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Mayor’s MySpace photos hot topic in Arlington

Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist’s name is sure to be mentioned when Arlington holds its annual town meeting Wednesday.

Some of the mayor’s roughly 500 constituents will want to know her views on the issues affecting the Eastern Oregon community; others will want to talk about her underwear.

The mayor’s lingerie is a hot topic here, with some residents upset that she posted pictures of herself wearing only a black bra and panties on her MySpace page. She was on one of the town’s fire engines.

Kontur-Gronquist’s MySpace page is blocked to all but her friends, but the pictures were at one time available to all users. In an interview with the (Pendleton) East Oregonian, the mayor said she did nothing wrong and those who are offended need to get over it.

“That’s my personal life,” she said. “It has nothing to do with my mayor’s position.”

Kontur-Gronquist, who is also the fire department’s executive secretary, said the photos were taken before she was elected mayor three years ago, and she saw no reason to remove them from the Internet after taking office.

“I’m not going to change who I am,” she said. “There’s a lot of officials that have a personal life, and you have people in this community who have nothing better to do than scrape up stuff like this.”

Lorena Woods is one of those residents who say the photos of a scantily clad mayor reflect badly on Arlington.

“It’s a picture of her in bra and panties on a rural protection fire truck in a rural protection fire hall,” Woods said. “This isn’t the way we want our city to be portrayed.”

Councilman Jeff Bufton said he’s heard a lot of negative comments about the pictures, but declined to say whether the council plans to address the topic.

-The Associated Press

Ramirez Box tonight
By Mary Louise Schumacher
Friday, Nov 30 2007, 08:07 AM
Every one-night art party that Cedar Block puts on at the Milwaukee Art Museum seems better than the last.

“The Ramirez Box,” the group’s fourth installment, like the events that preceded it, challenges local artists to respond to a feature exhibit at the art museum in a very specific way. It happens tonight at 8 p.m.

The artists participating in this exhibit-fete will possess a unique form of solidarity with Martin Ramirez, the self-taught artist whose work is the subject of a major retrospective. Like Ramirez, who spent the last 30 years of his life in mental institutions, often creating art from the scraps and odd materials he gathered from trash bins, the 30 local artists in the show will have made new works using nothing more than what they got in a box from Cedar Block back in October.
 

Brent Gohde, the founder and director of Cedar Block, has assembled a diverse group of Milwaukee artists including Charles Dwyer, Beth Bojarski, Mutope Johnson, Faythe Levine, Andrew Swant, Bobby Ciraldo, Della Wells, Mark Winter, John Riepenhoff and others.

Donebestdone (still, to left, from donebestdone piece) will perform and Tom Crawford and Von Munz will DJ at the event, which features free appetizers and a cash bar. The Martin Ramirez exhibition will also be open until 10 p.m. Tickets are $7, $5 for members. Information: (414) 224-3200.

Here’s my story from today’s paper about Brent and Cedar Block.

Check back at Art City a little later for a preview of donebestdone’s work.