Having it all: Seven days of art in six Wine Country cities

November 5, 2018

David Bates

Culture, Family, Language Arts, Visual Art, Yamhill

I’ve looked at the calendar, done the math, calculated driving distances, and something hit me: Over the next week in six cities sprawled across three counties in Oregon wine country, there’s enough going on in the arts scene — live theater, exhibitions, artist receptions, and music — to keep you busy every day. If you do it right, you can hit every single one. There’s some overlap, but we’ll take ‘em in chronological order. Try to keep up.

Andi Moring (from left), Mindy Mawhirter, and Phoebe Medler are three of the “5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche” in Western Oregon University’s fall play, which opens Thursday at the Rice Auditorium in Monmouth for a two-weekend run.

WESTERN OREGON UNIVERSITY OPENS THE FALL THEATER SEASON Thursday with a serving of double entendres and quiche in the comedy 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood and directed by the university’s Kent Neely. The show follows five women in the midst of Cold War 1956 to the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein Annual Quiche Breakfast, only to discover that they are not widows — they’re lesbians! The show runs two weekends through Nov. 17 and includes matinees and two performances interpreted in American Sign Language. General admission is $14. For more info, click here.

Lorrie Quimby’s paintings and sculptures in the Seufert Winery Tasting Room focus on safari wildlife.

IN DAYTON ON FRIDAY, Seufert Winery Tasting Room is showing off a new art exhibit of painting and sculpture by Lorrie Quimby. Her acrylics and bronze statues feature safari wildlife. Best of all, she’ll be there herself from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. If you need directions, check this out.

PENTACLE THEATRE IN SALEM on Friday night opens Little Shop of Horrors, by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman and based on the Roger Corman film. Directed by Robert Salberg, the show runs through Dec. 1. You can buy tickets here. Be careful making that left turn off Oregon 22 if you’re coming from the west.

MISSED THE YAMHILL COUNTY Art Harvest Studio Tour? Or, do you miss the Yamhill County Art Harvest Studio Tour? No worries. Willamina has you covered Friday and Saturday with the 27th annual Willamina Coastal Hills Art Tour. Artists featured from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the downtown walking tour include Rosemary Heuser, Lorri Maynard, the Grand Ronde Art Guild, Coastal Hills Quilters, William Lindberg, Reflections Photography, and many more.

Jo Nobel’s “Memory Shield” is among the art quilts in the “HEATWAVE” exhibit at the Chehalem Cultural Center.

PUT SOME FIBER IN YOUR ART DIET: Now that the Yamhill County Art Harvest show has packed up and left Parrish Gallery in the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg empty, the Columbia FiberArts Guild has a new exhibition to fill it. HEATWAVE is a themed exhibit of art quilts by the guild’s High Fiber Diet. It opened Tuesday and runs through Jan. 5, with an artists’ reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Dec. 7.

This Acorn Lidded Jar is one of many pieces of raku pottery by Kelly and Pamela Donaldson on display at The Gallery at Ten Oaks in McMinnville.

BACK IN McMINNVILLE at The Gallery at Ten Oaks, Dan and Nancy Morrow welcome new featured artists, raku potters Kelly and Pamela Donaldson of Cross Creek Clay. The reception is 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday. Their work will be showcased on the gallery’s main floor until Dec. 30. You can get a sneak peek here.

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FINALLY, LINFIELD COLLEGE rolls out its fall concert on Tuesday, Nov. 13, with the concert band presenting Music for the Imagination: Programmatic Music for Band in the Twentieth Century. That’s 7 p.m. in the Richard and Lucille Ice Auditorium in Melrose Hall on the McMinnville campus.

Under the direction of Keith Weathers (who is filling in while music professor Joan Haaland Paddock is on sabbatical), the band will perform pieces from a variety of styles and subjects, including Marching Song by Gustav Holst, Looking Upward Suite by John Philip Sousa, Symphony No. 1, “The Lord of the Rings” by Johan de Meij, Variations on a Shaker Melody by Aaron Copland, and Samuel Barber’s Commando March.

Linfield’s Concert Band comprises nearly 40 members who play woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Performers include music majors and minors and non-majors from several states, as well as community members. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call 503-883-2275 or go here.

Linfield music professor Anton Belov speaks on 19th-century Russian art song Nov. 14 at the college.

ONE DAY LATER, LINFIELD’S ANTON BELOV will discuss 19th-century Russian art songs in a free public lecture. Belov is the music professor who masterminded the Aquilon Music Festival last summer, and he’ll have the scoop on “Romanticism, exoticism, nationalism, and revolution as reflected in the Russian art song of the 19th century” at 7 p.m. Nov. 14, also in the Richard and Lucille Ice Auditorium in Melrose Hall on campus.

LOOKING AHEAD TO THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND, there’s opera in Newberg! Portland Opera’s Opera to Go show swings through on Saturday, Nov. 17, for a single, 50-minute, English-language performance of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Doors open at 1:30 p.m., and the performance begins at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5, free for youth under 18.

ARTS JOURNAL: Finally saw Marvel’s Black Panther last week and enjoyed a Marvel film that at least tries to suggest the weight of history. Also enjoying Hillary Chute’s Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere. While my 9-year-old son explores Chris Colfer’s Treasury of Classic Fairy Tales, I’ve been dipping into Shuan Tan’s retelling, which distills each fairy tale to a single page of text and one gloriously weird clay figurine. It’s called The Singing Bones, and Neil Gaiman and fairy tale expert Jack Zipes pen the foreword and introduction, so you know this one’s worth your time.

David Bates

David Bates is an Oregon journalist with more than 20 years as a
newspaper editor and reporter in the Willamette Valley, covering
virtually every topic imaginable and with a strong background in
arts/culture journalism. He has lived in Yamhill County since 1996 and
is working as a freelance writer. He has a long history of involvement in
the theater arts, acting and on occasion directing for Gallery Players
of Oregon and other area theaters. You can also find him on
Substack, where he writes about art and culture at Artlandia.