Think Oregon

Puppies in Prison

Woman’s best friend is freeing lives outside—and inside—prison written by Shirley Hancock | photography by Shauna Intelisano   AMY DUARTE’S FREEDOM is rooted in Oregon’s postcard landscapes. As a child, collecting bugs in the high desert. As a snowboard instructor, guiding young shredders down a volcano. As a wildland firefighter, lugging 40 pounds of gear up a mountain. But one violent, summer night in 2011, Duarte’s freedom shrank to a 6-by-12-foot cell. Arrested for domestic violence, she claimed it was in self-defense that she grabbed a lamp and swung. Her sentence—almost six years in Oregon’s “big house” for women, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. “I was like a zombie. An empty shell, with no hope,” Duarte said. “Hearing that cell door shut—that was the most traumatizing moment of my life.” Two years later hope arrived, in a wiggly pup named Sonic. Duarte is among sixty-four Oregon women who, since 1995, have…

Tetherow home

An architect and interior designer fashion a modern Tetherow home befitting the high desert

written by Melissa Dalton In this house, the formality of a traditional enclosed entryway is a thing of the past. Step inside the front door and you’re greeted with an immediate view out the back—a 12-foot-high wall of glass that frames a grove of Ponderosa pine trees, desert scrub brush and several Cascade peaks in the distance. Putting that view upfront was a priority for Anne Mastalir. When Mastalir and her family relocated to Central Oregon from Portland in 2013, the move was an opportunity for the interior designer and owner of Pringle Design to craft a house that was not only a calling card for her work, but an ode to her new home. “It was important to us to design and build a home that fit in well with the surrounding landscape and fit the Bend environment,” Mastalir said. I figured out a very long time ago that…

Summit Arts Center

Summit Arts Center’s creativity stems from a desire to preserve history in Government Camp

written by Catie Joyce-Bulay photography by Daniel Stark Most people head to Mount Hood for the epic skiing and hiking, but there’s also a vibrant art community keeping traditions of craftsmanship alive. The story of Summit Arts Center, formerly known as Cascadia Center for Arts and Crafts, began in the 1930s when the cabins housing its studios were first built for U.S. Forest Service personnel. In 1936, construction began on nearby Timberline Lodge as a Works Progress Administration project, providing employment during the Great Depression. As the lodge flourished as a popular tourist destination and historic landmark, the original Forest Service cabins fell into disrepair. Fast forward more than sixty years—the cabins were slated for demolition for lack of funds to repair them. Enter Betsy Valian, a nearby Government Camp resident and glass artist who couldn’t bear to see such an important part of the region’s history disappear. It was…

solar bee

A solar apiary combines solar power and pollination

written by James Sinks Honeybees dance and dip among the lightly shaded wildflowers in this patch of Rogue Valley farmland, zipping between splotches of color and—when filled with pollen—curl back to their boxed hives to offload their cargo, and then start anew. It’s almost a normal agricultural view. Until you look upward. The canopy above the carpet of wildflowers is not made up of tree branches, but rather rows of solar power panels, covering some 40 acres near Eagle Point. The installation came online in 2016 and produces 10 megawatts of renewable electricity—enough to supply the power needs of roughly 8,000 houses.  To Rogue River beekeeper John Jacob, the dual-use solar site—the nation’s largest “solar apiary”—is a thoughtful example of how farms of the future can coexist with renewable energy, and make the world better. And importantly, he said, the sites can act as organic refuges for stressed pollinators, who…

Nataki Garrett

New Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Nataki Garrett seeks to broaden marketing and season

What I’m Workin On interview by Sheila G. Miller The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced earlier this year that its new artistic director will be Nataki Garrett, a veteran stage director and the festival’s first African-American leader. She will be responsible for the artistic vision of the festival, which was founded in 1935 and has grown over the decades to become one of the biggest nonprofit theaters in the country. Garrett isn’t starting out slowly. While she takes over as the artistic director in August, she has been on site since April and will also direct a play, “How to Catch Creation,” at OSF in July. What exactly goes into being the artistic director?  I am the figurehead for artistic leadership, but I am also responsible for basically two-thirds of everything that happens in our organization. I’m responsible for all things in production such as choosing plays, hiring artists for plays…

tintype photographer

The Tintype Photographer

photography by Joe Kline Look through an old family photo album or peruse a historical society or museum, and you’ll find eerie tintype photography of years ago. Using a Civil War-era photographic process to make one-of-a-kind portraits of his subjects, Jason Chinchen is harking back to those olden times. The images are created by applying a light-sensitive silver emulsion to a thin piece of metal and then exposing it in a camera and developing it. Chinchen’s business, Analogue Tintypes, travels to various pop-up events around Central Oregon making tintype portraits for the public, and makes portraits in private sittings as well.

Liberty Bell in Oregon

When the Liberty Bell Came to Oregon

In 1915, the Liberty Bell came to Oregon as part of a patriotism-raising event in the lead up to WWI. Oregonians swooned. he 1915 annual Umatilla Reservation Indian Festival was in full swing on July 12 when it was upstaged by a remarkable sight. Arriving on a specially designed train, the nation’s Liberty Bell, on tour from Philadelphia, chugged into the Cayuse depot. Indians in full regalia, Chinese in native dress, and hundreds of others gaped at the Liberty Bell. Liberty Bell officials and the train crew gaped back. The bell’s official photographers took photos and recorded film. “It is doubtful whether the red people were half as interested in the bell as the Philadelphians were in them,” The Daily East Oregonian reported. As the Liberty Bell Special made its 10,000-mile journey across the United States that summer, stopping at 275 cities, towns and hamlets, a quarter of all Americans…