May[be]456 [th]
May - sorry this is so long, but just when it looks like nothing is going on, sweet surprises manifest themselves!
Wednesday May 4
Pre openings at the usual suspects, which still have free wine, how anachronistic. It is OK to tip the bartender!
Lecture at PICA on the work of Willem de Kooning by the authors of a new biography. An interview with the authors is available at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php de Kooning was a leading abstract expressionist who did not self destruct at an early age. 7PM Weiden and Kennedy SW 13th St and Everett. $10
Opening by the Pacific Switchboard at Albina Press: Jennifer Gleach, Courtney Nyman, and Hayley Barker 4637 N Albina at Blandena 8-10PM
Thursday May 5
Excellent people watching and art talk, talk, talk at the Mark Woolley Gallery and later Gallery 500
At Holocene, a Hush Records soundcase, the sound of Hush is so onomatopoeia, with soft sweet singer songwriters, their eyes on their shoes and their hearts on their sleeves.
At Augen, a chance to see an Albers print. Josef Albers was a founder of the Bauhaus then later fled the Nazis, coming to the US to teach, launching the careers of many artists of the 50's and 60's. He is the author of a classic text on the interaction of color, illustrated by the prints.
Simon Norfolk shows large photographic landscape prints, with varying scale, from intimate to medium - beautiful, until you find they hide graves of the Bosnian civil war from the text accompanying each. Blue Sky Gallery
Everett Lofts are always a surprise, often pleasant, Check the Pause gallery for an installation involving sod and porn and a brilliant installation composed entirely of random lists at the Residence gallery, both by Harvest Henderson. Hope to see more from this artist. David Candler, also a force in the local DJ and electronica community, has constructed large collages of candy wrappers and small obsessive collections of related printed objects at Starling. Shows may be seen by appointment throughout the month - phone the gallery or see if they answer if you knock on the door!
Mary Mattingly, PNCA graduate, now in NY presents her photographs, videos and installations. 'While in residence at Duende in Rotterdam, Mattingly delved into art prophesy as a comment on contemporary society. Developing a new rationale for mobility and convenience, she introduced the world to wearable homes as an abstract concept and a modern reality. "In my work, as a result of a build-up of homogenization among products, architecture, leisure activities, and even thought, there is a return to primal man," says Mattingly. "I begin the process by creating wearable-houses; sculptures that are portrayed as being a necessity in the future, as our environment crumbles around us. People will have the ability to be completely nomadic."' Mary Mattingly is also infamous with Paul Mittendorf for their art hijack performance at Art Basel Miami. Amidst a high end international art show, Paul and Mary constructed a pirate liferaft filled with artists' works, many from Portland, and landed on Miami Beach. High end galleries, collectors and artists, assuming their project was part of the show pitched in to help! A NY dealer has decided to finance a repeat performance in New York City and Venice, Italy of Liferaft. Opening 6-9 PNCA Feldman Gallery NW 13th and Johnson
Just Be Toys/Design shows a new crop of young Japanese manga-anime illustrators, many of them women.
Send your Seattle friends to see Portland artist Laura Fritz's vaguely disturbing laboratory experiments (www.laurafritz.net) at the Soil Gallery all month. Opens Thursday May 5
Friday May 6
SE art gallery openings. The _Hall Gallery presents a group show "The Personality Test" 7-10:30, Newspace Photo opens Liz Haley, Eric McCormack and Video Installation by Patrick Halm and the New American Art Union shows the collage - paintings of Lisa Dejohn. Other spaces may be open as well, look for fliers at any of the aforementioned spaces. Locations at www.seportlandartwalk.com/ there is a rumor of some sort of art bus touring some of the spots.
PICA lecture and booksigning by Justine Kurland and Jon Raymond. Kurland's career was launched by the show "Another Girl, Another Planet" curated in 1999 by Yale's Gregory Crewdson. It was roundly criticized as representing an unholy admixture of art, fashion and pornography by the New York arts establishment and dubbed "panty photography", but that did not stop Kurland from producing more landscapes with unclothed women. Her latest work combines landscape and figure, shot in a post fire forest. The work illustrates a short story set in Oregon environs by arts writer Jon Raymond, cofounder of Plazm Magazine. Kurland's work has evolved from illustrating a fictional Tom Sawyer runaway adventure, with all girl protagonists and set in our time. Later she photographed unclothed women in the landscape living fictional utopian lives together. Her latest work documents real life intentional communities, modern tribes and Renaisance fairs in the Victorian style of early photographers such as Julia Margret Cameron. 7PM Weiden and Kennedy SW 13th St and Everett. $10
Book reading and signing by Richard Speer, Willamette Week arts critic, and gonzo arts journalist, of his new bibliography of the painter Matt Lamb. Lamb rose from the mean streets of South Chicago to great success in business until a near death experience caused him to liquidate all of his holdings and pursue outsider art-style painting. Powell's Downtown 7:30PM FREE, Reception after and viewing of some of Lamb's work at the Mark Wooley gallery
Talk by Mary Mattingly "The New Breed" - ' How will people make due in nomadic conditions? Mattingly will chart how a neoliberal ideology is bringing us closer to this future-present reality and how we can combat this through creative types of resistance. Followed by, in conjunction with Red76, participatory Little City building - magic markers, knives and cardboard, and free beer, have at it! Talk 5, building after - PNCA Stevens Studios 1432 NW Johnson FREE
(More on Little Cities: With more questions than answers we set out on our project, Little Cities. Designed as a series of parties Little Cities is a project set in place to try to investigate these complicated questions through simplistic, childlike actions. While at the same time, a process designed to create new homes, new communities, and new ways and situations for people to think about what a home is.
Little Cities Build Your Own House parties are pretty simple. Guests are greeted by a room filled with cardboard and various supplies, markers, paint, glue, etc, etc...And, for the rest of the night we make houses out of cardboard, listen to music, have some drinks. That's that. The following morning we ask that party guests return to the site of the previous night's party. We'll have some coffee, sit around and talk. Try to figure out a place that we all agree on that is a special place, a place that we, collectively, would like to homestead. Taking our homes in hand we venture out onto the streets taking the trek towards our new homeland. Placing our homes in this newly homesteaded area we are all the new stewards of this land. There to look over it, see that everything is okay, watch out for it.
As time goes on, and more and more people get together for these parties, an invisible community of Little Cities will start to grow across the country, linked by the people and ideas that came to the parties, sat down, cut up some card board, listened to some music and maybe drank a beer with someone they hadn't met before. Invisible communities of Little Cities comprised of people who spotted an outcropping of discarded cardboard, junk and trash strewn across the grass or pavement, who realized upon a closer look that it wasn't trash at all.
Mattingly would make a great collaborator for City Repair Project activities)
And sight unseen, an A+ for spirit, no doubt: at Reed Vitamin A, a student art organization dedicated to promoting art and creative boondoggle among the Reed College community, presents "Danger and Safety". Work in the exhibition explores the delicate and sometimes disturbing relationship between vulnerability and security that permeates our lives both locally, nationally, and beyond.9 a.m. - 9 p.m., weekdays, Hauser Memorial Library. This event is free and open to the public. For gallery information call 503/777-7790.
May 14 Events
Holding Hands - an benefit art sale for Andrea U'Ren - will be Saturday May 14 6-9PM at 207 SW Pine in downtown Portland. Andrea's yet undiagnosed medical problems have resulted in large medical bills without insurance coverage. Join an outstanding group of local artists in supporting Andrea's health care needs in a silent auction of their work. Have a drink, hug a friend, sing a song, snuggle up to a special craft table where you can create a beautiful momento for your lapel. All of the proceeds go directly to Andrea's medical fund.
Artists include Brad Adkins, Paul Arnsmeyer, Chandra Bocci, James Boulton, Inge Bruggeman, Clearcut Press, Bruce Conkle, Nan Curtis, David Eckard, Harrell Fletcher, Emily Ginsburg, Sam Gould, MK Guth, Sean Healy, Stuart Horodner, Kristan Kennedy, Horatio Law, Chris Moss, Melody Owen, Chris Rauchenberg, John Ryzcek, Wilder Schmaltz, Mungo Thomson, Joe Thurston, Andrea U'ren, Heather Watkins.
Later at the CenterRing, from 8PM until dawn, join many beautiful Portland DJ's musicians and healing sound artists in Legacy, a benefit for Phenix's mother's medical bills. Info Line 503-282-2616.
