Culture

Where the magic happens.You may be surprised when you walk into Hot Box Betty expecting pretty
things and are confronted by Jaws and Dead Birds. Not that the
paintings by Alex Reisfar aren't beautiful - they are.

Reisfar's work has a Latin American influence; the figures are rendered
like those of Diego Rivera or Antonio Ruiz. In Maria and Child, the
breastfeeding mother's hair transforms into artery and umbilical cord
ala Frida Kahlo, while her masked face draws from the indigenous
revolution. "In parts of the Zapatista movement, they have these
pamphlets, and the imagery in them, especially the female Zapatistas,
is very powerful," Reisfar says. While initially surrealist, Reisfar's
paintings are not about dream worlds, but full of intentionally applied
symbols. The drama in the work is not happenstance from the
subconscious, but grounded, as he says, in "anarchist history and
theory." One piece is blatantly anti-war; a soldier with a leering
skull greets a smiling baby and a female figure that cannot face him or
the viewer. In El Cazadore, a great white shark signifies a menacing
force ("great white: GW," Reisfar points out) while a Zapatista child
stands in defiance. In Gaurdian, a Native American child begins to
unravel. Reisfar is confronting big subject matter: death, organized
religion, war, propaganda and white guilt.

The Around the Bend players bring you some old timey Christmas shows.While the weather outside has yet to be frightful (although 62 degrees
in December is kind of scary), inside Bend's local theaters the holiday
season is underway and definitely delightful. Area theaters and
production companies have pulled out all the stops to ensure that
Bendites have the most Holly Jolly Christmas play lineup yet. While
Bend Theatre for Young People, Innovations Theater Works and one of the
Tower Theatre productions have already wrapped (see sidebar), there's
still plenty more to see. So even if it's 75 degrees outside next week
and Bachelor reopens its Frisbee golf course, you can still get into
the festive seasonal spirit thanks to Bend's diligent theater stewards. 

Noted literary critic Harold Bloom calls spoken word poetry, "the death
of art" but I prefer comparing the monthly Bend Poetry Slam with an
Andy Warhol quote: "Art is what you can get away with."

The academic
community has criticized poetry slams since their inception in the
mid-80s because they challenge what is literary merit, though the same
devices of repetition, alliteration and rhyme, beloved by classic
poets, are shunned by critics when used in a slam setting.
Poetry
began as a way for ancient societies to record history. Over time,
iambic pentameter became the most common meter in the English language.
Think Shakespeare's sonnets. Think of this line, "to swell the ground
and plump the hazel shells" by Keats. Then how about, "complacency is
not the common place to cultivate the seeds of resurrection" mirroring
this poetic construction, from a poem by Jason Graham, who performs and
regularly places in the top three at the slam as Mosley Wotta?