This is a little bit silly, but the recent New York Times article on Julie Green’s terrific show at the Corvallis Art Center reminded us we’d better get down there. We set off in the fog this morning…
and took the back road…
and after a little lunch, arrived at the Corvallis Art Center (700 Madison St.) to see “The Last Supper”…500 plates painted by Julie Green, each plate representing an executed U.S. prisoner’s last meal. Green’s meditation on food, death, humanity, allows the weight of all the plates–all the deaths—to slowly overwhelm the viewer in a way most art exhibits don’t these days…combining thinking and looking. We are there alone in the gallery with each meal, each death, and there is no escaping.
they are little still lives, beautifully painted atop thrift store plates…
“fried shrimp, garden salad, chocolate cake, grilled salmon (one of 2 executions that day in Arkansas…9-8-99)”
“Fried crappie, 2 large onions, large green salad with blue cheese or Roquefort dressing, hush puppies, butter milk…Arkansas, 4-19-95”
Pizza and a chocolate birthday cake shared with his family and friends…Indiana, 5-5-2007…
and then the ones with just words…
the show is in Corvallis until February 16th (T-Sat, 12-5) and then travels to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Eugene. Well worth the very small effort to get there. Julie Green was supported by The Ford Family Foundation, The Oregon Arts Commission, and the Corvallis Art Center.
On The Way 
Very moving.
Sent from my iPhone
felt it
intense & sobering. even your shots of the foggy backroad drive seem funerary.
Very powerful….reinforces the fact that people about to be executed are real human beings…not just criminals that the “justice” system wants to get rid of.
Beautiful and incredibly sad. I recall hearing an interview with her on local NPR. Thank you for going to her exhibit and for sharing your photos.
I, too, read about this but couldn’t quite get a sense of it–thank you for sharing your travels. I will try to get down there.