Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2018)
A18 News Blue Mountain Eagle Wednesday, July 18, 2018 ARTIST Continued from Page A1 The Eagle/Richard Hanners Construction work on a single-track mountain bike trail above the Seventh Street Complex in John Day is nearly complete. TRAILS Continued from Page A1 3, which owns the land, along with the city of John Day and the John Day-Can- yon City Parks & Recre- ation District, Lieuallen said. Bike park funding Funding for Phase 1 included a $33,893 Recre- ational Trails Program grant from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, $12,000 from the Autzen Foundation and $3,000 from the Grant County Chamber of Commerce. In-kind work provided by the city, Grant County, the Oregon Youth Conservation Corps, Benchmark Survey- ing and a local church group helped stretch funding for Phase 1, Lieuallen said. The bike park organizers have applied for a $100,000 grant from Travel Oregon for Phase 2, a pump track that would be located be- low the new trails, Lieuallen said. Phase 2 could end up costing $200,000 or more, depending on whether the flow hills are made of dirt, asphalt or concrete, and ad- ditional funding could come from local fundraising ef- forts, he said. A resolution approved by the John Day City Council at the July 10 meeting will limit the city’s liability when the public uses its trails sys- tems, including the bike park and proposed riverside trails connecting the sports com- plex to Innovation Gateway. This includes private and public lands. In other community park news, the John Day-Can- yon City Parks and Recre- ation District has applied for a $350,000 grant from the Oregon Parks and Rec- reation Department to be used to build a children’s playground and a splash pad for summertime and to install exercise stations on the Jimmy Allen Memorial Trail at the Seventh Street Complex. The district could receive word on whether it will be awarded the grant this fall. is known for causing tremors, slowness of movement and impaired balance, and it also affected Magden’s eyesight. “I lost all vision of color,” he said. Although he continued oil painting during that time, the canvases were mostly absent of color. His color vision began re- turning in January of 2010, but that’s when he was diag- nosed with Parkinson’s. It was the beginning of the battle of his life. One of four hybrid bighorn sheep and Alpine ibex goats with some human qualities in Hans Magden’s latest sculpture. In the artist’s in-home stu- dio are photos and other pic- tures on the wall that inspire him or strike him as important. More than 350 paintings, plus 30 sculptures, rotate through his three-room gallery. However, he doesn’t paint or sculpt from pictures and hasn’t done so since the ’80s. He said he may recall a facial expression, a gesture or the way someone is standing as he paints. Magden, who especially enjoys Van Gogh’s art, said he avoided classical art training, preferring to follow a more creative process. “Realism copies what you’re looking at,” he said. “I have much more fun follow- ing what my brain tells me to do.” Magden said most of the time, when he sits down with a blank canvas, he doesn’t know until it’s finished what he will create, and his works are never finished until he paints or sculpts the eyes. “The essence of the feeling is the eyes,” he said. Magden’s latest project, which he hopes to eventual- ly scale up, is a sculpture of four hybrid bighorn sheep and Alpine ibex goats with some human qualities. He was inspired by a photo he saw of ibex standing at a steep angle on a dam, making a seemingly impossible climb upwards. In his interpretation, one especially human-like animal is pursuing the other three. “You’re only limited by your own imagination,” he said as his light blue eyes gazed at his creation. “I don’t know if all of this will run out, but I don’t think so.” Magden’s gallery is by appointment only. For more information, call Waldner at 541-620-1819 or visit Hans- Magden.com. discouraging firearms posses- sion or purchase and any live ammunition during the class. “A person does not have to support firearms ownership to recognize that there is always the possibility that a child might encounter a firearm in an unsupervised setting,” Starrett said. “We want to make sure that young people have every tool to stay safe in such a situation. It seems obvious that a child who has had the opportunity to learn how to respond to this kind of event will be safer. We believe denying young people this knowledge is irresponsible.” W.J. Mark Knutson, pas- tor of Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, and Mi- chael Cahana, rabbi at Con- gregation Beth Israel in Port- land, were chief petitioners of an initiative to ban semi-auto- matic firearms. They said they oppose requiring sixth graders to take a firearms safety class. “This is a very poor idea for our state,” Cahana said. “It accepts the status quo of guns as an ever-present danger, that there is no way to reduce the overwhelming prevalence of guns in our children’s lives. We believe it is time to change the status quo.” Knutson and Cahana who lead the interfaith coalition, Lift Every Voice Oregon, pro- posed Initiative Petition 43 to ban assault-style firearms for the Nov. 6 election but had to suspend the effort because of legal obstacles to the wording of the initiative ballot title. The group plans to submit an- other initiative for 2020 to ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. They said they also hope to work with state legislators in 2019 to ban the kind of weap- ons used in mass shootings around the nation. The fight Magden lost much of the use of the right side of his body and started painting with his left hand. Now he’s ambi- dextrous. He and his partner, Chris- ty Rheu Waldner, immersed themselves in researching the best diet and exercise for Parkinson’s, and doctors also helped him find the right com- bination of medicines. Drinking kombucha and eating fermented vegetables, such as kimchi, for a “health- ier gut bacteria,” he said, “helped me as much as any- thing, as far as a more perma- nent improvement.” He’s found three benefi- cial exercises for Parkinson’s are dancing, bike riding and boxing. “It appears that boxing is maybe the best — rhythm, timing and balance,” he said. “The big bag develops strength and balance.” Surrounded by paintings in his private gallery, Beyond the Perimeter, are a speed bag and heavy punching bag, which he uses on a regular basis. They seem to reflect the Eagle Photos/Angel Carpenter John Day artist Hans Magden shows his latest sculpture, which is a work in progress, inspired by a photo he saw of Alpine ibex goats that were taking a seemingly impossible climb upward. expressions in his art, which has also been therapeutic in regaining strength. “It’s been a real effort,” he said. “Parkinson’s is a for- midable foe. The goal is just to stay in the match. You’re probably not going to win, but it’s the refusal to be defeat- ed. It will take all your ener- gy and concentration to fight it — anything less than that, you’re destined for a wheel- chair.” The journey Magden spent his early childhood in Los Gatos, Cal- ifornia, near San Jose, where he experienced his first sculp- ture lesson at age 8. His dad bought a ranch north of Enterprise around that time. “I went up each summer and worked on the ranch,” he said, adding they moved to the property when he was 16. He graduated from Wal- lowa High School, then Or- egon State University in Corvallis. He trained to be a veterinarian at Washington FIREARMS Continued from Page A1 For more information contact Grant County Veterans 541 620-8057 61008 Bureau. “Rather than foster- ing ignorance and fear, we hope to provide knowledge and promote safety.” Schools would be required to provide a firearms instruc- tor certified by law enforce- ment or a national or state firearms instruction certifica- tion organization to teach the class. The curriculum would cover how to respond to an unsecured firearm, how to safely secure a firearm if an adult is absent, safe muzzle direction, avoiding touching a trigger and semi-automatic weapon function “to demon- strate that removing … the magazine doesn’t not mean the firearm is unloaded.” The initiative also bans any material encouraging or State University in Pullman, graduating in 1976. Magden opened the John Day practice in 1980 with his now-former wife, and he would periodically take time to paint in an adjacent studio. “When I could no longer practice, then the paintings exploded, and the sculptures exploded, and who knows what will be next,” he said. He shows his art mostly lo- cally. One might see his paint- ings in a John Day restaurant or in a couple galleries in Baker City. In March of 2017, his work debuted at the International Art Expo in New York City. Waldner, whom he calls his best art critic, was primar- ily responsible for the show in New York, he said, adding he’s not particularly interested in sales. The vision EOU John Day eou.edu/john-day “Advance your career and complete our fully accredited online MBA.” Connect with our regional center director, Ashley to get started. EASTERN OREGON U N I V E R S I T Y Ashley Armichardy Center Director aarmichardy@eou.edu 541.575.2168 66148 68073
