Portland’s lumber room gallery flies under the radar. It has no obvious sign identifying its second-floor showroom, its website is overlooked in Google searches, and it is open only on Friday and Saturday afternoons (except by appointment). This is not a conventional art gallery. And that is good. Free of commercial constraints, the lumber room does whatever it wants with its expansive space at 419 N.W. 9th Ave., often showing exceptional art that would otherwise struggle to find an audience.
Lumber room’s current show, Inheritance, spotlights agricultural workers in Ghana (in the vivid paintings of Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe) and Black farmers in America. The vulnerability of African farm labor is no secret, although mentioned only in a whisper: We all know, if we pay attention, that much of the chocolate and coffee we relish (as only two examples) depend on an often-exploited Black workforce.
Black American farmers and cattle ranchers labor in a different shadow of invisibility. Even when they husband land that has been in their families since Emancipation (or before), they are invisible to most of us, their presence erased by assumptions ingrained in American history.
That is the rich branch of African American culture that photographer Ivan McClellan has explored in depth. These are not portraits in the usual sense—the fleeting meeting of a subject and a camera—but intimate images of familiarity and revelation. They are examples of that marriage of documentation and art that photography does best (think Walker Evans, Robert Frank, or Margaret Bourke-White), with each image telling an individual’s tender story, anchored by a historical narrative. But most of all, these photographs subtly reveal an amazed and joyous artist, delighting in his new relations and celebrating his skill at sharing them. They are self-portraits of the best kind.
The show, curated by the gallery’s director, Libby Werbel, runs through January 14 at Portland’s lumber room.
