David Slader and Owen Carey don’t have a spot of ink between them, but tattoos are the central theme of their co-exhibition at Gallery 114 in the Pearl District later this month, beginning on First Thursday.
The idea for the show emerged after a gallery visitor told Slader the figures in his abstract patchwork portraiture appeared tattooed. He had invited his friend and acclaimed local theater photographer, Owen Carey, to exhibit photographs alongside him, and so Carey set out to capture the essence of body art.
Their show, running March 7 through March 30, will include five of Slader’s lively oil paintings, along with a sculpture he created from a burnt arborvitae hedge, and images Carey captured of 13 tattooed subjects. Carey said he has taken more than 3,000 photographs he’ll be selecting from to exhibit.
“It’s about the person as much as it is about the ink,” Carey said. “And usually the ink is very much emblematic of something in that person’s life. I wanted to know the stories about the people. Where did that come from? Why did you do it? What does it mean to you?”
His final selections will be paired with brief narratives about the subjects and their connection to the tattoos on their bodies. Carey found that in most cases, his subjects’ tattoos were cathartic, steeped in a deeply painful or pivotal moment of that person’s life.
One of his subjects had her husband’s cremated remains infused into the ink that outlines a tattoo to memorialize him. Another subject’s tattoos are linked to her ongoing battle with cancer, first with breast cancer leading to a double mastectomy and reconstruction and now with leukemia. She has a tattoo of the Portuguese word “saudade,” meaning a profound longing for something lost.
“It is the only art form I can think of where there are two artists collaborating,” Slader said. “It’s a permanent part of that person, and it’s an expression of wherever they were at that moment.”
Gallery 114 is a collective owned and operated by 13 artists, including Slader, who all pay dues and take turns designing their own exhibits. This structure, free of commercial pressures, allows each artist tremendous freedom in the art they create and the way they use the space.
Slader’s upcoming show, titled “InkBodySkinPaint+Fire,” will also feature a series of performances that take place periodically in the gallery alongside the exhibit, seeking to further explore the human body through the lens of identity, movement and prose.
Tattooed entertainers with Risk/Reward will perform during First Thursday. This band of Portland artists take the “risk” of experimenting with new styles and methods of performance art in front of live audiences. Slader said he won’t know exactly what they’ll do until it happens.
On Tuesday, March 26, Street Roots vendors will share prose they’ve written during a reading titled “The Invisibility of Visibility.”
And on Saturday, March 16, theater maker Rusty Tennant will perform their one-person show, “The Importance of Being Frank.” Tennant is the technical director for Reed College’s Theatre Department and artistic director for the Fuse Theatre Ensemble.
In addition to performing at the exhibit, Tennant is also featured in Carey’s photographs. Tennant’s tattoos and performance are tied to a fascination with Shakespeare and the parallels of erasure in what Tennant says is Shakespeare’s queer identity, and their own.
Tennant identifies as non-binary and has asked Street Roots to use they/their pronouns to describe them. Arriving in a place where Tennant feels they can be true to their gender-queer identity came after many years of suppression.
Much in the way that Tennant, who self-admittedly presents as masculine, experienced an erasure of their queer self while growing up in a small farming town in Michigan, puritans have sought to erase Shakespeare’s homosexuality from history, Tennant said.
All that remains of Shakespeare’s life are his literary works and six signatures on three legal documents. There’s nothing else to go on.
Tennant’s erasure happened half a lifetime ago. As a young child, they loved to dress in their mother’s clothes and jewelry, dance and cheer with the cheerleaders. But one day around the age of 5, they were told they had outgrown that behavior. Tennant remembers the pompoms were taken away and replaced with hunter’s safety lessons and a gun. Sports replaced dancing, and they were on their way to becoming the red-bearded bear they presents as today.
“Who is that kid? What happened to them, because this,” Tennant said, pointing to themself, “does not present that way – unless I let the queen come out, and the queen can come out. This, at least when you walk down the street, presents as a little scary, if not toxic masculinity. How did that turn into this, and what happened to that? Where did that little kid go?”
Tennant’s lively one-person show will explore this idea, their relationship with their mother and the experience of erasure, all in a one-hour monologue full of Shakespearian facts and prose.
This will be the fifth time Tennant will give this performance.
After each show, they said, “there is always that person who comes up and starts challenging my facts.”
But all a person needs to do is read Shakespeare’s sonnets in their context to figure out the author is gay, Tennant argues.
“If you’re a queer person and you read Shakespeare’s sonnets, there’s no more question in your mind,” they said. “He makes it very clear, numerous times in the sonnets. He is in love with this boy.”
Tennant points to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 144 as one of many examples that illustrates their point:
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
But Tennant adored Shakespeare long before coming to believe he was gay.
“Even in high school, I was the kid who couldn’t wait to go to Michigan State University to see the Shakespeare production every year,” he said.
When Tennant was cast to play Shakespearean characters, they portrayed them as gay. The parts were written in a way that it made sense to do so.
“I started to find characters like Antonio in ‘Twelfth Night,’ who was undeniably queer for Sebastian, or Osric in ‘Hamlet,’ which I played off Broadway – I played him exceptionally queer,” Tennant said. “They always cut this beautifully long monologue Osric has describing Laertes, and it is the monologue of someone who is in love with every ounce, every toe, every leg of that man, and it’s very clear – but it’s always cut.”
But it wasn’t just Shakespeare’s queerness that has held Tennant’s fascination. It’s always been a connection they saw between Shakespeare and their mother that was most powerful. It began with Tennant’s realization they both had the same birthday, April 23, which was also the day Shakespeare died.
Tennant’s mother died when they were 20, and that’s when the fascination with Shakespeare really ramped up. Tennant began to get Shakespeare-related tattoos: Shakespeare’s coat of arms on their back; his family’s motto, “Non Sanz Droict,” which translates to “not without right,” across their belly. Five of the seven tattoos that adorn Tennant’s body are in one way or another a tribute to Shakespeare, and in many ways, Tennant’s mother as well.
Tennant believes Shakespeare, recognized as one of the greatest Western writers of all time, could serve as a powerful role model for queer youth if historians and school curriculums would acknowledge his sexuality.
InkBodySkinPaint+Fire
Exhibit runs March 7 to March 30, at Gallery 114, 1100 NW Glisan St., Portland (lower level). Regular gallery hours are noon to 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. All performances and events are free and open to the public.
Preview Reception
with David Slader and Owen Carey
7 p.m. Wednesday, March 6
First Thursday and show opening
3-9 p.m. Thursday, March 7
Risk/Reward
An experimental, interactive performance
Intermittently between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. during First Thursday, March 7
The Importance of Being Frank
Rusty Tennant’s one-person performance on the theses that Shakespeare was gay
4 p.m. Saturday, March 16
Donations accepted; proceeds to Fuse Theatre Ensemble
The Invisibility of Visibility
Literary readings from Street Roots vendors
6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 26
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.
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