This spring I took my partner to the hospital, and then essentially lived there at his bedside for the next two months, sucking up to doctors and sleeping in recliner chairs. He lost. I lost. We lost. I am a person who communicates for a living, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to understand everything that happened there, let alone describe it.
So instead I’ll tell you about a particular tapestry that hangs in one of the busier hallways of Oregon Health and Science University. I walked past it most days, and in the moments when my eyes paused upon its moiré of tightly woven colors, I knew I was having a conversation with it that would also be hard to put into words.
In “Precipitation,” by Judith Poxson Fawkes threads of blues and greens and yellows and the occasional pink lock tightly in tartan-like rows. The overall motion is down, but there’s another loud pattern slanting to the side. Anyone who’s lived in the Pacific Northwest long enough has met rain in its sideways form. It doesn’t like to be sideways, but it must be for a time.
Whenever I passed “Precipitation,” I felt the work thundering in sheets, pungent with nature, and in a constant state of falling from the sky. The conversation between us had to do with rain in Portland, which I love, and the thought that if I lost everything, I would still have that. After my partner died, I didn’t care if the pain ever stopped because it was very diffuse, like the Portland rain that is merely mist and makes itself known through condensation.
I remember these conversations with a tapestry because processing is a real pain in the ass. But one of the more magical things that can happen in this life is when a piece of art transforms in the mind of its observer. Art can simply go places that meaning cannot.
Here in a midterm election year, as we look to art to reflect or parse the world, it makes complete sense that artists would be drawn to chaos. And that some artists would turn to clowning.
The influence of clowning on Portland’s theater scene is undeniable, and, in this issue, the Mercury is here to respect their particular form of chaos. You’ll find a profile of writer and performer Anthony Hudson, who has retired his longstanding persona of Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi, but is about to release a collection of plays where Carla is the star. You’ll also find a story about the Cuomo Theatre Fund, which builds on the legacy of CoHo Clown Cohort leader Phillip Cuomo to create stability and synergy in the local theater scene. There’s even an “experimental clown artist” at this year’s Time-Based Art Festival—Alex Tatarsky, whose work “ushers audiences through an absurdist hellscape of the mind.”
And, because you need some business as usual to throw your clowns into relief, we’re also looking ahead to gallery shows, soon-to-open movies, and the 15-year anniversary of local makerspace ADX.
Right now, to me, everything is chaos. When I realized the theme would be clowns, I thought: Yeah, that tracks. Thank goodness for themes, but also, the fact that not everyone follows the theme.
Suzette Smith
Arts & Culture Editor
