Introducing Thor Myhre

Zen Beacon by Thor Myhre

We're extremely excited to have sculptor Thor Myhre join Mindport's staff as Exhibit Designer & Maintenance Technician.  Thor brings with him technical expertise and ingenuity, a wide-ranging imagination, and a commitment to both his own art and to encouraging others to pursue their creative leanings -all of which make him a perfect match for Mindport.  Stop by now to see Thor's contributions to the Faces show, or in the coming months to try out some interesting additions he's making to the beloved and venerable Aerotrack.  In the meantime, here are Thor's interesting answers to some of my nosy questions. 

Where were you raised?  
I grew up on a farm in Montana, near a town so small Montanans haven't heard of it.

Did you always make things?  What were your earliest projects?  Did you take any art classes growing up?  
I made a lot of my own toys and birdhouses, but I always chose shop class over art class until I went to college.

What changed for you in college? 
I thought I wanted to be an architect or an engineer, but I realized that often those are desk jobs.  It dawned on me that artists both design and build objects.

What sorts of materials interest you?
I tend to collect and use older metal objects, things that were made when concern about the efficiency of mass producing an item didn't trump form and aesthetics as often as it does now.  Durability appeals to me, as does farm ingenuity - modifying what you have to build what you need.  When you live an hour's drive from good parts stores, you end up getting pretty creative, and I remember often returning from the dump with more than we dropped off.

How do you feel about rust?
I like rust.  I find it much more interesting and intricate than paint.  Rust is actually a way metal protects itself.

How many found objects do you have right now?
I have about a 20 ton collection squirreled away in various places - lots of old, curvy, rusty things.  I feel like we're saturated with rectilinear shapes in cities, so I collect a lot of objects from periods when designs featured more curves.  It's hard to see good things going to the dump, but I'm running out of room.

Was the need to divert things from the waste stream (and your yard!) part of the inspiration behind founding RARE (Recycled Art & Resource Expo)?
Yes.  But I also feel like some of the green movement tries to motivate by guilt, and I want to inspire people by showing the fun and creative side of conservation.  Bellingham has an unusual number of reuse events, and I figured if we worked together to create a large collaborative event, it would attract out of area visitors, money, and press.

What's one of the workshops you teach?
My class titled Junk has Soul: Sculpting with the Found Object offers a huge variety of interesting bits and different ways to connect them.  In part, it's about recognizing that with hours of human contact and use, a lot of tools and other parts are imbued with their own character, memory, or soul.   In general, I hope to ignite or feed a creative spark in students that they might access at other moments in their lives. 

What are you working on right now?  Where can people go locally to see some of your work?   
Right now I'm working on a public sculpture for downtown Anacortes and a gate for a community garden that’s a collaboration with members of a high school welding club.  Appliance Depot has a 10' tall figure made from stove burner grates under their sign on Marine drive.  I made a bike rack from stainless steel plumbing fittings at Chuckanut Brewery, and the Beach Store Cafe on Lummi Island has a rack made from farm and fishing implements.  This spring I installed a large one ton piece titled Satori in Fairhaven in an alley between 15th and 16th streets, just south of Taylor street.

That was fun.  Thanks, Thor!

For more about Thor or his work, visit his website,
check out this cool YouTube video,
or become a fan of his Facebook page
....and keep an eye out for Thor's work at Mindport.  

Satori by Thor Myhre

Chuckanut Bike Rack by Thor Myhre

Burner Man by Thor Myhre

You're Invited to a Mail Art Workshop

The text is a little small to read comfortably, so here are the details.  We'll be meeting: 

Sunday, November 17th, 1-4pm 

at

Mindport Exhibits

210 W. Holly St. 

Bellingham, WA

*

call 360.441.7162 to register

$10 suggested donation includes materials

no one turned away for lack of funds 

Upcoming gallery show, "Faces"

 

"Cocktail Gal," a rare happy "ghoul"

 A suggestion came to me not long ago that I should hang show of my pictures that had faces in them. I knew that I'd purposely photographed faces in things at times, when they were obvious, but others have noticed more faces in the photos than I'd ever paid attention to.

When I went through a few thousand images consciously looking for faces, it seemed to me that the photos, often abstract, that carried the most emotional impact often did include subliminal forms that looked like faces, or other features reminiscent of body parts, or visual analogs of muscle tensions. The exercise reminded me of a book I read back in the seventies entitled Subliminal Seduction, by Wilson Bryan Key. The author had a  PhD in communication and wrote a number of books on the theme of subliminal advertising, now billed by Wikipedia as "controversial." Whether Key's conclusions were controversial or not, they did open my eyes to the way imagery is used in advertising to capture our attention. Advertisers would be fools NOT to have used such techniques if they wanted their ads to be effective.

Nowadays I ask myself whether Key's book was instrumental in influencing my photographic eye. Could be so, or it could be that the human mind simply has its eyes open for faces and other forms related to human body appearances. More than likely, it's the latter. Research has shown that newborn babies are "exceptionally capable of facial recognition shortly after birth." (Wikipedia) That stands to reason. It also stands to reason that survival would dictate that we'd remain exceptionally capable of facial recognition throughout life, not to speak of developing sensitive abilities to recognize clues to personality from facial and other bodily cues.

I notice that, as often as not, the faces I find in my photos carry a ghoulish aspect. Is that the image I project on the world? Or is it just that faces hidden in photos are necessarily distortions, and ghouls are distorted beings? Most of us, especially children, harbor a fascination for horror stories or monster images. We seem to enjoy being scared, as long as we can be scared and feel safe at the same time. That may play into the subject choices I make when shooting certain photos. Is the perceived mood of any arbitrary environment we visit influenced by unconsciously perceived faces or forms?

Another aspect of ghoulish imagery that occurred to me as I was picking images to print for this show, was that North America tends to be a "happy face" society, which strongly tends to suppress awareness of injustice or other negative aspects of life in our country. This sort of awareness doesn't go away, but rather just goes underground. I've noticed on various podcasts I listen to, such as KMO's C-Realm, that discussion turns now and then to the subject of zombies, the living dead. Maybe my unconscious is alert to the zombies among us as well.

A favorite book of mine is Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques, photos by F-Stop Fitzgerald with commentary by Stephen King. Gargoyles were traditionally installed on cathedrals and other buildings both to serve as rain spouts and to scare off evil spirits. Maybe that's the best possible interpretation to apply to the gargoyle-like figures in these photographs.

Several of the pictures provide fertile ground for ghoulish projections. They are full of faces if you throw your eyes out of focus and view the image in a glancing manner. There are other images where it's difficult to find anything recognizable as a face at all, but somehow they convey the impression of a face, or at least an emotion that might be conveyed by a face. Use your imagination, and have fun. Remember, Halloween is almost upon us!

This show will be hanging in Mindport's gallery for an indefinite period, commencing on or about October 9th.

Kevin Jones

New Work in Gallery

Now through October 

Sixth in Mindport's Gallery:

~

  8^th Annual Downtown Bellingham 

Plein Air Paint Out & Exhibition (PAPO)

 ~

We paint from life in order to learn how to see.

If you can paint light, you can paint everything under the sun.

                                                           --Frank LaLumia, PAPA Signature Member

Thao Le

Painting from life is a pursuit unlike any other painting technique. It challenges artists to concentrate every sensory nerve on the information in front them. They absorb it all, from sight to sound, from temperature to atmosphere, and then channel those feelings from head to hand, re-creating the vision in paints on paper or canvas.

The roots of painting from life are found in 19th-century Europe. Englishman John Constable believed the artist should forget about formulas and trust his own vision in finding truth in nature. To find that truth, he made sketches outdoors, then elaborated on them in the studio.

Around the same time in France, in a small village outside Paris called Barbizon, a group of artists focused their attentions on peasant life and the natural world surrounding it. Like Constable, Francois Millet and Gustave Courbet challenged conventions of the day, choosing everyday subjects rather than the traditional cliches and presenting them in natural settings, the information for which came from sketches made in the field.

These realists, as they came to be called, laid the groundwork for the mid-19th century revolution in France that took painting from life to its logical conclusion. Lead by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edouard Degas, Auguste Renoir, et. al. the impressionists espoused the belief that you should trust your eyes. Using newly developed theories of how the eye physically registers color, they maintained that what you saw in nature was not form, but rather light on form. And light could be conveyed by color. To prove their theories, they took their paint tubes and easels outdoors, where they re-created the world as colors which suggested light. Rebuffed at first for what appeared to be unfinished paintings, the impressionist vision soon became a standard for truthfully conveying the outdoor experience.

Painting en plein air (in the open air) would forever change how we see the world. Artists in the United States were attracted to the concept, and many, like Californian Guy Rose, traveled to France to study with Monet. Suddenly, places with remarkable light were of particular interest to painters, including the both the East and West Coasts, and the American Southwest, where painting colonies formed. The goal of teachers and students alike was to capture the light and colors peculiar to the place.

Dave Nichols

Today, painting from life is a pursuit that continues to challenge the finest artists in the world, as well as the group from Studio UFO here in Bellingham.  This is our 8^th Annual Downtown Bellingham Plein Air Paint Out & Exhibition (PAPO).  This year we have 24 artists that participated.  The Bellingham PAPO is different in that it focuses on the downtown core and not a natural or wilderness setting.  It is our mission to raise awareness about plein air painting, to show the community how many artists are here in Bellingham and to show the artists’ interpretation of downtown Bellingham.

Summer at Mindport

During this practically cloudless and rainless Pacific Northwest summer, SUN has been streaming through our doors and windows.  The air conditioner has been running, we've moved a precious drawing away from the front because of all the bright light, and passing canines have been making much use of the water bowl set out in the front entry.

  

Along with the increase in sun, there's been an increase in Mindport visitors who are travelers from afar, and in the number of folks visiting with three generations of their family - kids, parents, and grandparents all together, generally having a relaxed and companionable time.  That's great to see any time of year.  

The guestbook entries for the past few months show we've had visitors from:   

Across the United States

Up and Down the I-5 Corridor and Points West (+ Spokane!)

and... Around the World

Thanks for visiting, everyone.  May you have a safe and happy journey into autumn, and come back and see us - rain or shine.

Tallie Jones

Garden

Apples help tomatoes ripen

I’ve never formally defined myself as a gardener, but I’ve cultivated some sort of garden nearly every year since I was 25 years old. In the beginning it usually consisted of a few tomato plants, maybe following in my father’s footsteps. He often raised a small crop, which turned up in salads, BLT sandwiches, and straight up, with mayonnaise. That was his favorite.

Once you’ve tasted a home-grown tomato, you never want to go back to those lumps of pink plastic that pass for tomatoes on your local grocery store’s shelves. Maybe the best variety I’ve ever found is the heirloom Black Krim, which ripens through green to a purplish red with greenish shoulders and delivers flavor beyond imagination.

Squash patch May 4

Squash patch June 29

As the safety concerns with industrially-raised food increase, and rumblings grow that we might eventually face food shortages or extreme expense, I’ve gradually expanded my gardening activities. This year I fenced in another 200 square feet of lawn, covered it in black plastic, and started six squash plants in holes cut in the plastic. I learned this technique during a visit Bullock's Permaculture Homestead   on Orcas Island. It saves you from having to dig up all that sod, once you’ve killed off the lawn, obviates the necessity for weeding, warms the ground, and helps retain soil moisture. The squash plants have gone crazy, even expanding beyond the fence, where they get crudely pruned by the deer who circulate through our yard on a daily basis.

Previous year harvest (3 plants)

 The earlier area of garden, reclaimed from a weedy flower bed adjacent to the aforementioned squash patch, has been planted in potatoes for the last several years. I actually didn’t do much of the planting. The previous crops seeded themselves because it seems impossible to dig out all the potatoes once you’ve got a batch going. Every spring volunteers pop up, eventually crowing out the new plants due to the fact of having gotten a head start. I advocate potatoes, tomatoes, and squash, because they yield the most food for the least amount of work.

This year I bought four huge plastic pots and experimented with growing Anaheim and Poblano peppers, along with cucumbers, in a $200 plastic greenhouse. We’ve been getting as many cucumbers as we can eat, and enough peppers are maturing on the three plants to supply us with several meals-worth of chilis rellenos.

If the idea of growing even a few tomatoes or other vegetables appeals to you, it doesn’t take much to get started. A sunny south or southwest- facing area on a deck, the edge of a porch or along the foundation of a building where you can situate a few large growing containers is desirable. Big plastic flower pots, ceramic pots, or even wooden containers work. I’ve heard of people punching a few drain holes in the bottom of a bag of potting soil, then planting seed potatoes in it. No reason why that wouldn’t work with tomatoes, cucumbers or squash. You can buy tomato and other starts in the spring at a local garden or nursery. Here in Bellingham starts are available at Joe’s Gardens or the Food Coop, as well as a number of other outlets.

I bring up gardening in the context of Mindport because I’ve come to recognize it as one more example of integrating aesthetic and spiritual pleasures with science. You don’t even need much science for a beginning garden. Your successes or failures will send you on a quest for more knowledge, of course: how to deal with various pests, what plants prefer acidic or alkaline soil, etc. There’s the art and science or composting to explore, and various sorts of fertilizer. My own garden navigation has been seat-of-the-pants. I’ve bought any number of gardening books, but hardly look at them. If a problem crops up, I usually find myself searching on the Internet for a solution. Even that hasn’t happened very often. Given a little fertilizer, sunlight, and water, the stuff I plant usually grows fine. Usually my garden area gets very weedy, but it still produces.

After weathering a couple extended spells of gloom over the last couple years, mostly brought on by too much exposure to news of environmental degradation, collapsing economy, and the general disaster being foisted upon us by our dysfunctional industrial system, I discovered that digging in the dirt was one of the few activities that, if it didn’t immediately raise my spirits, distinctly buoyed them over time. Growing things is emotionally therapeutic. Gardening is an activity that calls on your nurturing instincts, and returns them in kind. When I dig a colander-full of potatoes, accompany them to the kitchen with a couple of fresh tomatoes collected from richly fragrant tomato vines (evoking nostalgic childhood memories), I’m warmed by a sense of pleasure, wonder, and gratitude toward these plants that feed us and have fed our ancestors for generations. It’s partially this deep connection to the past that reassures me in the face of doubt and disaster that life does go on, and that we’re a part of it, no matter what madness at the moment happens to afflict the outside world.

Kevin Jones

New Photos

A new collection of photos entitled "Creek" is now hanging in Mindport's gallery and will be up until at least the end of August. You can find commentary relating to this exhibit here.

This group of twenty images is one of the most abstract sets that I've hung at one time. Viewed casually, they seem to me to blur into uniformity, but when I inspect each frame closely, I gradually begin to slip into the hypnotic state of mind that I experienced during the hours that I originally spent in the presence of the creek. Each image, reminds me of the  infinite variations of color and patterns and how they lulled me into a pleasant dreamlike state, erasing awareness of the passage of time. You too may find that after sitting with these images for a spell, you begin to encounter something of the same sensation of being in the actual presence of this creek that I do myself.

Kevin Jones