VIETNAM VETERANS OF OREGON LIVING MEMORIAL
"remember us. so long as we are not forgotten, we do not die"
A CALLING
DOUG MACY / POIGNANT TRUTHS
(by Jud Blakely)
Doug Macy's most fateful and mysterious gift is the empathetic reach he brings to what others feel. In the feelings of others lie hidden or obscure the elusively secret materials of his craft as well as the eventual verdict they reach on the impact of his work.
The rolling of the years only confirms the unrelenting passion of Doug to seek out and listen to what others have no clarifying voice to express on their own, to enter into the power and meaning of an experience that he himself has never had and will never have.
And in that may be the supreme, most unforgiving test of an artist: to enter into the power and meaning of an experience that he himself has never had. What so baffles is how this could be, how an artist outside an experience comes to absorb its essence.
VIETNAM VETERANS OF OREGON
LIVING MEMORIAL
By the filter of his intuition, Doug has been able to reconcile what is most fragile, most vulnerable, and most fleeting in our day-to-day lives (the basic and poignant truths of flesh and blood) with what is most certain and perpetual in time and place.
What is more certain or perpetual in our lives than the ebb and flow of seasons? And so, it's the seasons that are the most significant forces, palettes, and primal inspiration in his work to beckon from the cycles of nature strong and lasting echoes of the spirit.
Few echoes are blessed with more healing (or innate) power than the resonating echoes that so infuse the Vietnam Veterans of Oregon Living Memorial and that so clearly and unerringly affirm the marvel of Doug Macy's range and depth of empathetic skills.
And yet, Doug's skills are merely an aspect of his gifts, merely the tools he applies to give shape, relationship, and scope to a design. But his richly intuitive grasp of what others feel is what most accurately defines him and most pervasively informs his work.
As the seasons rise to reclaim us again, again, and again, so, too, will a chorus of echoes rise again to reclaim us in behalf of what is so fragile and vulnerable and fleeting within us but which is linked to our sense of what is most certain in blank and endless time.
Blooded by his own experience of unbearable pain and loss, Doug has always felt called to capture, define, and render the unrealized visions and longings of others into vibrant organisms of form and function and a rigorously true and faithful aura of effect.
In the soulful and liberating aura of the Vietnam Veterans of Oregon Living Memorial, our garden of solace and resurrection, Doug Macy has more than affirmed and fulfilled his calling.
SEMPER FIDELIS
