V olume 19 ♦ N umber 18 ♦ J uly 19, 2002
Portland, O re g o n
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Gay and lesbian Oregonians
are laying the foundation
to build a stronger community
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PHO TO S BY MARTY DAVIS
PHO TO BY MARTY DAVIS
Elemental roots
Portland lesbian artists draw
from the spirits by T J N orris
onte Shelton and Debra Shaffer have more in com
mon than their 20-year friendship, though the con
nection is by no means common.
Both women have been involved for years in
intense spiritual energy work and healing meditation
that emanates genuinely through their art, which is on display
through July 24 at Everyday Wine.
“I move back and forth from the spiritual to the physical
realm,” Shaffer’s artist statement reveals. During a recent trip to a
rain forest in Washington, she found herself enraptured by the ele
ment of a blazing fireplace. It was a cold and rainy weekend, and
she just started drawing the lapping flames, remarking “it felt like a
passage 1 was moving through. 1 saw the energy of the South, the
chaos of change in its conscious and subconscious states.”
This profound experience is reflected in “Tree Giving Birth,”
a cryptic, Gorey-esque ink drawing on paper. “I see things in
trees, a nurturing energy,” Shaffer says, and in these trees she
images powers that are visible just beneath the surface. The
drawing depicts iconographie imagery, including a bear’s paw
print, which, Shaffer notes, “is â symbol of the West, of death, of
letting go.”
Shaffer has re- and deconstructed her cabin experience in mul
tiple pieces currently on view. This is her very first exhibition of
drawings, as she has primarily worked with clay. Her love of solid
lines allows her to transition easily between mediums, choosing ink
because “I like the darkness of inks, I want really black blacks.”
In similar fashion, Shelton’s “Island with Three Trees and
Debra Shaffer (left) and Monte Shelton
Green Sea” is based on nature’s life cycle. One dead tree stump
their own power” and explains that her tree forms actually come
reflects the same shape and dimension of a frilly green sibling on a
from a Portland park she visits with Lillian, her Labrador retriever.
nearby island. A “living” log floats out to sea, illuminated with a
car-lighter orange inner glow. Shelton describes the quantum
Continued on Page 37
influence of these splintered floating stumps as “moving under
Oregon Citizens Alliance
loses again
Page 7
It’s C hastity Bono’s turn to
write a self-indulgent “ memoir”
Page 39
Join Ju st O ut’s wine-tasting snob on a
whirlwind tour of queer wine in Portland
Page 41