View this email in your browser
by Rowan Johnson
SOU Class of 2025, Creative Writing
Hello!

We at the Schneider Museum of Art want to thank you all for the love and support you have shown our winter exhibition What's at Stake. We appreciate all the important and thoughtful conversation this exhibition sparked and look forward to bringing you more amazing art with our spring exhibition Moving Pictures featuring artist Deborah Oropallo. After March 23rd, the museum will be closed until April 17th to switch out exhibitions. The opening reception for Moving Pictures will take place on Thursday, April 18th from 5 to 7 pm. 

I would also like to take this time to personally thank our subscribers for taking time out of their busy schedules to engage with this newsletter every week. The community we have created both online and offline is supportive, and I am so grateful to have such an engaged audience. As a student studying creative writing at Southern Oregon University, I am honored to have a space to do what I love and be received so kindly. 

For our last edition of the winter 2024 newsletter, I want to highlight some other wonderful student writers. The Creative Writing Club of SOU was given the opportunity to write Ekphrastic poems about pieces in What's at Stake. An Ekphrastic poem is a body of prose or poetry inspired by a piece of art. While contemporary definitions include movies, photography, and music, the original Ekphrastic was inspired by works of visual art. More information about Ekphrastic poems can be found with the link below. Visit the Schneider Museum of Art to see the art that inspired this poetry before Saturday, and I hope you enjoy these beautiful poems!

-Rowan

(link: https://writers.com/how-to-write-an-ekphrastic-poem)

Bob Thompson, Journey, 1962, oil on canvas, courtesy of private collection

Journey Response by Evan Chapin

 

They’re the people of two colors. They are stark and mismatched. Brown Body Red Hair, Red Body Black Hair, Gold, Orange Body Yellow Hair. All that can be made of their features is how their frames are positioned versus their surroundings. Most are facing the viewer, in front of dark golf grass and a road like a racing track. Gold has his hand around Brown Body Red Hair’s stomach. She is naked and her hand is on a horse’s backside. The horse is blue and a snake, long and fat. Its head meanders past the canvas. Gold Body Black Hair and Orange Body Brown Hair stand in front of its neck. 

It has a saddle. The saddle is a gate. There’s a figure with long green hair and big hips. Her skin is white and she is hiding her arms, if she has any, in front of her. She may be in the horse or the horse may have a hole to her. She may just be a figment scribbled on its side. The others seem kind of irritated or intrigued, giving the artists the side eye. Why are you here? The two on the painting’s right (Gold and Red Hair Brown Body) want to get back to dancing or whatever. 

But I think the person in the saddle is ashamed. And I think she’s the only one.

Masami Teraoka, Last Swan Lake Rehearsal, 2022, oil on panel in gold leaf triptych, courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery

Swan Song by Tom Kurstjens


The battle is over and the victor's decided,
And he's certainly seeking to assert himself.
Using propaganda and deception, he climbed this high;
Now with artillery and manpower truly unmatched,
All in his way are burned to the ground,
With smoke and shadow blotting the sun;
To prove he's the only man in the sky.
Yet a throne of corpses has an unstable foundation.
It's only by the people's will that a leader's appointed,
And it'll be that same will that brings his ruin.
Hope burns white-hot in the aftermath, with compassion its tinder.
Meanwhile, the fires of fascism can't burn forever.
Weapons pierce the heart, but never the soul.
Karma will be back to collect, it's just a matter of how soon.
And so, people prepare to rain on the victory parade,
Hoping to sing the tyrant's swan song.

Zeina Barakeh, Homeland Insecurity, 2016, digital animation (9:50 minutes), courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery

Homeland Insecurity Response by Merlin June Mack

Men are rarely named beautiful things

and horses will always bite off more than they can chew.

The vivisection that is currently happening in your backyard is

tired of waiting for you to notice it.

Colonizers love to imagine themselves on horseback,

there’s something violent about herbivores on four legs.

The horse is the most detailed chess piece and ponies are

for girls and stallions are for men.

Horses are for colonizers.

Nothing is personal not even bombs, stop making everything about politics!

Deep down colonizers want to marry horses! Blah blah blah!

Somewhere in the desert, there are children with childhoods,

and somewhere in the desert stones are as light and harmless as snowballs.

Somewhere in the desert, ceasefire is not a dirty word.

The vivisection in your backyard is not for horses and it’s not for you.

Discover More!


Tuesday Tours

Join us on Tuesdays at 12:30pm for a FREE Docent Led Tour of our current exhibition. Registration is not required but recommended. Register Now


Inside the Museum Archive

Visit the Inside the Museum Archive to read past editions.

 Subscribe to our YouTube Channels
The Schneider Museum of Art and the Oregon Center for the Arts now have YouTube channels. Subscribe today to stay up to date on all the art happenings at SOU.
(VIDEO) Creative Industries Discussion: Wesley Hicks, 2024 SOU VAST Resident
 
Schneider Museum of Art Schneider Museum of Art
Oregon Center for the Art Oregon Center for the Art

Thank you to our sponsors!

James M. Collier

Jeannie Taylor
Twitter
Facebook
Website
Email
Instagram
YouTube
The Schneider Museum of Art is located within the ancestral homelands of the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa peoples who lived here since time immemorial. These Tribes were displaced during rapid Euro-American colonization, the Gold Rush, and armed conflict between 1851 and 1856. In the 1850s, discovery of gold and settlement brought thousands of Euro-Americans to their lands, leading to warfare, epidemics, starvation, and villages being burned. In 1853 the first of several treaties were signed, confederating these Tribes and others together – who would then be referred to as the Rogue River Tribe. These treaties ceded most of their homelands to the United States, and in return they were guaranteed a permanent homeland reserved for them. At the end of the Rogue River Wars in 1856, these Tribes and many other Tribes from western Oregon were removed to the Siletz Reservation and the Grand Ronde Reservation. Today, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (https://www.grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (http://www.ctsi.nsn.us/) are living descendants of the Takelma, Shasta, and Latgawa peoples of this area. We encourage you to learn about the land you reside on, and to join us in advocating for the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous people.
Copyright © 2018 Schneider Museum of Art, All rights reserved.

Our address is:
555 Indiana Street
Ashland, OR 97520

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.