Review: Vanessa Renwick's "House of Sound"Review: Oregonian

At first glance, Vanessa Renwick's installation "The House of Sound" could be mistaken for a hipster bachelor pad. The dark gallery space is lighted only by an orange glow from two table lamps seemingly rescued from a Nixon-era Holiday Inn. A weathered corduroy love seat and vinyl sofa sit on shag carpet beside a record player spinning soul and R&B albums from the 1960s and '70s.

The exhibit, at New American Art Union, also is entertainingly interactive. Sitting on the sofas and playing records is encouraged. Yet Renwick's exhibit is born of a deeper, more earnest desire: to preserve the history of a long gone but still beloved North Portland record store.

The House of Sound was opened in 1964 on Williams Avenue by former Pro Football Hall of Famer Mel Renfro, a graduate of nearby Jefferson High School. Prospering into the late 1970s --an era still decades away from iTunes and the ease of accessing music online --the store was a treasure trove of hard-to-find artists. For all the memorable Motown songs that became chart-toppers in the period, countless soul and R&B acts never received radio play. As a result, the House of Sound became a trusted source to learn about such artists as Abner Jay, Archie Bell & the Drells, Wilson Pickett and the Whispers. Albums by these artists are part of Renwick's interactive exhibit and were provided by Mississippi Records.

The "living room" portion of the installation not only evokes an average home where records from the House of Sound might have been listened to, but also provides a setting to watch Renwick's accompanying film about the store; it's actually intended to be the center of what's officially a video installation. Sober, sepia-toned footage of the present-day site of the store --now a vacant lot encircled by chain-link fence --is paired with audio from a KBOO radio interview with two former House of Sound employees.
Photo: Susan Seubert

Another highlight, placed a few feet from the comfy sofas and record player, is the store's original sign. Showing the patina of age, it feels halfway between scrap-pile salvage and a Pop Art sculpture. Creating a kind of secular rite for the store, Renwick surrounded the old metal sign with several tea light candles on the floor and a canister of matches for guests to use.

This is the latest in New American Art Union's "Couture" series, in which gallery owner Ruth Ann Brown has provided artist stipends for 10 exhibits, free from concern about sales. Renwick's work has shown at galleries, clubs and museums all over the nation and Europe, including the Portland Art Museum's 2006 Oregon Biennial. She is one of the city's most venerated and iconoclastic filmmakers, having portrayed in more than 20 films everything from nude bicyclists ("The Yodeling Lesson") and gray wolves ("Critter") to poetic portraits of now-gone local landmarks ("Portrait #2: Trojan") and biographies of cantankerous fellow outsider artists ("Richart"). This is actually Renwick's first solo exhibit at a Portland gallery (she's represented by PDX Contemporary Art).

Some of Renwick's past work has had a bit of a hobolike quirkiness, but at its best, her career is about remembering the cultural history woven into the urban and rural fabric, places and personal stories we're likely to miss once they're gone. As it happens, "The House of Sound" is not just a one-time exhibit but an ongoing project. Renwick's rust-tinged vision isn't one of fanciful escape or wish fulfillment, but the poignancy of fleeting but memorable environments and lives.

Given the natural nostalgia people have for the House of Sound, this exhibit could easily have felt too sentimental. Instead, though Renwick shows unmistakable reverence, her hand is relatively light in laying out the exhibit.

A purist might argue that this is hardly art at all, just a documentary film screening with a comfy set of seats and a stereo. But such labels don't matter when sitting on the sofa watching the turntable spin in the lamplight, seeing the candles flicker before the store's old sign and listening to the authentic voices from the House of Sound tell the record store's story.

New American Art Union, 922 S.E. Ankeny St. Hours: Noon-6 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. Closes April 19.

photo: Susan Seubert