Quirk of the Week: The gone show
School’s nearly out, summer solstice nears, it’s professional baseball/basketball overlap time ...
This is a season of transition.
With that, a new selection of “Gone, returned, revisited …”
In Quirk, changes happen. We did something like this about a year ago; here are some recurring themes — and new/old ones.
Revisited
• Long ago, Calendar of Quirk celebrated a unique wooden statue — a friendly looking but odd-shaped bear, all 12 feet of him, on College Avenue near Ford Street. The moss-patinaed figure holds plenty to regard, between his wry smile, outsized ears, double thumbs up, and rotting wood at his ankles.
But late last year a closer look revealed further Quirk in the not-so-grizzly bear.
Look at his big, white eyes.
Those bright orbs are embedded golf balls: “Noodle 1” from TaylorMade, to be precise.
• A few months ago we profiled the golf décor and amenities at Loft & Lies in McMinnville, where simulated golf stations pair well with food and drink. In the hallway were displayed dozens of golf course scorecards, a collection since moved a few steps away to the “Pro Shop” meeting room.
The cards are now displayed inside a glass case. Got a scorecard you want to add? Blank or with scores penciled in, either are welcome. Bring yours to manager Aaron Baker.
Gone
• The nutcracker at US Bank: the classic bearded figure watched over the north foyer door inside the US Bank lobby. A staff member placed the nutcracker on his perch during Christmas several years ago, and he never moved. That is, until remodeling work was done in late winter, and he mysteriously disappeared. (Never mind that the doorway was not changed during the project.) A thorough search for the green-coated fellow turned up nothing.
• The life-sized “Alien” sculpture from a driveway on Highway 47 south of Yamhill. It was last seen in late May.
• Orange cone from atop the marquee roof at Mack Theater: there for years, the cone was removed when crews repainted the front of the historic Hotel Yamhill building.
• Ticket window board: two years ago, vandals broke the main pane in the booth under the Mack Theater marquee. It was boarded up until recently, and the space gleams all glass again. Take a close look inside and see the old clock, ticket machine and stubs, and photo of usher Delores Kinion, all from the theater’s heyday, the 1950s and ’60s.
• Miscellaneous objects: Display windows are now empty at Mac Prescription Shop on Third Street, which changed ownership last year. Gone are varied signage, an old doctor bag, artificial flowers and other miscellany once seen in the north and south window displays, now empty.
Gone ... partly, or mostly
Past Quirk included the DIY sign reading “We Care Please Buckle Up” — a roughly-drawn Oregon with a buckled-up heart symbol — since gone (knocked over? removed?) from the Fourth Street Harvest Fresh parking lot. But two blocks away is an identical one (or the same one?) in the Davis Street exit of the city downtown parking garage. A small mystery, perhaps.
Installed three years ago, “Tunnel” by Marissa Nagano is a trellis-like installation on the Linfield Art Walk. It was originally covered in pages of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Remaining are only two small scraps of newsprint the size and consistency of paper napkins. (Visible is “The new Aloha Stadium could attract international rugby …”) The plywood pieces have mostly turned from golden to gray, bent and peeling from exposure to wind, rain and time, which stripped the newsprint.
Gone, and replaced
Nearby is the annual or semi-annual Linfield Art Department rotating mural, repainted in late May by students of Totem Shriver. The former panorama of imaginary creatures is replaced by simple stripes of pastel blue, yellow and green.
Shriver said the work is a project borne of studying minimalist artists Agnes Martin and Lee Ufan.
“Minimalism has a tendency to leave you wanting more, and I think our mural does that,” he said, adding, “It was done with rollers, and the skips were intentional.”
Have you seen something that’s an example of quirk — an oddity that adds to the joy of life in Yamhill County? Email Kirby Neumann-Rea at neumann reakirby@gmail.com.
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