1980-09-17-sr-p22-gordon-vales
September 17, 1980 Spokesman-Review Page 22:
‘Silhouettes’ profiles artistic side of Gordon
By Chris Peck
No crow’s-feet crease the corners of his eyes.
In that sense Gordon Vales was fortunate to have grown up in a village for the retarded.
He had no worries.
He was fed, clothed, cared for in every way.
That he was an artistic genius who, if started on a different course, might now be renowned for his gifts rather than his limitations—well, that was the price of growing up in a society at first prejudiced against the retarded and then intent on shielding them from risk.
Gordon Vales has spent 44 years in mental institutions, foster homes and boarding houses.
“I look 24, don’t you think?” he asked one summer night as sheet lightning backlit the downtown Spokane skyline.
He scanned the sky.
He didn’t look at the construction paper in his hands, nor did he seem to notice the redheaded little boy who stood, awestruck, waiting for him to complete his work.
Soon, a clump of people had gathered in Spokane’s Riverfront Park to watch the man who tears pictures.
Gordon Vales can tear perfect circles without looking.
He can tear detailed outlines of cowboys rearing on horses, Indians wearing headdresses.
One look at a human face, and he picks up a plain piece of cheap construction paper and creates a perfect silhouette image.
On one plane he is a genius.
On another plane Gordon is special. He speaks in the parlance of the retarded.
“Did Jesus like cowboy movies?” he suddenly asked.
He was institutionalized as an infant in 1935 or as a 5-year-old in 1940—no one is quite sure.
He was kept in a room with retarded people at a time when care and custody overruled the chances for human growth, overprotected and underestimated for years.
He is a study in environmental retardation.
Yet he had a gift. He could tear pictures.
And after 44 years, Gordon Vales has finally decided to wager that his talent can overcome his limitations.
This summer, he moved into an apartment, alone.
He is trying to live like the rest of us, on his own, earning a living.
“I am an artist,” Gordon said the night he tore the picture of Jesus. “I want to live alone. I want to tear pictures.”
The success of this 44-year-old retarded man’s attempt to live a dignified life as an artist is tied, in some degree, to Spokane filmmaker Robin DuCrest.
This summer, DuCrest received a $20,000 grant from the Washington Commission for the Humanities to shoot a 28-minute documentary entitled “The Silhouettes of Gordon Vales.”
With a bit of luck, the 16mm film will be telecast on the Public Broadcasting System, and maybe the major networks in the coming months.
The film already is scheduled to be shown in October at five different forums in Eastern Washington.
If the film succeeds, Gordon Vales one day may be exhibiting his silhouette art across the country, selling his remarkable hand-torn works to major galleries, earning enough money to care for himself without the support of the state.
As it is, “The Silhouettes of Gordon Vales” already serves as an instructive example of what happens when a society assumes people want to be protected at the expense of taking a chance to succeed on their own.
Gordon was hidden at Lakeland Village in Eastern Washington for more than 20 years—an institution shaped, as most are, by the most conventional and conservative elements in society.
He grew up before the major civil rights movement in the United States, before the deinstitutionalizing drive in mental hospitals.
That he may yet find a place among the victorious not the vanquished is the result of individuals who saw beyond the institutional barriers,
One of these people was Rhoda Williams.
She was a farmer's wife from the little town of Edwall, Wash., who taught part time at Lakeland Village.
She was one of the few who saw around the label of retardation Gordon Vales had carried for 20 years.
“I felt Gordon was there because of social problems,” Mrs. Williams remembered of the first time she met Gordon.
“He was so curious. He was the only one who took an interest in the farm.”
Although Gordon is black and Mrs. Williams lived in a conservative farming town, she offered to take Gordon out of Lakeland Village and into her home to help with housework.
"When we took him in they said he would never work out," Mrs. Williams said a few days ago at the family farm miles southwest of Spokane.
“And when we took him in, they got a petition up in the church and asked us not to bring him out here. The children were afraid of him.”
Yet Mrs. Williams gave Gordon Vales something no institution had given.
For seven years she provided him with a chance to overcome the fears and prejudices of a society.
He attended Sunday school and won the hearts of the farm kids by tearing silhouettes of them.
When the Edwall Lions Club asked him to tear silhouettes for their annual dinner, Gordon tore tiny pictures of Lions doing good works like mowing the law and helping people.
Now, Gordon wants to make it on his own.
Not all special people could have done as much as he. Not all have talents as recognizable as perfect silhouettes.
Still, Gordon Vales serves as a profound metaphor for what can be done to retrieve this country from its institutional and individual malaise.
His life affirms that human development requires some room, entails some risk.
The same vision could be applied to everything from health care to the very organization and vision of government.
“Human dignity is one of the very heavy themes we pursue in this film,” Robin DuCrest said late one night after showing a working print of “The Silhouettes of Gordon Vales.”
“It seems the direction the film is taking is to key on the notion that we need everyone in society, that we have to use all humans as resources,” he said.
Gordon Vales wanted to risk something to become something.
That notion is one many in our safe, risk-free society have forsaken.
