The collector
Down and Out in Portland — Retired in Style in Waldport
Th e famous quote from the Dustin Hoff man
movie, ‘Th e Graduate,’ is not wasted on Duane
Snider:
“One word: plastics.”
DEEP
DIVE
GO BENEATH THE
SURFACE WITH
PAUL HAEDER
Th at was Benjamin Braddock, just
graduated from college, sitting in a
swimming pool. Giving him advice on
attaining the American dream, the neighbor’s
statement says it all. Today? Hedge funds?
Flipping houses? Coronavirus repossessions?
For Duane, that one word: artwork.
We’re sitting on the back porch of his
brand-new Adair home on a third of an acre
on the high land of Waldport. He and his
wife, Linda, are proverbially happy, fat and
sassy in this new iteration of their lives.
He went to Benson high school, when
it was an all-male segregated school. It was
during the Vietnam War, at the height of the
draft.
Just a few weeks earlier, Duane and I ran
into each other on the beach near the Alsea
River emptying out into the Pacifi c. Loons
and eaglets started the conversation, and
quickly Duane recognized me by my byline
for this newspaper. He had purchased a piece
of art from one of the people I have featured
in Deep Dive — Anja Albosta, artist and
environmental refugee from Yosemite see
Dec. 16, 2019, “Art in a changing climate”).
Duane is 68, and his wife — originally
from Sonora, CA — is 67. Duane’s work
life is quintessential drudgery millions of
Americans called working stiff s have faced.
In his case, 39 years working at one place,
grinding optics for an optical service in
Portland. It was for Duane 20 years in a
hostile work environment where his boss
bullied him. Th ere was no real upside to the
job — a repetitive job tracing lenses and
frames and low pay.
He conveys to me that for more than a
decade he was highly depressed, even suicidal.
“I could see the Ross Island bridge. Daily,
I would look out the window and fantasize
jumping off it. Even planning out in my
mind how I’d have to aim my fall just right as
to hit the bike path just to be sure.”
Alcohol and drug abuse were a big part
of his life, but to his credit Duane has been
clean in sober going on three decades. His
addiction to substances was eclipsed by
another addiction — art collecting. He has
been a fi xture in Portland’s art scene for
decades — a gallery gadfl y, and someone who
ended up with smart and strategic ways of
appreciating art and purchasing it.
He’s a veritable encyclopedia of Who’s
Who in the Oregon art world.
It’s not so unusual Duane would have
gained this proclivity for art appreciation
and deep regard for art’s role in society as
something bigger than commerce, industry
and day-to-day drudgery of commercialism.
When he was a youngster, he studied
guitar. He was good enough to end up
switching over to classical guitar in the style
of Andres Segovia. He has taken a master
class from the best — for guitar taught by
Michael Lorimere, who was a classmate of
Chistopher Parkening in master classes with
Segovia. Th at was 1975.
“I knew I was going to have to take a vow
of poverty if I was going to try and pursue
being a musician.”
Duane’s father was a union baker and not
very involved in the boy’s life. For the just-
turned-18-year-old Duane, his cohorts were
going to be drafted but he was talked into
enlisting. “A friend said the navy, since it
wasn’t the army. Anything but the army. But
that was nuclear submarine duty and I was
claustrophobic. Th ere was no way I was going
on a submarine.” Instead, he ended up in the
air force. He even tried the conscientious
objector route.
Military life was short-lived when he was
drummed out as a 4-F. Th ey found traces
of codeine in his drug test. “Ironically, I had
done all sorts of party drugs.” It wasn’t the
LSD he dropped they discovered, but the
codeine, the psychedelic from which it was
titrated.
Music out, optics in
“If you want the present to be diff erent from
the past, study the past.
Everything excellent is as diffi cult as it is
rare.”
— Baruch Spinoza
He was homeless for a few months.
6 • oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • June 26, 2020
Coming back from Lackland AFB, Duane
ended up working with the crippled
children’s division of OSHU. He took a
second master guitar class at Berkley. “I knew
poverty was going to be a regular part of my
life. I wasn’t that good. I took classes with
trust fund babies. Money wasn’t an issue for
them.”
Here’s where things really get prescient —
“I had a poster of Picasso’s “Old Guitarist”
on my apartment wall in Portland. I was
studying with extraordinary musicians. I
wasn’t about to spend 10 or 15 years in
poverty.”
Th e “Old Guitarist” was painted
in 1903, just after the suicide death of
Picasso’s close friend, Casagemas. Picasso
was deeply sympathetic to the plight of
the disenfranchised and downtrodden. He
painted many canvases depicting the poor,
sick, and outcasts of society. In fact, Picasso
was penniless during 1902.
It’s an amazing painting in the style of
El Greco. Th at moment for Duane Snider
turned into a life passion — sacrifi cing part
of his soul in that daily grind in order to enter
another world: one that was rarifi ed, fi lled
with the passions and creativity of artists just
like Pablo Picasso.
When he returned from Berkley, he ended
up in a friend’s parents’ house. He applied
to Portland Community College, talked to
a counselor, told her he wanted to fi nd a
steady job, one that was reliable. “I wanted
something recession- and depression-proof.
Optician fi t the bill.” He ended up taking
psychology and philosophy classes awaiting
the term to start for his major.
He grabbed a job at a lab his second
term. He parlayed that into a full-time gig
at Columbian Bifocal. Th e fi rst 20 years it
was a family-run place, and the last 19 years
it ended up as one of 17 labs for Hoya, a
Japanese investment group.
Good benefi ts, steady work, and a bully
boss. “We hated each other. It’s amazing I
survived.”
He hands me a DVD of an OPB special
featuring Portland art collectors. Duane is
profi led. He laughs, recalling how he had
read about the great philosopher Spinoza’s
life as a lens grinder. What was good for the
father of rationalist and deductive reasoning
had to be fi ne for Duane Snider’s life.
Not so ironically, the dust from lens
grinding led to Spinoza’s early death from
tuberculosis.
Th e amazing number of artists Duane has
met propelled him to write essays on art for
a local art rag — NW Drizzle. Here’s what
he penned in 2005, as he emphasizes, he
was “just coming out of a four-year bout of
suicidal depression.”
“When I gave up the guitar, I couldn’t give
up my need for a place to put my passion.
It seems natural that my passion migrated
toward the visual arts. Giving up playing
music meant letting go of a sizable part of
what I thought was my identity. My search
for a new sense of self played a major role in
pushing me toward the idea of collecting.
Th at’s when I started learning that the
real value of art is not determined by the
price on the sticker, but by the strength of
the connection between the viewer and the
object of interest.”
•••
Read on as Deep Dive continues at www.
oregoncoasttoday.com.
Paul Haeder is a writer living and working
in Lincoln County. He has two books coming
out, one a short story collection, “Wide Open
Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam,” and a non-
fi ction book, “No More Messing Around: Th e
Good, Bad and Ugly of America’s Education
System.”