This is Sandy Brown Jensen, and you’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s Arts Review Program. How about that humongous stadium going up on Agate Street in the U. District? Well, directly across the street is the spacious and light-filled UO Law Library.
You can walk right in the front door, ascend to the second floor, and suddenly find yourself in a splendid photography exhibition by Michael Taylor. As you disappear into these compelling images, construction noises fade away, and you find yourself immersed in the great landscapes of the open West.
Because I went to WSU in Washington’s Palouse country for three years before I realized the error of my ways, I fell first into a long, golden vision of those famous hills centered by one, also long, white and red barn. Add a warm gray sky, and you have a simple, dramatic composition in four colors.
I should add that to keep his prices down, Michael made his own frames, and at $175 each, UO Law Library may be the best holiday art market in town this season.
This show is titled “Places and Things: A Road Trip” because Michael criss crosses the Western States on his motorcycle, his camera capturing images you see here with the eyes of memory--
or the colorful layered hills of the Badlands, a rusted car hammered into iron lace by bullet holes, a bridal party walking to church, tiny foreground figures loomed over by an enormous city of gasworks, Leaburg Dam in full autumn dress, hay bales and old houses and the wide open spaces of our home here in the West.
This is just one more unexpected place to find art in Eugene; this show is visual time travel, and it’s up through Jan. 3.
I put several of Michael’s images up on the Viz City blog at KLCC.org/vizcity. And of course you know Viz City is co-produced by Terry Way and Sandy Brown Jensen.