The Three (dis) Graces

“The three standing figures located west of the Council Chamber are three women dressed in their best gowns to come to the town square, and are executed in a manner representing the great Oregon rivers, the McKenzie, the Willamette, and the Columbia. These figures are the largest single pour aluminum castings ever made in this country.”

—Dedication brochure, Eugene City Hall, June 1964. Sculptor: Jan Zach

Today, these three 9-foot-tall totemic figures entitled “Three Rivers” stand in a storage yard off Shelton Mcmurphy Blvd since removal from City Hall in 2014 prior to its demolition. Eugene City Hall is now located on the banks of Willamette River. To date, despite occasional vague discussion, City staff has decided to not decide what to do or not do with Three Rivers and other artwork from the former City Hall, all in storage. 

Below:  The aluminum sculptures stood next to the circular council chamber at Eugene City Hall from 1964 to 2014.  

Three Rivers is representative of a number of works Jan Zach created during that phase of his long career:  totems and dancers. The sculpture clearly derives from the tradition of representing in art the Three Graces originating in Greek mythology.  

Below: Today, Three Rivers, displaced; Three Graces, disgraced.

CODA

The earth, being earthwork.

That I am on earth, howsoever,

to draw breath: beneath the firm-

ament over us, overall.

The earth and its rivers;

her rivers. Now and again a

river goes underground, holing

up for a while in caves.

Some rivers end in sand.

The earth as worthy of mention.

The world as quicksand.

—Hans Faverey 

(trans Dutch in Against the Forgetting: Selected Poems)

THE MALL

When is the thing that is definitely a thing, not a thing? 
When you’re in… THE MALL 

All Hallows
— AE (Alicia Elsbeth) Stallings

The thin hands of the trees
Blow away, waving goodbye.
Haunted with similes
Is the house of memory—

The one who has departed,
The one who left you alone.

The bulbs are in their bed
Feeding on their meal of bone.

The jack-o'-lanterns bear
Brief, vegetable witness

As ghosts tap at the door
Still hungering after sweetness. 

FOR NOW 
—Simon Ortiz

is everything beyond edgy
risk is risk is risk is risk sure
all but the smartest know that for now

tomorrow is tomorrow
the same way the era before now is
a common enough knowledge

for now for now and a day before
forever lesser or more sacred
a target locus we might figure out

take today or this evening or midnight
is it now yours or is it its own a day later
for now what to do but own it as ours for now

The Right to Signs

A well regulated landscape, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to post and bear Signs, shall not be infringed.  —An Amendment

Our own 

dialect was abstract, 

we wished to understand 

not how things were

but what spectacle we might 

make of them.

—Meghan O’Rourke

Below:  Along the tracks in Crescent, Klamath County.  A crossing-place for millennia between the Columbia Plateau and Klamath River basin.  As the sign below notes, Ogden passed through in 1826, as did Fremont in 1843. Two centuries of tumultuous change followed, and continues. As the signs -above- indicate...

If you pay attention to every detail,

they will be become our alibi for not arriving on time.

or for never arriving at all

wherever we had set out to go. 

—Luljeta Lleshanaku

Above:  Note from the manager of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge posted at the (closed) Refuge HQ, October 6, 2025, the sixth day of the US Government shutdown.

Below:  A marker on Rock Creek, the primary drainage of the northeast slope of Hart Mountain.  A survey marker, mining claim, burial?

NOTES

—Oscar Wilde:  ”The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

—Meghan O’Rourke from the poem My Life As A Subject in Once (2011)

—Luljeta Lleshanaku from the poem Small-town Stations (trans Albanian)

—All photos by Douglas Beauchamp, Klamath & Lake Counties (Oregon), October 2025 (except as noted below.)

CODA

The gravesite of Modoc leader Kintpuash, aka Captain Jack, at Fort Klamath, Oregon. (Photo October 2025, courtesy Bryan Andresen) 

Captain Jack was hung by the US Army with three other Modocs in 1873. An effort is ongoing to exhume and conduct a traditional ceremony and burial on Modoc traditional lands, now northern California’s Modoc and Siskiyou Counties.

FREE & = !!!

Take someone who doesn't keep score,
who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: He's free.
—Rumi

<<<INTERMISSION>>>    

Mini FREE-WALL (two-sided) in Eugene near the Willamette River and the Jefferson-Washington Bridge.
Jefferson.  Washington.  Key framers of the US Constitution.  In dismay these founding “fathers” as yesterday the sitting “president” in Washington DC "decided" to “order” federal troops to Portland Oregon.  Portland — just downriver from this FREE-WALL.   
What is Order?  What is Freedom?  What is Art?  And what is a River?

Artworks, various artists:   January-September 2025. 
Photos by DB, on walkabouts.  
With gratitude to the Artists.