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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 2015)
Page 8 News S tre e t R o o ts • A u g . 7 -1 3 , 2 0 1 5 S tre e t R o o ts • A u g . 7 -1 3 , 2 0 1 5 News Page 9 Always an artist As a child during the Depression, Mary Pacios experienced poverty. As a young, single mother, she persevered through college. As an adult, she wrote and published books about notable friends. A ll the while, she was an artist — and still is. BY SUE ZALOKAR STAFF WRITER ary Pacios, a printmaker living in Portland, has a lot to say about society and life at large. Her work is as striking as it is personal. I’m no art critic, but I can tell you there is something special about the images that Pacios produces. They are beautiful and tragic — semi-abstract representations of real life and human emotion. Pacios has been an artist all her life. She will chuckle as she tells you the story about drawing on the huge canvas of the earth with a stick as a small child in the late ’30s. Raised in the poverty that accompanied many families’ experience during the Great Depression, Pacios didn’t have access to crayons o r even paper and pencil. True artistic drive cannot be repressed, though, even in an era when women were PH O TO S BV SUE Z A L O K A R told where their place was. Pacios would Printmaker Mary Pacios will participate in A rt In Action, the Geezer Gallery’s new working artists politely albeit firmly ignore the naysayers and studio in the South Waterfront neighborhood. A t right, Pacios’ work, “The Salish Canoe.”Below: A prove them all wrong. few o f Pacios’ large, hand-pressed prints. She would also befriend some society fringe players: Elizabeth Short (known as “The Black of Mind” at Portland’s ArtReach Gallery, 1126 I’ve always worked big. When I was 5 , 1 was Dahlia”) and, during h er time in New York SW Park Ave., across from the Portland Art asked what I would want to be when I grew up. City, the Kuchar brothers (indie-cult Museum. I said, “An a rtist” I don’t know where it came filmmakers). from. We were very, very poor. I was bom in Sue Zalokar: For those who might not be “Bette” Short was a neighbor to Pacios, and the Depression, and we were poor. We didn’t familiar with your work, how would you explain in their youth — starting when Pacios was 8; have crayons and pencils and paper, and I love it? Short was a teenager — the two would go for to draw. So I would go out in thé dirt, and I ice cream and to watch movies. Years after would get a big stick, and I would draw in the M ary Pacios: I draw from life, but I don’t Short’s unsolved murder, Pacios’ desire to d irt I would have all this space to draw in. draw realistically; I draw emotionally — and I correct public opinion of her friend largely see emotionally. A lot of artists work from a When I started school, we didn’t have drove her write a book about her. It is the age- photograph to make a drawing, but photos are crayons, but we had little colored pegs. It was old tale that women still have to navigate: you very static. If you have a person sitting for in the first years of school that set the pattern are either a madonna or a whore. Short was you, they have to sit 20 minutes and then take for my whole life. In second grade, if you finish neither but has been depicted as the latter. In a break. The whole time, they are thinking in the work, you could take out your little box of reality, she was a woman brutally murdered, their head, and that comes through. I don’t do pegs and you can play with them on your desk. quite possibly because of no other reason portraits because I’m afraid people aren’t I would always finish my work, get it right — than someone thought they could get away going to like what I see, how I see them. fast Then while all the kids were working, I with it. So far, Pacios is one of the only people would be covering my desk making drawings S.Z.: What brings you to this medium? to restore some dignity to the memory of with these p eg s.... The idea was to keep the Short kids who finished first quiet In my whole life, M.P.: It’s like my whole life — it was a fluke. Pacios also befriended twin brothers Mike it was: take care of your responsibilities first, (We both laugh). and George Kuchar. She was cast in, or and then do what you w ant funded, Kuchar film projects. One such role S.Z.: I can relate to this. S.Z.: Can we talk for a minute about the was the lead in the 1995 short film “Society M.P.: I went to art school as a painter. Most responsibilities that you had as you were creating S lu t” of my shows in San Francisco were my all of this art? Although she spends much of her time paintings. I was living in Modesto, Calif., and I creating art, Pacios has found time to M.P.: This is an important era for me thought, if I went for a m aster’s degree, I’d be volunteer in the community, as well. She was able to teach and earn some money. In the Cal because the Republicans who are against birth active in both Obama presidential campaigns, State University system, the only advanced art control and abortion and want to go back to and she was an integral volunteer with Street the ’50s —th e y scare me. classes they had were in printmaking. Roots for many years. I watched the first episode of “Mad Men,” I worked out an individual major in a rt and Through September, the public can watch and I couldn’t watch it again because it was social change. I had it worked out for taking Pacios and other artists work at the Geezer like PTSD. It threw me right back into the anthropology and sociology courses for Gallery’s new working-artists studio in ’50s. academics, and I was going to take all the Portland’s South Waterfront neighborhood. I loved school. It was my haven from a different kinds of printmaking classes. In the fall, Pacios will be at Portland State dysfunctional home. And at 17,1 had to leave The first topic in the printmaking class was University, auditing and printing on the large (school). I was pregnant I didn’t want to get relief, and the first medium was linoleum. I’ll press. In October, her work will be exhibited married, but I had no choice. tell you from the first time I cut into that with m aster printmakers Eleanor H. Erskine, At the time, I would bring shame to my linoleum ... where had it been all my life? Josh Hulst, Michael McGovern and Jorge L. family, and of course birth control was illegal (laughter). Porrata in “The Cutting Edge: Portland State M Art In Action What: Observe Mary Pacios and other artiste in action during open-studio hours. W here: Emery Apartments, 3139 and 3147 SW Moody Ave., on the waterfront. year program. You should go home and take care of your kids properly.” I said no. He told me I never should have been entered here. The school is crowded, and we can only accept the top third of those who qualify —meaning I was in the top third. He told me I was taking up valuable space. S.Z.: WTia/ the... ? When: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday- Sunday, through September. More information: Geezer Gallery, www.geezergallery.com. in Massachusetts. So at 18, three days short of a year, I had my second child. A nurse said to me, I don’t want to see you in here next year. This was a Seventh-day Adventist hospital. The nurse told me about diaphragms. I had never heard the word birth control. These are the instructions she gave me: She wrote down the doctor’s name and phone number and said, “Call them; tell them I sent you and that you want an appointment for a checkup.” So I w ent She also explained that in Massachusetts, if a doctor dispensed birth control, he would lose his license to practice medicine, so it was very serious. I went, and I told all my friends, and I gave them the doctor’s name. They had never heard of birth control. Yeah (deep sigh). So that’s what it was like. It was an underground network of women helping other women. I left my husband, but I couldn’t make it on my own at 18 with two children. Nobody would rent to me. I went back to my husband. I had no alternative. I had another baby at 20. After the baby was bom, he said he wanted to Duke Ellington ... Count Basie .... Most of the wait staff were college kids, and •som e of them went to Mass Art (Massachusetts College of Art and Design). One of the waitresses said she’d like to see my drawings. I had been drawing sketches of my children. I had to draw fast because they leave me. Oh, God! I was so happy! I figured, I move so fa st I brought in a whole bunch of can’t let him know how happy I am, so he’s at_ quick sketches of my kids, and she said, “You the door with his suitcase. It was like a movie. should go to art school.” I’m standing there and he says, “You look so I said, “Oh! I can’t. I’ve got three kids to •sad. I can’t leave you like this,” and he comes su p p o rt...” (but ultimately) I got accepted. back in! S.Z.: Oops! You might have looked a little less sad. M.P.: He left a week later. His girlfriend was pregnant. But I had an apartment. I had babysitters. I just didn’t have to support my husband anymore. I was making more money as a waitress than he was making. Then I got my GED, and I got a job at a jazz club called Storyville. It was run by George Wein, who put on the Newport Jazz Festival. He and the manager hired me because I knew nothing about jazz. He said our next band is Woody Herman, and I said, “Woody who?” The thing is they didn’t want jazz groupies there. They wanted people who were going to hustle the drinks. For the next few years, I listened to Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, S.Z.: What was it like to be working and going to school as a single parent? M.P.: My first year in college was something to get used to because I had to get my kids ready and I didn’t want them to feel rushed in the morning. (I’d have to) get them off to school before catching my bus that was 45 minutes over to Mass Art then switch gears and be an a rt student Towards the end of my first semester, I was doing (really well) in the studio classes. The ones where I had homework? Not so good. But I was one of the top students in the drawing departm ent The dean called me in, and I was all excited; I figured he’s going to offer me a scholarship. After a little bit he said, “I want to cut to the chase. You should withdraw. You have three kids, and there’s no way you can finish a four- M.P.: Yeah. Of course I said no. I was the first woman with children who was the sole supporter of her kids to be admitted to that school. He thought I didn’t belong there. To counterbalance this, I had been living in a housing project, and the women in the housing project, we made friends and helped each other. I had so many people (in my life) — how the society was at large - there was a subculture that helped people (like me) get by. ‘Exerting the female dominance’ S.Z.: The female form is significantly represented in your body o f work. What is the significance of this to you? M.P.: The female body is beautiful. It’s exerting who I am and who I identify with. I think to me, it’s exerting the female dominance. S.Z.: Indeed! M.P.: I was surrounded by this. I had to overcome — women my age had to overcome — this thinking. If you were smarter, you had to pretend to be dumber. I didn’t want to play that game anymore. I’m an ex-Catholic, and there’s a lot of things I don’t like about (Catholicism), but the one thing that it did do for me as a kid, I’d go to church and I would see the Virgin Mary, I would see all these female saints, and of course I’m Mary. The highest thing you could attain was sainthood. The saint was above the pope. That meant that all these female saints were above the pope. It gave me the counterbalance to “Men are superior, and you should defer to them.” S.Z.: You talk a bit about the sexism you’ve experienced. Do you experience ageism in your artistic or day-to-day life? M.P.: In my day-to-day life, it’s the condescending attitudes that sometimes get to me, whether it’s being told I’m “feisty” or referred to as “lady” or just plain talking down to me. I live in subsidized housing, and under the new ownersj I received a pre-inspection cleaning checklist suitable for a 12-year-old or a recalcitrant teen. Wash dishes and put away, etc. I saw red! I experience good ageism in that I always get a seat. (Laughter) S.Z.: Take advantage o f that! M.P.: When I was in New York C ity... what’s the name of the Dorothy Day group? S.Z.: The Catholic Worker Movement. M.P.: Yes! I m et this young guy; he was Puerto Rican. He did the (El) Museo del Barrio (a New York City museum devoted to Latino culture in the Americas). I gave him the prints of Adam and Eve (a piece Pacios created in 1984) for the museum. He introduced me to this man who looked so old to me; he was maybe 70. He had an etching plate in his hand he had just done, and he was showing me the plate, and I was thinking, “Wow! When I’m 7 0 1 want to be like him — still working.” This is why Geezer Gallery is so good because they have these programs and classes to stimulate the creativity in older people — the ones who have been separated from i t The fact is that they show the work of older artists like these. (Pacios gestures toward the room around us and the artwork displayed throughout) You can tell these are all experienced, developed artists. That’s what they show. Whereas other galleries would pass See ARTIST, page 11
