Exhibit Traces Packwood’s Travails Artists Nationwide Depict Allegations Of Sexual Harassment, Ethics Probe

While history awaits the outcome of an ongoing Senate ethics probe, Bob Packwood and his trusted diaries have secured a place in the art world.

“The Bob Packwood Experience,” “Bob’s Dilemma,” and “The Origin of Bob’s Image Interpretation Disorder” are among art works on display through next month at a private suburban gallery a half-hour from Capitol Hill.

“The Packwood Diaries” exhibition was organized by Donald Vogler of the Comus Gallery in Portland, who invited 15 artists nationwide to participate.

The paintings, sculptures and avant garde works depict scenes and symbols familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Packwood’s situation, from allegations of unwanted sexual advances to his unsuccessful court battle to keep his private diaries from the Senate Ethics Committee.

Some pieces portray the 62-year-old Oregon Republican as a boozing masher. Others speak to questions of privacy and the relationship between memory, perception, reality and truth. A few are almost sympathetic.

Tthom Mutt’s “Packword” is a cluttered card table with a game of Scrabble in progress. Amid the wine glasses and ashtrays is a match book with a picture of Packwood that says “Close Cover Before Resigning.”

The small wooden squares on the board spell out more than 50 words, including Packwood, misconduct, kiss, obstruction, intimidate, tongue, subpoena, grope, philandering, allegation, construe, beer, date, accuse, ego and resign.

Letters arranged for future plays spell out “womanizer,” “seniority,” “unwelcome” and “scapegoat.”

The score pad reads, Bob 6, Ethics Committee 94 - the vote by which the Senate ordered Packwood to turn over his diaries.

Pamela White, program coordinator at the Pyramid Atlantic gallery in Riverdale, said visitors find many of the works humorous.

“But people seem to be pleasantly surprised that it is more than just political satire,” White said.

“He’s not so uniformly, savagely attacked as you might expect. Some are - I wouldn’t say sympathetic, but maybe understanding. Empathy more than sympathy. I think there is a recognition this is probably a very embarrassing part of his life,” she said.

Neither Packwood nor any of his staff have seen the exhibit, said Matt Evans, the senator’s spokesman in Portland.

“I’m not even sure he knows it exists,” Evans said.

The exhibit opens with a quotation from the Scottish novelist James Barrie, who wrote the play “Peter Pan” in 1904.

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it,” Barrie wrote.

The first stop is at “Phloem” by Helen Lessick of Seattle. A wooden replica of an open diary has a copper silhouette of a man on one page with a brass tack through the heart. On the other page, tacks spell out “the loneliness.”

More political, “The Bob Packwood Experience,” by Gregory W. Shelnutt of Oxford, Miss., is a brass postcard display stand. Each wire holder contains the same white file card, which reads:

“We’re sorry … The Bob Packwood Experience is EMPTY. To reorder this product, please contact: Sen. ichard Bryan, chair, Select Committee on Ethics, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington D.C., 20510, (202) 224-6244.”

Perhaps the most unusual piece is Paul Zelevansky’s “Bob Packwood in the Dark,” a gray door with a small image of a man that could have come from a men’s restroom door. Coming out of a hole towards the bottom of the door is a cord attached to stereo headphones hanging on the door knob - an invitation to eavesdrop.

“This is about Bob Packwood and his diaries,” a tape-recorded message says. “But it could be about anyone with a desire to entrust secrets to a book, a tape recorder or an empty room … “

Heather Cox of Portland offered two works. “You say no but you really mean yes,” features an eye on one cube and a mouth covered by a BandAid on another. “The Victim” consists of 25 photocopies of pelvis bones in a 5-foot-by-5-foot square. Twenty four are on pink paper. One is on blue paper with a pencil attached in the middle pointing down.

Carrie Larson of Aberdeen, Wash., depicts Pandora opening a box in “The Story,” a relief print on silk tissue. In the background are words aligned like those in a dictionary definition - “a breach,” “privacy,” “allege,” “excuse,” “blackmail,” “graymail,” “white male,” “trust,” “truth” and “INTERPRETATION.”

The most expensive exhibit item is Warrington Colescott’s “Keeping In Touch,” a bright watercolor selling for $1,850. Most of the other items ranged from $250 to $1,200.

Four Packwood characters appear in “Keeping In Touch,” three of them molesting women, in some cases with six arms or six hands. The fourth Packwood is writing in a diary at a desk with a glass of wine, his tongue hanging out while he imagines three winged, naked women.

Pyramid Atlantic is a private, non-profit working gallery that has been holding classes and providing residencies for artists for about 15 years, White said. It receives some grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The gallery invited Packwood, members of the Oregon and Maryland congressional delegations and members of the Senate Ethics Committee to visit the exhibition.

There’ve been no takers so far.

“If any staff has come through they haven’t identified themselves as such,” White said. “No one has been upset. Being in Washington I think most people who come to see this are ready for a good time.”