Friderike Heuer

 

Photo First: Hope and joy

An evening showcase of student dancers from Faubion and Harriet Tubman schools highlights the talent and promise of a new generation

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Published January 24, 2020, in CULTURE, DANCE, FEATURED

Jump for Joy: Lighting up the Winter Showcase.

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER

There were at least two people in awe at Da Vinci Arts Middle School on a mid-January evening while attending the Winter Showcase of Faubion and Harriet Tubman Middle School: this young lady and me.

As Harriet Tubman Principal Natasha Jackson, in unison with teachers, staff and musicians from the other organizations, put it: People of all races and all backgrounds are coming together to celebrate art and the achievement of these young dancers who have worked hard to present an incredible program. Both schools have a diverse student population, with many languages on their website to get information to all those parents who have newly arrived. To see all those different faces merge into dance ensembles that became one in the movement really represented hope: for a future where unity fights back the forces of segregation.

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‘Nothing at all of this is fixed’

"It struck me as joyful": A visit to Dorothy Goode's studio reveals a merging, overlapping, playful kinship with Calder and Modersohn-Becker

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Published January 20, 2020, in CULTURE, VISUAL ART

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER

Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren, 
Das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.

That which glitters is born for the moment;
The genuine remains intact for future days.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust eine Tragödie, Kapitel 2: Vorspiel auf dem Theater (1808)

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I WAS SO COLD WHEN I LEFT Dorothy Goode‘s studio after a visit last week that I could barely get the key into the car ignition. During our first-ever encounter we had huddled, both in down jackets and hats, in front of a little electric stove in her unheated warehouse abode. The space had beautiful views, brilliant light, and a damp iciness that crept into my arthritic bones. I could not help but think of Frans Hals, that radical observer of humanity, who was so impoverished at the end of his life that in the Dutch winter of 1664 he accepted three loads of peat on public charity, otherwise he would have frozen to death. (Of course, he then had to portray the administrators of said charity, the Governesses of an Alms House in 17th century Haarlem – those faces all-telling.)

Dorothy Goode, painter.

Not that Goode would accept alms. Ever. Fiercely independent, proud, accomplished and not at all risk-averse, she’ll probably persuade you that rheumatism is the price you pay for pursuing your art. Or so I wager. After all, I have to run on the impressions of two hours of conversation with an artist intensely protective of her inner life.

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New art territory in Oregon City

At the Museum of the Oregon Territory, a dynamic partnership and a "gutsy art of overcoming" create an art show and an auction

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Published January 14, 2020, in CULTURE, NEWS & NOTES

Jugaad: Originally from Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, and Urdu.

Definition in the Oxford English Dictionary: “a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.”

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ONE OF THE SIDE EFFECTS OF BEING GERMAN is that everybody comments on the weird words your language generates, and in particular their length. Yes, it’s strange to have (real!) words like Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (loosely translated as the law for the task assignment of monitoring beef labeling), but then again, their length is proportional to the length of German sentences that extend across half a page. Other languages, less often mentioned, engage in similar stretching exercises, Turkish, Greenlandic and Finnish among them. How is this for a lingual marathon? Ymmärtämättömyyksissäni suuntautumisvaihtoehtoni opintotukihakemuskaavakkeeseen kuulakärkikynällä kirjoitin is a Finnish statement, I am told, that translates into, “In a state of not fully comprehending, I wrote my major thesis on the form for financial aid provided by the state using a ballpoint pen.” Just saying. …

Bethany Hayes, Erratic 1

In reactive fashion, I have become very fond of truly short words that convey incredibly complex meanings. Jugaad is one of them. Fully aware that I might engage in inappropriate cultural (mis)interpretation, the word implies making do with very little, salvaging what can be salvaged, miraculously coming out ahead. Or, as the Harvard Business Review defines it: “the gutsy art of overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources.”

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The new history: Dreams Deferred

As the U.S. cracks down on "Dreamers," a new show at the Oregon Historical Society digs deep into the journey stories of new Americans

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Published January 13, 2020, in CULTURE, FEATURED, NEWS & NOTES

“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” 

― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (1999)

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IF IT WEREN’T FOR THAT PESKY NUMBER at the end of the quote, dating it some 20 years back, you might as well imagine that Arundathi Roy had crafted that paragraph with an eye on the exhibition just opened at the Oregon Historical Society, DREAMs Deferred.

Inside the museum. Photo: Friderike Heuer

Roy frequently writes about the fate of minorities, refugees or displaced people on the Indian subcontinent. The focus of the DREAMs Deferred exhibit is closer to home, asking what happens to those who came to the United States from Mexico or Latin America as young children of undocumented parents. The collaborative work on display shows a combination of six portraits and short-form narrative accounts of young undocumented immigrants, joined by photographic documentation of some treasured objects they chose to take with them on the hazardous journey. The thrust is indeed: Watch! Try to understand! Never look away! These are your neighbors. These are people who just like the rest of us seek love, overcome obstacles and indescribable challenges, pursue a simple life and do not confuse the things that matter with those that should be ignored.

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Art on the Road: Kollwitz in L.A.

At the Fortress on the Hill that is the Getty, an expansive overview exhibit gets to the grit of the great German modernist's life and work

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Published December 11, 2019, in CULTURE, VISUAL ART

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER

Husband: “You really are drawn to dark art, aren’t you? Who is she?”
Me: “What do you mean? We have a print of hers hanging on your side of the bed.”
Husband: “Print? What print? ”

Thus I offer you a slice of typical conversation overheard in our household, while dragging my beloved to a striking exhibition of works by Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), one of the icons of German modern art, at The Getty in Los Angeles.

Entry to the Exhibition with an enlarged excerpt from Charge (between 1902 and 1903).

While he was muttering about the absence of visual memory, my brain was frantically searching for a translation of an untranslatable German term that is often – and mistakenly, oh so mistakenly – cited in connection with Kollwitz’ art: Betroffenheitskitsch. Betroffenheit can be translated as shock, dismay, consternation, sadness. But in this context it is probably meant to describe too much empathy verging into kitschiness.

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A soldier’s journey

Charles Burt charts a course from military life to an art academy. How the two meet and meld and reflect each other.

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Published November 25, 2019, in ARTSWATCH FOCUS, CULTURE, NW, VISUAL ART

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
– Mark Twain; “Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events.” Edited with an introduction by Bernard DeVoto, 1940

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IF YOU ARE CURIOUS about the world, have the privilege of meeting a lot of different artists, and risk tackling things that are not exactly central to your own expertise, you’ll expand your horizon. When I set out to portray people with my camera and my writing, the encounters are as varied as the artists I meet. Some evolve into friendships; others are puzzling. Some demand hard thinking; many provide nothing but pleasure. The last year alone introduced me to classically trained musicians turned Ukrainian girl-band, puppeteers from Chile, choreographers in wheelchairs, Mexican political theater activists, female conductors of sacred music, and numerous printmakers from around the nation. All offered glimpses into worlds different from my own, and in one way or another challenged the way how I view art or the process of creating art.

This has never been more true than for my most recent conversation with a man who has lived in worlds so distant from mine that they might as well exist in a different universe. I met him by chance in a museum cafe. He had come to Maryhill Museum of Art to pick up paintings that had been on display in a group exhibition of, among others, student work of the Seattle-based Gage Academy of Art, his included. I was there because of my interest in the Exquisite Gorge Project that was in progress across the summer months. We started to talk and agreed to a studio visit, something I finally managed to set up last week.

Charles Burt, artist

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Art on the Road: Transparency in Tacoma

An LGBTQ+ glass art exhibition at the Museum of Glass is a celebration, a memorial, and an unveiling

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Published November 22, 2019, in CULTURE, VISUAL ART

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER

“One can resist [oppression] only in terms of the identity that is under attack.” – Hannah Arendt Men in Dark Times, 1968.

The title alone made me curious. Was Transparency a less than original descriptor of works made of glass? Was it an absolutely clever pointer redressing the invisibility of members of the LGBTQ+ community, who were the sole artistic contributors to the current exhibition of that name at the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma? Was it an invitation to shine the light on preoccupations and concerns of this particular community, only to reveal that these are often shared by us all, no matter what community we identify with? Was it a play on the fact that transparency is successfully used for purposes of camouflage in nature, as exquisitely demonstrated by jellyfish, South American glass frogs and clear wing butterflies?

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