Rumors mix with pollen, swirling and clumping on the early summer wind, which flows in gusts down the Friendly Street corridor. At the end of the historic Eugene drive, which has a neighborhood community dedicated to preserving its roots, lies the home of Eugene’s local tea master. Remodeled in 2010, J-Tea brings the Taiwanese tea experience to the Pacific Northwest.

As the door swings open, the rumors of odd business hours and a divisive personality dissipate, leaving only the reassuring scent of steeping tea and the enthusiastic “Thanks!” of Josh Chamberlain’s latest tea convert. For Chamberlain, a 50-year-old Eugene resident, the discovery of tea was a life-changing twist of fate, and he’s spent the last 21 years bringing the best of Taiwanese tea to the Friendly neighborhood.

Chamberlain was introduced to tea during his college years at the University of Oregon, where he studied international studies and Mandarin. “I needed caffeine to stay awake, and I was reading a textbook about tea. Thinking it seemed cool from an intellectual perspective, I decided to buy some,” Chamberlain said.

But the store-bought commodity tea he found only left him with disappointment and a stomachache. The frustration would slowly change to awe as Chamberlain uncovered a wealth of tea knowledge off the coast of mainland China.

Chamberlain was guided to Taiwan via a chance encounter with his study abroad advisor, who had spent time there. “She recommended this language program school, and I had a strong interest in martial arts, so I thought ‘if I can go to Taiwan and find a kung fu school, that would be ideal,’” Chamberlain said.

The study abroad experience in Taipei brought Chamberlain the language experience and local connections, but following his graduation, he felt lost in the endless opportunities the working world had to offer. So in typical recent graduate fashion, he decided to travel back to Taipei to continue studying the language.

But Chamberlain remembered the feeling of aimlessness that followed him. “I remember thinking it was kind of pointless; I had no direction in life. I might be learning Chinese, but ‘so what?’”

The turn from solo travel back into the work world brought Chamberlain the purpose and opportunity that he needed. “I started to see that the work world was so vast. Once I started to see that, I decided to take every job I could,” Chamberlain said.

True to his word, he took unconventional jobs, working as a ground agent at Starlux, a Taiwanese airline at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. Working from midnight to 5 a.m., Chamberlain spoke only Mandarin and developed his fluency.

The decision to hone his language skills proved highly beneficial. When he embarked on a fateful third trip with a group of four high school friends, he finally began unlocking all that Taiwan had to offer. Unlike the first two trips, which were relatively short and both based in Taipei, the five-year escapade led the group to Tainan in southern Taiwan, where Chamberlain spent his time learning kung fu and earning an International Master of Business Administration in economics from National Cheng Kung University.

For the motley group of kung fu protegees, tea was a byproduct of the martial art they loved. Introduced by their teachers, they bought a tea table and sat around drinking tea bought from local markets. At first, they were completely oblivious to the nuances of the tea world.

“We were so clueless; we would just buy the cheapest tea we could get,” Chamberlain said. “Our kung fu teachers were using $500 teapots and we couldn’t wrap our heads around it.” Slowly but surely, Chamberlain and his friends began to piece together the beauty of tea culture, but it wasn’t until a chance encounter at a noodle stand that his tea journey truly began.

While waiting for his food, Chamberlain was approached by an artist who seemed to recognize his air of refinement and invited him to what can loosely be described as a studio. The fateful interaction quickly sparked a friendship, and Chamberlain began joining him and his crew of musicians on their outings at tea houses.

While frequenting the houses, he connected with one of his tea teachers, who began teaching him the ways of the leaf. Simultaneously, Chamberlain’s kung fu practice led him to an acupuncturist and restaurant owner — the mentor who pushed him into the tea well once and for all.

“At that time, I was buying the crappiest oolong, and I thought it was so rad. But one night, he brought out and brewed an Osmanthus Oolong, which changed everything for me,” Chamberlain said. “When you fall into the well of tea, sometimes you fall deep and you can never get out.”

From then on, Chamberlain dove into the well, developing his taste and pursuing as many teas as possible. “I remember I told my mentor I wanted to try Dong Ding Oolong, and he called me at 9 p.m. and told me to come over, so I went and we made tea for three hours. It was nuts.”

As he was gradually introduced to farmers and fellow tea enthusiasts, Chamberlain was brought into the fold of Taiwanese tea. The tasting sessions with both farmers and friends could take many hours, and to many, any more than 15 minutes dedicated solely to brewing tea seems far-fetched. But in the East, where Gongfucha, translated as “brewing tea with skill,” is practiced, three hours barely cracks the surface.

Gongfucha, a practice that J-Tea pioneers in Eugene, utilizes smaller teapots and cups to scale down the volume of tea consumption and maximize one’s appreciation of high-quality tea leaves.

“By conducting multiple smaller steeps and keeping a tighter control over variables, like water temperature and brew time, you can appreciate the changes in the tea,” Chamberlain said.

Gongfucha also breaches the spiritual, with deep ties to Buddhist thought, leading practitioners to greater self-cultivation.

“We are a block when we are born, and by self-refinement or practicing different arts, yoga, or training yourself to appreciate an aesthetic, your edges are rounded off and you become an elevated version of yourself,” Chamberlain said.

While the philosophy behind Gongfucha may convey a heady air, in practice, Gongfucha depends on its surrounding context. In some communities, like the intelligentsia, its aesthetic importance is stressed. But according to Chamberlain, it’s usually just used as a social lubricant; well-made tea can connect friends and strangers alike.

For Chamberlain in 2025, turning strangers into friends via J-Tea is relatively straightforward, but his work blazing trails connecting quality tea with the Eugene consumer left him with some scars.

Inspired by his mentor in Taiwan, Chamberlain branched into the bubble tea business in 2016 with the now-defunct Oolong bar. The bar, which was slotted between Sweet Life Patisserie and Prince Pucklers Ice Cream, was aimed to be a space for students to enjoy the highest quality mixed teas while sharing ideas.

“The products we developed in the Oolong bar were insane. But I’m a perfectionist and wanted it to be to the Nth degree, which didn’t quite match consumer demand.”

Chamberlain even went so far as to implement “T-talks,” which brought fellow tea experts to Eugene to discuss tea life. But even after all the extensive research and experimenting, the business closed in 2023 following the pandemic, and proved to be a learning experience for Chamberlain.

“It was a great idea, and I learned a lot,” Chamberlain said. “That kind of lesson you can’t learn in a vacuum; I had to go through it to learn it.”

Bringing cutting-edge information to a community is always a battle, and the mark of a savvy business owner is perseverance and the ability to adapt. As of now, Chamberlain has reconsolidated his operations back at J-Tea, continuing to build his community with consistent posting on both his blog and newsletter, as well as budget-friendly tastings for the community to enjoy.

The tastings — raucous, good-natured events —are a way for Chamberlain to continue sharing his love of tea with newcomers. Much like in Taiwan, Chamberlain takes pride in making his customers tea.

“It’s a way to demonstrate to my guests that I appreciate them,” Chamberlain said. “It’s about connecting, and it brings everyone together.”

The post Spilling the tea with Eugene’s most elusive tea salesman appeared first on Daily Emerald.

In 2025, the pursuit of truth is a ChatGPT search query. While such easily accessed conveniences provide answers, seemingly to any question we may seek, by placing trust in the hands of our artificial counterparts, we abandon our obligation to seek truth and accomplish true social change. For anthropological consultant and seventh-generation basket weaver Stephanie Craig, the waves AI induced noise are just another backdrop in her 20 year journey of preserving Indigenous history and facing discomfort in pursuit of truth.

Craig, a descendant of Santiam and Yoncalla, Takelma, Cow Creek Umpqua, and Chinook, didn’t grow into her heritage until her undergraduate years at University of Oregon. She grew up in a rural non-BIPOC community where sticking with the status quo meant safety.

Craig attributes the parental decision to conceal their culture largely to the generational trauma endured by her mother. “My mom grew up on the reservation in Grand Ronde during the time of termination. We didn’t have Federal recognition, so she got a lot of harassment,” she said.

The Termination Era (1953-1970) was a period when the government, in pursuit of the natural resources controlled by the tribes, revoked the sovereignty of Indigenous nations. Followed by numerous efforts to erase their identities and Americanize the nations, the government forced the previously independent communities to assimilate into American cultures and ideologies. While the effects of this homogenization remain 55 years later, Craig has dedicated her life to uncovering and preserving the histories and identities of her people through her practice of basket weaving, ethnobotany, ceremonial fishing and understanding of traditional foods.

For Craig, who has a master’s degree in cultural anthropology, museum studies and folklore, identity has been the pillar of her career. While she was an undergraduate studying anthropology, an experience at UO’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History pushed her career into motion.

“The docent was giving me a tour of the native exhibit, and they had a photo of my family. He was telling me the history of my family,” Craig said. “And so when he was done talking, then I told him my family’s history. And when I finished, I turned around and all the museum staff had gathered behind me.”

This experience was far from her last. When interning with the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American Indian Archives Department, Craig walked into the George Gustav Heye Center only to find her family’s items on display. As the curators opened the display cases, Craig grappled with the complex emotions that accompany reconnection.

“It’s a shock. I’m not mad or upset, just sad,” Craig said. “Those belongings feel lost.”

The flood of emotions wasn’t all negative, though. “As soon as those doors or cupboards or drawers are open, it’s like they see me, and I see them,” Craig said. “There’s this light bulb, a spark of good energy and it feels like we’re connected again. It feels like my grandmothers and my aunties are right there with me. Then it’s just exciting; happy and warming. I act like a little kid in a candy store.”

But much like the history of clashes between settler colonial and Indigenous ideologies, the best practices of cultural preservation are also at odds. Craig is left feeling that these items, ironically placed on a pedestal by Western culture, need to be freed from their captivity and returned to their rightful owners.

The growth of culture lies in the generation of dialogue between the past and present, so by caging critical pieces of Indigenous history, cultural development is stunted. Indigenous communities are stripped of autonomy when cultural power rests in the hands of colonizers.

“If the items aren’t in our community, our culture will end with whomever they choose,” Craig said. We know how to take care of those items better than anyone else. There’s no reason why a non-Indigenous institution or repository should hold on to cultural material, especially when that community has their own repository.”

Perhaps due to its inability to cultivate authentic aesthetics combined with its history of extraction, the Western world — white America in particular — has long had a fetishistic relationship with cultural objects, both Indigenous and nonnative. Particularly in the context of items engineered for use, like the baskets which Craig specializes in, the pedestal Western society has placed them on leaves them to collect dust.

“Our items were not ever made to be put on a shelf and put in a closet,” Craig said. “They’re meant to be used and used until they bust and break. Then, at that point, we put them to rest, or we repair and keep using them.”

For Craig, the materials represent the tangible intentions of her ancestors, and using them solidifies the relationship between the present and the past. “We are today the dreams of our ancestors two generations ago coming true, just like how we dream for the future of our children and grandchildren,” Craig said. “They didn’t want our history to end, and by being able to connect with them, they get to feel that we are still thinking of them, being mindful and living respectfully with the land and our resources.”

Craig’s own basket weaving is enmeshed with intentional effort and historical cognizance. Her practice, which she began as a child when it was passed down from tribal elders and maternal family members, was kept humbly covered throughout her college years. When she decided it was time to begin passing her knowledge on to future practitioners, she took all the appropriate steps.

“I didn’t just go rogue. I asked permission from my oldest tribal elders first,” Craig said. “The whole goal of any native woman who is a culture-bearer or culture-keeper is to practice the craft in order to transmit it to the next generation and to keep it from getting lost.”

Even when health issues — carpal tunnel and arthritis — put a dampener on her personal projects, she forged on. “I was told about 15 years ago that I’d only have about 10 to 12 years left of use in my hands,” Craig said. “So I had to slow down a lot, but I still taught.”

As Craig raises her own children, passing down her wealth of knowledge to the next generation, she recognizes that fighting the friction created by the ease of modern technology is difficult. But through countless hours weaving baskets and fighting friction in daily life, she’s built the work ethic needed to keep encouraging growth.

For Craig, her headstrong and diligent mindset was passed down through generations of strong and capable women. From a young age, she was exposed to photos of her great-grandmother whose strong hands were formed from weaving baskets and farming.

“I knew my grandma had big hands because she worked hard and was able to provide for her family,” Craig said. “So my goal was to always have big, rough hands.”

With the comforts of modern technologies, it’s become increasingly difficult for Craig to convey the value of her work both in basket weaving and cultural preservation to potential protégés.

“A lot of people, native and non-native, want me to make the basket for them, or they want me to cut everything down and give them this nice package,” Craig said. “They don’t want to gather, learn to process materials or understand ethnobotany and traditional ecological knowledge because it’s too hard; it takes them away from video games, from dating and from social life.”

The pursuit of truth is a lifelong endeavor and a mechanism for change. When the falsehoods of socially dominant systems are revealed and ignorance is fractured, burying thoughts of change is no longer an option. With a contemporary American political climate that manipulates information systems, an already divisive historical field has been put in jeopardy.

“With the new administration and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), I’ve lost contracts with museums. I get emails that say, ‘Well, I don’t have to follow NAGPRA Federal law,’” Craig said. “A month and a half ago is when I already started feeling this administration’s power. I have lost six big contracts already: two state, two federal and two tribal.”

While the future is complicated, the potential of a generation with minds adjusted to the allure of instant gratification excites Craig. “We’re raising the children, and since they were born they’ve been out gathering basketry materials,” Craig said. “They’ve been to ceremonies since birth and they’re growing up. In the next generation, there’s gonna be even more of a grasp on our culture, and I think that in itself is amazing.”

Questions of potential will be answered in time, and it is only in the present where the future can be built. Though unexpected circumstances can lead to challenges, adapting in real-time will build the path to a worthwhile outcome.

“We don’t get to choose our life or our path. That’s done by the Creator, or some higher power, and I am just the one that was chosen for my life,” Craig said. “I am here to do a job. My ancestors chose me, and, by God, I’m going to do the best damn job I can.”

The post A future woven with past and present appeared first on Daily Emerald.

In their recent exhibition, titled “Rare Earth,” Briar Marsh Pine, who is a visiting faculty member in the UO photography department, examines the complex relationship between humanity and rare earth metals.

The exhibition is a continuation of Pine’s textile and photographic exploration of the waste caused by steel mining in their home state of Minnesota.

“I knew I wanted to expand on the things I learned from that project, so I had an outline where I wanted to make this textile piece; and I wanted to make a bunch of images and gather all these materials, and from there this body of work really grew,” Pine said.

While the technologies which utilize rare earth metals have only been popularized in the last three decades, the mining of such metals began in 1788 with the discovery of yttrium in Sweden. The metals, which consist of the lanthanides (La to Lu), scandium (Sc) and yttrium (Y), were coined “rare earth” because they were both novel and could be dissolved with acid.

The metals themselves aren’t exceptionally rare. However, they exist in small quantities throughout Earth’s crust, rather than large deposits. The diffused nature of the metals exacts a complicated extraction process which creates a high volume of waste, contaminating the environment around the mine.

While China has been the primary source of rare earth extraction with notoriously lax waste policies in the early 1950s, the U.S. tried their hand at the practice, opening Mountain Pass Mine in San Bernardino, CA.

The mine has a storied history, involving many owners, a bankruptcy in 2015 and a $35 million dollar contract with the Department of Defense in 2022. With tariffs limiting international trade of technologies which necessitate rare earth, the relevance of Mountain Pass Mine — the only U.S.-based rare earth mine — and the environmental concerns which accompany increased extraction are rising.

Pine’s “Rare Earth” offers a novel look into the complex reality of rare earth consumption. “My goal is to provide a different point of entry to think about something differently, something you’re probably already engaging with whether you know it or not,” Pine said.

While Pine spent over a year researching the mine before accepting a visiting faculty position in the photography department, it was their newfound proximity to the mine and an invitation from Mike Bray — a founder of Ditch Projects — that pushed them to complete the exhibition.

“A lot of my practice was centered around the history of U.S. geological surveys and landscape photography, so this was really a natural progression for me,” Pine said.

While Pine was pressed for time, they found the constraints were just what they needed. “I had less than four months to make the images before printing and framing, so there wasn’t a lot of room for questioning myself,” Pine said. “I really had to work and trust my intuition, so that was really rewarding.”

The work is multimedia in nature, using everything from digital collages to still life, so their research reflected that. “There were a lot of press releases and government websites where they wrote about the different funding sources for mountain pass, but a lot of the websites are different convoluted internet archives,” Pine said. “I was looking at images and a lot of what I do is working with existing images.”

By literally extracting pieces of image from various sources, Pine used their newfound studio space at University of Oregon to create relationships between their mediums.

“Prior to my work here, I was more of an on-location photographer, but recently the process has been in the studio,” Pine said. “It’s been really rewarding to have complete control over what materials are speaking together.”

The complex arrangement of materials parallels the fundamental problem with rare earth that Pine seeks to highlight. With approximately 92% of Americans owning smartphones, we are all involved. Pine recognizes that nobody’s hands are clean. “In one of the photographs, I include my cell phone and my camera because I am within the system,” Pine said.

While such an acknowledgement may drive a cynic to despair, Pine is hopeful that their work will provide the stimulus to continue pursuing a solution. “I don’t want to give answers necessarily because I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing to think about,” Pine said. “I’d rather turn the situation over in your head; this is something that is occurring in the world that we are all implicated in.”

While many artistic endeavors attempt to convey value with heady and heavily contextual subject matter, Pine’s work concretely engages with audiences, providing a medium for conversation about a lesser-known topic.

“Here is something that is happening in the world but you’re not reading about it, which is a great way to learn things, but it can be hard to empathize and engage with it on a human level,” Pine said.

With a new lithium mine in the works on the Oregon-Nevada border, Pine is already looking into their next project. “I think I’m going to bridge the two, because they are so intertwined; and I also have my past work in steel, so I’m thinking about tying all three together and looking at this industry from a material point of view,” Pine said.

“Rare Earth” is on display at Ditch Projects in Springfield until May 4, so take the 15-minute bus from campus and check it out. “I hope that you have questions after this, and that you’re turning them over; if you’re asking questions, that’s exciting to me,” Pine said.

The post Mining for answers at Ditch Projects’ new gallery appeared first on Daily Emerald.

Quality never goes out of style, but when manufacturing is shipped overseas and corners are cut in pursuit of profit margins, consumers must go great lengths to recreate the heritage quality of the past. Such is the case for Eugene’s own David Mattox, 42, whose work in the Alaskan fishing industry exposed the flaws in denim, forcing him to roll up his sleeves and take matters into his own hands.

His jeans are crafted with years of experience braving massive swells in the Gulf of Alaska, where Mattox developed a uniquely utilitarian view on workwear. His lived experience and attention to detail reframes a subgenre of fashion which has shifted towards gaudy adornment in recent years. Guided by a penchant for pre-World War II era sewing machines and nearly a decade of trial and error, his denim creations guide workwear back to its roots in timelessness, reliability and dedication to craft.

Mattox, who grew up in Boring, Oregon, has a storied history with America’s most historic denim manufacturer. “My grandpa gave my dad two pairs of Levi’s 501s every Christmas,” Mattox said. “That was a constant, positive thing that happened every year in my dad’s life, so he started giving me two pairs of Levi’s every year in high school.”

In the early days, Mattox’s Levi’s were a treasured possession, and he acquired piles of the then sturdy jeans.

While he never had any real interest in fashion, Mattox’s interest in reputable workwear brands developed throughout high school and college, and he gravitated towards brands like Filson and Pendleton, which were made in the Pacific Northwest.

“At the time, I thought buying Filson and Pendleton was buying locally because I lived in Portland,” Mattox said. “Maybe that’s why those brands were important to me in my teens and twenties.”

For Mattox, the practical and almost bulletproof quality of 20th century manufacturing instilled a reverence for the purposefully created garments. After he received his father’s 1940s Filson hunting jacket, he became inseparable from the collection of artifacts which made up his wardrobe, adopting a worldy pride as he wore them. Amid droves of graduating seniors donning trendy Old Navy and Gap cargo pants at the turn of the century, Mattox stuck to his guns.

“I remember one day walking up from the school parking lot with like 10 buddies,” Mattox said. “I looked around and I was the only person wearing Levi’s.”

However, as Mattox entered college at University of Portland in the early 2000s, Levi’s — and an array of similarly esteemed manufacturers — began to shift operations overseas. At the same time, Mattox, who was a year into his philosophy and English double major, happened upon a summer job at an Alaskan fishery. In the years that followed, it became clear his passion for grueling labor and the lifestyle to match would test the mettle of the jeans he loved.

Chasing the allure of a profitable summer job and an adventure, Mattox journeyed to the Last Frontier for salmon season.

“The application was basically one question,” Mattox said. “Do you have a pair of boots or do you need a pair?”

But when each laborer is churning through thousands of salmon daily, those who can’t adapt don’t survive.

Mattox, who’s father earned his job on a handshake, was no stranger to a bit of elbow grease and he dived into the thick of things.

“We got started working in the butcher room which is the grossest room to be in,” Mattox said. “It’s cold, bloody and there’s ice and water everywhere. You’re in full rain gear touching fish that have been in refrigerated salt water so you’re just cold, wet and miserable, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”

The idea of such conditions being fun is uncommon, with most salmon season opportunists cutting their losses after a few hours on the job. But Mattox fell in love with the strenuous yet fulfilling labor and found his way back every summer afterwards.

By the time he graduated college, Mattox had progressed from the cannery to the boats and his Levi’s couldn’t keep up. As he pulled massive buoys from swells over eight feet, his jeans— and their shoddy overseas manufacturing— began to deteriorate before his eyes.

“I just remember that first summer thinking, ‘Wow these buoys don’t give a shit about my Levi’s,’” Mattox said. “It got to a point when two pairs of 501s would fall apart before I even had the chance to break them in. You can see the details and construction of some of my earlier pairs, like the inseam was flat felled, so Levi’s was changing things and their pants weren’t lasting as long as they used to.”

Annoyed with constantly replacing inferior pairs of jeans at an ever increasing price point, Mattox scoured the internet, inevitably discovering the world of selvedge denim. “I was like ‘there’s gotta be a better way,’ but at that time I had never heard of selvedge denim,” Mattox said. “I didn’t think one fabric was different from another. Or that one would last longer or break in differently.”

Recently, “selvedge” has been circulating internet menswear circles as a catch-all term to imply a thoughtfully made pair of jeans. While in 2025 this isn’t necessarily the case, with fast fashion brands like UNIQLO making their own “selvedge” denim, the fabric —invented in 18th century France and perfected in post-war Japan— was initially constructed to be the gold standard for workwear. Selvedge refers to a self finished edge of the denim fabric and is woven using antique shuttle looms, which imbue less tension on the yarn, resulting in a distinct fade.

Mattox’s deep dive into denim’s past led him to an obsession with mid-century sewing machines. “I love the old machines because they represent the period of manufacturing in this country which is polar opposite to what it is today,” Mattox said. “At that time we were trying to build the best sewing machine possible because we needed to defeat fascism in Europe.”

By the mid 2010s, Mattox, who spent winters in Boston, had acquired his first 40s era Singer sewing machine. It was then he made a breakthrough. “I remember finding Pacific Blue Denim and realizing that I could buy the denim, making a $350 pair of pants for $7 a yard,” Mattox said.“So for $25 worth of fabric, all I had to do was learn how to put the pieces together.”

His creations have always been purely utilitarian and inspired by lived experience. “When I started making pants, I decided to taper them a bit more,” Mattox said. “Because in Alaska we wear thigh high boots, so you don’t want a whole bunch of extra fabric in your boots.”

Much like his background, his attitude toward sewing is unconventional. “I approach sewing in the way that my mom did when she would fix things,” Mattox said. “She didn’t have formal sewing training but she patched my jeans up as a kid, through high school and college. I’d take my jeans home so she could put patches on the knees with zigzag crossing all over it. It was hideous but it was also cool, and it was one of a kind.”

Eight years later, Mattox has refined both his creations and his machines. He currently boasts a humble basement workshop and owns over 20 bombproof Singers, crafting classic American silhouettes for himself and his friends, selling customs to the occasional inquirer.

Mattox represents the true spirit of workwear — a genre of fashion which has been misconstrued in the 21st century. As uncalloused hands reached for new and thrifted variations of Carhartt, Levi’s and Ben Davis, phrases like “blue collar stolen valor” began to appear in internet lexicon. While the idea of blue collar posers is steeped in irony, the trend of affluent and presumably white-collar men donning attire meant for long hours of manual labor has taken the zeitgeist by storm.

Mattox’s perspective provides a refreshing contrast to the fashion community at large. For him, the jeans he makes represent work. “They’re work pants. I get excited about wearing a pair of pants while I work because that’s how they get broken in,” Mattox said. “They don’t get broken while sitting at a desk. I want to go out and I want to get them dirty. I want to work hard, sweat and drink a beer and smoke a cigarette afterwards.”

While making jeans is his current endeavor, Mattox has always had a passion for understanding the world around him and his creative eye has matured over time, bleeding into all facets of his life. From curating bottle collections and whittling wooden pins throughout his childhood, to understanding communication through photography and language as a writer and philosopher, to his current pastimes of cuisine and clothing.

“I like seeing the way things work,” Mattox said. “I take pride in that in a way. It’s fun to have a weird obscure set of tools basically in your head.”

More concretely, Mattox finds joy in using creation to cement himself in the flow of time. “I get the same satisfaction from making things, be it a wooden box, a plate of food or a pair of jeans,” Mattox said. “There’s something about having that object at the end of the process. You have an artifact now, it’s gonna exist in the world somewhere (and) out of your control.”

With such a diverse array of creative experiences and decades of experience, one would expect Mattox to be sharing his wealth of knowledge on social media. However, evading internet ostentation, Mattox opted for a more understated approach, donning a username derived from half a quote from his favorite book, the beautiful and nonsensical epic, “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon. The quote, “names by themselves may be empty, but the act of naming,” stresses the importance of intention and represents Mattox’s brand to a tee.

Even the family logo he engraves on each garment’s leather patch is the product of years of experience. “Growing up, you’d get a sharpie out and put it on your coolers and baseball mitts,” Mattox said. “So when we were at the park or the baseball game we knew what was ours and what wasn’t. It was the Mattox family brand.”

The mindset of simplicity and intentionality which Mattox represents has become blurred in the eyes of the next generations, whose attention is attracted to the LED screens which make up the world, rather than the history of the world that surrounds them. According to Mattox, as the complexity of the machines and institutions which make up our world continue to increase, there’s a simple yet fundamental secret which is often overlooked.

“The best tool you can have when it comes to making something is understanding how your machine works,” Mattox said. “A sewing machine is a tool, the same way an iPad is a tool, but people expect their tools to do things for them.”

As the tools we interact with daily become more complex, it has become increasingly easy to adopt a blissful ignorance. However, taking a few minutes to read the manual is well worth it.“It’s usually the most simple things that people overlook,” Mattox said.

Mattox’s denim reflects life. The secret to a killer fade is to put in the time and embrace the struggle because the result is a unique and beautiful character.

“You’ll break in a pair of pants way different than I break in a pair of pants,” Mattox said. “So go out in the world and break them in.”

The post Denim forged in storms appeared first on Daily Emerald.

Change is in the air. With daylight savings approaching and flowers blooming in the gaps between campus walkways, seasonal transience is on full display. While hearts may warm with joy as icy mornings fade into sunny days at Dexter Reservoir, the days spent chasing powder at Mt. Bachelor and surrounds are the inevitable sacrifice. Such bittersweet feelings are encapsulated within the light writing of renowned contemporary Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie, now on display in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Qiu Zhijie has been a prominent name in the Chinese contemporary art scene for over three decades. From his first video exhibition in 1996, his role as an innovator in the contemporary art scene is undeniable. As president of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and a curator in his own right, Zhijie boasts a multidisciplinary portfolio covering a variety of mediums.

But when he introduced himself during his Feb. 2 panel at the JSMA, Zhijie characterized himself so the audience could understand his work. “I’ve always been asked who I am,” Zhijie said. “I am a mapper.”

For Zhijie, concept mapping is the combination of all his facets, a flow of curation, calligraphy, painting and journalism. He works in cartography both physically and conceptually. His work in physical cartography gained traction in 2017 following the release of “Map of the Theater of the World” at the Guggenheim Museum which led to many iterations involving concepts like technological ethics.

But broadly, his portfolio reflects a conceptual cartography, mapping the reality of a world straying from tradition and in the process of being overturned by AI.

As uncertainty continues to bombard the West, the choice of Yan Geng, a new curator for the JSMA, to display “Twenty-Four Seasons: Critical Temporality and Qiu Zhijie’s Light Writing” brings ideas of transience to the forefront of the Eugene community.

The exhibition was inspired by a generous donation of the photographs from Jack and Suzie Wadsworth in 2018, which finally brought together the 24 piece series created by Zhijie in 2005. After months of coordination, the showing began on Jan. 5, only six months after Geng joined the JSMA curatorial staff.

“This is a very important work that has been shown previously only in a gallery in New York,” Geng said. “There was a catalogue published, but this body of work hadn’t received the due scholarly attention.”

The collection highlights the technique of light writing, which involves slowing the shutter speed on a camera and drawing with LED while the shutter is open. The combination results in designs seemingly drawn into the photo by the artist. The method is reminiscent of work done by Picasso in the 1950s, but the fresh perspective Zhijie offers via his calligraphy provides a space for a dialogue between tradition and innovation.

“Qiu Zhijie is particularly interesting because he is not making the Chinese tradition something exotic or superficial,” Geng said. “He is using Chinese media with contemporary artists from other nations to deeply engage with some of the fundamental issues in contemporary art.”

By ignoring the perception that photographs are captured moments and exploring the process of writing calligraphy, Zhijie addresses the matter of transience with his light writing.

“Photography is not just about a moment,” Geng said. “It’s about a process and this process he was exploring is the process in which he was writing calligraphy.”

By engaging with his own cultural background, Zhijie provides a critical perspective of photography by which to push the medium forward.

Calligraphy, which Zhijie dissects, has a storied history as the first Chinese fine art and remains highly regarded today.

“Even until now, the traditional view on fine art has remained the same. The order of the most important fine art starts with poetry, then calligraphy (and) then painting,” Johnson Chang, a prominent curator and dealer of Chinese contemporary art, said during the JSMA panel on Feb. 2. “Almost all of it has to do with the written word, even painting, the aesthetics of painting has been founded on the brushwork and how the painter delivers his personality so in that sense Qiu Zhijie has basically unravelled the magic of the written word.”

By combining calligraphy with photography, a symbol of modern media, he shows that by blending the past and present a new future can be created. In unraveling the written word, Zhijie also creates space to explore the importance of calligraphy’s history. In China, the written word is entrenched in sociopolitics, and though it is often overlooked in the west, in the east, the power of the written word is second to none.

“Writing for China is very important, and even today, communist leaders like Mao Zedong wrote everywhere and wrote the names of certain institutions, universities, the newspapers and poetry,” Geng said. “Writing is very political in China. It is also a type of art and a method of personal expression for the highly educated elite. It’s a very complicated thing.”

Calligraphy has ties back to the Shang dynasty in around 1600 C.E. The artform — similar to western writing — has acted as a gatekeeper of information for the ruling class. In “Immutability and Impermanence in Qiu Zhijie’s Work”, a 2019 paper published by art historian and theorist Christine Vial Kayser wrote, “Literature and calligraphy are efficient means of ensuring the permanent hold on power by an educated class, as they rely on highly technical gestures and elaborate use of Chinese characters, which are closed off to the uneducated.”

But for Zhijie, the past offers important signposts which can be interpreted to understand the present and create the future.

“Qiu heralds the need to go back to the past of Chinese culture as instrumental to keep the culture alive and functional, providing existential benefits to both individuals and the society at large,” Kayser wrote. “The past is the horizon of progress, an attitude which he opposes to both Marxist and Capitalist teleology and the presumption of unfettered progress, based on a Darwinian view of nature”

It’s no secret that the first quarter of the 21st century has brought change on a scale yet unseen. Zhijie’s work explores the dialogue surrounding these changes.

“What he has done over the last 30 years in a way has shown us is the speed of history of these cultural changes and what it means and what has remained after all these changes,” Chang said. “What remains are some essential things that are preserved through Chinese civilization, but it may not last.”

The beauty of Zhijie’s light drawing lies in the capture of an ephemeral process. By capturing such complex emotions, the works themselves are signposts for the audience to follow into the future, embracing both the positive and negative feelings of change. Zhijie is chasing the future of art in a world where tech giants and their AI’s vie for control.

His primary projects include creating a branch in the School of Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing which focuses on developing art using the wonders of new technology. It serves as a place to educate the next generation of contemporary artists on experimentation and responsible use of the artificial intelligence that has taken the world by storm.

“He has a very ambitious plan and an interest in exploring AI in a more complicated way,” Geng said. “So for him, the AI is not just asking Deepseek to generate an image, to produce a video or something so simple. Instead, he is deeply interested in AI in the sense of art and technology and neuroscience and the study of the human beings.”

Zhijie has taken a truly experimental approach, using concepts of neuroscience to teach AI robot arms how to write his calligraphy and even attempting to create an AI version of himself by compiling his portfolio and plugging it into the neural network. Understanding the future lies in interdisciplinary collaboration, and Zhijie has enlisted a wide variety of professionals from neuroscientists to computer and natural scientists to contribute to the project.

This collaborative approach provides respite from the storm of technological and cultural change currently engulfing the world. It shows that through comradery and connection, humanity can embrace the ephemeral and tackle global issues together.The exhibit will be open until June 22nd.

The post Unraveling the written word with artist Qiu Zhijie appeared first on Daily Emerald.

Six bus stops away from the bustle of UO campus lies the best kept open secret in Eugene-Springfield. For the last 17 years, Springfield-based art gallery Ditch Projects (Ditch for short) has been providing a space for contemporary art to thrive. The gallery showcases rotating exhibitions of the collective members and occasionally brings in artists and musicians the collective supports. While current social standards place high value on art valued by the populace, Ditch provides the last bastion for experimental art in the area.

Since the 1960s, Eugene has represented a West Coast ideal of American freedom. Through communities of hippies and cultural norms adjacent, many found themselves seeking freedom outside the structure of the East Coast. However, as musical movements thrived, the contemporary art scene didn’t have the chance to begin growing. By a stroke of luck, in 2008 a new guard of non-tenure track faculty decided to take matters into their own hands.

Six months after finishing his Masters in Fine Arts, Mike Bray, co-founder of the gallery, decided it was time to bring the Chicago punk scene he resonated with in his youth to Eugene/Springfield. Banding with a motley crew of fellow MFA students, the group struck out and founded Ditch.

The gallery, a reference to both its original construction and the Deitch projects — a SoHo gallery of contemporary artist Jeffrey Deitch — was a place for pushing the envelope of self expression. “We’re kind of a risk space,” Bray said. “If someone wants to come in and do something that’s a little unorthodox, we’re totally in support of that.”

A core aspect of the group’s ethos is accessible art. While their taste is cosmopolitan, exhibiting contemporaries like German duo Ubermorgen, the distinctly punk spirit of the collective opposes the highly commoditized pop art scene. They put on monthly cross-disciplinary exhibitions, ranging from fine art to performance art. “We are always first and foremost an artist’s art space,” Bray said “But I do think that art, music and film should all kind of interplay and intermix on occasion.”

In 2025 America, free art offerings are in the minority. Though the Ditch mission is a valiant one, their lack of budget is the primary reason why their campus engagement is minimal compared to operations like the JSMA. However, since its inception, cycles of intrigued groups of students who had done the digging required to happen upon the space would attend the exhibitions in packs.

“They kind of had this like ownership where you could tell that they knew this secret little spot,” Bray said. “They would be there for two years and attend every exhibition, but they’d almost not necessarily engage with Ditch. It was just their secret hideout.”

The combination of an extraordinary hideout-esque atmosphere of the gallery and the ebb-and-flow of student popularity has led to an audience primarily based out of New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. But Bray hopes more Eugene residents and students will get involved.

“We’d love for more people to come check it out and be involved,” Bray said. “I do think of it as a point of community where we want people to not only come and see it, but get in there and contribute too.”

The current exhibits “The Pattern Within the Pattern Within the Pattern” by Sonja Dahl and “So Long, Stranger” by Noah Greene will be up until March 2.

The post Ditch Projects: The gallery across the tracks appeared first on Daily Emerald.

For budding STEM students, the Coffee Lab is an enigma. At the core of the cold concrete interior of Willamette Hall, undergraduate and graduate scientists can be seen brewing coffee at all hours of the day.

While onlookers are granted the pleasure of viewing the student side of experiments on the cutting edge of coffee science, there are whispers of a mysterious leader, Willamette’s local coffee maestro. While he’s not quite as ominous as rumors imply, the tales ring true in regards to his commitment to both students and coffee.

Chris Hendon, a professor and researcher, has been the driving force of coffee science at University of Oregon since 2020. Hendon, whose mother was a chef, said he had been interested in food for most of his life, but the artisan coffee shop Colonna and Small’s changed the course of his scientific career forever.

In the midst of a PhD program in Theoretical Chemistry at University of Bath, Hendon frequented Colonna and Small’s as a patron and eventually caught the eye of one of the founders, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood.

Colonna-Dashwood had an interest in chemistry, so Hendon spent his weekends teaching him chemistry and learning the ins-and-outs of brewing high quality coffee.

“At some point we realized maybe there’s something more to this,” Hendon said. “It’s a widely consumed product and people care about it, so why not use that in two ways to do a little bit of good for science communication and try to build trust of the general public in science?”

The pair’s endeavor to brew shots of espresso would leave its mark on coffee history, with their work in chemistry providing the foundation for their partnership.

“We started really working on water chemistry together,” Hendon said. “That’s when it became clear that there was a lot of room for improvement and Maxwell and I teamed up.”

The competitive result: two fifth place finishes in the World Barista Championship, where the top baristas of each country battle for the world title, in 2014 and 2015.
The wins validated the application of chemistry in the field of coffee and provided Hendon recognition within the coffee community. Using his momentum, he published “Water for Coffee” (2015), a guide to water chemistry and its relation to coffee, and the 2016 paper, “The effect of bean origin and temperature on grinding roasted coffee.” The globally recognized study concluded that keeping coffee beans cold prior to grinding allowed baristas to extract more coffee from the beans while speeding up extraction, reducing waste and improving the standard of quality across the board.

Early on, Hendon’s work affected cafes globally. When attending a conference in Sendai, Japan, he noticed a barista implementing his 2016 study. After he asked the barista about his technique, Hendon said, “He pulled out all of my papers which he laminated.”

The research he conducted in coffee continued through post-doctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and eventually at UO.

“At UO they knew I was an expert in coffee,” Hendon said. “But their work in the area didn’t really crank up until 2020.”

While Hendon joined UO staff in 2017, it wasn’t until 2020 when breakthrough study “Systematically Improving Espresso: Insights from Mathematical Modeling and Experiment” was published. The study found a coarse grind size, instead of the fine one used at that time, was optimal for preventing waste and providing homogeneity from shot to shot. The study saved millions of dollars yearly in cafes across the world.

“I pick problems that I think are big and important that no one else is working on,” Hendon said. “That way we can take our time with it and make sure that we get it right.”

For the last four years, Hendon and the students in his lab have been working with electrochemistry — a study of chemical processes involved with electron movement — and its role in coffee. Specifically, the lab aims to understand coffee’s response to electrical stimulation. In January 2024, the lab published a study which explained that a spritz of water on coffee after grinding will provide a better tasting brew since it removes static electricity buildup on the ground coffee.

In a study recently conducted and currently in review, the group sought to understand how electricity affects the flavor profile of a cup of coffee. “We basically connect the battery to coffee and we can measure how strong the cup of coffee is,” Hendon said. “In addition to that, we can measure how dark tasting it is.”
The measurement of a coffee’s roast profile is a widely contested topic among the coffee community. Hendon, comparing the roast profile to its meaty counterpart, said, “the outside of your steak could be black but the inside could be completely raw.”

At this point, the only way to be completely objective is by obtaining a temperature curve for the roast, which Hendon pointed out is to “ask a chef the temperature at which they cook the steak.” Without forcing coffee roasters around the world to give away their secret sauce, these scientists found another way to quantify flavor.

Should the study pass the peer review process and find itself in an esteemed scientific journal, it would push the boundaries of coffee science forward in a major way. “It’s a pretty big deal because the state of the art in the industry right now can only measure strength and can’t do strength and flavor,” Hendon said. “So this is kind of a big step forward.”

At this point in his career, Hendon is globally recognized in the coffee industry, but he admitted that while he likes coffee, funding and student interest are the biggest factors of the lab’s research direction.

“This job is not about my interests. It’s about what we need to do to learn new things about the universe,” Hendon said. “So, if the students are interested in doing computational chemistry, that’s what we’re going to do. Half the group’s funding comes from coffee research, so we’re going to continue to do it for now.”

While some sectors of scientific research have been steeped in uncertainty given the rise of AI technologies and the threat to NIH lab funding, Hendon said coffee science is thriving and the AI induced dream of a standardized flavor metric doesn’t have ground to stand on. “I actually think it’s a baseless dream,” Hendon said. “I think it’s a naive dream. Because why would you want AI to tell you flavor if people can’t tell you flavors?”

While flavor preference has slight differences between people, in the Coffee Lab, all the scientists, like the judges in professional barista competitions, are calibrated. While actually “liking” a brew is subjective, Hendon says all the testers can attest they taste the same flavor notes in the sample.

“Humans are always allowed the right of preference,” Hendon said. “In other words, you’re allowed to taste what you taste and enjoy it, but in my lab you’re not allowed to like it and not be able to describe why.”

Hendon enjoys working with coffee, but the food is just a medium through which to cultivate a deeper understanding of chemical phenomena. “I work on coffee so we can learn broadly new things about the universe to apply to other foods and other chemical problems,” Hendon said.

Though understanding the secrets of the universe is Hendons mantra, at the current stage of his career, he’s in a position to give back to the next generation of scientists. Through his lab, he provides a staging ground for student ideas to grow.

“What brings me joy is the process, not the destination,” Hendon said. “So seeing the students learn is the most important thing.”

For curious coffee scientists, connoisseurs and hobbyists, the best place to connect with Hendon and other knowledgeable staff of the coffee lab is in Willamette Atrium during their weekly coffee hour, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-12 p.m.

Hendon also co-hosts the podcast “Coffee Literature Review,” which dissects recent highly caffeinated studies.

The post Single Origin: Unpacking the growth and future of coffee chemistry with Dr. Coffee appeared first on Daily Emerald.

In 2025, youthful visions of self-fulfilling work are blurred by family members, friends and internet celebrities telling you what to do and who to be. While moments of peace and self reflection are few and far between, when the pieces finally click together in times of repose, the path to the future gleams in the eyes of those who dare to dream. For 23-year-old University of Oregon student Liv Ruth, it took a gap year to reconnect with her creative roots and uncover her love for the hidden art of tufting.

Ruth, who grew up in Pennsylvania, made the journey out west haunted by ghosts of conformity dressed in LuluLemon. While her father was a prominent multimedia artist with a gallery in the basement of her childhood home, Ruth opted toward traditional Pennsylvania past-times like lacrosse.

“I literally wrote my college essay on lacrosse and how it was my entire identity. I toured University of Oregon to play D(ivision) I lacrosse and that was my life,” Ruth said. “Once I decided not to go down that path, I was really lost.”

The loss of her sport weighed on her, but as a young college student immersed in the breakneck pace of American culture, she felt the pressure to make a decision. Following a period of uncertainty as she pursued education and occupied her free time with sorority life, she found her way back to art.

“I didn’t really get into art until I started going here. Honestly, I was really struggling in my regular classes, like education classes,” Ruth said. “I’ve always liked art, so I started doing really well in my art classes and just kind of went with it.”

The loss of her support system when she switched into art classes was a blow which led to an impromptu gap year. But, a step back to reassess can lead to a clear and streamlined path forward, and for Ruth, the year spent at home gave her time to realize her distaste for the hustle of the East Coast.

“Being back home has definitely made me appreciate living here a lot; it’s just so much more vibrant. People are so much more kind, and have a slower way of living,” Ruth said. “I really try to incorporate that into my work. I feel like now it’s part of my life too, and I just love the change of pace.”

For Ruth, her passion for the slow and labor intensive process of tufting was inspired by watching a video her dad sent her of a rug being made.

“He randomly sent me a rug tufting video one day and I thought, ‘I’m just going to do it,’” Ruth said. “I bought all the equipment and spent the year learning while I was working.” As she continued building, she began to increase the complexity of her designs and found her distinct creative voice.

Her first rug, a depiction of the Peanuts character Snoopy embracing Woodstock, proved to be the first in a line of wholesome motifs. For Ruth, a multimedia artist, Peanuts-inspired designs have been a recurring preference across mediums. The show, a favorite of her mother’s, has occupied a special space in her mind’s eye since she was a child.

“My mom wore this little Lucy pendant, and I’ve just always been staring at that,” Ruth said. “I mean, how many times do you look at your mom growing up, so when I think of my mom’s face, I think of the pendant.”
Such heartfelt presence can be felt across the breadth of her portfolio, due to her imagery and color palette. Scrolling through her instagram it’s hard not to be engrossed by the neon colors which evoke thoughts of the Grateful Dead and ‘50s surf rock culture.

The colors she opts toward are beautifully psychedelic, but Ruth admitted her color palette has much room for improvement. “I’m really scared of using black, gray, brown and any neutral colors,” she said.

With Ruth feeling more invigorated than ever to continue pushing the limits of her artistic capabilities, largely in part to her new community on campus and within the greater tufting community, the sky’s the limit.

The post The art of living ruthlessly: How Liv Ruth took the road less traveled to reconnect with her creativity appeared first on Daily Emerald.

Almost 30 years ago, the organization Disciples of Dirt was formed in Eugene, changing the trajectory of mountain biking in the Eugene community for decades to come. This organization has played a hand in the construction and maintenance of every trail in the greater Eugene community and laid the foundations for the explosive growth of mountain biking in the last five years.

In the early days, the group was known by hikers as “rogues” or “devils on wheels,” but they shifted community perception through thousands of hours of volunteer work and over $100,000 dollars in private funds spent on trail renovation.

Disciples of Dirt built over 20 miles of illegal trails by hand at Carpenter Bypass in the late 90s and early 2000s, and hosted key events that have introduced new bikers to the budding sport. Over the last thirty years, the Disciples have been silent stewards of greater Eugene, working tirelessly to build, protect and maintain trails for people of all walks of life to enjoy the outdoors.

Their end goal? To have trails accessible to all mountain bikers in Eugene, their city of origin.

The Disciples of Dirt began after Dave Hallock, 71, bought his first mountain bike in the mid-80s. Mountain bikes, called ballooners or clunkers in the early days, were a novel invention. Hallock confessed that at first, he hated the idea of leaving the thin tires of his road bike for the wider rougher ones of the novel dirt jumper mountain bikes. But when he finally took the chance, he was hooked.

“From the first day I got on a mountain bike, I was almost laughing out loud,” Hallock said. “I don’t think I rode my road bike 100 miles that year. I lit up; I had found my place.”

As an early adopter of the sport, Hallock had no one to ride with for the first few years. When he finally found a small group to ride with, he was inspired to create a social club dedicated to mountain biking, and in 1985 the Disciples of Dirt was born.

At first, the only paper trail and way into the club was via a newsletter called “Lets Talk Dirty.” Written by Hallock, it contained local biking news and a calendar for rides. At first they rode in the Coburg hills area, on old logging roads.

Lee Wilkinson, 62, described his fight club-esque initiation to the club in 2002. New to Eugene, he went into Bicycle Way of Life, a local bike shop, and they pointed him to “Lets Talk Dirty.”

“It was cryptic, and it was hilarious,” he said. “I introduced myself, and told them what I was into. I mentioned I used to poach a lot of trails down in California and they immediately got back to me. I got a message saying, ‘Meet us off I-5 at 6 p.m., bring beer and peanuts.’”

While people continued to show up for the rides, the Disciples faced the problem of finding a consistent place to ride. So, in 1993, when a friend of Hallock’s happened upon a prime piece of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, untouched and unwatched by the city, the Disciples began building their first cathedral. The land later became known as Carpenter Bypass, and while it is now an established trail network, in the mid-90s the area consisted only of locally built motorcycle trails.

“We just lit up, and started building like mad out there,” Hallock said. The current trail system reflects over 20 miles that the Disciples built by hand. The extensive building was highly illegal and sometimes on private land.

“Because we were illegal, we were flying under the radar out there,” Wilkinson said. “The Disciples told me, ‘You hear a truck coming by, (and) you hit the ground. Don’t let anyone see you.’”

When they were happened upon by the sheriff in 2010, the Disciples knew something had to change. Facing the destruction of 10 years of work, the majority of club members decided it was time to go legit. So the Disciples, after creating official bylaws and gaining 501c3 non-profit status, met the BLM on their own terms.

The BLM not only agreed to adopt and sanction the trails, but they applauded their work. The city, however, was far from granting them free reign to build responsibly. On multiple occasions, the city approached the Disciples, offering incentives of bike access on local trails in exchange for the Disciples volunteer efforts, only to withdraw their promises at the last minute.

Hallock described the disappointment after a mass effort to improve the Ridgeline Trail; “I felt like we had been hoodwinked,” he said after the city turned around and enforced usage that only allowed hikers.

The prior lack of mountain biking trail access in Eugene, though largely blocked by bureaucratic entities, is also a result of animosity toward mountain biking in the Eugene community itself. During the first two decades after the sport was popularized, mountain biking was extremely dangerous.

“Traps were set on the trails we were riding, literally people setting branches across blind corners,” Jack Hill, a 31-year-old semi-pro downhill racer, said. “They set booby traps, it’s really insidious, they do things like point sharp branches up the trails.”

Faced with the consistent vandalism of their trails and danger to their personal health, the Disciples relied on their passion for the sport to remain optimistic. They continue to push the pedals in hopes of establishing separate areas for mountain bikers and hikers so everyone can enjoy the outdoors in their preferred mode.

Luckily, it seems that 2025 could finally be the time the Disciples envisioned, with the finalization of Susan Arlie Park. The land was donated to the city by John Musumeci, an entrepreneur responsible for land sales and development including PeaceHealth’s Riverbend campus and Springfield’s Regional Sports Center. Musumeci donated over 300 acres of land, with only one caveat: that the park be named after his deceased wife.

The park lies between southeast Eugene and Gosha and is funded by a $1.2 million dollar grant from Rebuild America. During the development of the park, the city has taken no small expense at perfecting the design. Not only have they outsourced top trail designers, consultants and builders, but they have hired a committee of city residents, including some Disciples, to advise the building process.

Hill, who is on the oversight committee, thinks the plan in place is the best option. “Of all the trail building companies, maybe only 15-20% of those people I would trust to build advanced trails,” he said.

Once the park is built, the Disciples are a top candidate for adoption and maintenance of the trails. With the home stretch looming, the Disciples are “100% behind it.” “We’re all chopping at the bit, let’s go break ground at Arlie,” Wilkinson said.

As Susan Arlie Park is finalized, the Eugene community looks forward to a brighter future, courtesy of the Disciples, who believed in the vision before everyone else knew it existed.

Wicked (2024)

Released in November, “Wicked,” directed by Jon M. Chu, brings the famous Broadway musical to theatres. Featuring a cast of stars including Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum and others, the film depicts a story in the Land of Oz in the time before the classic novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” The film tackles complex themes like identity and race through the story of Elphaba and Galinda, two aspiring Witches. 

Romie Avivi Stuhl, a senior associate editor for A&C, recommended the film due in large part to nostalgia. “Being an ex-theatre kid, it was fun to see a musical I had seen on stage come to life on the screen,” she said. 

Wicked was a highlight of the year, rating 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.0 on Letterboxd. 

The Breakfast Club (1985)

30 years after its release, the cult classic coming-of-age film made an impact on A&C this year, showing why it earned resounding acclaim over the last three decades. Centered around five high school students and a fateful Saturday detention, the film shows the commonality between all humans when cliques are removed from the equation. 

“The characters are quite different from each other in terms of social status, but throughout the movie they overcome their differences and come together,” Cate Campbell, a junior art reporter, said. 

The cathartic moments of this heartwarming film will keep you cozy until spring. 

The Substance (2024)

Released in September, “The Substance,” directed by Coralie Fargeat, is a thriller/horror masterpiece that depicts the sickening results of the search for youth. Starring Demi Moore, Fargeat’s vision is brought to life with “thoughtful camerawork, striking production design, nasty makeup and a squelching soundboard,” Sean Avery, a senior film and TV reporter, said. 

Avery further described the film as “an unsubtle exploration of Hollywood’s ridiculous body standards, which trickle down to the everyday woman.” 

Grossing 77 million, with most earnings coming from its international audience, the film is a must-watch at your next movie night.

Ricky Stanicky (2024)

Scapegoat, fall guy and patsy are all words to describe the imaginary Ricky Stanicky who is used as an excuse for the inane behavior of JT (Andrew Santino), Dean (Zac Efron) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler). 

Eventually caught in the lie, the three men hire an actor (John Cena) to stand in for their imaginary scapegoat. As the actor assimilates to his role, to the dismay of his employers, he begins to enjoy it too much and all hell breaks loose. 

“It gets really out of control,” Fern Peva, a senior food writer, said. “It’s not a deep film, but it’s one you won’t regret watching.” 

The chemistry between the leads results in an absurd and hilarious comedy flick certain to earn a few laughs. 

The Boy and the Heron (2023)

This modern animated classic was the seminal work of animator Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. 22 years after his first nomination for best animated picture in 2001, “The Boy and the Heron” cemented Miyazaki as one of, if not the best animator of all time. The film describes a boy and his journey towards peace following the death of his mother. 

“The combination of reality and imagination is really beautiful,” Seira Kitagawa, a sophomore dance and theatre reporter, said. 

Miyazaki and Ghibli seamlessly weave existential themes like purpose and loss with historical elements of war and the struggles of rural living, Miyazaki’s final project with Ghibli ends its run with a bang.

The Departed (2006)

Rediscovering the work of Martin Scorsese has been an incredible ride, and “The Departed,” is a nail biting thriller surrounding two Boston cops played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon and their relationship with Frank Costello, a mafia kingpin. 

Played by Jack Nicholson, Costello has a cold and psychotic grip on the Boston drug trade and the budding police officers are forced to deal with the results of his rule in their own ways. 

Featuring incredible storytelling, a healthy dose of comeuppance and fantastic character portrayal from all of the leads, the film remains a gritty and violent classic that is well deserving of the Best Picture Academy Award in 2007. 

If you’re looking to be on your toes and sweating with anxiety for the better part of two and a half hours, the visceral experience of “The Departed” is my personal recommendation for your next movie night. 

Kneecap (2024)

This musical comedy depicts three Irish hip-hop rappers and their rise to fame. The trio, named Kneecap after the torture technique popularized during the political conflict in Northern Ireland, fight an uphill battle of critics and assailants who complain of their promotion of anti-social behavior and republican ideologies. 

“It was swept under the rug,” Jackson Buckley, a junior music reporter, said. “It told a great story of the duo’s impact on current social conflicts in Ireland with language.” If you’re looking for a music-centric and socially pertinent film, “Kneecap” is available on Netflix.