During this mean time, find a ‘meantime’ to see local artists bring language to life at Terrain’s ‘In the Mean Time’

Mayor Lisa Brown said she was captivated by the title of “In the Mean Time.”

“When I saw ‘In the Mean Time,’ I immediately went to the meaning of it,” Brown said. “Things are kind of mean right now, that’s my politics lens.”

“Not even close,” chimed in Heidi Gann, an artist and lifelong friend of Brown.

“Now that I read the description, that’s not what ties it all together,” Brown said. “But I’m still happy I’m here and I’m happy I saw it.”

“It’s a take on language, which is interesting because a lot of them don’t have any language at all,” Gann said. “Art is a language itself.”

The pair was present the First Friday opening of Terrain Gallery’s “In the Mean Time,” which was curated by Carrie Scozzaro, and is “all around language,” said Ginger Ewing, the executive director of Terrain.

“I like Terrain,” Brown said. “And I also knew one of the artists, Emma Noyes, so that’s what got me here.”

Noyes said she’s in the show because of a book she wrote called “Baby Speaks Salish,” which illustrates a language manual inspired by one family’s effort to teach Okanagan Salish.

Yet she said her favorite piece she presented at the show is “Mole Woman Diaries,” the diary of a character that usually at the side of Coyote, who is regularly featured in traditional Native storytelling.

“I like getting to explore the inner workings of Mole … and that’s represented in the writings of her diary,” she said.

A member of the Colville Tribe, Noyes said her work is inspired by the stories that were the most important to her growing up, and they’ve continued to be important to her as she returns to them in her work.

“Visual art and written language are related,” Scozzaro said. “They have a common ancestry. I wanted people to be able to revisit that idea.”

It’s inherent to the human experience to be able to share ideas through written and spoken words, but also through visual language, she said.

Scozzaro is a high school art teacher and freelance art writer, and she’s a prolific artist in our city, Ewing said.

“The artists that I chose were artists that I’m familiar with from either writing about them, working with them in the community, exhibiting alongside them, or artists whose work that I admired,” Scozzaro said.

She also added that she wanted to represent and include a wide range of artists in ages, gender, ethnicity, media and sensibilities. “So that people could have multiple access points for this idea of language,” she said.

Scozzaro requested that each artist make at least one new piece for the show.

Some artists, like Lance Sinnema, made more than one. This ceramics teacher at Whitworth University brought in a handful of glazed ceramic plates.

“I was thinking about language without language, or how we communicate without language,” Sinnema said.

Sinnema uses word bubbles in his art, which “sort of build up and pile up to suggest that there’s something happening, there’s some sort of communication happening,” he said, describing “Nature’s Subtle Signals,” the image of a man standing in front of flames yet engulfed by word bubbles.

In works made later for the same show, Sinnema said he moved on to spelling things out.

“There’s this idea that content and communication is meaning,” Sinnema said, adding that the art is either specific text, or an exploration of how to communicate visually.

Sinnema said he’s usually specific in his art, and that the earlier “vague suggestions” were a deviation from his usual work.

Putting words right into a piece is normal for Sinnema, and is the reason he thinks he was picked for the exhibit.

According to Scozzaro, he’s right.

“He always comes up with unique stuff. I think he’s an underrated artist,” she said. “Every time he creates a series of work, he makes really interesting stuff.”

After the artists were picked the theme was discussed, and it was up to everyone individually how to approach it, Sinnema said.

Kay O’Rourke, for example, is different in the way that she made only one piece for this exhibition.

“Like with Kay’s I think it’s less about language, but it is about storytelling,” he said.

O’Rourke describes herself as a narrative artist.

“I do use words, but my words become a visual. They’re visual words instead of spoken words, but they’re based on a story,” O’Rourke said as she described “A Light in the Rubble,” depicting flowers in a warzone.

“A flower is a rebirth,” she said.

O’Rourke said everything she paints is something that’s stewing in her brain.

“I have to paint it, and sometimes people wish I wouldn’t,” she said.

This 81-year-old widow said art is where she goes to take care of herself.

“I have been very political and it’s not my fault. It’s because of Donald Trump because I can’t stand him.”

O’Rourke makes a clear political statement with “Orange Sherbert.”

“This one is about just the selfishness, the not thinking of others,” she said. “Our democracy I feel like it’s at huge risk right now, I feel like the devil is at play.”

When Trump lost the previous presidential election, O’Rourke made posters that she put out in the streets, which provoked some people in trucks to shoot guns off in her driveway, she said, prompting the FBI to get involved.

“I could probably be killed for some of my art that I’m doing,” she said.

O’Rourke thinks art is a powerful vehicle for politics.

“The winged rabbit tries to bring peace to the world,” she said, “so the rabbit is me.”

In “Orange Sherbert,” the winged rabbit is holding Lady Liberty. “It’s saving Lady Liberty. I’m going to save you Lady Liberty, and we’re gonna do this together,” O’Rourke said.

“Art is important. It’s where you’re trying to say something, where you’re feeling inside yourself and you’re going in there.” O’Rourke said, “Even if it scares you.”

Although gallery-goer Gann’s initial observation that language is the central theme of the show is verifiable, as it’s the description written in the show’s statement on Terrain’s website, Brown’s initial interpretation of the title describing a “mean time” is true, Scozzaro said.

“That was the point,” she said.

Scozzaro works with contemporary issues, citing how many of her pieces in the show had a very strong social and political element.

“I don’t think any of us can make the kind of work that we make without being acutely aware of what’s going on in the world around us,” Scozzaro said, noting how some artists choose to allow that to show up in their work, and some don’t.

“It’s a mean time. We are lacking kindness, and somehow kindness has been equated to weakness,” Scozzaro said. “So I wanted to point that out, and that break in the word is deliberate.”

There’s another interpretation of the name that Scozzaro brought up.

“We’re making art in the meantime.”

Scozzaro said that creatives generally take care of kids and work jobs to put food on the table, just like everybody else, so it’s hard to find the time and energy to put art first.

“But I also like the idea of the word mean as in average,” Scozzaro said. “I like the idea that instead of focusing on one right answer and one right way to look at things, I think we all benefit from stepping back and trying to find multiple ways to look at things.”

She noted how this interpretation wasn’t really explored in her work, but that she likes the idea that the title could be read many ways, and that it’s all up to individual interpretation. “That’s the teacher in me is to put it back on the audience and engage them in that thought process,” she said.

“What I hope for with this exhibition is that people engage with the work, both visually and verbally, and that they take something with them from that experience.”