IN THE NEWS

Statesman Journal | RON COWAN | Jan. 27, 2007

DELIVERING A MESSAGE: Exhibit uses are to make statements about war, ethnic pride, toxic waste

Art for art's sake is not the operative term at Salem Art Association's new "Private Contemplations/Private Conversations" exhibit.

The seven artists, working in everything from film and video to photography, installations and paintings, are using art to deliver a message about subjects like war, ethnic pride, religion, nuclear power and toxic waste.

"I wanted a different angle than just art as activism," exhibition curator Paula Booth said. "I think what I was really struck by was the personal journey involved."

Booth said one of her inspirations was Salem painter April Waters, whose huge oil portraits of peace activist Cindy Sheehan and nuclear-environmental activist Helen Caldicott dominate one end of the A.N. Bush Gallery.

"I think this is better for me than a letter to the editor," said Waters, who has demonstrated and written letters as part of her own personal activism.

The 60- by 80-inch canvases have a commanding size and a warmth of personality, echoed in the rich colors and intimate detail.

"I don't think I would have hung these portraits in this show if they were life-size portraits," Booth said.

"Artists need to say something," said Waters, who visited Sheehan at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, last Easter.

"Also she's a mom, with sons the same age as mine who went off to war. I think she went through a lot of pain from her experience, losing her child.

"It has completely changed her life."

Sheehan's son, Casey, died in Iraq, a fact that led Sheehan to become an anti-war activist and led to the breakup of her marriage.

Proceeds from sale of the painting, priced at $19,200, will go to Gold Star Families for Peace, co-founded by Sheehan. Sheehan met Caldicott during an appearance in Portland last year.

"She's passionate, forceful and powerful in that," Waters said. "They are brave women who are doing something brave for our time; they're giving up a lot to do it."

Portland artist Holly Andres is represented by a series of seven large color photos which evoke the lives of a family in the 1970s, based on her own family of 10 siblings.

She recruited children in Portland to play the fictional family in the images, which were taken with a large format camera for a detailed but almost surreal kind of image.

"Each image is constructed to enact a specific moment, convey identity through space and depict a psychological portrait," she said.

Some of the images are meant to evoke her Catholic upbringing, with obvious references to the virgin birth and the Last Supper. The characters have a solemn, unemotional quality.

"I think about a particular composition and create a scene," Andres said.

"They're obviously contrived. They're not really emotive, but that makes them seem sad."

"I think the viewer is going to bring their own life experiences, own background to it."

The cinematic quality of the photos is echoed in the fact that Andres does film work.

"Dandelion," a super 8mm film made with fellow exhibit artist Grace Carter, deals with the shared experience of the loss of their mothers in youth and how that affected their transition to womanhood.

Jan Allen of Farmington, Maine, uses both photos and an installation to evoke her own journey of physical and spiritual healing, as well as express her concerns about health care in general.

>Her "Transmigration 8:42" combines the projected images of wave patterns and three suspended sheets formed of Protoplast mesh, a flexible, heat-sensitive material used for medical purposes.

People can touch the sheets and walk in between them as part of the interactive experience.

"The way the light picks it up to me it's like a little holograph," she said.

"It's fun to see how it changes every time it's installed somewhere. It still conveys the same message I want it to."

The different sheets are meant to reference multiple dimensions, with the wave images speaking to the life-giving and taking forces of water, among other things.

Her "Lifeboat Series" of photos features the artist herself in images that recall her own medical history dealing with a recommendation of a hysterectomy and related feminine issues.

Allen has studied medicine in China.

"So I bring this into a conversation," she said. "I can't deny I deal with energy, healing and life in tension."