Sunday, May 10, 2009

Stonehenge in Washington

One of the best things about Stonehenge, for an Oregon girl, is that you don't have to go all the way to England to see it, you can see an almost identical replica of it right across the Columbia River from Biggs Junction, just an hour east of Hood River. I was there a month ago, after visiting Maryhill Museum. I was with my uncle and my niece, she's nine. She sat in the car while we wandered Stonehenge because she was so mad at us for taking her through the Rodin collection at Maryhill museum, so much erotic nude sculpture really shook her up. We didn't realize exactly what we would see downstairs in the Rodin exhibit, just past the hundreds of chess sets from the world over. When she said lets get out of here, we did. She still wanted to sit and stew while we surveyed the blossoming orchards of the Klickitat county just above the Columbia river. Nine year olds do better with McCracken Black Box's in my experience, than they do with Rodin's sculpture. If you're not nine I hope you go to Stonehenge and Rodin at Maryhill very soon.
As for healing powers, I have no doubt McCracken's art has some, but I won't be chipping off any of his sculptures for health reasons, these are made of plywood with a coating of fiberglass finished off with a polyester resin. It reminds me of the book I'm reading by Tom Spanbauer, Now Is The Hour, when the main character Rigby John plays the game poison with Puke, the bologna breath radio obsessed boy from his grade school. They go around the farm and put every toxic chemical they can find into a bucket, the whole time I'm reading I'm thinking, please don't let them drink it.

This one is called light and was made 5 years ago. It was just up at David Zwirner in New York last fall.

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