 BELOVED MOTHER AT ART GYM |
Most of us know a pack rat or two. The souvenirs of yesteryear that we leave behind for others to disperse and dispose of are the subject of Paul Middendorf and Brandy Cochrane’s affecting collaboration, The Dregs, at the Marylhurst University Art Gym. About two years ago, Cochrane managed an estate sale for a recently deceased septuagenarian named Larry Forsyth. For decades, Forsyth had lived in a North Portland house with his father and mother, both committed pack rats. He continued to live there after they died. Going through the home after Forsyth’s death, Cochrane was struck by the volume of accumulated nostalgia and suggested to Middendorf that they repurpose everything that didn’t sell into the current installation.
Laid out fastidiously on the Art Gym’s floors and walls are Forsyth’s childhood report cards, a lifetime of photos and slides, 154 bars of travel soap, and six jigsaw puzzles themed around the 1980s prime-time drama Dallas. The man had also lovingly preserved 46 of his mother’s hairbrushes, 21 of her aprons, and dozens upon dozens of her nightgowns, corsets, bras and panties. As the artists continued excavating, they discovered gay porn, leather sex harnesses and a mattress with conspicuous brown stains. According to Middendorf, it was only after the death of Forsyth’s mother that he emerged from decades of sexual repression, spending his final decade and a half living out the fantasies he had long held in check.
To underline this, the artists stepped outside of strict documentarian presentation, embroidering the soiled mattress with an image of two men cavorting and covering Forsyth’s favorite chair (in which he is believed to have died) with fabric octopus tentacles sewn together from his mother’s undergarments. This Norman Bates-worthy conceit is the show’s most fascinating: the juxtaposition of the wholesome and lurid components of a human life examined posthumously. We are left with a strange sympathy for this man, who after a lifetime of playing the Good Son was freed by his mother’s death to finally let his freak flag fly. Kink notwithstanding, Middendorf and Cochrane show respect for the deceased, reminding us how complex a thing the human psyche is, how diligently we sweep our bogeymen under the rug and how virile those goblins are when they wriggle out for a last hurrah.
SEE IT: The Dregs at Marylhurst University Art Gym, 17600 Pacific Highway, 636-8141. Closes Feb. 11.
First, Larry didn't die in that one chair, he actually died in the hospital. And the chair wasn't necessarily his favorite (it isn't even an antique), as there were several well-used recliner/wingback type chairs in the house. This one was just the last one standing.
Also, Larry didn't "preserve" his mothers things so much as leave them in his (large, amazing) attic and not touch them for decades. Finally, the 46 brushes are not all hair brushes, they are a variety of all sorts of weird and wonderful brushes (for shoeshine, for dentures, for ???) that I just started collecting as I cleaned out the house. I had no idea of the volume of brushes until it was all over. There are, however, two neat old hairbrushes.
I know these are minor points in the overall picture, but I just wanted to make sure these things were corrected.
Again, thanks for writing about this show, your favorable review is much appreciated!
Sincerely,
Brandy Cochrane
I was acquainted with Larry, the original owner of the materials used for this exhibit, for about ten years, up until the time of his death.
I'm a bit puzzled about the details of Larry's life expressed in the article, since they are pretty inaccurate. I imagine most readers won't care one way or another, but I'd like to point out that far from 'emerging from decades of sexual repression after his mother's death', Larry had a lively sexual history spanning his entire life, about which he was not in the slightest bit shy. And he didn't collect (read: fetishize) his mother's underwear, it was in the attic, along with, you know, poker chips and soap. And so on. This is not a Norman Bates story, this is the story of a bon vivant winding down a busy life in a house cluttered with mementos of his family's life.
I know Brandy Cochrane knows Larry's story well, both from a careful reading of the materials in the house, and from talking to me. I surmise that the reporter for this article either didn't talk to her, or didn't transcribe what he heard very carefully.
Of course, this is an art exhibit, not a biography, and I'm hesitant to risk drawing attention away from the project's self-evident merits. I'd just like to suggest that before making such concrete assertions about Larry, the person, as opposed to Larry, a character in an art installation, the reporter should have taken more care.