Portland

MOTOYA NAKAMURA - Oregonian staffCunningham opens the door to his studio. But will he let his paintings out into the world?

In Jay Cunningham's paintings, the things that don't fit matter the most. 

It's the shiny gold key in the hand of the monkey who smiles cryptically as he unlocks a wooden door. It's the golden crown on the table next to the man watching his toddler play with a toy dinosaur. 

And it's the detached expression of the young man peering away from the mother bird feeding her two babies in a vine-tangled tree. 

That's the picture that gets to Jay Cunningham's mother, Sharon Vanderzanden, since she knows that the young man in the foreground is her son. The birds represent her family back when her two boys were navigating what Jay calls "the crucible" of their childhood. 

Crucibles can do the darndest things. When he was young, the Milwaukie-reared Cunningham retreated into his room, where he projected himself into the wide-open world of crayons and paper. Brushes, canvas and pigment came later, then art school. Then a shockingly fast rise to the upper ranks of Portland's most prevalent artists. 

By 1993, the average price of the 26-year-old painter's work had climbed more than 800 percent beyond what Cunningham's gallery charged at his first show in 1990. Then came the private commissions and repeated pleas from a prominent gallery just itching to help Cunningham break into Seattle's larger, more lucrative market. 

"He seemed to be going so good," recalls J.D. Perkin, a Portland sculptor and longtime friend. "I had no idea why he backed off." 

And yet, that's exactly what happened. After an exhibit in 1996, Cunningham's work slowed to a trickle. He managed another gallery show in 1999, but that was it. No matter the acclaim, the successful exhibitions and endless opportunities ahead, Cunningham closed his studio door and abandoned his art career. 

Life went on. He worked a job. He bought a house and got married. So many responsibilities, so many things to do. Art, he insists, remains his highest priority. But where is it? 

"I've had to make my peace with it," Cunningham says. "But I can't -- or won't -- compromise with art. And not doing it at all is a better alternative than doing it wrong." 

Still, at age 43, Cunningham is determined to make 2011 the year of his return. 

He's working on an illustrated book. He is a finalist in an upcoming art-themed TV series. He even has some paintings nearly ready to show. 

But the key word is "nearly." Because Cunningham needs every blade of grass to be just so. Every button and flyaway hair must have a specific look and meaning. 

"It's an impossible standard," he says. 

Once again, something in this picture doesn't fit. And until Cunningham resolves that disconnect, his renewed career, and his life, hang in the balance. 

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Slam dancers caromed and smashed across the floor. A fist fight broke out near the left corner of the stage. Another guy dove off the balcony onto the heads of the crowd below. 

All inspired by Bad Religion, a 30-year-old hardcore band whose lead vocalist/co-founder Greg Graffin, who stalked the stage dressed in a a black polo shirt, black trousers and what appeared to be soft brown leather shoes. 

"The spirit of resistance, you gotta hold your grip," Graffin snarled, the sweat already dripping down his vast, balding forehead. "Lest the state of your resolve/Makes you quickly devolve/Into a fundamentalist, yeah!" 

The song, "The Resist Stance," comes from Bad Religion's 15th and most recent album, "The Dissent of Man." And if it seems to be a stretch coming from a 45-year-old entertainment entrepreneur, it's even less expected from a man whose quarter-century of academic study has earned him a PhD (zoology) and a day job at U.C.L.A., where he lectures on evolution and the ongoing conflict between science and faith. 

Imagine the train rumbling through the Black Triangle of Czechoslovakia.

It's the morning of November 10, 1999, the weak autumn light filtering through a tattered forest of skeletal branches, the gruesome toll of industrial coal mining and acid rain. 

John Haines peers through the windows. His eyes are shadowed from lack of sleep, but he can see, and feel, life all around him. Green shoots pushing through the black earth. The pulse of life, the persistence of hope. And not just in the midst of this grim, dead forest. 

There's also the tentative peace in the wake of the Balkan war. The 10th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, which inspired this train ride: Haines is heading to the celebration of the Berlin Wall's collapse. 

Ninety minutes outside of Prague the train stops in Usti nad Labem. And just like that Haines is on the move. He slips on his Adidas -- not pausing to lace them -- tells his girlfriend Jill he'll be back with coffee, skips to the door and leaps into the air above the concrete platform. 

And that's where Haines' memories end. 

What happened next is a mystery. Maybe the specifics don't matter. Because Haines was already off on his next adventure. An internal journey to the gates of death, all the way to where reality and fantasy reside. Where a dream of life is powerful enough to pull life from even the most poisonous soil. 

*****

Do his eyes look haunted? Is there an ineffable weight riding along in his wheelchair? 

If you glimpse Haines in motion and sense his struggle, take a closer look. What you'll notice is that his chair has no motorized parts -- he uses his own hands to push his way through the world. Which says quite a bit, given that he's a C-7 quadriplegic with the most limited muscle movement in his arms and no sensation beneath his nipples. 

And yet he wields unlikely power. As the executive director of Mercy Corps Northwest, the regional branch of Portland's global aid organization, Haines runs a multimillion-dollar program that uses small bursts of capital -- micro-loans, officially -- to help struggling entrepreneurs drive themselves out of the economic muck toward something like a living, sustainable future. 

Many of these pivot from simple financial fixes. A thousand dollars to start a food cart, $5,000 to launch a child care center. Other MCNW programs require more creative solutions. Haines is particularly proud of the group's work with the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, helping freed women prisoners adjust to ordinary life by giving them cameras and journals to record the often jarring transition. 

"You could say he removes obstacles for other people," says Mignon Mazique, the Mercy Corps exec who hired Haines in 2002. The real measure of his success, she continues, is that Haines has kept his branch of Mercy Corps alive and growing for nearly a decade, despite its risky economic mission, particularly in the midst of a devastating economic downturn. 

But Haines, she continues, clearly has the emotional fortitude to keep his staff motivated and even inspired. 

"Just think of what it must take for him to get out of bed every day," Mazique says. "John's spirit is indomitable." 

I got to thinking about that Barefoot Bandit fellow, and the up-and-coming Beastie Boy kid, and the good ol' DB Cooper bandit, who may be alive and well and reading this right now. Or possibly not. Either way, I've got fresh new journalistic endeavors about all of the above and so, check it out. It's just like beer at the Delta house rush parties: Don't cost nothin'.

And when that was over I went downtown on Saturday to check out the 2nd annual Big Busk festival of movable performance artists. You can find that one, and along with references to pork pie hats and wicked cool Depression-era guitars, in this here story about the Big Busk.

Credit Ross W Hamilton for this cool shot of the Gone Fishin' group. Credit Mr. Randall for that awesome porkpie hat.

Photo: Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Turns out there's sex in Portland. Turns out there's lots of sex in Portland. The whole story, going back to the writing of the Oregon state constitution and the randy religious culters, the many, many strip joints and the fundamentalist, yet cheerfully Sexy Christians can be found right here. Parental guidance suggested. 

A bonus story from the 2009 files, published in The Oregonian in June, and now reprinted in tribute to the Rose City Rollers and the new documentary, "Brutal Beauty," about their exploits. The movie premieres in Portland on Saturday, January 9 at 7 pm. Tickets are $10 at the door.

Peter Ames Carlin - The Rose City Rollers Should Kick Your Ass

What Heather Petty loves the most is when she gets to be the jammer.

That's the roller derby's equivalent of a quarterback, the woman at the center of the action; the one who gets to move the fastest; whose entire purpose is to out-skate, out-fake and out-muscle every other woman on the track.

"It's like, you're the ball," she says. "You sprint full-out, hitting and weaving and going all-out in every imaginable way. It's like track meets boxing meets wrestling. All on skates. And you get to hit people."

Petty's cheeks glow and her blue eyes grow electric. And it's not just the roller derby competition that fires her up. It's everything else about the Rose City Rollers league, too: The epic personalities; the aggressively slinky clothes; the interwoven strands of athleticism, wickedness and sisterhood.

"There is no low self-esteem in this building," Petty says, gesturing toward the women on the track. "No one feels fat today. They're not worried about their zits. I'm a confident person, right? But this is breathtaking."

Particularly for a young woman just making her own way in the world. It's tougher out there these days. And while some people look for meaning at the office, or at church, or at home with the spouse and kids, Petty has found it somewhere else: in a diverse community of women whose faith in themselves is so strong they understand exactly why a 27-year-old first-grade teacher can, and should, reinvent herself as a roller derby goddess called SoulFearic Acid.

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