ON CENTER
Envision Cascadia!, Summer/Fall 2009, Vol. XXI, No. 4 by Jake Seniuk
AH Cascadia! Like other imaginary Ah! Places – Utopiah! And Shangrilah! to name a pair that have passed into the vernacular of optimism – the very name conjures a mindscape of the Ideal. Except this one is not lost in mists of the imagination, but may be found under the cloud cover that perennially blankets what is more prosaically called the Pacific Northwest, encompassing greater or lesser portions of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, and sometimes northern California, depending on the predilection of the dreamer.
Cascadia will not be found on an auto club map, whose towns and cities populate the same country it occupies, because road maps are gridded according to political logic. Cascadia’s boundaries aren’t defined by politics and treaties, but by the more primal ecology of emerald forests, swift waters and silber skies, shared by the lands lying between the icy ramparts of the Cascade Mountains and the wide Pacific Ocean.
Notions of Cascadia can be traced back to the fabled Oregon Territory, which beckoned to the restless in the early 19th Century. Inspired by sublime landscapes, westward-bound pilgrims have often held this far-flung corner to a Utopian light. From the idealistic Puget Sound Colony’s 1890s village, which was the predecessor of modern Port Angeles, to Ecotopia, the “green” breakaway Cascadian republic imagined by Ernest Callenbach in his 1975 futurist fantasy novel – this late-tamed territory has long wrestled with its self-image as Promised Land.
Legend has it that in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln designated a town-site for nascent Port Angeles in the Washington Territory. Here the nation’s “second city,” a capital-in-exile, would be built should the Confederacy overthrow that other Washington. History tells us that The Union prevailed and Port Angeles was left to develop by its own wits and at its own pace. But now, a century-and-a-half later, while blue and red battle flags again flare menacingly in those distant halls of power, the idea of a Northwest homeland may have recovered some of its cachet. Because of its remoteness and its location at the very heart of the Cascadian zone, the Olympic Peninsula still embodies the lingering promise of that kind of ah! place.
Artists in all cultures have long occupied the role of both observer and seer, crafters of original visions of what was, what is and what might yet come. For more than two decades the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center has celebrated the artists of Cascadia, and often served as a venue for visionaries and fantasists.
This show includes the works of thirty-three artists, who live in or have roots in this region, chosen from among those who responded to a call to ponder their homeland – to Envision Cascadia! Artists were encouraged to address what they found essential about the notion of Cascadia or, conversely, to report on obstacles to its evolution. Works created specifically for the exhibition are complemented with works drawn from the existing work of Cascadian-minded artists. This exhibition is not suggested by any means to be a definitive treatment of the meaning of Cascadia. Rather, it is a first step meant to stimulate conversation, both private and public, about who we are. Here in our far left-hand corner the Olympic Peninsula is the “Northwest’s northwest,” certainly as a physical location, but also as a place that embodies many of the quintessential Northwestern qualities that have drawn so many idealistic souls to the region. May notions of Cascadia play prominently in developing Port Angeles’s identity in this new century.
The Promise is Michael Paul Miller’s first full-scale painting completed in his newly adopted Cascadian homeland. It transplants to the foot of Mt. Angeles the apocalyptic imagery he brought with him from the autumnal burning fields of his Wisconsin youth, and which were featured in his powerful PAFAC solo show earlier this year. The wounded youth, himself, is there – a shirtless foreground figure brightly lit and staring back at the viewer from a shoreline scene seemingly awash in fossil fuels on the verge of ignition. The mood is black and pensive. The mountain above the city is in shadow. The sky is heavy with acrid, sooty smoke that blocks out the daylight, except for a small blue patch of hope visible on the mountain’s shoulder. The harbor has given way to low tide mudflats glistening as if soaked in split oil. Fire consumes a pick-up truck stalled on Marine Drive and is now spreading in a continuous front across the bay. A wooden stake flying colored lashes of surveyor’s tape is cast aside at the lad’s feet and a pair of half-erased adult figures can be made out in the smoky pall like phantom memories. Could these be the waning days of the Petroleum Party? What has been promised and by whom?
- Jake Seniuk - Executive Director/Curator - Port Angeles Fine Arts Center
