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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 2004)
auuust 6 .2QQ4 DIVERSIONS Art is a drag [a garden, a war] ueer feminist art is alive and welkin Portland this month. Take a trip on the magical mystery tour with me, won’t you? Our first stop (left to right on your help ful city map) is the Standard Arts Window at 1715 N.W. Lovejoy St. A 24-hour view of the evolving window exhibition shows us bi Portland artist Marne Lucas’ Full M etal W indow through Aug. 15. Lucas is well- known around town for her erotic photog raphy under the name Gina Velour and until recently curated art for the gay-owned Aalto Lounge. Dance diva Amber plays the C .C . Her latest deceptively simple display is Slaughters Block Party on Aug. 14 made up of two large self-portraits printed onto plexi-mirrors and mounted in baroque- ish gold carved frames. “They are inspired hy the colors and textures found in amusement parks,” says ance hit starlet Amber will play the Lucas, “specifically the Gravitron.” She also third annual C.C. Slaughters Block cites a heavy metal and hip-hop ambiance. Party Aug. 14. T he name of the display and the deci You might remember her from such sively camouflaged “Beyatch Blanket Blin- hits as “This Is Your Night,” “Above the go” piece, though, give away other inten Clouds,” “Sexual (Li Da D i),” “Yes” and tions. Like, “W H A T IS T H IS FUCKIN G “If You Could Read My Mind” (a cover of W AR DOING T O O U R BR A IN S!” Or the Gordon Lightftxn classic from the possibly “LET’S U SE O U R BRA IN S T O movie 54 that Amber, G E T O U T O F T H IS FUCKIN G W A R !” Ultra Nate and Jtx:elyn But that’s sncx)ty art criticism, so whatever. Enriquez really Next on our peregrination is the visual shouldn’t have touched). and sound installation V ertical Q arden by Amber’s fourth full- newlyweds Hilary Pfeifer and Heather length album, My Kind Perkins, on display in the lobby of the Port o f W orld, will be released land Building at 1120 S.W. Fifth Ave. in October, and the This beautiful exhibit has a creepy sappy, happy blonde is a undertone of the “outd(X>rs” of the future. nice little cherry on top “We can’t take it for granted anymore that of the best bkx:k party nature is all around us,” the couple note in you’ll find this summer. their artist statement. “Will we come to a The event starts at 6 p.m. on Northwest day when the majority of the ptrpulation Davis Street between Second and Third relies solely on past memory, photographs or avenues. Amber plays at 10 p.m., and a television to describe their relationship with host of other entertainment is included. nature?”* Whoa, very Soy lent G reen. Cover is $ 10. Pfeifer has oft displayed her little wcxxlen, painted forms, but they’ve never seemed so at home as in this remarkable floral- wall landscape. Perkins, who has an extensive back ground in music, the ater and video sound work, provides little noises you might hear if you were in a real garden (playing on headphones). O ff we go, then, outdcxirs (scanning for greenspace) across the (polluted!) Willamette River to Newspace at 1632 S.E. 10th Ave., where we find the ultra-cool Art Is a Drag exhibit by Chicago photograph er Christa Holka. A member of the Chicago Kings drag troupe, Holka has shot several of her fel low kings in tradi tionally “feminine” and “masculine” attire. “I was inspired Marne Lucas’ Full Metal Window is part amusement park, by comments," she part head injury Q by Lisa Bradshaw Living on the down low aurice Townes and Kevin F. Allen, owners of Atlanta-based Senwot Nella Films, are worried about black queer men and the women who love them. Specifically, they’re worried about the down low. No! Not down below, the down low: a term African American men coined for those who act straight but play gay— on the side. Men on the down low frequently live double lives— girlfriends and wives in the “real” world, sex with men in the secret one. Although being secretly gay or bi certainly cuts across ethnic lines, African Americans and other peo ple of color particularly struggle with the down low and the STD s that result. Socio logically, this is based on the same reasons black men often find it more difficult than white men to come out in general: You’re already a black man in a white man’s world, you don’t want to he a homo, too. And many of these men have a funda mentalist religious background. So Townes and Allen made themselves a little DVD series they call The Closet. Although not available for screen ing at press time, the bits I’ve seen have hixiked me already. It’s essentially a queer African American soap opera. “I think it’s a great t(x>l to validate those m en...w ho are living their lives on the down low and who are not out and who are seeing women— or mar ried to women— and having sex with men,” says Stephan Herrera, HIV program manager of Portland’s Brother to Brother, a support and advix:acy organiza tion for African American gay and bi men. “When 1 think of men on the down low, what comes to mind first is that most of those guys who have sex with men and go back and have sex with their wives aren’t using protection...so they’re putting their wives at risk for STD s and HIV.” W hich Townes says precisely. “African American women are dying in staggering numbers from being infected with HIV,” the director rails. “Men who are sleeping with women have to hide the fact they’re sleeping with men.” Townes says he made the series for straight women as much as for men on the down low. “You do not have to live your life hiding behind a woman or using our sis ters as trophies.” But here’s the problem. (You knew I’d find one, did you?) The Closet is available only through subscription at a whopping $24 99 per two-epis<xJe DVD. Or you can order the whole first season for $260 (at www.rhecloset.tv). One wonders if-Senwot Nella Films approached PBS or a distribution company about putting out DVF)s to rent. “In terms of the viewer audience, it’s going to appeal mostly to black, gay men,” says Herrera, “rather than to men who are leading a double life.” Men on the down low and the wives who don’t know about it are not going to order DVDs to be mailed to their homes. If Townes and Allen really want to reach their intended audience as they say, they’d better make a few phone calls to a few cable channels. M jn Amber to play C.C. Slaughters Block Party D says, “from people who feel very strongly that a girl should ‘dress like a girl.’ But what if that ‘girl’ likes to dress like a ‘boy’?” So she juxtaposes images of the same friend differently dressed. “I want the viewer to ltx)k at the girl in ‘girl’ clothing and feel the girl’s discomfort and then feel uncom fortable themselves.” Holka will he in attendance at the Aug. 6 opening, which includes a film screening of T h e U rulergrad, a smarmy lit tle take on The G raduate by Michele Mahoney, also a Chicago king. And that’s your early August art, people. Be careful out there. Sex lives of Portland actors— revealed! tark Raving Theatre continues its more daring late-night fare this month with Thrust, a new show conceived and directed by Portlander Michelle Seaton. T he one-act is a series of scenes, mono logues and movement pieces all dealing with sexuality in its many varied forms. “It’s very unaplogetically honest,” says Stark Raving’s gay artistic director, Matthew Zrebski, who wrote some of the show and arranged the music and choreog raphy. “There’s some very, very honest dia logue about what people really go through in the bedroom.” In a unique twist to average theater, cast members, including Portland gay actors Michael Tuefel and Todd Pozycki, penned most of the script themselves. “They’re all a bit autobiographical,” Zrebski says of the separate scenes. “Everyone in the cast has written pieces...people dug into their own closets, dealt with their own demons.” Thrust includes scenes of straight and gay sexuality as well as all those pesky shades of gray in between and plays at 10:30 p.m. Fri days and Saturdays through Aug. 13. Tickets are $12 from 503-232-7072. S Donate to Bob Hackney fund ortland Gay Men s Chorus softball team member Bob Hackney, who was hit by a fly ball during a July 11 game, may need surgery, says Rose City Softball Association assistant commissioner Sean Canavan. “Along with the 18 stitches to close the wound, Boh may need to have metal plates put in his head to ensure that the bones heal cor rectly,” shares Canavan. Unfortunately, Hackney is uninsured, so the team has set up Portland Gav an account for him at M en’s Chorus U.S. Bank. (Contact any softball team branch to donate to the member Bob Bob Hackney Medical Hacknev mav Fund. need surgery “None of us would want to be in his posi tion,” notes Canavan, “and if we were, we’d appreciate all the help we could get!’ ¡H P il ( 'ompiled hy LlSA BRADSHAW *45
