EUGENE, OR – The Lane Community College Art Gallery is proud to present,
Blame it on Wyoming, an exhibition featuring the work of local artist and Lane Community College Art faculty, JS Bird. JS has been a fulltime faculty member of the Department of Art and Applied Design for over 12 years. Sharing with students his unique vision of the world through painting, as demonstrated by his new body of work feature in his current exhibition.
Artist Statement:
The First Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying…
Rainer Maira Rilke
The show runs from October 17th to November 10th. There will be a lecture with fellow artist, Kathleen Caprario on Thursday, October 20th 3:00 pm with a reception immediately following.
The galleries are located in building 11 on main campus, 4000 E. 30th Avenue. There is no charge for admission. The Art and Applied Design Department phone number is 541-463-5409.
For more information about Lane Community College:
Lane is an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabilities Employer
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