BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
DENNIS DREAD
ARROWYN CRABAN
JASON HOVATTER CRABAN
JULEIGH HOWARD-HOBSON
DAVE HOBSON
ROBERTO A. JARAS L.
MICHAEL MOYNIHAN
UWE NOLTE
SCOTT RAUTMANN
ROBERT N. TAYLOR
NICHOLAS TESLUK
MADELINE VON FOERSTER
Pboks
WHITE HART FORGE

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Robert Kenneth BeauSoleil, AKA Bobby BeauSoleil, was born on November 6, 1947, in the California beach town of Santa Barbara. From an early age he couldn’t wait to be old enough to get out on his own. Shunning the surfer scene of his hometown peers, he turned his attention to hot rods and electric guitars. These interests eventually took him to “the strip” in Hollywood, California, where in 1964, at the age of 16, he became a colorful and familiar feature of the emerging youth subculture. Plying his developing talents as a guitarist through several garage band experiments, BeauSoleil landed a position as second guitar in Arthur Lee’s new band, The Grass Roots – a band that a short time later would become widely known as Love.

Just prior to his eighteenth birthday, BeauSoleil joined the artist community in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, he formed a band of his own – an instrumental ensemble called The Orkustra – notable for its unprecedented blend of psychedelic rock, classical, jazz and middle eastern music styles.

He was discovered by underground filmmaker, Kenneth Anger, while performing with his band at the opening of a particularly bacchanalian counter-culture festival called The Invisible Circus. Anger, taken by BeauSoleil’s striking looks and uninhibited stage performance, asked the young musician if he would be willing to star in his current project, an epic underground film with the foreboding title of Lucifer Rising. BeauSoleil agreed, on the condition that he would compose the score and record the soundtrack for the film with his band. A bargain was struck. To perform the soundtrack, BeauSoleil formed a new band he called The Magick Powerhouse of OZ, an eclectic ensemble that combined experimental free jazz with bluesy rock and amplifier feedback.

For the band’s first performance, Anger and BeauSoleil joined forces to put on an event at the Straight Theater called, by Anger, The Equinox of the Gods. When the event (while memorable to the audience) did not go as planned, Anger and BeauSoleil each blamed the other for what had gone awry. The collaboration could not be reconciled, and the two parted company with harsh feelings.

A couple of months later he was called upon to play supporting guitar for singer-songwriter Charles Manson, and thereafter joined Dennis Wilson (Beach Boys) and others in efforts to help Manson record an album of his songs. He began to associate more with outlaw motorcycle clubs, whom he romanticized, and others, like Manson, who lived on the outskirts of what was considered normal, acceptable society. BeauSoleil began to adopt some values that led him astray into criminal activities. During the commission of an absurdly misconceived drugs transaction, things went terribly wrong, and BeauSoleil killed a man. He was arrested soon afterward, tried in a Los Angeles County courtroom, and sent to prison with a life sentence for one count of murder in the first degree. Ever since, his former association with the since notorious Charles Manson, he remains in prison more than 35 years later.

In 1976, while at the state prison in Tracy, California, BeauSoleil resumed his earlier collaboration with Kenneth Anger, nearly ten years after their parting of ways in San Francisco. The filmmaker had shot new film for his Lucifer Rising project. BeauSoleil believed that the soundtrack was still his to do; Anger agreed. With permission from prison authorities, BeauSoleil formed a band of musically inclined prison inmates and called it The Freedom Orchestra, assembled a make-shift recording studio, and in 1979 he finally completed his soundtrack for the now legendary film. Lucifer Rising,

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, is now available worldwide in a double CD Deluxe Edition from Arcanum Entertainment. Over the subsequent 8 years he composed and recorded, as a solo performer, a total of about 3 hours of new music, then turned his focus to producing a series of drawings and paintings as a visual counterpoint. The most stylistically representative of these recording have been compiled for a new double CD entitled Dreamways of the Mystic, and were released on the Arcanum Entertainment label in early 2005. "The Dreamer" is a work from this series while "The Green Man" is a new work.

www.beausoleil.net

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DENNIS DREAD

Dennis Dread was born at home in 1972 in New York's lore-rich Hudson River Valley, near Sing Sing Prison and Sleepy Hollow. Following a childhood of monster movies and home-made comic books, at the age of 18 he began silkscreen printing for the infamous underground t-shirt company Mutilation Graphics while studying literature and comparative mythology at the State University of New York at Purchase.

Dennis Dread's visceral and obsessively detailed ballpoint pen drawings have appeared on numerous national and international hardcore and metal records, including work for such extreme-noise luminaries as Autopsy, Abscess, Phobia, Engorged, Abigail, and Machetazo.

His contributions to the Heathen Art exhibit, symbolist portraits of Freyja and Odin, are completely hand drawn with black Bic pen and framed with primary acrylic. Dennis credits a very early discovery of d'Aulaire's Norse Gods & Giants at a public library as his first introduction to the Nordic pantheon and path. Dennis also edits and self-publishes the long
running underground art magazine Destroying Angels. His writing has recently been published in Runa, an Asatru journal published in England by Ian Read.

When he is not sitting at a drawing table in a dark basement, Dennis can be found assisting homeless youth on the streets of Portland, Oregon where he fulfills an oath sworn nearly 15 years ago and earns his professional title as a street outreach worker.

www.dennisdread.com

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ARROWYN CRABAN

I started drawing when I was three years old. It just felt natural to want to capture what I was perceiving and try to hold it in place on paper, in dirt, on cloth, or on a wall. I didn't realize at the time that I was continuing a tradition of thousands of generations of my ancestors. I think that through the process of eye to mind to hand to pencil to paper to eye I am in essence trying to get a grip on the crazy flux of earthly existence. Trying to interpret, and understand, and then influence the flow of life. And my reasons haven't changed since I was three – I just have more words now.

www.verdandidesign.com

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JASON HOVATTER CRABAN

Who am I? Do the things I make define who I am? I am a young shoemaker, a father, and husband. I love to make and share good food and drink with good friends. I am fascinated with the way folks have been living and doing what they do for thousands of years. I believe the things I create help me to understand what it is to be human.

Laughing Crowe Leatherworks
www.laughingcrowe.com

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JULEIGH HOWARD-HOBSON
DAVE HOBSON

Juleigh Howard-Hobson is an award winning writer whose art pieces have exhibited at the American River Arts Festival (US), the Newlands Festival (Australia), as well as at select galleries and cafes throughout Northern California. Born in England she has lived in Australia and the US. This is her first Portland showing. She is an associate of the Rune Gild of North America.

Dave Hobson has been working in metal, from custom automotive bodywork to traditional smith arts and sculpture, for over a decade. His work has been shown, driven, or used throughout Northern California. This is his first piece in collaboration with his wife.

This piece was inspired by a comment of Nigel Pennick's on looking for the futhark in tree branches. The runetwigs in this piece took two years to assemble. The first found was Ansuz. The last, Mannaz. From Odin to the Self: fitting opening and closing for a work.

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ROBERTO A. JARAS L.

Roberto A. Jaras L. was born in March 1973. Even though his academic education was more oriented towards music as a professional guitarist, his strong inclination toward the more oneiric and spiritual aspects of existence rapidly made him absorb like a sponge all things related to the Arts. This finally made him dedicate his life almost entirely to every art form he could get his hands on, not only making and producing music, but also writing and translating literature, as well as painting, carving, sculpting, and so on.

While traveling various artistic roads, a decisive turning point came when he realised the true implications of his particular heritage: being both the descendent of different European immigrants (Spaniards, Germans, Scots, Italians...), and a son of the world’s southernmost lands, Chile. Thus, he dives into and nurtures himself in the tradition of the Old Continent, and in the energy, magic and youth of the New World.

The Arte Celta project in particular was born of the his urgent need to unite both of these currents into one unique river of tangible artistic manifestation; one original creation evidently rooted in the European tradition, but mainly fueled by the renewed solutions and forms of the young South American spirit. This way, the cultural heritage of the West, old and tired, reconstructs its blood and shape in the new magical land, our Southern regions, rising like the Phoenix to preserve and continue that which, in the artist's humble view, is the best mirror of our Soul: Art.

www.artecelta.cl

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MICHAEL MOYNIHAN

Michael Moynihan was born in 1969 in New England. He has lived on both coasts and in between, as well as in Belgium. Since the early 1980s he has been a musician, artist, author, editor, and provocateur. Together with his wife Annabel Lee he runs the Dominion Press imprint, and he is a co-editor of the journals TYR (Atlanta, Georgia) and Rûna (London, UK).

"My ongoing series of circular hex paintings was begun a few years ago, as a result of a longstanding interest in Germanic folk art and magical symbolism. The designs are based on traditional patterns, but also bring in other related (Indo-) European motifs. The paintings are not intended merely as aesthetic works -- just as importantly, they have practical use. Typically this is of a protective nature, and they are often meant to hang on the outside of a house or barn building, above doors, and so on. The synergy created by their form and function reaches its fullest effect when they are displayed in such a context."

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UWE NOLTE

Since his earliest childhood, the memories of his legendary hometown Merseburg in Saxony-Anhalt have left a permanent impression, enriching and imprinting his soul for the rest of his life. The towers of the castle bathed in moonlight, the imposing facade of the cathedral, the ivy-covered battlements of the castle on the banks of the Saale river: it was a veritable wonderland. Forgotten treasure must be hidden there!

Only later, long after the discoveries of childhood, did it become apparent that "real treasures" are to be found there: the "Merseburg Charms," the architecture that has evolved through the ages, and a history that is fundamental to Central Europe. But inspite of his present capacity for intellectual reflection, the rule also applies in this case: In the end, the artist remains a child, outside of any norms and free as a bird! Legend, mythos and magic are the three foundations of his sovereign worldview, that cannot, should not, and may not submit to any fashions or ideological tendencies. He follows an inner voice rather than a career path, is rooted in the past rather than the present, and is more indebted to the Classical world than Modernity. The cultivation of a multifaceted creativity and the permanent quest for perfection are the only constants in his creative life.

And so it is no surprise that has not only striven for artistic self-realisation as a musician and poet, but also as a painter, photographer, actor, and organiser.

Uwe Nolte's main musical endeavors have been Rückgrat, Scardanelli, Orplid, Sonnentau, and most recently Barditus. His symbolist photographs have graced the covers of the last three projects. The two signed prints included in this exhibit are from the cycle "Kreis der Gestalten."

www.orplid.de
www.noltex.de

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SCOTT RAUTMANN

Born on St. Patrick's day, March 17th, 1970. Spent youth watching monster movies, reading and daydreaming. Studied Poetry, Philosophy, and Religion (not necessarily in that order) at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Currently spending time with his family.

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ROBERT N. TAYLOR

R. N. Taylor was a seminal figure in the early emergence of the Pan Pagan movement in the U.S. as well as one of the three founders of the spiritual path of Asatru in North America. Taylor is probably best known in his role in the musical duo Changes. He is also a poet, lyricist and graphic and fine artist.
http://www.nmia.com/~thermite/

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NICHOLAS TESLUK

Born in Chicago and raised in northern Illinois between the mid and latter part of the twentieth century, his youth was spent in small idyllic little community which had not yet begun to blossom, and while enjoying the natural surroundings of his environment he became a sensitive yet naive young man.

His first awareness of any actual artistic talent emerged later when, during his college tenure in Chicago, he and his cousin (and lifelong friend), Robert (R. N.) Taylor, began creating art posters with the primary intent of distribution, allowing their art to reach more people, but also as a small commercial venture. Until this time, Nicholas had no idea that he had a knack for proper spacing and justification of letters and other calligraphic talents. It was about two years later that this same duo would also discover their ability for song writing.

Even though Robert had written poetry for most of his life and Nicholas had written dozens of “tunes”, it was not until 1970 that they merged these talents to become a song writing team and their folk group "Changes" was born. After a few years of performing to a small cult following, Robert and Nicholas went their separate ways. Nicholas moved to Colorado with a "putting bread on the table” career of office machine repair (which he does to this very day), and formed another music group,

Phase II, with his friend Mark Andrews, and he began to delve more deeply into graphic arts which he used for the group's publicity posters and sole recording. The artistic time being very primitive by today’s standards, he would paste-up photos and illustrations and use his calligraphic abilities to some extent, but for small text on posters and advertisements, he would have the laborious task of pressing out each letter with “Press-Type”. What took hours then can be achieved in minutes today using digital means. But one learned perseverance for the goal was to get it done no matter how much time was wasted. He also did many graphics in pen-and-ink and scratchboard during this period of his life.

When Phase II disbanded, he and his then wife started a family and they raised two children. Early on in this era though, he turned his artistic direction to fine arts and illustration in both oil and pastel. Being self-taught, he evolved through trial-and-error in many of these artistic endeavors. With the reemergence or what has now been termed the “Third Incarnation”
of CHANGES in the mid-‘90s, Nicholas and Robert once again found a great avenue in which to use their art and graphic works through album covers, liner booklets, labels and advertisements for their musical works.

Nicholas now moved into the “digital realm." In this new period of artistic life they have the luxury of having their artworks reproduced in color which gives their work a whole new dimension and opens many possibilities which were formerly lacking. His children now grown and his wife now gone away (to divorce, not death), Nicholas has come full-circle and lives in New Mexico in a small, idyllic and forested mountain community near Albuquerque.

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MADELINE VON FOERSTER

Madeline von Foerster received her art education at California College of Arts and Crafts, and at Freie Kunstschule of Mannheim, Germany. She has also studied the Misch Technique with Philip Rubinov Jacobson. She was a prizewinner in the“Brave Destiny” exhibit of Surrealist and Visionary art. Born in San Francisco, she now resides in New York City.

Her paintings have graced the covers of several unique underground music groups, including Unto Ashes, The Red King, Mirabilis, Blood & Time, as well as Infernal Proteus: A Musical Herbal. She last showed with H.R. Giger and Ernst Fuchs at a group show entitled "The Inner Eye - Selected Works from the Society for Art of Imagination" at the Interart Gallery in New York City.

The drawing included in this exhibit was executed in preparation for the "Odinn Exchanging His Eye for Wisdom" painting, which illustrates the cover of the English edition of Alain de Benoist's On Being A Pagan, published by Ultra.

“In my paintings, I attempt to unveil images of the subconscious underworld – my own and that of my culture. I utilize the methods and the styles of the past, in order to reinterpret current topics using the iconography of history. I think there is still gold to be mined from the meticulosity of the Old Masters, but I would like to alloy it with the dream-delving of Surrealism and the conscience of the Social Realists.

It is my hope that art-makers worldwide succeed in our mammoth task – that of changing the current omnicidal tide of culture – before everything worth saving on this planet has been razed, or eaten. I believe there is still time to make a new myth. There is still a chance for imagination to rise to power.”

www.baphomatty.com

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MARKUS WOLFF

Markus Wolff lived in Germany and Austria before coming to California at the age of 14. His influences from European culture and art, which he absorbed during his childhood, continue to inform his creations. After completing high school, Wolff embarked on a program of sculpture classes at Palomar College and soon specialized in lost wax bronze casting and glass casting.

The work from this period was exhibited in San Diego in 1994 and in San Francisco in 1995. Concurrently, Wolff was a founding member of the group "Crash Worship" (1986), also designing many of their posters and merchandise and supplied artwork for most of their record and CD packages. After two European and numerous U.S. tours, Wolff left the band in 1996 to move to Portland and concentrate on new projects.

He initiated the moniker "Heidnischwerk” (heathen works) to denote a group of works influenced by Norse and Germanic religion and mythology. Sculptures and drawings from this project were exhibited in 1999 in Portland. In 1996, he designed the so-called “N-Rod” for the well-known Bay Area band Neurosis which has been used extensively by Neurosis, Tribes of Neurot and Neurot Recordings. It is part of the logo of Neurot Recordings, was made into large banners that have been prominently displayed at both “Beyond The Pale” festivals and has been used on numerous t-shirts, etc.

In 1999, he also sculpted a relief version of the “N-Rod” design and cast an edition of 50 plaster wall plaques to be sold through the Neurosis mailorder. His work has appeared in several pagan and music magazines in the US and Germany. In addition to his visual work, Wolff leads a music project called Waldteufel, best described as an experimental archaic folk group, which has performed in Europe and the US and has released a full length CD “Heimliches Deutschland”, as well as several records.

His works, ranging in theme from the heraldic to the erotic, owe a deep debt to European mythological imagery and iconography, while being heavily inspired by the Symbolist movement and European Folk Art.

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Pboks

In order to augment the large conventional Delft collection his mother assembled in the 1970s as she dragged him through countless European forests, museums, heaths, and cultural sites from their Suxmundham home on the English coast, Pboks taught himself surrealist Delft ceramic arts in 1992 while undergoing rehabilitation in the Washington State Juvenile Justice System for alleged actions attendant to his status as the leader of a popular, uniformed paramilitary order of skateboarding teenage vigilantes. This large outfit constituted the regional sub-division of an older, culturally liberal international underground skate collective known as LEE WONG'S TENNIS CLUB, in the service of which Pboks honed his skills as a phenomenological guerilla artist and publisher.

His return to the Delft/porcelain medium was stimulated a full eight years later when Michael Moynihan, Annabel Lee and Markus Wolff introduced him to lunatic godfather of Delft surrealism Charles Krafft (a.k.a. Charliqua Shabaaz X, Pride Warden of the Beacon Hill Gender Garden) for purposes of an intensely hilarious psychonautic romp through the cosmos by way of Krafft's VILLA DELIRIUM portal. Pboks immediately set to work on his successful surrealist mock-Allach SONDERDIENST AFRIKA line, but soon abandoned the theme in favor of mostly wood-framed, free-hand Delft agrarian scenery and Delft renderings of traditional Scherenschnitt (scissor-cut) motifs. These include his own Scherenschnitte (exemplified by his 'hidden-faces' hammer and ‘solar lion’s tooth’ designs) and those of 90yo German Ernest Lindental (exemplified by Pboks' often nonchalantly-demanded oak/tile botano-runic wedding boxes) with Lindental’s encouragement.

Though he continues his role as simultaneous protégé and advisor to Charles Krafft, producing both surrealist and traditionalist ceramic pieces to express sentiments pertinent to friends and family, Pboks concentrates his artistic efforts on a non-comic, future-primitive synthesis of both surrealist and traditionalist imagery in his psychedelically-vibrant runo-digital transparency-on-glass, oak-framed diamond window-hangings. If he can do so without the ideas he sloshily blabs to fellows at gallery openings being co-opted first, Pboks plans to unveil the first in a line of kid-friendly occular-assault conceptual sculptures in an objectionable steel, polymer, PTFE and bakelite medium later this year.

All publicly claimed work is produced as Pboks (phonetically ‘box’), the name under which he was regionally famous from 1987 as the toe-headed, wisecracking, skateboard & slingshot, comic mascot of the pre-Redstone, then-esoteric Tacoma/Olympia punk/skate community. Pboks was born October 1975 to a volatile family of Dutch-German physicists, Buddhists, and fate-decriers, colonial-English Pulitzer/National Book Award-biographed rogue military generals and Romanian-Austrian stock-brokers, stock-car builders and hippie in-person Richard Nixon-snubbers. Anticipating the coming mega-depression, and reflecting on the increasingly arbitrary basis of nationality, Pboks currently contemplates his alignment and relies solely on his NSK diplomatic passport and harmless countenance at border crossings.

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WHITE HART FORGE

White Hart Forge are Dan Klug and Heidi Shewchuk, traditional artist-blacksmiths. Our backgrounds are varied – Dan is a trained archaeologist and Heidi is a theatrical/cinematic welder. We are both history geeks, with a special fondness for the pre-christian cultures of Europe and the British Isles. It was an interest in ancient crafts that led both of us to blacksmithing as an art and way of earning our bread. Our iron work is part of our lives, it is our trade, our art and an expression of our love of the Gods. Being able to work iron is also how we connect with our Ancestors. In our craft the tools we use have not changed in thousands of years, the tongs and hammers we use are exactly the same as the tools used in the Viking era and even earlier for that matter. This for us is thrilling, to be able to create from the raw materials of Nerthus (Mother Earth) in the same way as was done of old. To know we are not the first to start a fire from charcoal, and listen to the bellows breath life in the fire, to be part of a craft that changed the way humans live forever.

www.whitehartforge.com

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