A18
News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
ARTIST
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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
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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
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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