M.K.
Guth
After growing up in a minuscule Wisconsin mill town
and spending some time in New York and Philadelphia, M.K.
Guth plopped herself down in Portland eight years ago.
By day, the 36-year-old Mary Kay creates "oddity
tilings" as decorative accents for homes and businesses.
In her free time she's made herself a name--or, more accurately,
a set of initials--to be reckoned with in the Portland visual-arts
community, with her provocative, paradigm-questioning mixed-media
pieces.
Her latest installation, for example,
includes a series of miniature, resin-frozen "dresses,"
translucent, colored "building blocks" printed with various
words, and video monitors showing loops of a dancing woman
and girl. Traces (showing now at the Elizabeth Leach
Gallery) asks viewers to determine where innocence ends
in a culture overwhelmed with conflicting images of youth
and adulthood (think JonBenet, Calvin Klein and Columbine).
The use of video is a new development for
the continually progressing Guth, who was previously known
for using atypical materials such as dirt, dead bees and
bars of soap. "I see video as simply another another tool
to work with," she says. "It's like learning a new language--you
can speak to a whole bunch of different people. It's another
way of communicating."
--John Graham
Jimmy
Smith
Two things you need to know about Jimmy
Smith: He adores writing ads, and he's obsessed with sports.
You'll be pleased to hear that he gets to marry his true
loves all day at Wieden & Kennedy, where he's a copywriter
on the Nike account.
But even the perfect 9-to-5 life isn't always
so peachy keen. Take last year, when the Michigan native
came up with the steamin' campaign to push ski lass Picabo
Street into the upper stratosphere. He threw together an
animated commercial series featuring the championship skier
as Sister Slope, enlisted Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon to pen
the soundtrack and even hooked up with Milwaukie's Dark
Horse comics to publish a printed version.
It was jammin', all right, except for one
thing--the Sultans of Swoosh didn't buy it. "It was my baby,"
the 37-year-old Smith says, "and it was stillborn."
That year, all his great ideas got swacked
down by the Man, and he was getting a little frustrated.
Dan Wieden doesn't like his top creatives to feel thwarted,
so he pulled aside Smith, a W&Ker since 1994, and told
him if he wanted to make comic books so bad, go ahead--and
the agency would foot the bill. And that's how The Truth
(www.the1truth.com)
came to be.
With W&K's bankroll, Smith hooked up with
Dark Horse once again, and this summer his futuristic tale
of a polemic race war was released. The perceptive piece
on race relations comes with a CD soundtrack of hip-hop
anthems, spoken word and a few folk tunes. The story, which
lets no sacred cows graze, probably won't sell any sneakers.
--Caryn B. Brooks
James
Harrison
To observe James Harrison's hairdo is to recognize
his deep commitment to architecture, sculpture and design.
The 32-year-old principal of RIGGA, Portland's intimate
art-and-architecture studio, mounts his sandy locks in a
backward-crashing wave of tendrils high above his head.
It is a bold, rakish creation, not unlike RIGGA. "We are
all makers," Harrison says. "We have a full shop and build
a lot of what we design. Our work should be full of wonder,
surprise and beauty. We use the sensual as a foil to how
most architectural firms operate." In the three years since
its inception, RIGGA has produced commissioned installations
at Marylhurst College and the Center on Contemporary Art
in Seattle. More recently, the group was instrumental in
a lengthy struggle to preserve the Lovejoy Ramp column murals
during the ramp's demolition. Now RIGGA is concentrating
on another work of public art to be incorporated next summer
into the long-anticipated opening of the Eastbank Riverfront
Park. Portland developer Homer Williams met Harrison during
the columns crusade. "James is one of those people you're
fortunate to have in your community," he says. Impressed
by RIGGA's doggedness, Williams has asked the firm to create
an interesting courtyard space for a new building project.
"They've come up with ideas I haven't seen anybody else
come up with," he says.
--Mac Montandon
Bryan
Markovitz
In two years, Liminal has become one of Portland's
leading performance groups, producing a small but impressive
body of work that is unabashedly intelligent, provocative
and inspired by both modern European theatrical theories
and the landscape of the Northwest.
As the artistic director and playwright, Bryan
Markovitz is the driving force behind the success of the
company. Markovitz came to Portland three years ago from
Texas, where he was an acting and directing student at Trinity
University.
Trinity not only offered Markovitz a good
grounding in traditional theater but also encouraged enthusiasm
for theories that lie beyond the average theater's perspective.
Current thoughts in anthropology, architecture and movement
theory are integral to Markovitz's work.
Markovitz spent a stint with a Houston company
called Infernal Bridegroom, where he came close to burning
to death on stage after his costume caught fire in an adaptation
of Othello that was using cans of Sterno for lighting.
Surviving that, he came to Portland, which he has found
to be the ideal spot to develop his ideas because the city
is still affordable for artists.
In a city that, in many ways, is still coping
with the death of burlesque, Markovitz and his company offer
other young and serious artists an excellent example of
how to think globally and act locally.
--Steffen Silvis
Ileana
Perez Velasquez
With the term "fusion" the speciality of the
house in the restaurant world and the little island morsel
of Cuba the spicy musical treat of the moment, it's no wonder
Ileana Perez Velasquez is hot. The 32-year-old composer
and Portland State University prof has pieces under consideration
by both Third Angle New Music Ensemble and Fear No Music
for performances in their upcoming seasons--the Portland
classical-music equivalent of a hat trick. Velasquez came
to the area last September to teach music theory and composition
at PSU. She left her native Cuba for educational opportunities
in the United States and is currently finishing up her doctoral
dissertation with Indiana University. "I use all the richness
we have in our culture," says Velasquez. Her classical harmonic
concepts add a dash of electronic exotica to the too-cerebral
world of contemporary classical composition. Her Un Fer
con unas Alas Enormes (A Being with Enormous Wings),
written for violin and tape, made its Carnegie Hall debut
last year (Fear No Music will present it in January). The
New York Times even forked over a positive review. "That
was nice," says the understated Velasquez.
--Bill Smith
Matt
McCormick
Three years ago Matt McCormick was just another punk musician
playing in hole-in-the-wall clubs throughout the city. Then
one day he convinced a club owner to let him and his friends
put on a show of their experimental short films--everything
from collages of pre-existing footage to eccentric non-narrative
works and abstract music videos.
That show gave birth to Peripheral Produce,
now a popular ongoing exhibition of work by filmmakers from
Portland and around the country. By spearheading and maintaining
a regular occasion for underground artists to rear their
heads, McCormick has become the impresario of one of the
nation's most vibrant experimental-filmmaking communities.
"Matt is one of the real linchpins of the scene," says the
Hollywood Theatre's Richard Beer, who has hosted three Peripheral
Produce shows. "He just has the ability to draw people in."
A tall 26-year-old who came here from New
Mexico four years ago and spends his days working on big-budget
TV and movie shoots, McCormick says his primary motivation
for starting Peripheral Produce was "to meet other filmmakers.
We're kind of an elusive bunch." Peripheral Produce shows
have since emerged as a new scene that combines the energy
of punk rock with the intellectual nature of artistic show
and tell. With a third-anniversary gala planned for this
October at Cinema 21, Peripheral Produce figures to continue
its rise in popularity. And whether as a filmmaker or as
dean of the scene, McCormick will remain in the driver's
seat.
--Brian Libby
Kara
Larson
You'll want to visit Kara Larson's new design studio.
The tall, blond former model will probably
be wearing a floral print dress over capri pants--her own
creations--along with a pair of Adidas kicks or cowboy boots
and a Britney Spears-style headset. Chances are she'll be
on the line to New York or Los Angeles chatting about an
order of Kara-Line one-of-a-kind dresses. There will be
a comfy chair to sit in, a couple of racks of flowing rayon
dresses to thumb through and plenty of exuberance in the
industrial loft's air. For Larson, ambience is everything.
She doesn't just make dresses--she sells the
notion that in a world filled with road rage and rudeness,
life can be free and easy, that rose petals and pretty country
music will dissolve stress, that a farmhouse oasis can exist
in the city. "It's about being a girlie-girl in the best
way," says Larson.
Amazingly, the 32-year-old is living the fantasy
she packages. After being featured in the June/July issue
of Jane, Larson received hundreds of fan letters,
a contract with Girlshop.com to develop an exclusive small
line (Ramblin' by Kara-Line) for the site and international
interest in her romantic garments. This is heady stuff for
a girl who started sewing out of her sister's garage seven
years ago. She has since made dresses for Gillian Welch,
Winona Ryder and Kelly Willis--and turned down offers from
Saks Fifth Avenue and design houses in Paris. "I want to
stay small," she says. "When I make a dress, I make it because
I want someone else to be creative with it."
--Christina Melander
Kevin
Sampsell
If you think about it, there's almost no way
Kevin Sampsell can avoid becoming a world-famous fiction
writer. It's not just the fact that he's awfully good-looking,
in a Party of Five-meets-Neal Cassady way, or that
he writes dark, brooding odes to the ridiculousness of humanity
and gets you to laugh all the same. It's not even the fact
that the Eastern Washington native has been running his
own press, Future Tense, since 1990 and has released his
own work (How to Lose My Mind with the Lights On)
and other people's stuff (Richard Meltzer's Holes: A
Book Not Entirely About Golf).
No, Sampsell's sure shot is all that stuff
combined with the fact that he works as an events coordinator
at Powell's and gets to rub pens with some of brightest
authors and most powerful publishers in the world. And you
better believe he takes advantage of it.
Well, sort of. He's handed his work off to
visiting luminaries such as Barry Yourgrau and David Sedaris
as he hosted their visits to Portland's literary ground
control. But Sampsell isn't sitting around waiting for return
calls. Look forward to a collection of short stories called
Stuck (soon to be published by New York's Incommunicado
Press) and Troublemakers, a novel he's shopping around
to agents this very second.
--Caryn B. Brooks
Heidi
Carlsen
Heidi Carlsen describes her life as structured chaos. "I
wake up sometimes and wonder how it all gets done," she
says.
Luckily for her growing audience, the work
does get done, and done well. Not only has this 30-year-old
created a substantial body of work as a performance artist
and dancer, but she is also a managerial assistant for both
PICA and Portland Arts & Lectures.
The Lewis & Clark College graduate has
studied and worked with some of Portland's finest artists,
including Erin Boberg (see next profile). The Conduit dance
studio has become Carlsen's headquarters, where she and
Tracy Broyles produce Spill It!, a monthly platform
for other dancers and performance artists to show works
both finished and in progress and receive critiques. As
a performer, Carlsen's dynamic fearlessness was evident
in Mary Oslund's Terrifying Grace and Kristy Edmunds'
Over There.
Carlsen's work is radically interdisciplinary;
she is an accomplished singer and actor as well as a dancer,
and her talents have been recognized outside of Portland.
This past June, Carlsen studied with director Ann Bogart
at the important Saratoga International Theater Institute
in New York, a serious baptism for any young artist.
Now back home, Carlsen will be making her
debut at Imago this week in Blood Wedding, Blood Wedding.
In November, she will co-produce The Line Between at
Conduit.
Given her crammed calendar, some may wonder
whether Carlsen has the energy to keep up the schedule.
The real question is, will we have the energy to keep up
with her?
--Steffen Silvis
Erin
Boberg
There was a ghost of a girl who haunted
a stage; there were lessons in mechanical engineering that
led to an aria by Gluck; and there were echoes of voices
from the dead. Though it was only performed twice, Erin
Boberg's last performance piece, Temporary Record,
was one of last year's highlights. Like her friend and frequent
collaborator Heidi Carlsen (see previous page), the 29-year-old
Boberg is a Lewis & Clark College graduate who didn't
waste any time making a name for herself in Portland's theater
and dance circles.
Temporary Record, a haunting vaudeville
of memory explored through this century's recording devices,
revealed a young performer of extreme maturity. Boberg is
committed to Portland and plans to stay as long as she can.
"It's a good city in which to self-produce work," she says.
Alongside her own work, Boberg is also the programs assistant
for PICA, an organization that has been very supportive
of her projects. PICA rightly receives praise for the artists
it brings to Portland. But perhaps its greatest contribution
to our culture is its advocacy of young, local artists such
as Boberg.
--Steffen Silvis
Joe
Nozemack and Jamie S. Rich
"'Indie, alternative, small press'--I
hate those words," says Joe Nozemack, co-owner of comic-world
upstarts Oni Press. "We want to be able to get our books
to as many people as possible."
The 28-year-old Pennsylvania native is talking
less about Oni's multifarious output--which parades the
idiosyncratic visual and written style inherent to non-mainstream
comics (no bulging superhero muscles and ballooning heroine
tits here)--than about his desire to reach markets larger
than the self-limiting indie world.
Formed in late '97 by Nozemack and former
Dark Horse editor Bob Schreck, Oni has released more than
50 titles, featuring art and text from famed names such
as Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman, plus rising stars like
as the Pander Brothers. In April of this year, Schreck sold
his part of the company to Jamie S. Rich, 27, also a former
Dark Horse editor (and occasional WW contributor).
Oni is an artist-friendly operation that puts
personal expression before financial gain and has lured
big names seeking a haven for their less-commercial concepts.
One of Oni's biggest sellers to date, penned by filmmaker
Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), was previously
rejected by larger companies. Smith's Jay and Silent
Bob series extrapolates upon characters from his films.
The second big seller is a sort-of prequel to the year's
biggest underground success story, The Blair Witch Project.
Nozemack is cautious about getting too giddy
over Oni's accomplishments, saying, "When you're in the
entertainment business, everything's a risk."
--John Graham
Carolyn
Garcia
There are tons of people out there who think they have a
great idea for a kids' book, but few actually pull one off,
let alone distinguish themselves in the glut of children's
literature. Portland's Carolyn Garcia has managed to do
both with her latest book, a story about a boy from the
moon who arrives in the town of Poppygold looking for a
friend. The vivid illustrations portray the humor, pathos
and foibles of the townspeople and reveal each emotion as
it crosses Moonboy's expressive, lovable face.
While on a break from her part-time job at
the library, Garcia said that inspiration for writing and
drawing her first published book came from a friend's sculpture
called Moonboy. The friend asked Garcia if she would
write a story about the figure for her daughter. The 33-year-old
artist agreed, and Moonboy landed. Garcia contacted
Hillsboro-based Beyond Words Publishing, where a scheduled
10-minute interview stretched to an hour. Offers to publish
the book in foreign languages, such as Norwegian and Japanese,
are now starting to stream in.
--Michaela Lowthian
Eric
Mast
At the end of the Slash Decade--spearheaded by Hollywood's
notorious actor/writer/director/global emperor paradigm--comes
a newer, more bitchin' breed: the painter/DJ/'zine publisher/musical
auteur. As a sleepless practitioner of this millennial
man-about-townness, Eric Mast has his fingers in so many
pies that he's got Sara Lee soiling her apron.
The lean 25-year-old recently put out the
10th issue of his music and musings 'zine, Thumb.
He currently has several paintings showing at the LaurelThirst
Public House and a joint show set for October with fellow
Portland artist Erik Railton. Mast's approach to painting
is emblematic of his greater creative designs. Often working
on eight wood panels at once, he prefers Craypas, a fast-drying
medium somewhere between pastels and oil sticks. "If you
only have two days to work on a painting, you don't want
to spend three days waiting for it to dry," he says. "When
you're working that way, things stay inspired."
Mast also owns and operates Audio Dregs Records,
a label high on poppy electronica and the beautiful bleeps
of our modern world.
Underscoring his dedication to myriad projects,
Mast maintains a full-time job at Ozone Records, funding
his hitherto moneyless artistic adventures. "Art's the thing
I've always done," says the hunky boho, who landed in Portland
after college looking for a music- and rent-friendly scene.
"No matter what, I always come back to it."
--Mac Montandon
Sarah
Marcus
Sarah Marcus has had her head in the movies for as long
as she can remember. "I grew up in Louisiana," says the
cinéaste, who skipped out on the Big Apple
in favor of PDX two years ago. "Movies were how I learned
about most of the rest of the world."
From such beginnings, strange things grow.
Back in the day, there was little indication that Marcus,
26, would ultimately direct an all-girl, neo-noir,
lesbian spy movie, let alone hustle such a film into festivals
ranging from Austin in August, Montreal in September and
Chicago in November to Portland's Gay and Lesbian Film Fest
this October. But Lesbianage, a collaborative effort
between Marcus and Kirsten Kuppenbender, filled out every
last facet of that descriptive pile-up, taking advantage
of the Rose City's supply of prime noir settings and some
ancient Super 8 stock the filmmakers discovered at Portland
State.
"We never lacked for places to shoot," says
Marcus, who puts in day-job hours at the Northwest Film
Center. "Portland sort of turned out to be perfect for this
movie."
--Zach Dundas
Jon
Raymond
Jon Raymond, the 28-year-old editor of Portland-based Plazm
magazine, gets around. Raised in Lake Oswego, he was playing
Satyricon with his band the Delinquent Tree Men as a teen.
He went off to Swarthmore College, the East Coast version
of Reed, where he studied English and art history. He recruited
all his like-minded college friends to move here, and Portland
circa 1994 was a city seething with creative possibilities.
He put on art shows, created video installations, made a
movie based on the comic strip Crock, wrote a book-sized
'zine about a phony artist and put up unsanctioned murals
that were subsequently ripped down.
Today, Raymond is more interested in being
a writer and editor than indulging in disposable art. A
few years ago he started writing art criticism for WW,
The Oregonian and others, and he was hooked. About
18 months ago, he took over as editor--and only salaried
employee--of the quarterly Plazm, a publication known
primarily for its cutting-edge design. With Raymond's arrival,
the pages have become filled with audacious and wise articles
that connect regional issues to national discussions. Raymond
has even roped in Randy Gragg, The Oregonian's art
critic, to write a few pieces--most likely at very un-Newhouse
rates.
--Caryn B. Brooks
Aaron
Wright
While most PSU undergrads are writing love letters, position
papers or code, Aaron Wright is writing classical-music
scores. Even more unusual for a 20-year-old music major
starting his junior year is to have his creations performed
by a major classical-music ensemble. That's exactly what
Wright has done with Portland's iconoclastic classical group
Fear No Music, which has taken on two of the young composer's
compositions, Scherzo and Arietta, Recitative
and Jam, in the past two seasons. While jamming in his
native Berkeley's jazz haunts, Wright was tugged by jazz's
rhythmic pull and now tries to marry that element to the
modernist classical composers he favors. FNM artistic director
Jeff Payne raves, "Aaron's got amazing skill and phenomenal
talent."
--Bill Smith
Martin
Ontiveros and Bwana Spoons
Some art is deadly serious. Posing stone-faced questions
about sociopolitical issues and the secret mechanisms controlling
our culture leaves little room for mirth or humor. The art
of Martin Ontiveros and Bwana Spoons is not that kind.
"It's kind of a weird little rainbow world,"
explains 29-year-old Spoons of his mythical macrocosm, Mogwab
Island, and the imaginary, action figure-sized denizens
he molds to inhabit it. And 29-year-old painter Ontiveros
dreams of the Freudian landscapes and feisty robots on Planet
Glondarth, a place he plans on developing fully in the coming
months.
Ontiveros, who also illustrates children's
books and comics, is reluctant to over-analyze his work,
saying, "I don't even have a language for what I do. It's
too simple to just call it 'pop.'" The innocence in the
duo's craft sprouts from the pop-art tradition, surely,
but the detail with which they lovingly render their characters'
lives is more elaborate than simple tributes to icons and
products. Ontiveros and Spoons don't merely replicate faces--they
create their own.
At their current show (at Roq LaRue gallery
in Seattle), for example, Ontiveros painted nine panels
illustrating the reproductive cycle of the fictional "poot
grub." And Spoons, who works at Will Vinton Studios, is
mentally spawning creatures to occupy Caveland, a new world
he'll reveal in November.
--John Graham
Chloe
Eudaly and Rebecca Gilbert
Don't ask Chloe Eudaly, owner of Reading Frenzy, whether
Portland is the 'zine capital of the world, because she
can't answer that--she's too enmeshed. But all signs point
to the city as the geographic center of the self-publishing
universe, and Eudaly, along with copilot Rebecca Gilbert
and a host of volunteers, has helped boost our city's rep
by kick-starting a nonprofit organization that helps writers
get their words into print.
For the past five years, Reading Frenzy, a
West Burnside Street shop specializing in small-batch writings,
has been the place for 'zine writers and fans to congregate.
But with the birth of the Independent Publishing Resource
Center (IPRC) in 1998, the little shopping strip across
from Powell's has turned into a completely different city
of books.
The IPRC was created to offer independent
publishers a space to share ideas and information and produce
work. There's a library chock-full of indie titles, Internet
access, a graphics computer station, a copier, a phone-fax
setup and even an old-fangled letterpress that publishers
can use, all for the low price of $30-$50 membership per
year.
For $5 per hour, you can even rent the space
without being a member. Eudaly says the center has attracted
50 members, including "teen 'zine publishers, middle-aged
poets, activists and artists." Expect to see even more varieties
of voices as word about the center spreads.
--Caryn B. Brooks
Molly
Vidor
In many ways Molly Vidor seems too affable and accommodating
to be a painter--particularly of the still, emotive pieces
she showed for this year's Oregon Biennial at the Portland
Art Museum. After viewing the 28-year-old's deepest-blue,
somber oil painting--enlivened by bejeweled crests, like
moonlight on night water--one could imagine a typically
tortured, exacting manner behind the creation.
But Vidor is remarkably pleasant and candid
when discussing her work. "I paint from the gut," she says.
"I'm at the whim of the work in a certain way."
The work has treated the native Portlander
very well since she graduated from the Pacific Northwest
College of Art in 1994. That year, she was awarded the first
William Jamieson Scholarship, started by the legendary gallery
owner. Over lunch, Jamieson offered her a show at his gallery.
She has showed regularly since--including the past two biennials--and
avoided having to take a spirit-sapping day job. Kathryn
Kanjo, curator of contemporary art for PAM, is a fan. "One
thing that I find interesting in [Vidor's] monochromatics--and
I use that word hesitantly--is that they are not what they
seem," says Kanjo, sole juror of the past two biennials.
"They are mutable, and they seduce you."
--Mac Montandon
Storm
Tharp
Don't try to pigeonhole Storm Tharp. This utterly darling
29-year-old Oregon native studied photography for four years
at Cornell, rocked through Portland's grunge heyday, became
locally recognized for a series of stunning silk dresses
and just took top honors at the Oregon Biennial.
"I like the idea of being well-rounded as
a human being and an artist," says Tharp,who works a designer
at Wieden and Kennedy. "My work is a direct reflection of
me; the jumping around is a window to my own neuroses, the
fear of getting stuck."
The pair of works that received the Museum
Choice Award at this year's Biennial, Panel and Relief,
consist of a wall-sized silk-tissue paper grid of 36 ink
portraits juxtaposed with a leather-and-wood sculpture vaguely
resembling a saddle.
Tharp's passion is portraiture. In 1997, he
created the celebrated gowns--each designed with a male
face between the knee and hem--as a way to legitimize his
developing drawing style. "I didn't know how to incorporate
the portraits in drawing yet, so I beaded them on [the dresses],"
explains Tharp. A year later, he crafted five sinister landscape
paintings and then drafted the visages that would eventually
land on Panel.
"I had a blast. I'd be in the studio, turn
the music up, drink beer and go really quickly. If I didn't
feel like drawing a hand, he wouldn't have a hand," Tharp
recalls, smiling.
It was the process--the balance of rigor and
freedom--and not the prize-winning result that rewarded
Tharp.
--Christina Melander
Vanessa
Rios y Valles
One of my first assignments as WW's
stage critic was to journey out to St. John's to see The
Other Side Theater's production of Wallace Shawn's Marie
and Bruce. At the interval, the first thing I did was
grab my program to find the name of the fearless performer
playing Marie, whose brutally audacious reading of the role
had this critic crying from laughter. My gaze came to rest
on the name of Vanessa Rios y Valles.
Among the many excellent young actors coming
up through the ranks in Portland's theaters, Rios y Valles
is one of the very best. She received her theater degree
at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. But her real education
came in London, where she studied at the British American
Drama Academy during the day and went out to the theater
every night.
"I was inspired by the British reverence for
the art," says the 28-year-old actor. Back in the States,
she moved to Portland with other members of her company,
because they had heard that Portland was a good place to
start a theater from scratch. That was four years ago, and
The Other Side has become one of the city's finest troupes.
"I've always been more drawn to character roles," said Rios
y Valles, "but I'm now shedding my fear of tackling the
leads."
Rios y Valles has always chosen work that
has dared to explore society's failings or expose the secrets
of the human heart. "When I came to Portland, I was intent
on seeing how theater can be used to heal our society and
our souls," she says.
--Steffen Silvis
Alex
Steininger
He's run his own online music 'zine for two years, put on
gigs starring the heppest cats in town, and the first release
on his forthcoming record label is an intensive chronicle
of Portland's alternative-rock history. Oh yeah, and he
carries a full load at Portland State University, too.
What had you done before you turned
20?
If you're Alex Steininger, it's simply a matter
of getting out and doing it. While his high-school friends
were slouching around a bong, Steininger was catching Hazel
at LaLuna. And when his teachers told him he should be a
writer, he turned from music enthusiast into music entrepreneur
by starting In Music We Trust (www.inmusicwetrust.com),
a homespun monthly Web 'zine with numerous band interviews
and album reviews every issue.
Not stopping there, Steininger began promoting
all-ages shows at PSU featuring such popular bands as Jr.
High and Pete Krebs' Gossamer Wings. He's currently cobbling
together a benefit show for early December; called "Rock
for Tots," the event will help buy Christmas presents for
underprivileged kids.
And soon he plans to launch Sponge Worthy
Records, the inaugural release of which will catalog Portland
punk and post-punk bands.
Why all the effort? Simple. Rather than leave
the music scene in the hands of fate--or worse, slackers--the
young Portland native wants to keep things vibrant. "Portland
is where I want to spend my life," Steininger says. "Everyone
says you can't make money doing music in Portland--you have
to go to L.A. It's my goal to prove them wrong."
--John Graham
Myrlin
A. Hermes
Myrlin Hermes remembers a simple lesson she once heard:
"Good sex makes for bad writing." If the inverse of this
is true, then her first novel is full of great writing.
For throughout Careful What You Wish For--published
in May by Simon & Schuster--men and women continually
collide in painful, prosaic intercourse. Hermes' half-dreaming,
sun-speckled tale of love, desire, identity and survival
is set in the Faulknerian Southern hamlet of Liberty circa
the 1950s. It is a lyrical, emotionally wrought story with
elements of magical realism invoking the Reed College grad's
influences: Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez,
Alice Hoffman and William Faulkner himself.
This summer Hermes, 23, took a break from
her second novel--a Gertrude-centric retelling of Hamlet--and
from part-time work making balloon animals to concentrate
on her first screenplay and collect some shorter fiction
into one volume. And how has post-publishing glory treated
her? "It doesn't make anyone like you more," she says. "It
doesn't make the person you had a crush on in 6th grade
fall in love with you."
--Mac Montandon
Swallow
Press (x2)
Why struggle in solitude when you can have an
art buddy, like the smarties at Swallow Press (x2). Topher
Sinkinson, 27, and Kristan Kennedy, 26, became friends during
college at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University
in New York and moved to Portland soon after graduation.
Both began working on solo art projects around town, and
they looked to each other for editing advice and general
idea-tweaking. It worked well, and soon enough they became
collaborators. From there came a show of over 1,000 Polaroids
at Reading Frenzy, a series of four collaborative paintings
at PICA's The Garden Show, many fabulous slide-show
parties featuring surreal found photos set to cheesy rock
and, as the pièce de resistance, a series
of meditative public billboards so simple in image and thought
that they shocked passersby who were inured to the usual
bombardment of titillation. The billboard project was recently
highlighted in the Portland Art Museum's Biennial. Sinkinson,
who works as a freelance graphic designer at Johnson and
Wolverton by day, says there are certain advantages to tag-team
art. "Removing yourself by name from what you're doing makes
it easier," he says. Still, they do fall prey to all aspects
of being two. "We've had our knock-down, drag-out fights
and moments where we just click and move forward," says
Kennedy, who pays the bills by clocking in as a receptionist
at an accounting firm. PICA's Kristy Edmunds has nothing
but praise for the duo and waxes admiringly about their
moxie in getting money--they persuaded PICA to support their
billboard project and received fiscal sponsorship--and their
fresh approach. "They appreciate the complexities of collaboration,"
says Edmunds, "and they use it as an aesthetic strategy
rather than just a fun thing to do."
--Caryn B. Brooks
Andrew
Dickson
"The instant tagline is sort of like this," explains Andrew
Dickson of his debut feature, Good Grief. "There's
this group of high-school kids based on the Peanuts
characters who like to play Dungeons and Dragons and things
like that, and this movie is pretty much about them getting
out of that and getting into sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Sort of them coming out of the basement."
Of course.
Key names have been changed in Dickson's 16
mm epic to avoid an unpleasant call from Charles Schultz's
lawyers. (The deluded protagonist will be called
Chuck, while the obsession-sparking fantasy game becomes
Monsters & Mayhem.)
Good Grief is set to premiere early
next year at the Hollywood Theater; primary shooting wrapped
in May '98, with reshoots finished recently. Dickson, a
26-year-old product of Wesleyan University's film school,
makes the leap to the feature format after turning out some
well-received shorts. "Film is such an expensive medium
that to make it pay off, you really need something 80 or
90 minutes long, something people can get into."
--Zach Dundas
Diana
Bright
Diana Bright considers herself an urban Berber. She's referring
not to a popular knitted carpet but to a Southern Moroccan
nomadic tribe whose women are known for their fierce independence.
The connection is spiritual, not ancestral.
Bright was born and raised in Portland but has a decidedly
multi-ethnic world view.
Recently, the 33-year-old belly-dance teacher
has been begun selling a line of jewelry called Gawahzee
Gear, which borrows and reconstructs elements from the cultures
of Afghanistan, North Africa and India, among others. She
originally started designing jewelry for bellydancers, but
her slightly tamer designs have taken off with people who
have no intention of shaking their midriffs in public.
"Diana's jewelry is really popular, especially
with young people," says Posy Quarterman of Gilt on Northwest
23rd Avenue, which sells Bright's creations. "It's interesting
and contemporary; it's ancient-looking but has a modern
touch that people respond to."
--Michaela Lowthian
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published September 15,
1999
|
