Twists of Fate, Turn of Figure
The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington)
February 23, 2007 Friday
Twists of Fate, Turn of Figure
BYLINE: BRETT OPPEGAARD, Columbian staff writer; Dave Olson The Colmbian
SECTION: LIFE; Pg. D1
LENGTH: 1893 words
Awake suddenly, Jim Hansen sat up in bed amazed by what he had seen in a dream. Two words handwritten in white on a dark background, like a teacher's note in chalk on a blackboard. Only he had never heard the words before and had no idea what they meant. He also couldn't imagine going back to sleep and forgetting them.
He woke his wife, Annie, and told her to write down the letters as he spelled them to her. She didn't know the definitions either, and the Hansens couldn't find the words in their pocket dictionary. Hansen, who was in his late 50s at the time, says, "We went to bed early. I wasn't doing anything unusual that day. I didn't hear voices. I was written to, like Moses. In another time, in another age, I would have thought this was a very holy thing, and I would have gone and preached or stood on a mountain."
He instead interpreted the dream as an affirmation of his life's work. That the abstract imagery of his mind, which he had been expressing in sculpture, really could be somehow connected to something mystical beyond his comprehension. He wanted more clarity.
He needed to find out what those words meant. But he also had an exhibition in a major Seattle gallery to open in the morning. So he vowed to further investigate the mysterious message later.
For decades before and since that dream, the sculptor has been developing a career of regional distinction from his rural home in Clark County. His work is prominently displayed at the Portland and Seattle art museums. He's built pieces for the civic centers in Olympia and Salem, Ore., as well as the plaza outside the stadium at Washington State University in Pullman. Hansen now is showing a collection of his pieces locally for the first time in 15 years, through Feb. 24 in an exhibit at Portland's Wonder Ballroom that classifies him a member of this area's "Preeminents."
"He's one of the masters of the Oregon-Washington scene, and his influence as an artist and a teacher here is probably unparalleled in his generation," says Bruce Guenther, the Portland Art Museum's chief curator and curator of modern and contemporary art. "In his 80s, he's still working on his sculptures for some part of any day. He has enough in his studio to keep him busy for another 20 years, which the actuary tables tell us that he probably doesn't have. Yet, without a patron in mind, he's compelled intellectually and emotionally to work."
Since receiving the message in his dream, Hansen has begun imagining himself as an unwitting member of a hive. He says, "I wonder how much a bee thinks about making honey? That's just what a bee does."
He's driven not by ambition, but curiosity. Hansen just keeps making his sculptures, about 600 to date, to see where the effort takes him. Meanwhile, he ponders the words that came to him in the dream.
He considers these to be a prophecy, which inspires him to keep refining his imagery, to keep looking closer at forms until he can discover their true meaning. He wrote a poem, "Omen," that includes these lines:
"One night when we were sleeping
In a hotel above the bay,
Words that I did not know
Came in a dream there as I lay.
M U L T I V E R I S I M I L I T U D E
And beneath it E B U L L I E N C E;
White letters gleamed in a blackened void
Seared into my consciousness."
Hansen wonders if the words came from inside his mind or from some outside force.
As a survivor of soldiering in World War II as well as the various quirks of fate that happen over 81 years, he can't help but question why he's outlived so many of his friends and family. He thinks about how close he came, several times, from never getting the opportunity to make a sculpture or receive such a message.
As a powderman and gunner on the USS Preston in the Navy during World War II, shortly after graduating from Vancouver High School, his ship survived the worst storm in Naval history in 1944. Hansen recalls that his vessel just happened to be refueling when Typhoon Cobra hit, so he and his shipmates had enough power to escape the 50-foot swells. The three other destroyers waiting in line behind the Preston ran out of fuel and capsized, killing about 800 men.
A few months later, Hansen's ship was patrolling near Okinawa, Japan, when orders came instructing the vessel to surge ahead and set up a sentry post on the lookout for squadrons of suicide planes. The ship's radar screen jammed just as it was about to leave to take position. Another ship took the Preston's place, and Hansen and his crew had to go out the next day to clean up the wreckage and dead bodies and bury the sailors at sea. Hansen says the floating hulk looked like a giant canoe full of scrap metal. Hansen says through tears, "They were all killed. That could have been me."
He wonders why he was spared. He thinks about the G.I. Bill money he earned that put him through art school, while so many less fortunate soldiers were buried with their hopes unfulfilled. He thinks about the jobs that have miraculously appeared over the years, when he needed the work and money. He wonders why strangers have shown up at his studio, simply to volunteer to help him work on his sculptures.
In the mid-1970s, Hansen was asked by the Congregation Shaarie Torah in Portland to create a nontraditional design for a large bronze menorah. He made a sketch of what he thought was simply interesting shapes at the base of the candlesticks. But when he showed the design to the rabbi, there was silence, followed by astonishment in the question, "Do you know what you've done?" The rabbi then told Hansen that he inadvertently had spelled "God" in ancient Hebrew.
A few years later, Hansen was going through an intense family crisis, involving a lot of anxiety and emotions, and he discovered that the metal model of the menorah had inexplicably warped, causing one of its candlestick arms to slouch. Hansen only could bend the model's arm back into place using heavy-duty tools from his shop. He has never seen anything like that happen to metal before. He can't fathom how it could have warped. So he just accepts it as another example of something he doesn't understand. He says his mind keeps opening to the possibilities.
"There are energies and forces that surround us that are so unexplainable, that we have all sorts of strange things happening all of the time," he says. "Most people aren't aware. Or they don't think about it. Or they don't talk about it, because it's too weird, and we want things to happen for a reason. We can always say God did it, or the devil did it. Sometimes it's easier to put divinity on our ignorance than to try to figure it out."
Hansen eventually found a more comprehensive dictionary, which helped him explore potential meanings of those words that had come to him in his dream. Combined, he determined, they give a message that describes our world as "merely having the appearance of truth, so don't get too excited about it." But he still struggles with whether that interpretation is correct. He wants to know why such a puzzle was sent to him. And why he's even still around. Hansen keeps returning to his sculptures for answers. His shop contains at least a couple dozen pieces that need to be completed. He's been so busy on those that he hasn't started a new piece in three years.
"I'm overwhelmed with unfinished pieces," he says. "If I don't finish them, then I might as well not have started them. I feel in a way that I'm imbuing inanimate material with spiritual imagery. I'm motivated to do it, and I don't know why. It's the same kind of feeling someone might get from a great piece of music or a beautiful sunset or a wonderful flower. Why are we attracted to certain things? Why do certain things inspire us? I like to think that they make us more inquiring and compassionate."