Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##Chachalu Tribal Museum and Cultural Center on Grand Ronde Road in Grand Ronde, a former school facility, welcomes visitors Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##Chachalu Tribal Museum and Cultural Center on Grand Ronde Road in Grand Ronde, a former school facility, welcomes visitors Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##To quote Ernest Hemingway, the 63-year-old Jim’s Trading Post in Grand Ronde is a clean, well-lighted place, with orderly stacks of books, and a somewhat jumbled array of hardware, clothing and varied second-hand goods.
Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##To quote Ernest Hemingway, the 63-year-old Jim’s Trading Post in Grand Ronde is a clean, well-lighted place, with orderly stacks of books, and a somewhat jumbled array of hardware, clothing and varied second-hand goods.
By Kirby Neumann-Rea • Of the News-Register • 

Back, and Forth: Healing power of art felt upon return visit

Editor's note: Dakota Zimmer's work was credited to another artist in the original version of this column. -- KN-R

 

Places with a full sense of history also keep up with the times.

I was reminded of this in a visit last month to Grand Ronde, a place I plan to return to again, this time before 36 years have elapsed.

It’s been on my list since I joined the News-Register two years ago.

My purpose was dual: get a general refresher on the West Valley as I wound through Sheridan and Willamina on my way, and get a good look at the Chachalu Tribal Museum and Cultural Center, pride of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. We’ll have updated information on the museum in our annual Visitor Guide, coming out next month, and I wanted to see the facility for myself.

Grand Ronde is a place that happens to straddle the coverage areas of both the News-Register and my first newspaper, the Polk County Itemizer-Observer in Dallas. It’s 20-25 miles in either direction, and tucked right up against the Yamhill and Polk dividing line.

A visit to Grand Ronde was part of my first day as a fulltime reporter, on April 1, 1981. My editor, Tom Shapley, needed to take photos of a quilt gathering held either at a church or grange hall, I think the latter.

I made perhaps five other visits to Grand Ronde in my two stints on the staff of the I-O in the early-to-late-1980s. This week I tried to recall which housed the quilt event, but to no avail.

One place I was able to revisit last week was Jim’s Trading Post, a bookstore/collectibles/hardware store on Highway 18 one mile west.

The last time I was there, in mid-1989, I spent some time with camera and notebook. But whatever I planned to write about that Highway 18 mainstay back in 1989 remained unwritten and unpublished when I left Dallas later that year.

Inside, I found some great books and postcards, and enjoyed a chat with the gracious owner, Russ Hosley, who inherited the 63-year-old store from his late father, Jim.

“I’ve been consolidating,” Russ said. “This place is nothing but labor intensive. But it pays the bills and I like to keep it going.”

Time was limited on my Friday afternoon reconnaissance run through Grand Ronde, but I got a memory-lane trip out of it nonetheless. To go back, some 36 years since my last visit, was enjoyable if a little dizzying.

I told Russ I appreciated the shop then, and all the more now.

In my current job as managing editor, I take the occasional photo for publication.

The most recent featured bluesman Tony Coleman and his band in a gig at another essential location — Willamina’s West Valley Community Campus. As I’ve noted in the past, the campus is a true community center, full of life,and welcoming of folks from throughout the county.

Other recent images for this newspaper featured businesses, community festivals and craft breweries, any of them akin to photos I might have taken at any point since I got started in the business in 1981. But the exhibits at the Chachalu Museum were very much in tune with the times.

Ikanum, from the Chinuk Wawa language, refers to painful stories told in a personal way. One placard explains, “Ikanum imparts teachings on heartache and loss as well as creation, new beginnings, and healing.”

A traditional canoe, which elders would have made from cedar, was rendered in steel. It examines both masculine and feminine energy, according to artist Travis Stewart, allowing one “to peer through to the other side.”

“Cougar finds doe” by Teal Reibach is a digital illustration on paper of the ancient Chinuk legend of “Thunder and Cougar.” Dakota Zimmer’s photo illustration “Bee” blends a honey bee and the former paper mill in Oregon City, location of sacred waters and now owned by the Confederated Tribes.

“I have hopes and a vision that in the future the tables will turn and mother nature takes her power back…” Zimmer says.

“The Art and Life of Frank Kowing” exhibit is accompanied by information on suicide prevention, including “Two Spirit Loved & Accepted” (#weneedyouhere).

Tables in the middle of the room contain paper and writing implements for people to address “How do you care for yourself when feeling low?” and “What brings you joy?”

Words and images — butterflies, flower, trees and more — display those deep, anonymous feelings, and they augment the display of drawings, paintings and sculpture by Kowing, who died by his own hand in 2016 at age 72.

The room is filled with several hundred works, row upon row in charcoal and paint, all measuring 16-by-20 inches, with vivid, surreal and sometimes disturbing or ironic images.

Sample captions include “I too have no means of influencing the decisions which affect my fate in this world,” “Do not go gently into the night” and “The sword is a benevolent instrument that clears the way.” In the last, a red tie-wearing torso bears a blade-wielding Statue of Liberty with a death’s-head.

Another graphic image of a ghoul fingers an exposed skull. It reads, “Allow me to pick your brain… we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

The current exhibit — which closes April 14 — shows Kowing’s gifts at both deep human emotion and incisive satire.

Photography and reporting have always introduced surprises at events I’ve gone to cover. The Chachalu visit was no less surprising, given the chance to review the works of Kowing, an artist whose works I was introduced to last year in a show at Linfield University.

The earlier show served as an introduction, the Chachalu exhibit as a feast. And many larger works are displayed in the old gym at Chachalu, where they are viewable on request.

“Art heals, even if it hurts. Even if it’s ugly,” wrote one visitor, who may have been responding to the stark beauty of Kowing’s messages.

To the healing question, “Color, life, connection …” one visitor wrote. “My family, my tribe,” another wrote in response to a question on joy.

Others wrote, “The sea, trees, candlelight,”and “… garlic, full moon at midnight, and art.”

“I think about how lucky I am,” someone wrote. Another visitor left the message “Never Give Up” next to a Sonic the Hedgehog drawing.

Kowing draws a ravaging crocodile in a suit and tie that announces, “We’re moving forward,” early-21st century code for ignoring the past.

This therapeutic effort, and the Stewart canoe sculpture, feel like bridges between the exhibit on Kowing and Chachalu’s next exhibit, “My Father’s Father’s Sister: Our Ancestor Shimkhin.” Slated to open April 20, it is billed by museum curators as “celebrating Oregon’s queer Indigenous history, focusing on the respected 19th-century Atfalati Kalapuya healer Shimkhin (pronounced “Shim-hen” or “Shum-hin”) and highlighting contemporary Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer contributions to our communities.”

This person of European descent is looking forward to the Shimkhin celebration, for it will be fascinating to see how Chachalu embraces this reflection of humanity through an indigenous perspective.

Contact Kirby Neumann-Rea at kirby@newsregister.com or 503-687-1291.

Comments

@@pager@@
Web Design and Web Development by Buildable