Sunday, April 1, 2018

The Yachats Gazette, Issue 79, April 1 2018


Interview with Emily Crabtree and Tom Beare

Emily and Tom are artists who have recently settled in town.

TYG: So how did you guys get to Yachats?
Emily: Hmm. You’re going to start with that one.
Tom: Yeah. I graduated from Portland State University, and I had friends living on a farm up-river. Next to Lester’s old property—100 acres. They were renting it, and it was beautiful. I went out there and did some work in their garden, and ended up staying for two years. [laughter] I’d just graduated, and I didn’t have any job prospects, and I didn’t really care to start working right away.

TYG-Graphic Design: What did you major in?
Tom: Economics.

TYG: Good field!
Tom: Yeah! Good field. It didn’t lead me to a career, but I enjoyed learning it. [laughter] Became a staunch communist for four years, and then I graduated, and it was welcome to the real world. [lots of laughter] But I lived there, moved back to Portland, and when Emily and I started dating, three weeks in or something, I brought her out here, and she immediately said, “This is where I want to be.”
Emily: Yeah. I was like, “I know we just started dating, but I’m going to move there.” And he’s like, “But that’s where I’m going to move!” And I’m like, “Well then, I guess we’re going to do that thing that people say don’t do right away!” [laughter] 
Tom: We did it for a year and a half before we moved here.
Emily: Yeah, it was like a year and a half before we were able to find a place to live. You know, the housing issues here are so much. I was ready to come back to the country; I grew up in rural Virginia, and really missed living in the country. I’d been living in Portland for the last—I’m bad at numbers—13 years? A while. I was just ready to come back to Mother Nature. Portland was getting really hard to live in, too. When I first moved there, it was kind of hard to find a job, but you could also find rent for not too expensive, and there was a lot of underground art. There’s still underground art, but then it was all free. [laughs] By the end of it, it was like, oh my gosh, six women, one bathroom, really nice Craftsman home, but still... but it was really kind of nice timing that we both met when we were ready to move to another stage in our lives.
Tom: Perfect timing when I got evicted, and then a house opened up here! [laughter]

TYG-GD: Why did you get evicted?
Tom: Oh, it was kind of the thing that’s been happening in Portland a lot. Landlords buy a house cheap, rent it for a few years, the prices are going up, and sell it for dear. And so I got evicted just because they were selling their house.
Emily: So nothing bad. They kind of have to go through this process. This is happening really rapidly to a lot of us.

TYG-GD: That’s terrible!
Emily: Yeah, all the artists, all the people, most of them are being displaced. And it’s something [that repeats]: we move out to another neighborhood, then that gets cool, and... I also think there is going to be more of a move back to the country with a lot of folks around our age. It seems like everyone’s really talking about wanting to do that.

TYG-GD: Where did you grow up in rural Virginia?
Emily: I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley, on the Shenandoah River. It’s very beautiful—Appalachian, which is gorgeous, but also a lot of the ideals just really didn’t match up with my family’s. [They]’re very liberal, and open-minded...

TYG-GD: Yes, that is weird.
Emily: [laughter] I’m like, “Why did you guys move there?” So I moved out of there—I put myself in boarding school in tenth grade. And I was a good kid! Well, kind of good. I didn’t get caught, so I guess that doesn’t count. [laughter] So I moved out early to see more of the world, and then I got to the west coast from high school. College was in Santa Fe, and then I went and moved with one of my best friends to Olympia, Washington. Unseen, because I was really ready to get out of Santa Fe, and Olympia has really cool record labels.

TYG-GD: Were you into music?
Emily: Yes, yes. More as a spectator. My family are all musical, and my Dad says I was too strong-willed to teach. [laughter] But moving there was really interesting. I got to start performing, and meeting with other like-minded people. I was only there for a year, and then I moved to Portland. Olympia and Portland are like little feeder cities for each other—[there are] a lot of the same people. Musicians and artists kind of bop back and forth—a natural progression, sort of.

TYG-GD: So, what kind of musician are you? 
Emily: I sing, write music, guest on a lot of tracks. I have a friend who’s an electronic musician. He doesn’t sing, so if he has certain tracks that he wants vocals on, he’ll ask me. I’ve done that for a metal band as well, which was sort of interesting and fun. Then I’ve had my own groups. My friend Andrea, who moved here, she’s been in three of my bands with me. And then since I’ve moved here, I bought myself a really nice semi-hollow body electric guitar, and a bunch of guitar pedals, and I’m trying to teach myself how to play guitar, which is a steep learning curve, so if you know anyone I could take lessons from... I just need someone I can be accountable to. That’s mostly what it is. I just don’t practice enough. I think for me, music is this beautiful epicenter to be surrounded in every other aspect of art. When you’re in a band, you have to know Photoshop to make your pictures look good. You have to be creative for your album cover art. So it’s a fun way to encompass mixed media stuff. That was really fun. Plus, it was a way to soothe my social anxiety, because I really liked going to shows, but it would make me [blows up her head gesture] sometimes. So if I have a reason that I’m here, I’m allowed that because I’m playing, so that would give me a reason to be somewhere, to feel involved.

TYG: Certainly, to me, going to these shows where it’s body to body, completely packed... I’d kind of just rather listen to records or recordings.
Emily: I feel you! I went to a show in Portland a month ago, and I was like, “I’m too grown up for this front row!” [laughter] “I’m going to go up in the balcony and calm down, and just enjoy myself...” Yeah—there’s a time and a place. It’s funny how that mood can change.

TYG-GD: [To Tom] So, I know you’re an artist, because I’ve seen your paintings! [Tom has a couple of paintings on display in the back room at Ona Restaurant and Lounge.]
Tom: Yeah! I paint, a bit; do print making, a little bit of collage...
Emily: He writes, as well.
Tom: I write a bit. I run the gamut. We just moved into a new place, and I have a nice, big painting studio. So this winter I’ve got to buckle down. I’m making prints of local dogs. That’s my new thing. [laughter]

TYG-GD: Really? That’s awesome!
Tom: Woodblock and linoleum prints of our friends’ dogs.
Emily: They’re pretty great!
Tom: It’s kind of crafty, but yes, it’s fun.

TYG-GD: I don’t know, I did linoleum stuff and I really liked it! 
TYG: And you did [rubber] stamps for years!
TYG-GD: That’s true! 
Tom: Yeah! I enjoy it a lot. Doing a few different layers, or just one.

TYG-GD: Have you talked to Mike Guerriero?
Tom: Oh, he’s a print maker—did he have a show at Ona?

TYG-GD: Yes!
Emily: He did the big fish.
Tom: And the big landscapes... his work is beautiful! I’ve talked to him in the restaurant. But I haven’t hooked up artistically.

TYG-GD: So how does your economics fit in to your art?
Tom: Ooh! [laughter] I paint a lot of patterns. I like them as a design concept. Conceptually, I think—it was my third year in college, I started imagining a work of art describing visually a planned economy, or a volatile capitalistic economy. I think patterns sort of emerged. We have a bunch of similar commodities going one direction, and they’re processed in this way—and the outcome, visually, is patterning.

TYG-GD: That’s a cool way to think about it!
Emily: I see it in the things you choose—the sort of architectural imagery you pick to represent this stuff.
Tom: Definitely. Right on! [laughter] I’ve strayed pretty far from economic thinking in my life... [laughs] I think that aspect of my personality comes out more in game playing.

TYG: Oh, you play games?
Emily: Big time.
Tom: I play a lot of games, yes.

TYG: Computer games, or...?
Tom: Chess, right now. My favorite game for years was Magic, the Gathering. I was on the Magic, the Gathering pro tour, in Valencia, Spain. I got to go—it was fun.

TYG: Nice!
Emily: I was like, “Wait a minute! There’s a game that will fly you to Europe?” [laughter]
Tom: Yep! [...] It was five years of my life, and I was just obsessed with it. Then I got to the pro tour, then I was like, “Okay! I can probably calm down now.” [laughter] [to Emily] I was actually in Spain when I saw your dating profile!
Emily: That’s not how we met!
Tom: It’s not how we met! It is how we recognized each other.
Emily: I didn’t. You did. I was like, “What are you looking at?” [in a growly voice]
Tom: Heavy metal show in North Portland.
Emily: [laughter] He kept walking by, and I was in a bad mood. “What are you looking at?” And he’s like, “We’re talking.” And I’m like, “No we’re not.” [laughs again] 

TYG-GD: How’d you get her out of the bad mood?
Emily: Beer...
Tom: A couple of drinks, yeah... [laughter]
Emily: Portland rent is really expensive, so if someone wants to buy you a drink, you say yes.

TYG: [to Emily] So, what kind of art do you do?
Emily: I do a lot of different kinds. I started doing photography in high school, and I’ve always really loved that. And on and off over the years, depending on whether I could afford film, or to get it developed. But I’ve always done it. And I bought myself a medium format camera—the film is bigger, and the grain is really small, so if you blow the photo up, you can make it really, really large and it still has all the clarity.

TYG: Nice. So that’s like a professional film camera.
Emily: Yes. This one is a Yashica—it’s really cool, you open it up and look down in it, and it’s multiple mirrors. It’s really cool looking. And that camera is from the ‘60s. Then I have a bunch of other cameras too, but that’s my favorite one. So actually in our new house, Tom’s going to help me build my own dark room.

TYG-GD: Wow! You still have film? 
Emily: Yes—so much. I have bags of undeveloped film.

TYG-GD: And it hasn’t gone bad?
Emily: Who knows if it has or not—I mean, the light flares can be weird, but sometimes that gives you really beautiful, strange stuff that happens, that you can’t plan.

TYG-GD: Sure, absolutely. 
Emily: So I do photography, and I do collage art as well. Right now I’m working on a collage that’s commenting on how American culture sort of eroticizes hyper-masculinity that’s found in the Army, the Navy, as this kind of way to sell it to young men. Which I find really kind of horrifying.

TYG: It’s immature, but it’s like, “We need recruits!” 
Emily: Yeah, so I’m working on a collage of that. I’ve always wanted to figure out how to make them bigger, in a way that’s not just blowing them up. Now what I’m doing is cutting the pieces, organizing them, and I’m going to scan them, and print each piece large and put them back together, so it’s still actually collage. Because every time that I’ve just enlarged them from a photo or a scan, it loses the texture of the collage.

TYG: And also, that’s going to make it feel like it’s much closer to a memory. Because instead of having just one, clear image, you have smaller images, but they’re still separate, so they’re more like what the human eye remembers and sees. 
Emily: I’m excited about it—I think it should be fun. Sometimes it’s slow-going—I have bursts where “Oh! I’m almost done!” and then like, “Well, I’m not almost done.” [laughter]

TYG-GD: So when you say “big,” how big are you talking about?
Emily: Um, I don’t know, four feet by four feet, maybe? A lot of times I work in a square format, because I use old record sleeves. I collect vinyl records, sometimes from thrift stores, where the record will get messed up but the sleeve is there. It’s just a really nice, heavy weight cardboard to work on. So a lot of times they end up being square. So yeah! I do collage stuff, photography—I write, as well. Since moving here I write a lot of poetry about the ocean. Not sure how great it is, but usually right after, when I read it to myself, it seems amazing. [...] I also do micro-stories—really short stories. Maybe a page, or something. That’s been fun. My great-uncle—my grandfather’s brother—passed away two years ago, and I really got into researching who he was, and I got some good short stories out of that, going through his memories and stuff. I haven’t had a big flush like that for a little while. I think it’s coming soon, now that we both have our own art studio! It’s so awesome!

TYG-GD: So, now that you have your nice, big house and studios, do you have any big projects planned? You said you were going to work on some new paintings?
Tom: Ah! I have the dog prints that I’m still working on... I do have a big project planned! I built a four foot by three foot light table for tracing. I’m tracing these images from this print series—I can’t remember who put it out—about Napoleon’s adventures, Napoleonic history. So these really cool old prints of famous works of art, or any work of art relating to Napoleon. Lots of French soldiers in lines, lots of coronations. So I’m using pieces of those images, those reproductions—because someone made a reproduction of them—pieces of those images, sort of putting them together into a pattern over a five foot by three foot sheet of paper. So creating almost like a piece of wallpaper, but politics and history and war, using or stealing these other images. And then I’m trying to figure out how to interject sort of a little bit of humor, or guiding principles into the pattern, with disparate objects that aren’t from Napoleonic history, like plumbing diagrams, parking lots, things like that [laughter] ... if that makes any sense.

TYG: No, it makes perfect sense! It’s like straight plumbing, straight plumbing, [makes a dropping noise and motions downward]—that’s when he invades Russia. [laughter] 
Tom: There you go! [...] So that’s my big [project]. It’s long-term.

TYG-GD: So you’re tracing these things... are you reproducing them just by moving the pattern underneath?
Tom: Yeah! So I’m sort of learning the process—the big pieces haven’t really started coming out yet. But yes, so you have one piece of this image—I can copy it a couple times if I want, using the light table or just drawing it, or tracing paper—and then I can sort of play around before I actually commit to the pattern, like where everything is going to be placed. I can move it around under the light table and see how it’s going to come out. So that’s why I built the light table. It’s pretty fun. You get to really work it out before having to put it to paper.

TYG-GD: Wow, that’s pretty wild. What about you? [to Emily]
Emily: Me, let’s see. My big thing is this summer, I really want to save up and get myself a really nice digital camera, because as much as I do love working in film, it’s really nice to be able to do both. But I love to take photos, and then sort of digitally keep—on my phone, there’s a program where if you keep on over-editing, the program gets confused. And in ways you may not anticipate, it sort of degrades the image, but in this way that I find really, really interesting. I call them over-edits, and then layering of images I think is really fun. I do a lot of self-portraits, mostly because I’m around myself all the time. [laughter]. It’s easy to do, and convenient. And then I have bigger photo project ideas that I’m going to need help with—we have a lot of willing friends. And I recently had someone who’s like my god-brother give me a really beautiful computer, so that’s very exciting. So when I can get it together I can have something to edit with. Which is really great. Now I have a place to record my music, a place to edit my photos... I think that with being an artist out here, it’s just so nice to remind yourself that you have time, and not to measure the success of your own inertia. You do it just because of how therapeutic it is to do it.

TYG-GD: So, you recently went to England, and you have lots of artsy friends there too! 
Emily: Yes! It was really fun. One of my best friends I grew up with in Virginia—her name is Nikki Kvarnes—she’s incredible. She’s a musician, she was in a very successful band called Those Darlings, and she was able to have that be her job. She comes from a line of musicians and painters—she is also a painter, an oil painter. She just now, actually, has announced that she’s having a show in a gallery in London. I’m really excited—the stuff I’ve seen is incredible. She does really beautiful portraits of people, and she also does fruit that’s in half decay, flowers that are falling apart—it’s just really beautiful stuff.

TYG: That sounds incredibly hard to capture.
Emily: Yes! I can show you guys sometime—it looks like you can touch it.

TYG-GD: So where do you guys think you’ll be in five years? You guys did get married, right?
Emily: Yes!
Tom: We’ll still be married. [laughter] We’ll have five acres up river...
Emily: There we go. Dream big, baby. [laughter] 
Tom: ... a barn...
Emily: Ooh yes, big barn, big studio, where I can do huge art. Maybe a sculpture or something.
Tom: Hopefully we’ll have started paying for our own house. Separate out-buildings for our own projects. I’d like to still be here. We fantasize about moving back to the city, but...
Emily: I think if we moved to the city, it would be what we’ve fantasized about becoming ESL teachers and going to live in Thailand. We hope to go back maybe next year. But all my friends keep on getting married, so we put off our trips! [laughs]

TYG-GD: So you’ve been to Thailand before? 
Emily: Yes! Not last winter, but the winter before.

TYG-GD: Wow, so what was that like?
Emily: It was incredible. We loved it.
Tom: Stunning. We stayed for a month; we traveled sort of up and down from the Island of Ko Tao, up through Bangkok, the ancient city of Ayuttayah—just as tourists, stayed each place about a week, got settled in, enjoyed the food, the temples...

TYG-GD: Did you know any Thai?
Tom: We learned [a couple of phrases]. If we go back, we’d like to take like three weeks of language classes so we can start getting the hang of it.
Emily: Because we really appreciated that country—I think we need to do our due diligence the second time, to show that. It was really, really beautiful. The people are just... everyone is stunning. We got into watching Muay Thai boxers. Typically boxers ... but these boxers were beautiful. I was like, “Are these models going to fight?” [laughs] There’s really a lot of Buddhist mysticism, which was really neat. Everyone was just so gentle and kind.

TYG-GD: So, is there anything else you’d like to share with the community of Yachats?
Emily: Oh, I do, yes! I’m on the Yachats Annual Pride Planning Committee, and [Pride] is June 1, 2, and 3. It’s going to be really fun. It’s not only been great to just hang out with folks in the community and plan something, but we’re getting a lot of artists from outside and inside the community. To come, there’s going to be, on Friday night, a cabaret show. It’s going to have some of my friends in Portland. I brought this friend who does a pet psychic drag act; it’s totally weird and out there. My friend who’s coming is a DJ, and there’s going to be a good dance party. On Saturday there’s a trans tea party, which will be for folks in the community to just come and ask questions and be educated on trans issues and all that stuff. What’s really sweet is that the Lions is donating their hall for that. After that, Cris [Williamson], who’s a very influential, lesbian folk musician—she has quite a following—she’s coming. Last year she was really popular. And then after that there’s going to be dinner and Bingo in the Commons, with acts in between. For Bingo, my friends’ band HURTUR is going to play—they’re kind of a synthwave dance band, emotive, and there’s a light show. They’re really fabulous friends of mine and they work really hard to create a whole experience. And there will be food trucks, and a beer garden. And Sunday there’s going to be a hike in the morning, just up the 804 trail, and there will be a person to talk about plant life. After that, there’s a picnic in the Commons picnic shelter. It’s a potluck, but also lots of stuff is going to be provided. And then there’s an open mike with some music, and then a Puppy Parade—dress up your dogs and bring them. [“Aw”s abound] [laughter] You don’t have to dress up—it can be just you and your puppy. And after that there’s a seminar about navigating consent in relationships. My friend Cassie, who’s a teacher at Waldport High and runs their LGBTQ club, she’s getting a lot of the kids involved in volunteering, and they might do some acts too.

TYG-GD: This sounds very awesome!
Emily: It’s going to be fun!

TYG: That is going to be so cool.
Emily: So, that’s the biggest thing I have!

TYG: Well, thank you so much!
Emily and Tom: Thank you!

2 comments:

  1. would be great to see a pic of these two or maybe some of their art.

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    1. Absolutely! I can't post pics of people without a model release, but I've asked them for some pics of their art. Hope to get them tomorrow. =) Thanks for the comment!

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