“Children's Games,” as a title, sounds innocent enough. But look at the Pieter Bruegel painting of the title and see that not all of the 91 games depicted are innocent or fun. Artist, composer, director Seth Nehil has named his upcoming multimedia performance work after the Bruegel painting, and as with Bruegel's clear-eyed view of the real games children play, expect from Nehil something more complex and a little darker than the title suggests. For Nehil's Children's Games, debuting in October at The Mouth in Portland, he brings cinematic image, live vocalists, and an electronic band to bear on ideas around the loss of play (as well as the associative and irrational aspects of play), psychoanalytic film theory, and horror films.
Try to invent a backstory for a composer whose works for choir have included setting Orestes to music as well as poems of Robert Duncan, William Stafford, and now Leslie Scalapino. Would you guess a background in classical music, a degree in composition, and maybe a minor in literature? Or coming out of chamber vocal music as a performer perhaps to write for the ensemble? No, try albums on the Kill Rock Stars, K Records, and Mr. Lady labels, teaching Women + Rock at PSU, and of course, the Ph.D. in comparative literature.
Like a cutaway section of a fusilage, Portland artist Josh Smith's big curved plywood sculpture in his 2010 installation at the Manuel Izquierdo Gallery “Working With Doubt” (2010) brought to mind the utopian hopes of modernity via the sleekness of the manufactured. On the reverse of the freestanding piece, its grid of ribs was revealed, interrupted by an angular dash of intersecting white plains that grew out of its side like cut crystal.
