Back in the day. The early early day. I distinctly remember William Jamison telling me one night at an art gallery opening, I distinctly remember him telling me, this neighborhood, full of derelict loading docks and empty warehouses and homeless winos with three-legged dogs, would someday be the jewel of the city. I told him I didn’t see that ever happening. From October 12, 1988. – JDW
A number of years ago, maybe eight, Guido Maldemara moved to Portland from a really big city Back East, maybe Chicago. And you know how everything tends to look better the longer you’re away from it. School, jobs, Mom’s cooking, the first time, military service, the good old days. Almost everything – except spaghetti marinara in junior high school – seems better to us now that we no longer have to deal with it.
That’s the way Guido remembers that big city. Maybe it was New York.
“There was always so much going on,” Guido repeats like the chorus of a Greek tragedy. “Not like Portland. Nothing ever happens here.” He’s serious. He means it.
He’s wrong. Guido is blinded by cultural cataracts, a condition which causes the afflicted to conclude: if it’s local, it’s substandard. On the other hand, there are those – you know who you are – who believe: if it’s not from here, it’s a communist plot to weaken our family values, doubtlessly sponsored by alien life forms or card-carrying members of the ACLU. This latter is a syndrome known as Lemming’s Calcification.
Fearful of contracting any illness, I recently plunged into the Northwest Triangle, that area bounded by Northwest Burnside, Northwest Marshall, the North Park Blocks, and the I-405 Freeway. Don’t ask me why it has four sides.
Like some oysters, some neighborhoods are groady, encrusted, visually unappealing. Inside though, if you’re lucky enough, occasionally you’ll find a rare and valuable jewel. That’s the Pearl District.
The district held its second annual Arts Festival, a day-long party on one of those cloudless blue-skyed, toasty Portland kind of days. The kind of day whose memory we’ll all cherish for the next six months. I miss them already.
Norma Louise was late as usual. She was off doing one of those secret things some women seem to find to do on Saturday afternoons. I don’t think she’s up to no good, mind you, but she comes back after a few hours, perky as a pup and darn glad to see me. I’m a pragmatic kind of guy, but I am starting to get just a little curious. I had anticipated this eventuality, her tardiness, so we arranged to meet outside the Portland Brewing Company.
I order a twelve-ounce Oregon honey beer and survey the scene. Flanders Street has been blocked off. On a truck loading dock, Les Rustique, a six-piece Cajun band from Louisiana, is fiddling up a storm. Ten and one-half couples are hoedowning as if they knew what they were doing.
Corn stalks hide the parking meters. Did you ever notice bayou music is a lot like opera, in that you can never understand a word they’re singing?
One of the food booths is selling Make Your Head Sweat Chili.
You can tell something about a crowd by the t-shirts it’s wearing.
Saw just one – DIE YUPPIE SCUM – suggest a dearth of goodwill toward a large portion of those in attendance.
Another fifty-fifty blend billboard fairly shouted its parochial machismo: OREGON STATE ANIMAL – SLUG STATE FLOWER – ALGAE STATE SHRUB – POISON OAK STATE ROCK – SPONGE STATE COLORS – GRAY & GRAYER. The last time she visited – thank you, Lord – my future ex-mother-in-law bought an XXXL as a souvenir. It was winter. Told her the tee-shirt spoke truth.
Don’t even ask me to explain the shirt HITLER- THE EUROPEAN TOUR 1939-1945.
I memorized the guy’s features in case I ever see his face on that television series “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Bogart’s Joint, which I should note features the Pacific Northwest’s largest selection of beers, over 250, was hosting its first annual Fall Fashion Show. The presentation was pretentious but overblown. Have you ever seen a fashion show that wasn’t unusual? That’s normal. The music is always weird and not a few of the models look like protagonists in a Stephen King novel.
“Fakushka is wearing a simply divine confection of extra virgin compost artfully highlighted by distressed baby mackerel shoulders,” gravely breathes the announcer, who resembles the mother of the Adams Family. Then adds, “It’s one of a kind.”
Of course, it is. Who would make two of them? Just at that moment, Norma Louise shows up, gives me a big kiss on the forehead and says, “That’s a cute outfit.”
We head for an ad hoc gallery nearby. Susan Walsh, who pays her bills as a waiter at Genoa, was showing two bedside tables that glow in the dark. Each entitled “One Night Stand.” Featured are Ken and Barbie and The Serpent.
Overhead a silver-haired gentleman in a blue cashmere sweater tell his matching wife, “It’s too much. It’s too energetic.” That’s why they call it ART.
When we walked into Ron Wagner’s fourth floor loft studio in the Maddoz Building, the first thing I noticed was a Latin phrase carved into the wall: Fortuna Nulla Fides Frontis. Translated roughly – pretty much how I translate all dead languages and most of the live ones – it means “What you see isn’t what’s in front of you.”
The sign’s not carved at all, it’s painted to fool the eye.
That’s how Wagner makes his living. He also does gilding, marble-izing, wall glazing, and faux bois. (Don’t worry, you probably can’t afford it.) He builds custom furniture. He just finished a project on a private island in the Caribbean, and he’s working on the decor of a trendy new restaurant in Washington, D.C. He’s packing for a trip to Italy.
Visit Wagner’s workplace and you sense immediately this is is world-class talent. It’s a talent he’s willing to share.
Trained in California studios, Wagner has started a studio school of his own, right here in Portland’s Pearl District.
Twenty-four students each recently paid six hundred dollars ($600) for a week-long seminar, where they learned to paint stone and marble that will trick your vision.
And I’ll bet it’s as good as most schools in a really big city Back East. Maybe even Boston.
Leaving Wagner’s studio, I saw another sign which didn’t fool me at all. Ars Longa Vita Brevis. “Art is long. Life is short.”
Guido, that is so deep.
