ARTS&LEISURE Vashon-Maury
Wednesday, April 9, 2014 • Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber
WHAT’S HAPPENING ALL ISLAND SHOW
VALISE holds open submission for all artists For its annual All-Island (and Beyond) Invitational Art Show, VALISE Gallery invites every island artist working in any media to submit one original piece to be displayed in the show. The exhibit opens Friday, May 2, and runs through the month. Intake for submissions is 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 27, or 9 to 11 a.m. Monday, April 28, at the gallery. VALISE Gallery is open on Saturdays from 11 to 4 p.m.
CHANGES AT BERGAMOT
Bergamot Studio closes shop in Burton After 17 months of curating fine art collections and home furnishings, Bergamot Studio owner Kassana Holden is moving on to a new project, closing her gallery and showroom in the historic Burton Masonic Lodge. Holden will continue to use the business name Bergamot Studio while doing freelance design work for small companies and lifestyle brands. She will also continue to work on residential and commercial custom design projects. Bergamot Studio creates custom light fixtures, upholstery fabric and wallpaper using a unique combination of traditional textiles with photographic images. Prior to starting her business on Vashon, Holden held the position of design director for Eddie Bauer Home from 2000 to 2010. Holden said closing her studio was simply the right move at the right time for her. “I will miss ... the relationships with the people of Vashon — the artists, customers and other business owners,” she said. “I’ve made so many close friends here. And, it’s been a professional honor to collaborate with such a fantastically talented cadre of people.” Bergamot will hold a three-day closing sale on the last weekend of April.
MUCH ADO ABOUT KIDS
Kids perform Shakespeare Vashon Island Shakespeare Festival’s ShakesKIDS is up to some educational shenanigans in its free production of William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” at 7 p.m. Friday at the Ober Park Performance Room. In a bold move meant to both entertain and educate, Aimee van Roekel directs this classic comedy with a modern-day twist — the main characters cross dress and exchange gender identities. “Children are constantly told how they must present themselves and which mold they must be seen to fit into,” said van Roekel. “In this production, the boys have learned something of what it is to be a proper young girl, and the girls have learned a bit of what it means to be a fine young man. Also, it is just good fun to do!”
LIVE MUSIC AT SNAPDRAGON: Welsh musician Jon Langford brings his own brand of alternative country and rock music to Snapdragon and the Hastings-Cone Gallery for a live concert on April 20. Currently based in Chicago, Langford was a band member of The Mekons and the Waco Brothers. His artwork is also on display at the gallery for the month of April.
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Writer remembers father in new poetry book By JULI GOETZ MORSER Staff Writer
Islander Cal Kinnear likes to ponder life’s big questions. For this natural-born philosopher dressed in the guise of a writer, former English professor and bookstore owner, the answers to his musings often appear in the form of poetry. His latest and fourth book, “The House of My Father,” explores what he calls the magical border between memory and imagination in a series of prose poetry about his late father. Kinnear will read excerpts and talk about his book next week at the Vashon Bookshop. Ask Kinnear, 74, to describe his father and an image of a man larger than life starts to appear. Take his resume: U.S. Naval Intelligence officer in World War II, an American attache to the British Navy in Senegal, a lawyer and politician, state representative and director of revenue for Governor Dan Evans’ administration. Then factor in Kinnear’s early impression of his father returning from war to their home in Seattle when Kinnear was 6. It was also the first time he met his father. Add a dose of his father’s rule to recite the Gettysburg Address or Bill of Rights as prayers before a bed made tight with hospital corners, and the alchemy of facts and memory creates an almost mythical character. “My father was a force when I was growing up,” Kinnear said. “I had to learn to outgrow it.” Outgrow it he did with the help of his writing. Twenty years ago Kinnear penned a series of poems to sort through his understanding of the man who was his father and the relationship they had. Yet it wasn’t until 2012 that Kinnear reread those poems and realized they should be gathered into a book. With distance and reflection, Kinnear recognized his poems were also investigations into what makes up memory and what defines time. “The poems are a sequence of moments brought back not from time but from a mingling of memory and imagination,” Kinnear writes in the book’s introduction. “Modern scientific thought has demanded we be so certain of time, that it is a line, like a railroad track, on which we find ourselves in a passage we can never reverse. As I reread (the poems) … I know time, memory itself is something different. Ghosts, visitations, hallucinations, the reshaping
File Photo
Cal Kinnear will read from his new book of poetry,“The House of My Father,” at the Vashon Bookshop.
“Memories come and go, the faces, the moments, fire flaring and settling back. The constancy of life is an illusion of the habits we build to protect us from our inner weather. Is it any less powerful than the weather out there? ... Father to son, like gravity. Only the energy isn’t channeled like that. It’s wild as this night, turbulent as the ocean. Given, a gift too vast to manage, and still a gift. To make of what I can. Navigation. You still come to me, from wherever, in great gusts. This is my inheritance.” of desire and regret, where do these reside? ” Kinnear, who moved to Vashon in 2000, wrote his first rhyming poems as an undergraduate at Stanford University. His classmate, poet Sharon Olds, convinced him that poetry could still be written and sold, that it was not yet a meaningless form. With his graduate degree from Princeton University, Kinnear taught English at the University of Virginia and Wells College in New York. But his true poetic muse — inspired by poets James Wright, W.S. Merwin, Pablo Neruda among others — only began to sing once he
and his brother opened a bookstore near The Evergreen State College in 1970. Kinnear’s current poetry project called “The Great Wheel,” takes a look at Western philosophy and how he believes it needs to change. Does Kinnear ever worry he’ll run out of ideas to write about? Apparently not. For according to Kinnear, poetry is all about life. Cal Kinnear will discuss and read excerpts from his new book at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 17, at the Vashon Bookshop.
Rocks star in a VAA science lecture New series debuts at VAA Vashon Allied Arts will launch a new science series that will begin Sunday with a lecture by a local geologist. The series builds on the success of VAA’s popular Arts & Humanities Series and Art History Talks. It will explore emerging and broad scientific topics that relate to how we live. “Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood” is the provocative title of this first lecture, given by David Montgomery, a MacArthur Fellow and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. Montgomery’s book “Rocks Don’t Lie” examines the world’s flood stories, drawing
from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers and scientists. He reveals the role that the Noah’s flood story played in the development of both geology and creationism. With an explorer’s eye and a new approach to both faith and science, Montgomery journeys across landscapes and cultures to look at the illusive nature of truth, how it has changed throughout history and continues to change even today. Montgomery will speak at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Blue Heron. Tickets are $14 for VAA members, seniors and students and $18 for general admission and are available at VAA or www.vashonalliedarts.org. The series will continue with a lecture by crow researcher John Marzluff on May 18 and a talk on gray wolves by Aaron Wirsing on June 8.
David Montgomery