to appeal to a larger audience than just those of us who are making or collecting art. You show in Memphis, where the Buchanans are from. How did the people in Memphis receive them? They didn't like him while he was there, but like I said before, their museum is in a firmer financial position. He's not a dirty word in Memphis as far as I can tell. Do you think the same thing will happen in Portland? Yeah, I do think so. What about some of the criticisms that have been leveled against the Buchanans: being insensitive and unresponsive to the local art community, for one. Do you think this is justified? I don't think John Buchanan is an art museum director, I think he's a museum director. An art museum has different pressure from the local community than a science and industry or historical museum because the city doesn't have a big community of science and industry people who want to make sure they're going to be shown in this museum. It's a different set of conditions. He's a business person. He's here to have a financial impact on the museum and not to be remembered for the innovative shows he brought. Like the Buchanans, there are a lot of people in the art world who aren't from the region. Do you think there's a resistance to people who aren't born and bred here? I think there's less resistance than talk would have you think. Whenever an area's growing fast, there's always talk about outsiders not being welcome. Does it go back to the idea you were mentioning before about being isolationist? Yeah. I think we're more isolationist about not paying attention to what's going on outside than we are about wanting to keep outsiders out. I think where this resistance may come from is from outsiders who are constantly calling Portland provincial. I don't think Portland is provincial. I think it just has its own character and is happy with that. |
