2018
Culture
Page 7
Portrayals
in spirituality
The Franciscan Spiritual Center
in Milwaukie hosts the artwork
o f Street Roots vendor Phoebe Oaks
BY HELEN HILL
ST A FF W R ITER
° ^ es etched in light, meticulous
I““C landscapes rich with allegory,
- L r portraits that seek the essence of a
soul. The colored pencil and ink art of
Phoebe Oaks is stunning and brave.
Stunning because the color, composition
and detail are luminous. Brave because her
driving motivation is to use her gift of
expression to help
destigmatize spiritual
experiences common
to marginalized
people.
Oaks has been a
Street Roots vendor
off and on since 2015.
She will be serving j
.
.
’
PH O TO BY HELEN HILL
Phoebe Oaks is exhibiting her artwork at the Franciscan Spiritual Center in Milwaukie.
for th e third
Phoebe O aks’
portrait o f M addy
Brown Clark was
featured in Street
Roots’ 2017 fa ll
zine.
IF YOU GO
What: Artwork by
Phoebe Oaks
Where: Franciscan
Spiritual Center,
2512 SE Monroe
St., Milwaukie
When: Open to
the public for
viewing from 9
a.m. to 5 p.m.
Monday through
Friday through
September
consecutive year on
the editorial
committee of Street
Roots’ zine, an annual
fall publication
featuring vendor
poetry and a r t She is
also a regular
volunteer for Sisters
of the Road, a
nonprofit café for
people experiencing
homelessness and poverty.
Oaks’ evocative portrait of former Street
Roots vendor Maddy Brown Clark is an
excellent example of her ability to
thoughtfully craft the essential. Maddy’s
wise and graceful nature is expressed in the
openness of her face while strong music
spirals from her fingertips.
Spirals are a recurring theme for Oaks.
Of her work “Spiral of Life” she wrote: “The
spiral is a common and beautifulpattern in
nature.... Its outer part is much larger than
its inner. (As you travel forward) it takes
less and less distance to move closer to the
center.”
Oaks’ own spiritual journey deepened
through a tragedy she experienced as an
undergraduate biology student when a good
friend was killed by a drunk driver.
“At the funeral, I felt a flooding sense of
peace with impermanence and mortality,”
she recalled. “The death denial in this
culture is another thing I’d like to challenge
through my a r t”
Several of Oaks’ works deal viscerally
with death and decay. In one piece - not
part of her current show because of its
potentially disturbing imagery - vultures
pull the entrails out of a corpse on the
forest floor as a beautifully rendered
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PHOEBE OAKS
woodpecker, chickadee and nuthatch look
on tranquilly from the branches of
surrounding trees.
“Accepting death actually enriches our
lives. This acceptance lessens fear, egotism,
denial, superficiality, materialism and
insensitivity,” Oaks wrote in her artist’s
statement about the piece.
The forest has always been a place of
renewal and inspiration for Oaks.
“I got laid off in 2016, and I lived in the
woods for three months,” she said. She
moved from the woods to a women’s shelter
for the next six and a half months. Now she
has an apartment of her own.
Although-she eschews the rampant
material culture, Oaks makes it clear that
she is not a remmciate. She is living firmly
in the real world and working, through her
art, to counter trends that silence, minimize
and disempower an individual’s desire to
look past the superficial goals of our society
and find a deeper truth.
There is a strong connection, she
believes, between those marginalized by
poverty and those who undergo spiritual
See ART, page 13