Sculpture by Aisha Harrison

The Weekly Volcano, Oct. 17, 2013

Realization, clay and salt, by Aisha Harrison

Picture if you can sculpted figures with the strength and sensuality of a Rodin, but not idealized in any way — realistic sculptures of people who may be a little overweight or less than movie-star beautiful, in natural but perhaps awkward poses with faces that register pain. Now imagine they are people of African descent rendered in brown clay and coated, partially or wholly, with glistening white rock salt. That is what sculptor Aisha Harrison is showing at Susan Christian’s Salon Refu in Olympia.

Harrison’s vision of humanity in clay walks a tightrope between realism and surrealism. The figures are engaging, and many of them are eerie. They are sure to ignite an emotional spark.

“I am interested in the experience of power and privilege derived from an individual’s race, class and/or gender identity,” Harrison wrote. “I use materials and surfaces metaphorically. … the brown bare clay refers to my own brown body. The bare clay surface is never extremely smooth or refined. Instead of mimicking skin, I want the gritty, spotted clay to refer to all the elements that come together to make us who we are.” 

It is the white salt that gives these sculptures their surrealistic quality. In some the salt is ground fine and thinly brushed on with acrylic gel allowing the brown clay to show through. In others the salt is courser and more completely covers the skin. 

One of the most powerful pieces is called “Cleanse.” The figure is crouching and licking the salt off part of one hand and arm, and the brown clay shows through only at that point and on the figure’s face. I was so taken with the face and hand that I cannot now remember whether this figure was male or female.

In a similar piece, “Realization,” a woman is lying down in a boat. Her body and the interior of the boat are completely covered with salt, but she reaches out one hand to dip in the water, and the salt has washed away from the delicate fingers of that hand.

There are some in which streams or clouds of salt gush out of mouths as if they are speaking or vomiting salt. There is one mask that is stark brown on the outside and stark white on the inside. And yet another figure holds square masks of salt in front of her face and is standing in a pile of identical square salt masks.

Another favorite piece, “Dissolve,” is a crouching nude woman pouring liquid out of a pitcher. The flowing lines of her legs, arms, knees and breasts are lyrical, and her position is natural and “un-posed.” She demonstrates that the artist has studied figures closely. This is also the only piece in the show without any salt. Or without any recognizable salt. There is a stream of hard, clear “water” inside the spout of the pitcher that is probably finely-ground salt.

This is one of the better shows I’ve seen all year. 

Salon Refu, Thursday-Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. through Oct. 27, 114 N. Capitol Way, Olympia, 360-280-3540.

From New York to Olympia

Acting Class and Hamlet at SPSCC

The New York City-based production company The Acting Company is coming to South Puget Sound Community College for a monologues master class and a production of Hamlet on Tuesday, Oct. 22. These are both great opportunities for local theater students and actors, whether young and new or vets, to come see and learn from some high-level actors up close and personal.

Purchase tickets for the evening production of Hamlet

Reserve your space in the master class - limited to 15 people

An Improbable Peck of Plays II

 

Bobby Brown, Debbie Sampson and Kate Arvin

Last year at this time Northwest Playwrights Alliance and Prodigal Sun Productions teamed up to entertain Olympia audiences with a weird, inventive, (and dare I say improbable) evening of one-acts called An Improbable Peck of Plays. They are back with a second round called An Improbable Peck of Plays II, consisting of six insanely funny stories and one serious and strangely surrealistically play so this year a peck is seven.

Four of the same writers, directors and actors are back. They are:

• actor Ken Luce;
• Tom Sanders, serving as both actor in Sinatra’s Ocean and director of Philip Atlakson’s Charlotte’s Web We Weave and William Missouri Downs’ Books on Tape;
• Gregory Hischak, writer of Hygiene; and 
• Bryan Willis, writer of The Awesome Power of the Black and Decker LH5000 12 AP Variable Speed Electricleaf Hog Blower and director of Sinatra’s Ocean.

Jeremy Holien and Ken Luce

The evening started with Charlotte’s Web, a cute take on a mother reading the children’s classic to her daughter and the daughter’s insightful questions about the story. It’s just what you’d expect from bright and precocious child. Debbie Sampson as the mother and Judy Oliver as the child both act their parts with style, and there is a delightful but not too surprising twist ending.

Shoe Story by Arlitia Jones is the first of three plays highlighting the skill and versatility of Kate Arvin who plays one of a pair of women with Erin Manza Chanfrau who meet on a park bench and strike up a risible‎ conversation about shoes.

Dan Erickson’s Sinatra’s Ocean was the only serious play in the bunch and the only one I was not pleased with. Sampson and Oliver return in this one along with Sanders. It is a disturbing play about a woman who can’t hear and a nurse who is not really there (but we don’t know that until later) who interprets what is not heard. It was confusing in part because I had difficulty hearing much of what Sampson and Oliver said. They had projected and enunciated clearly in the first play but spoke quietly in this one, and that did not work for me.

In reference to the above I need to add a disclaimer. I have hearing loss that is corrected by hearing aids, and as a theater critic that puts me at a disadvantage. But if I can clearly hear most of the actors I should be able to hear them all. I had no problem hearing Sanders.

Tom Sanders, Debbie Sampson and Judy Oliver

Willis’s play with the extra-long title about the hog blower was hilarious and typical of other plays of his I have seen. Arvin plays a machine, specifically a leaf blower. She rides the backs of Jeremy Holien, Chanfrau and Luce and makes outrageously funny leaf-blower sounds along with facial expressions and physicality to match. Both Willis’s writing and Arvin’s acting score high on the genius scale for this one.

Downs’ Books on Tape, directed by Sanders and starring Bobby Brown and Judy Oliver is an unusual love story well acted by Brown and Oliver about a woman who loves books on tape and a voice actor who makes his living recording them. It would seem an ideal match, but when they come together things do not go as expected.

Hischak’s Hygiene starring Sampson, Arvin and Brown, and directed by Sky Myers is an absurd comedy about a little girl who gets some kind of frightening parasite in her hair. Once again Arvin displays comic genius. I have not seen a grown woman play a little girl this well since Lily Tomlin’s “Edith Ann.”

Finally, Amy Shepard’s 13 Lives, co-directed by Shepard and Sanders and featuring Chanfrau, Holien and Luce is a story of 13 vignettes illustrating typically frustrating things cats do. Anyone who owns cats will recognize them all. Luce in particular displays a knack for physical comedy in these skits that I had never seen in previous shows I’ve seen him do.

The show starts at 8 p.m., and we were out of there by 9:30. For a fun evening of belly laughs, I highly recommend An Improbable Peck of Plays II.

Shows Oct. 17-20 and 24-26 at The Midnight Sun, 113 N. Columbia St.
Tickets: $12.00 - $18.00 (Sliding Scale - No one turned away). Available at door night of show or online at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/475243

Harlequin’s Henry V

The News Tribune, Oct. 11, 2013

Harlequin Production’s Henry V is ensemble theater at its best. With the lone exception of Jason Marr as the title character, every actor in the cast plays multiple roles — eight actors astonishingly playing over 50 roles. The reason I call this show ensemble theater is because any one of these actors could just as effectively play any of the other parts and there are no leading roles, not even Henry. Sex, size and appearance don’t enter the equation. We have men playing women’s roles and women playing men’s roles, and they are all equally convincing. Thanks to Ashley Randolph’s costumes and the actor’s good use of posture, voice and movement it is almost impossible to recognize that the women playing men’s parts are not men and vice versa. Again with one lone exception: Christian Doyle playing two of the women, Nell, a.k.a. Mistress Quickly, and Alice, brings off some hilarious bits of drag performance. His gestures and his feminine voice are right-on, and the fact that he has a beard adds to the wondrous absurdity. 

Apropos to presenting this as an ensemble production, it is all about the words and the action; everything else — sets, costumes, lighting, could be eliminated and it would still be an excellent show. Such theatrical dressing is icing on the cake. Marko Bujeaud’s set is a backdrop of beautiful trees and a huge pageant wagon of a type that may or may not have actually been used by roving players in Shakespeare’s time. Harlequin used the same wagon when they did this play in the Washington Center black box in 1998. It was originally designed by Seattle set designer Jeffrey Cook. It is a large wagon (easily 10 feet tall by my estimate) built of heavy old timber with a side wall that lets down to rest on barrels and serve as a thrust stage and with cleverly designed hand and foot holds actors can use for climbing. This wagon is the only set piece (other than the trees) and it is all that is needed. 

The entire story is a play within a play as a roving band of actors and a narrator (called Chorus and acted by Daniel Flint, who also plays the French Ambassador, a constable, Governor Harfleur, Duke of Burgundy, a soldier and a prisoner) acts out the story of young King Henry V’s invasion of France and his courtship of Princess Katherine (Maggie Lofquist). High drama is mixed with loads of comedy, since the troupe of actors is a scraggly bunch and due to the high comedy provided by Henry’s old drinking and carousing buddies — Pistol (Taryn Pearce), Bardolph (Flint), Nym (Frank Lawler), Mistress Quickly and the Boy (Lofquist).

There are two epic battle scenes, each of which is preceded by inspirational speeches from the king, and each of which is filled with marvelously choreographed sword fights. There is a comic scene worthy of Abbott and Costello in which Alice tries to teach English to Katharine. There are numerous scenes of intrigue, and an excellent if too long denouement in which Henry bargains with the king and queen of France for the hand of their daughter, Katherine.

In many other plays Russ Holm has proven that he has a special knack for playing big, blustery characters, especially ones who are taken with their own authority, and he employs that here as the Archbishop of Canterbury, King Charles VI of France and other nobles.

Casey Brown morphs into many diverse characters and is especially notable as Louis the Dauphin and as the French aide. 

Director Scot Whitney is to be commended for an excellent job and, more importantly, for being the originator of the concept of using eight actors for a play that is usually done with 20 or more.

It is a long play, close to three hours including a 20-minute intermission. I enjoyed it immensely, but I have to admit I got anxious for them to wind things up after the last big fight scene.

WHEN: Thursdays through Saturdays, 8p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. through Oct. 26

WHERE: State Theater, 202 E. 4^th Ave., Olympia

TICKETS: $32, $28 seniors and military, $20 students, discounted rush tickets a half-hour prior to curtain

INFORMATION: 360-786-0151; http://www.harlequinproductions.org/

Marilyn Frasca’s “Like This” at Childhood’s End

The Weekly Volcano, Oct. 10, 2013

And Then the Boys Played War

The 71 drawings in Marilyn Frasca’s “Like This,” at Childhood’s End are stunning. It is an exhibition of drawings done since 2001. All of the drawings are done with pastel or other media drawn into monoprints. Each picture tells a story, be it the story of Squaxin Indians recreating an historic canoe trip or depictions of Native American legends, be it a tender rendition of people with their animals, or art about the horror of war and the events of Sept. 11, 2001. They are memories and events real and imagined, created with sensitivity to form, balance, texture; and each picture, no matter how real or how detailed, began with what the Surrealists called automatic writing — marks on a surface derived from the artist’s unconscious.

There is power here. And love. And humanity.

Witness

The earliest drawing in the show is a little black and white image that Frasca created by inking a Plexiglass plate, messing around with it and finally driving her Subaru over it to create an abstract image of densely textured areas.  The piece is called "Terror of the Situation." It looks like a horse’s head. Frasca said, “This is something Gurdjieff refers to in his writings that happens to people when they are pondering very difficult questions. At the time I made this I was deeply disturbed by the USA support for war.”

Every other piece in the show is an outgrowth of this in which she created textured areas on paper

One Song

through similarly made monoprints, and then, over time, studied the textural areas until she found images within the abstract forms and drew them out with pastels or other drawing implements. Many of the earlier ones were reactions to the attacks on Sept. 11. The whole back wall of the gallery consists of war-related images made in this way, including a large drawing of two Palestinian women standing in front of Picasso’s great anti-war painting “Guernica.” One of the women is holding a candle, which resonates with the arm holding a lamp in Picasso’s painting, a metaphor for light shown on the horror of war. A nearby wall text includes a clipping from Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times which said that when Colin Powell addressed the U.N. in the buildup to the Iraq War he had “Guernica,” which hangs in the U.N., covered up because he could not make the case for going to war with it in view.

Each picture in Frasca’s show is a dialog between the abstract and the figurative; between smooth, flat areas of color and roughly textured shapes; between the conscious and the unconscious; between images seen and images imagined. 

A drawing called “A Gathering” is almost completely filled with a large textured area that looks like a rugged Cliffside with — as if she grew out of the cliff — a winged angel to the far right. The angel is the only recognizable image, and everything except her face is filled with the original textural marks. At the opposite extreme formally, none of the original texture remains in “Daily Practice.” It is an image of a woman with outstretched arms upon which three birds are perched. Somewhere between these in terms of the balance between abstract textures and realistic figure drawing is “Where Ever We Go,” a drawing of two standing women in which the textured areas become robes or shrouds that wrap around the two figures. Only the head of one woman can be seen, and only the eyes of the other.

Like This

The piece from which the show takes its title is “Like This.” It pictures a person holding two masks in his hands. One is a dull gray mask of a face with no eyeballs. It covers the person’s face. The other mask is yellow and its tongue is sticking out. As the person changes masks he or she becomes “like this” and then “like this.” The artist said that it was only after completing the drawing that she learned that both masks are traditional in Native American culture.

A canoe journey inspired “Leaving Squaxin.” Every year the Squaxin Island Indians paddle more than 100 canoes throughout Puget Sound to celebrate the revival of traditional travel on the ancestral highways of the coastal Pacific Northwest, stopping at indigenous territories along the way for cultural celebration and sharing. In 2012 they landed on the beach below Frasca’s home. She was astounded by the sight and to commemorate this event she created this largest work in the show, a picture of an Indian woman paddling her canoe. It is one of the few pieces in the show in which the textures are allowed on the body. It is as if the woman’s body is transparent and you can see these rich textures through her arms. Metaphorically perhaps that would be the history of the tribe seen on her flesh.

One of my favorite pieces, partially because it is so different from all the others, is “The Far Shore,” showing a fisherman in a stormy sea near a rugged coastline. It reminds me a lot of some of Winslow Homer’s watercolors of fishermen on stormy seas. There are also two little wash drawings that are entirely different from everything else in the show. They are among the newest pieces and may be harbingers of what’s to come next.

This may well be the best show you will see this year. It is an exhibition should that should be shown in a major museum featuring works by a woman who, by all rights, should be represented by big-time galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Count yourself lucky that we have it at Childhood’s End in Olympia.

inH

[Childhood’s End Gallery, Like This, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, through Nov. 17, 222 Fourth Ave. W, Olympia, 360.943.3724]