EUGENE–Personal memory and absence of memory. Private suffering and public memorial. Heroic martial images and battle statistics.

These are some of the thematic dichotomies depicted in an unusual interdisciplinary exhibit opening June 16 in the LaVerne Krause Gallery in Lawrence Hall, 1190 Franklin Blvd. on the University of Oregon campus.

"Memory/Memorial" will combine poetry, mixed media and sculpture by three women of German ancestry with very different experiences and points of view relating to Germany’s role in World War II:

• Sculptor Susi Rosenberg of Munich, Germany, whose mother is a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

• German-born mixed-media artist Ingeborg Kolar of Corvallis, whose father, a physician, was killed aboard a Nazi submarine.

• Poet Ingrid Wendt of Eugene, a third-generation German-American whose parents took pains to hide their German heritage during and after the war.

Although the women’s personal experiences have influenced their work, Wendt says the exhibit is not specifically tied to Germany or World War II.

"We hope to see some universal themes emerging from our own experiences," says Wendt, coordinator of the exhibit, which runs from June 16—26. "For example, in my poetry, I’m not writing about any one specific incident but rather about the whole issue of how memory becomes memorial. What do we choose to memorialize? Where does the personal become public and what choices are made in the process? What cultural assumptions are involved? What purposes do memorials serve?"

"I’m trying to tie together all kinds of events: how we have memorialized or not memorialized recent disasters such as the Thurston High School shooting and the ValuJet plane crash and historical tragedies such as the Native American genocide," says Wendt, an award-winning poet and co-founder of the Lane Literary Guild. She currently teaches creative writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

Wendt’s poems will be enlarged and displayed on the walls of the exhibit. She will read the poems at 7:30 p.m. during the exhibit opening, which runs from 7—9 p.m. June 16.

The exhibit’s centerpiece will be a sculpture of cast concrete and industrial steel by Rosenberg, a visiting artist during spring term in the UO Department of Fine and Applied Arts.

The sculpture will include 78 concrete blocks weighing about 50 pounds each, stacked like stair steps arranged diagonally, with 24 bent steel bars between the blocks and 12 small pools of standing water at the top of the structure. Rosenberg has been casting the concrete blocks and putting the sculpture together in one of the department’s studios along the Millrace. Students will help her transport the work in pieces by forklift truck from the studio to the gallery for the exhibit.

Rosenberg says the concrete and steel elements relate to the "memory of the body" in the repetitive actions required to construct them and in their small differences. The pools of water stand in counterpoint to "the flowing water common to every religion and culture that is intended to wash away memories and sins," she says. "In these standing pools of water, the memory cannot escape."

Rosenberg’s works have been featured in many one-person shows and group exhibitions in Germany and elsewhere.

Kolar’s mixed-media work will include nine brass altars, each featuring an antique hand-painted, round slide depicting a scene from John Bunyan’s 17th-century morality tale, "Pilgrim’s Progress." In front of each illuminated slide will be a jar of dried blood alluding to relics of saints. The altars will be connected with a rusty chain ending in a cannonball. The work also features a stand holding a book containing poems on the right-hand pages and battle statistics on the left-hand pages, all relating to wars of the 20th century.

Kolar, who moved to the United States from Germany in 1965 and now teaches photography at Oregon State University, says the altars and the contents of the book juxtapose romanticized depictions of war and violence with reality.

"The poems describe feelings of loss, pain and suffering," says Kolar, who obtained her master’s degree in fine arts from the UO two years ago. "The whole installation is a tribute to the suffering of the various speakers."

The exhibit and Rosenberg’s residency at the UO are being co-sponsored by the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Office of International Affairs, the Center for the Study of Women in Society, the Oregon Humanities Center and the Jewish Student Union.

Wendt says this exhibit grew out of a previous collaboration between her and Rosenberg. In 1997, when Wendt was in Germany under a fellowship from the Cultural Ministry of Munich, she and Rosenberg mounted a joint show titled "Time: Word: Space."

"This is the first exhibit of its kind in the Krause Gallery," says Laura Alpert, fine and applied arts department head. "It’s an unusual opportunity to see the work of a contemporary sculptor from Germany in collaboration with artists from Oregon. It’s also uncommon to be able to bring together three contrasting artistic points of view–all by women–relating to both events in recent history and ancient issues of humanity."

—30—

#P-6105/A&E,Local,OrDailies/am