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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 21, 2008)
visual arts BY SUZI STEFFEN Remains of Our Days Bones, shells, eyes and ears at DIVA B First, the Spahns. Sara works with ack in high school, my best friend ceramics, some of which come off as a loved to joke about humans bit too precious (Big River or Tracks, for “having a hundred percent instance), but most of which mix ephemeral mortality rate.” Perhaps he said it dryly lightness with the strength and vulnerability when we read Red Sky at Dawn and the of fi red clay to create wonderfully allusive main character fell face-fi rst into a decaying images. Sundance and horse; perhaps he Dreams That Almost said it triumphantly Existed nudge at the when Hamlet went brain to consider on for a bit too bones — tossed bones, long about Yorick. perhaps, or an animal’s We would raise ribs in Sundance and our eyebrows and broken, reknit, stripped give a little nod and scrimshaw-carved of appreciation at bones in Dreams. his wry yet plain To Hear and See You statement. combines elements on Then, we rarely the wall and hanging had to deal with from the ceiling. The death or even hanging pieces call up reminders of our bones, too, but also pork own mortality. I’d rinds, tiny bee’s nests, like to take him to wrapped bandages, DIVA now to see strips of skin or bark two of the shows: — and the interaction “Sight and Sound” To Hear and See You, of their shadows with by Sara Smith by Sara Smith Spahn the white wall elicits Spahn and Kevin a pleasing visual Spahn, and “Thrown complexity. Kevin Spahn’s sound design Before,” by Jonathan Smith, in which also alludes to other things — outdoor bodies meet art, and what lies beneath the noises, or maybe the sound of breath from skin emerges as hauntingly attractive. the inside of the lungs. The visual and aural work together well; each lends more weight to the other’s art. In the next room, Jonathan Smith’s “Thrown Before” monumentalizes objects even as the photography reveals its own process. One piece focuses on a pine cone stripped by squirrels (“They eat it like an artichoke,” Smith says); one an egg that Smith shot in several different exposures and printed, leaving his tracks clear. Because I’m lightly acquainted with him, I’m not going to review the show (though if I didn’t know Smith, I’d be writing my approval of these moving, lovely pieces that both turn away and confront). Instead, he and I talked about the show. Here’s an excerpt from the longer interview, available at blogs.eugeneweekly. com 039_33-37, by Jonathan Smith and someone found a deer skull. Bones specifi cally are so close to what we are, and to see a bone photographed speaks to us. Something has died; something has passed on; this remains. We can easily make a jump from a deer to our own mortality. Why make the photos of bones so consciously beautiful? Art has to be beautiful in order to be viewable. I don’t necessarily agree with art that shocks. I think even some of the most controversial art out there is beautiful in the end, like [Andres Serrano’s] Piss Christ. Even a gruesome project can be viewed in a beautiful way. It’s like sugarcoating in a way — it goes down a little easier, but the fact is that it goes down. ew EW: Jonathan, how did you get interested in remains? JS: We were on a hike with a bunch of friends, Both shows run through Saturday, Aug. 30, at DIVA, 110 W. Broadway. Summer hours are 10 am-6 pm Tues.-Sat. THRILLER RYONE “ TEL UT L ‘T E EL V L E NO ONE ’... A T G O ET P-N TO OT B C R H EATHE.” O R AB O OU MAY FO R SO TWIST LO Y S AN Y GELES TIMES n, -Kenneth Tura GET G IN WHICH T T O Y FUN. H T IN R Y S B A A N L , RE “A LY LOST...PU DELIRIOUS L N BETTER IT WAS EVE D TIME.” THE SE lde CO n, N THE NEW YORK TIMES A FI LM BY ET GU IL LA UM E CA N -Stephen Ho lde MMER’S U S IS H T F O “ ONE FYING MOST SAT P IS ERIENCES.” MO d V Schic IE kel, E TIM X E -Richar l by HA RL AN st- Se llin g No ve Ba se d on the Be CO BE N © 2006 EUROPACORP – LES PRODUCTIONS DU TRESOR BIJOU ART CINEMAS ND 492 East 13th Ave., Eugene (541) 686-2458 STARTS FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 tellnoonemovie.com WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM EUGENE WEEKLY AUGUST 21, 2008 27
