![]() Oregon Symphony’s Scott Showalter, Renegade Opera’s Madeline Ross, theater leader Michael Mendelson, poet Genevieve DeGuzman, roots music legend Lloyd Jones. Portraits of musicians Marv and Rindy Ross, artist David Eckard, actor Maureen Porter, and writer Todd Schultz. Portraits of Profile Theatre’s Josh Hecht, Pacific Northwest College of Art leader Jennifer (Jen) Cole, opera singer and teacher Hannah Penn, novelist Tony Ardizzone, and make-up, prop, and effects artist Christina Kortum. Portraits of singer/actor Susannah Mars, violinist Tomás Cotik, Native Arts and Culture Foundation leader Lulani Arquette, sculptor Ben Buswell, and artist, costume designer, choreographer, and filmmaker Fuchsia Lin. Portraits of writer and Portland Parks Foundation leader Randy Gragg, playwright/director/photographer Lava Alapai, mixed-media artist Erik Geschke, writer Erica Berry, and dancer/choreographer Samuel Hobbs. You can see it at Karin Clarke Gallery through June 24. Naeemeh Naeemaei’s amazing art explores the question of how humans can help heal the environment in which we live. The artist’s conversation at the gallery is available for viewing at. Hours are 10 am to 5:30 pm Wednesday through Friday and 10 am to 4 pm Saturday. Naeemeh Naeemaei: JAAN runs through June 24 at Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette Street. She doesn’t want to change nature, she wants to picture it unchanged - unharmed. The scarf is laid around the animal, protecting it. Naeemaei doesn’t move things, Clarke says. Goldsworthy moved elements of nature that he found, such as leaves or rocks, into differently ordered formations, like circles or spirals. The image reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy, the land or environmental artist who’s been using the Earth as a stage for his art for decades. The cloth is on the ground circling a slug, and the composition is such that the slug is in the center of the frame. One of the large photographs, titled “JAAN #5,” is a close-up of the red scarf. Her wish to heal now seems more directed to all the forests. In this exhibit, the references are less specific to one culture. In Dreams Before Extinction, Naeemaei referenced animals, landscapes and mythology from her native Iran. It stands as a symbol for a hopeful healing presence - the same as it does in the stylistically different Arterioles series. The surreal touch is still present, though, as the red scarf stands for a human presence in all the forest images. I was struck, upon first entering the gallery, by how similar the look of the photographs is to the artist’s previous realistic approach to painting. The photographs of the forest in JAAN are giclee prints on canvas. The representational style of those paintings was realistic, often with a surreal or fantastic edge. Naeemaei’s work that Clarke saw at the JSMA exhibit was acrylic or oil painting on canvas. ![]() In response to that show, Clarke says, “I liked that she put herself in her artwork.” Clarke is a painter, too, and has lately realized she prefers to paint interiors rather than exteriors, depicting herself in some of those interior scenes. Naeemaei first came to Clarke’s attention in 2019 in the wonderful Dreams Before Extinction exhibit at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. She says she tries to “play the role of a healer by getting into cracks and wounds as an artery.” In JAAN she visualizes her presence in the landscape with “a delicate red scarf,” and in Arterioles, she adds tints of red that include her own blood. Naeemaei thinks of herself as a healer-artist. ![]() Together, Arterioles and JAAN present a micro and macro picture of nature, as well as offering us a view of Naeemaei’s evolution as an artist: the small observations she made coming of age in Iran to the larger statements she’s currently making about the environment. Defined as “mixed-media on paper,” they’ve been modified by hand and tinted red in places, and they complement the eight more showy, large and very green photographs of the Willamette Forest that are the JAAN series. The Arterioles series consists of intimately sized black and white pictures that resemble drawings. In addition to JAAN, a second series called Arterioles, comprising 24 of her photographs from Iran, is on display. Then, before she left her home country, she took pictures of these things and brought them with her, leaving the collection behind. Before coming to the U.S., growing up in Iran, Naeemaei collected leaves and pods, things with seeds, stems with unusually shaped botanics.
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