Homeless animals will benefit from 'eclectic' garage sale

Throughout 60-some years of living and conducting business in McCook, Otto and Frances Nilsson collected the usual items -- dishes, lamps, linens -- but then there are also some items that are not so common.The uncommon list includes: Marble countertops with and without sink-holes cut out and a lighted marble company sign; a wall-mount white porcelain drinking fountain and a small wall-mount sink equipped with a drinking fountain; a sky-blue round bathroom sink; an adjustable hair dresser's chair; a medical examination table.

For those handy in "repurposing," there are two console televisions that can be transformed into storage cupboards and/or doggie beds; there's a wooden hutch (shingled in blue) that some creative person can turn into a head board for a bed. Some items are "one of," and include a screen window, a glass window, a tip-out pantry drawer, a set of dusty-blue/gray-painted sliding cupboard doors; bumper carrying mounts for a motorcycle.There is flooring, sheets of pegboard and a set of wooden, louvered swinging saloon-type doors, three adjustable draftsman's tables and T-squares.A small artist's easel ... a huge artist's easel.There is an antique scythe, antique kerosene lamps; lamp chimneys, lighting fixtures and lamp shades.There's one 5x5-inch "Made in America" "Small Fry" cast iron skillet. There are porcelain bathroom soap and toothbrush holders.

For those whose garages are just as, if not more, important than their kitchens, there are collectible shop signs and pegboard organizers from Otto's automotive business -- United Delco, Stanadyne Diesel, Roosa Master, Robert Bosch Alignment Kits, Wagner Lockheed, Motorcraft, Autolite, Weatherhead, Red Tip Partshop.For shoppers/homeowners looking to rebuild or redecorate, there are doors -- screen doors, interior doors, exterior doors, oil painting reproduction, commercial doors.Rolls and rolls of classy flocked wallpaper.

There is signed original artwork -- a couple framed oil paintings by untrained "sidewalk" folk artists. An oil painting by an artist named "Van Lowe." A couple of framed unsigned pencil drawings of country scenes. There are large gold-colored, ornate frames.The sale will be Friday, Aug. 2, from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m., and Saturday, Aug. 3, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.Early birds pay double.

Enter the Rutt Building through the blue doors on the north side of the building, in the alley between West B and West C ... or a half-block east of McCook Christian Church ... or a half-block southeast of the new McCook city offices, fire and police department ... or a half block west of the Kugler Company and American Electric ... or across B Street north of the former Automotive Sales and Service building and in the alley on the north.

There are some other inscriptions present and one of them, from the Danish philosopher S?ren Kierkeg?rd, is in Danish. Translated, it reads: "The person who never leaves reason never reaches a connection with God." Another Kierkeg?rd quote enhances the allegory of the voyage as a spiritual quest: "The believer lies always above the deep; he has 70,000 leagues of water under him." Paul Anderson notes that "There is a wonderful interplay between high culture, pop culture and spirituality in Nebeker's works. Most have spiritual themes without being overtly religious."

Nebeker, who has Norwegian ancestry and has lived in Norway, has been asked "Why do you write on your paintings in Norwegian, Japanese and English?" His answer is: "I don't like the way English looks, it is so blatant. It is too easy to take literally, too easy to see what it means. I don't intentionally obscure meaning, but I distrust clarity." For that reason, looking at a Nebeker can be like listening to an opera in a foreign language: the emotion comes through even if the words can't all be deciphered.

Norway is often the setting for his paintings -- Nebeker says he dreams about Norway -- and the works of the Norwegian master Edvard Munch have exerted a major influence on him as well. In 1972 Royal received a grant to live in Munch's studio and living quarters in Ekley where he read the artist's journals and also helped organize the artist's archive of prints. At the time, Munch's work was out of favor in Norway, but Nebeker was very moved by his direct experience of the artist's environment and archives. Royal's interest in imbuing his paintings with psychological motivations and the inclusion of writing in his works both began with this crucial engagement.

Nebeker's 2013 oil The Blue Bike certainly feels quite a bit like a Munch painting: it is a deeply felt moment shaded by memory. The painting is centers on the silhouttes of Royal and his father facing each other across an isthmus in a nocturnal dreamscape. The Blue Bike distills Nebeker's recollection of the disappointment he felt as a boy when he received an inexpensive green bicycle from his father after hoping for a top of the line blue Schwinn. The canvas also alludes to Nebeker's mature, guilty realization that his father had been a man with limited resources he did all he could for his son.

"They stand so awkwardly," observes Paul Anderson of the two silhouettes; "two people who don't quite understand each other." The image of the father and son carries a very strong emotional charge: it makes the resulting painting nostalgic, apologetic and cathartic. Like many of Nebeker's strongest works, The Blue Bike is about human relationships, their emotions clarified and magnified through the filter of dreams.

Nebeker's very commanding vertical canvas When We Awaken which derives its title from a play by Henrik Ibsen, portrays a trio of figures rising from a tomb. The central figure is a woman who throws off her burial shroud as another open-mouthed figure to her right rises skyward. A third, transparent figure stands to her left, wearing a belt that is covered with numbers representing earthly knowledge. A collaged poster -- in French -- advertises a concert with an image of the Louvre's Hellenistic "Winged Victory" who serves as a sister image to the resurrected figures. At the bottom of the canvas is a line from Ibsen's play, a despairing, dreamlike drama that was originally called The Resurrection:"What shall we then see?" We find that we have never lived."

Although resurrection has certainly been a theme used by many artists for hundreds of years, the idiosyncratic nature of Nebeker's painting demonstrates how Nebeker has come to the theme on his own terms. There is a paradox at the heart of Nebeker's art that goes like this: by presenting his personal dream world, infused with cultural references and anecdotes that mean something to him he causes his viewers to think more deeply about universal themes. Not all of us have read or seen the works of Ibsen, but at some deep level we can all connect with the universal human craving to reawaken to life's beauties and deeper meanings.

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