Art. What?

I think about art a lot - what is it, who gets to define it, who gets to judge it, and other imponderables that are purely subjective.  That old saw "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like" is actually true.

The Joseph Beuys exhibit at PAM is a case in point.  Beuys was a German fluxus - one who mixes or blends different media and art forms.  PAM exhibited his Lightening With Stag In Its Glare which consists of a huge piece of iron dangling from the ceiling (the lightening), and scattered on the floor below the various and sundry other bits of metal, a steel cart, blocks of stone, and a tripod table.
A friend and I were on the balcony above the piece, looking down at the twisted shapes littering the floor.  It came to me.  "Those look to me like coprolites."  She said, "I was thinking exactly the same thing.

We simply could not understand the sculpture.  We later talked to one of the room attendants, who pointed out what each piece represented (I think the steel cart was the stag - I don't recall), which helped.

It reminded me of an art show I attended in Eugene years ago.  The painter was there, along with patrons and guests drinking wine and talking about art.  The artist had been collared by a middle-aged woman with money and attitude.  She had her arm hooked through his, gesturing with her wine glass at a painting they were standing in front of.  "What were you trying to achieve with that slash of mauve across the lower right?  Is that a statement of lost hope, or perhaps even despair?"  The artist, without missing a beat said, "I just liked the color."

Art is like that.  You get it or you don't.  But it can depend on how you're exposed to it.  For years I thought that Mark Rothko's stuff was nonsense.  Certainly I could paint something like this.  How hard could a light red O on a dark red background be?  Until the Rothko retrospective at PAM, I had only seen his paintings in magazines.

Seeing them in person changed my perspective entirely, partly due to their size (most of them are enormous canvases), but mostly because in person I could begin to see the subtle way he had done them.  They started to make sense to me in a way they hadn't before.  He hadn't just slopped some paint onto a canvas and called it art, he had worked on them.  They meant something to him. Seeing them in person and to scale changed my perception of what he was doing.

I still don't know if I like them, but I appreciate them as art just the same.

One definition of art, I suppose, is the transformation of emotion into a physical entity. Rothko was feeling something when he painted his abstracts.  He was trying to explain something that was going on inside him; some vague or perhaps even crystal clear feeling that he could only express by laying paint on canvas.  I've been listening to a lot of 50's and 60's jazz lately, and that same thing comes through when "Fatha" Hines lays his hands on a keyboard.  He's expressing something from inside that only comes out through his fingers.

I know, I know, this is all very trite, and I'm only covering ground that has been well-trod.  But abstract art always makes me wonder about what art is.  Is this art...

A banged up old wooden dining room table, painted over and over again, nicks and scratches everywhere, sits sort of off to the side of a large museum gallery, alone, with nothing nearby.  Around the table apron are painted eyes.  When an innocent bystander happens to walk near the table, the table begins to make a noise.  As the bystander gets closer, the table begins to shake violently, and doesn't stop until the person backs off.

Is that art?  Well, maybe.  Let's say my intention was to portray the feelings of someone suffering from anthropophobia.  Heck, we all get tired of people once in a while.  For us introverts, we do better without a bunch of people around anyway.  Perhaps I built the table to reflect how I feel when perfect strangers approach me.  In that case, in my opinion it is art.  I might build that table just to see what it's like to express an emotion through a physical entity.  In this case, the table would be an expression of an emotion, and I think that's what art is.

But, I might be all wet.

PAM is having a great show on California Impressionism, which is one of my favorite styles of landscape painting - abstract enough to be interesting, but you can still see the trees.  You should go.  They have AC.

A Clear Lake Sojourn

Clear Lake is almost due south of Mount Hood, and one of the busiest recreation sites in the Mt. Hood National Forest.  I reserved a camp site for Wednesday and Thursday night this week (one of the many bliss's of being retired).  It was this year's first trip for the popup (I really should come up with a name, and finish the paint job design) with its new canvas.

The tow up the mountain was easy (thank you, Subaru, though I still don't know what "partial zero emissions" means), and arrived at the reserved site about 2PM.  The description was that it was a pull-through, but to my eye, it was more of a wide spot in the road, and the door to the popup would be right on the pavement of the camping ground road.  Fortune smiled, though, and right across the road was a genuine pull-through, vacant the same days I had reserved.

The camp host came around in a little while, and we settled the paperwork, making one family without reservations very happy to get a shoreline site on chance.  This was the second year she and her husband had been campground hosts.  I asked if she liked it.  She was quiet for a moment, then said, "Well, the 80-20 rule still applies.  My days off are Monday and Tuesday, and I'm more than ready for them."  It was interesting to see their vehicles parked side-by-side - a 30-foot motor home and a Smart Car.

The wind started coming up as it does every afternoon on Clear Lake, and the water got pretty choppy.  I chilled at the camp site, looking at maps and deciding the activity for the next day.  About 7PM it started to cool, and after dinner required a fire and fleece.

Morning was blue sky crisp.  My alarm was the slamming of the out-house doors and the cries of kids wanting to do anything but sit down and eat breakfast.

I had decided the night before that I'd hike around the lake, which according to the Forest Service was 6.7 miles.  Actually, they said that was the shore line of Clear Lake.  Although no trails appeared to run on the south side, it appeared that an old Forest Service logging road followed the length of the south shore.

After breakfast, the day pack was loaded with water, a Cliff Bar (should be back in time for a late lunch), camera, and emergency supplies.  Turning to the eastern end of the lake, a few minutes had me standing on the rock and fill dam that forms the lake, though before the dam was built, there was a small alpine lake here.

From the air, Clear Lake looks like a bird on the western edge of Wasco County, and serves as a water reservoir for that county.  Clear Creek, the small stream that drains the lake dips into the corner of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (great museum) and the winds its way northeast, ultimately turning into the White River which feeds the Deschutes between Maupin and the Tygh Valley.

Crossing the dam put me on the south shore.  Though not a clearly identified as a trail, old FS Road 2660 ran right along the shore line, as shown on the maps and has transmogrified into a hiking and bike trail.  For the first mile or so there were lots of casual fire pits (at least there were fire pits).  And sadly, signs of the other 20% the camp host mentioned.  Their scat seems to be beer cans and toilet paper.

Not too much further, and Mt. Hood rears above the far shore canopy, giving the first of only two viewings from Clear Lake.  (In the camp ground the day before, a motorcycle pulled up along side me and a man sporting a neatly-trimmed beard asked where a good spot to see Mt. Hood would be.  Had to send him south to Timothy Lake.)

I don't know how long its been since the south shore was logged, but there are lots of young trees (disorganized and therefore I assume volunteers), while the older trees don't have a diameter of much more than a foot or two.

Along the way I noticed a strange thing.  It looked like a cat had had a rough night and spit up not one, not two, but seven fur balls.  Coulda been a dog, I suppose.  Or ferrets.  Owl pellets came to mind, but there were no bones.  By the way, I'm easily distracted.

About an hour into the hike, I thought I must be at the half way mark, but it looked like a lot more lake remained to the westward than their should have been.  At this point I confess to being something of a techno-geek.  At the beginning, I launched the MotionX GPS app for my iPhone 4S.  It's my favorite GPS bar none, though it does consume a bit of battery power from the not-so-powerful iPhone.  At any rate, rather than half way, the map made it look as though I was only a quarter of the way.  So, I determined to steam on, and stop for a break at the western-most arm of the lake.

The second view of Mt. Hood came up, better than the first but still pretty stingy as far as Hood views from surrounding lakes are concerned.  Finally, I came around the corner at the end of the lake and spotted the perfect resting roost.

 It had a built-in back rest, and was a perfect place to lift my feet for a while.  Oh, I forgot to mention an extra added bonus on this trip.  No mosquitoes.  I didn't get poked even once, much to my delight.

I did share the rock with a damsel fly, though, which I'm always happy to do.  These dragon fly cousins were thick along the shore, outnumbering their larger brethren probably 10 to 1.  And, it's mating season.  But I didn't look.

After a rest and yawn, I headed back east down the north shore of Clear Lake.

Clear Lake has an official campground on the eastern end, but the entire north shore is littered (and I mean that seriously) with casual campgrounds.  It wasn't long before I was reminded of the campground host's 80/20 rule.  In fairness, it's probably more like 98/2 rule, but the offending 2% really have a huge impact on what is otherwise a beautiful spot.

There must have been a casual camp site every 100 yards along the shore.  Most of them were tidy and clean.  Which made the ones that weren't even more of an eyesore.  The first one I ran across wasn't just a fire pit full of beer cans and other trash, but it looked as though someone had delighted in scattering their junk across the entire site.  Could have been a bear, I suppose, but there were no foodstuffs left behind for a beat to carry around.  Just junk.

The second one was even worse.  It sported a fire pit about 10 feet across connected to another about five feet across, and this one was completely full of trash.  Mostly liquor bottles, beer cans, and soup cans.  Diapers, of course, torn up boxes, and so on and so on.

The most offensive one (though why it's worse than the others is unclear to me) was one back in the woods away from shore.  These folks must have thought they were doing good by leaving the camp site nice and tidy by carrying their trash back into the woods where nobody would see it.  Well, nobody but somebody who occasionally wanders off the beaten path, like me.

I really struggle to understand those who come out into nature, and then just trash it.  My imagination says that the folks with the double fire pit probably played loud music all night and made their neighbors swear off camping ever again.  It's really beyond me.  I wonder if they say to themselves, "No worries, somebody will clean it up."  After all, for the most part they try to leave it all in the fire pit, so it seems that they're trying.  Just not hard enough.  Sigh.

My day brightened when I came around a corner to be greeted by a Mama and her brood.  They looked to be mallards, though the showy guy wasn't doing his part, so far as I could tell.  Deadbeat dad.

About two hours into the hike, my feet wanted a break, so I gave them one.  The water surprised me at its warmth, and explained the occasional swimmer I'd seen here and there.

While cooling my heals, I glanced to the right and spotted what I immediately thought of as "A Monk Contemplates the Fir."  It was a piece of bark that had peeled away from a stump creating a form that so much said to me a tall, thin man with a funny hat leaning on a tree.  Art as nature or nature as art.  Either way works for me.

Finally, just as my feet were beginning to complain, I re-entered the camp ground, completing the loop around the lake.  I flopped down into my chair, opened a beer, and pulled out my iPhone to see whether the lake was 6.7 miles around or not.  The way I went, it was 8.5 miles.  What?  I suppose that the Forest Service is correct when measuring the shoreline, particularly if they did it at the end of summer.  But to us simple hikers, they're off by nearly two miles.  I'd have taken lunch had I known.

As with all persons of a geekish nature, I wondered how many thousands of calories I had consumed in my journey.  Google quickly pointed me to a site that let me enter the distance for a walk, my weight (which I most certainly will not share here), and deliver in calories how much energy you exerted for a walk.  As W.C. Fields used to say, "Godfrey Daniels!"  My 8.5 miles and 2:45 time burned a total of - wait for it - 1100 calories.  I been robbed.  I thought I could eat peach pie for a week.  Nope.  Reality gives me one more dope slap just to keep me alert.  Happy trails!