August 24 Art Show Party @ Audio Cinema
ACVC, the Audio Cinema Visual Collective presents an art-show-band-party-benefiting P:ear. The visual work is curated by part of Gallery 500's old team.
Details and a list of artists at http://www.audiocinema.org. Party Thursday 6pm-2am, $8 donation requested. Art show Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11am - 7pm, admission by donation. 226 SE Madison
August 24 Art @ Missing Link
Vo Minh McBurney's shows "Monsters on Vacation". Hey monsters have a life too!
7 - 9 PM
flyer at www.missinglinktoys.com
Missing Link
3314 SE Belmont St
August 25 Grab Bag Performance @ the Portland Art Center
Susan Ploetz and Khaela Maricich are wrangling a new monthly performance night. It's an opportunity for performers and artists to experiment, to take a risk, to get feedback and to have fun; it is the same for the audience, but low key like a house party. So performer or audience performer, take advantage of this!
The first evening:
Pash (Susan Ploetz)
Brace Paine (of Gossip)
M. Blash (director of upcoming movie "Lying")
Khaela Maricich (of The Blow)
Admission is $3 or free for Portland Art Center Members (you can join at the event). Included in the admission is an actual grab bag. Beer and Wine for sale.
Portland Art Center
32 NW 5th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
503-236-3322
http://www.portlandart.org
August 31 The Music Population Orchestra @ the Doug Fir Lounge
The Music Population Orchestra continues its mission to bring music to the masses. $7, Doors 8, Show 9 at the Doug Fir Lounge www.myspace.com/thempo
August 31 Reed Curator Stephanie Snyder @ Seattle's Henry Art Gallery
Fron the Henry press release: "Check out the latest in art made just to the south [in Portland]. Stephanie Snyder joins special guests to discuss new activities in Portland and consider the work of Portland-based artists Kevin Abell, Dana Dart-McLean, Alex Felton, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Kristan Kennedy, MK Guth, Storm Tharp, and others. Part of what Snyder describes as Portland's "representational imaginary" the evening will consider an intergenerational group of Portland artists that explore 'self' through experimental film, drawing, painting, sculpture and social practice. These imagined and constructed self-discoveries are often created in dialog with art history, popular culture, and an interdisciplinary media practice signature to Portland's scene."
7 PM Henry Auditorium
$5 General / $3 Henry Members & Seniors / FREE for Students
and
September 1 some of the Eastside Galleries will have their openings.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
August 19 & 20 Art Antics
Saturday August 19
Iron Artists Compete at N Vancouver & Failing SCRAP
SCRAP collects stuff and you can get it for cheap or free. It's super useful for schoolteachers on an art material budget, which is just about every public school teacher in Portland. Today they stage a very fun fundraiser the IRON ARTIST team competition. 10 teams receive a collection of materials to which they add their secret ingredients. They have 3 hours to sculpt an art-like structure to be judged by a celebrity panel. The winner is awarded the coveted Cup du SCRAP. Cheating is allowed. The teams and audience are encouraged to wear costumes. There will be a beer garden, food, kiddish things, a raffle with of things you want to need, bands and DJ's. Cheer your fav team to victory! Gates open at 12:30. At 1 the theme is announced and the teams begin their mad competition. The sculptures must be finished by 4 and the judges go to work. Around 5:30 your votes are due for the "People's Choice". Slightly afterwards the judges critique each piece and announce the recipient of the Cup du SCRAP. The raffle drawing is held. The event ends about 8. See the website for pics from previous years to get an idea and start planning your team for next year!
$5-10 donation (it's a find raiser)
Mostlandian Games at Col. Sanders Park
This is hard to explain. M.O.S.T. is a social art group. They are having an Olympics of unusual competitions: http://www.mostlandia.com/pages/championship.htm
Rose City Rollers Rollerderby at Portland Expo Center
Rose City Rollers teams Guns and Rollers, the Heartless Heathers, Break Neck Betties and the High Rollers, face off. This wacky and highly entertaining sport does have rules in which one each of the team members, designated by a different helmet color try to pass the other team members from behind. But those mean girls try to elbow them aside, hog the court and otherwise keep from being passed. Sort of like junior high. Meanwhile an all ages and varied crowd, some costumed to support their favorites, hoot, yowl and otherwise carry on. The cheering and jeering somehow seem more real than at a pro sports event. Expensive PBR supports county programs - that would be social services and jails. A most entertaining half time show, sometimes with the Sprockettes and the Zoobombers, means that with the pairings of four teams, the event runs from 6 to 9:30 or 10. Doors 5. Portland Expo Center - go by train on the light rail as parking is expensive. www.rosecityrollers.com $12 advance, $15 day of show and $20 for VIP's, though how that applies to Rollerderby I'm mystified.
Sunday August 20
Exchange Project at Homeland
Portland is one of the world's centers for social art. Artists such as Harrell Fletcher, Red 76, M.O.S.T, Miranda July and others work in this space.
Sunday for a few hours, Portland will be host to Vancouver, BC's Nancy Nisbet's Exchange Project. With a nod and a wink. perhaps, to eToy's traveling cargo containers, the Exchange Project is a free store of stories in objects on a semi truck.
You are invited to bring objects and exchange them with others on the truck. Each object comes with a story from its previous lifetime, in turn, your story, of your object will be recorded for its future journey of highways, truck stops and even border crossings.
The Exchange Project adds sly commentary too, on privacy and surveillance: each object is taged with an RFID - a tiny radio "bar code" which can be read at a distance of feet by anyone with a reader. (Note in recent news RFID tags have been demonstrated to be able to carry small computer viruses.)
Visit the Exchange Project at the Homeland squatter headquarters at 916 SE 34th Ave, across from the Belmont Stumptown anytime between 4 and 7PM. http://www.galleryhomeland.org
Iron Artists Compete at N Vancouver & Failing SCRAP
SCRAP collects stuff and you can get it for cheap or free. It's super useful for schoolteachers on an art material budget, which is just about every public school teacher in Portland. Today they stage a very fun fundraiser the IRON ARTIST team competition. 10 teams receive a collection of materials to which they add their secret ingredients. They have 3 hours to sculpt an art-like structure to be judged by a celebrity panel. The winner is awarded the coveted Cup du SCRAP. Cheating is allowed. The teams and audience are encouraged to wear costumes. There will be a beer garden, food, kiddish things, a raffle with of things you want to need, bands and DJ's. Cheer your fav team to victory! Gates open at 12:30. At 1 the theme is announced and the teams begin their mad competition. The sculptures must be finished by 4 and the judges go to work. Around 5:30 your votes are due for the "People's Choice". Slightly afterwards the judges critique each piece and announce the recipient of the Cup du SCRAP. The raffle drawing is held. The event ends about 8. See the website for pics from previous years to get an idea and start planning your team for next year!
$5-10 donation (it's a find raiser)
Mostlandian Games at Col. Sanders Park
This is hard to explain. M.O.S.T. is a social art group. They are having an Olympics of unusual competitions: http://www.mostlandia.com/pages/championship.htm
Rose City Rollers Rollerderby at Portland Expo Center
Rose City Rollers teams Guns and Rollers, the Heartless Heathers, Break Neck Betties and the High Rollers, face off. This wacky and highly entertaining sport does have rules in which one each of the team members, designated by a different helmet color try to pass the other team members from behind. But those mean girls try to elbow them aside, hog the court and otherwise keep from being passed. Sort of like junior high. Meanwhile an all ages and varied crowd, some costumed to support their favorites, hoot, yowl and otherwise carry on. The cheering and jeering somehow seem more real than at a pro sports event. Expensive PBR supports county programs - that would be social services and jails. A most entertaining half time show, sometimes with the Sprockettes and the Zoobombers, means that with the pairings of four teams, the event runs from 6 to 9:30 or 10. Doors 5. Portland Expo Center - go by train on the light rail as parking is expensive. www.rosecityrollers.com $12 advance, $15 day of show and $20 for VIP's, though how that applies to Rollerderby I'm mystified.
Sunday August 20
Exchange Project at Homeland
Portland is one of the world's centers for social art. Artists such as Harrell Fletcher, Red 76, M.O.S.T, Miranda July and others work in this space.
Sunday for a few hours, Portland will be host to Vancouver, BC's Nancy Nisbet's Exchange Project. With a nod and a wink. perhaps, to eToy's traveling cargo containers, the Exchange Project is a free store of stories in objects on a semi truck.
You are invited to bring objects and exchange them with others on the truck. Each object comes with a story from its previous lifetime, in turn, your story, of your object will be recorded for its future journey of highways, truck stops and even border crossings.
The Exchange Project adds sly commentary too, on privacy and surveillance: each object is taged with an RFID - a tiny radio "bar code" which can be read at a distance of feet by anyone with a reader. (Note in recent news RFID tags have been demonstrated to be able to carry small computer viruses.)
Visit the Exchange Project at the Homeland squatter headquarters at 916 SE 34th Ave, across from the Belmont Stumptown anytime between 4 and 7PM. http://www.galleryhomeland.org
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Antarctica and Minnesota in Photographs by Friends
Albina Press presents the photographs of friends, Gretchen Vaudt and Michelle Ott. Portlander Vaudt records images of a canoe trip, in the Boundary Waters, spanning the United States' Minnesota and Canada, also friends. At least I think we are friends. For me the landscape has a feeling of nostalgia. The north woods psychic and historic geography is documented by brilliant author William Cronon who is writing a landscape history of nearby Portage Wisconson. Vaudt has a great image of a birch wood, it has a similar feel to one of her recent images of a wall filled with discarded chewing gum, a uniform field of very individualistic objects. Ott, an Antarctic resident, captures beautiful bleak landscapes from which she excises objects marking human presence. These photos are c-prints with the emulsion removed from small areas and mounted on light boxes. The effect mimics Antarctic's 24 hour sunlight and fierce ultraviolet flux through the hole in the atmosphere's ozone layer over Antarctica and Patagonia, also man made. Ott has worked in Antarctica for three years and has a feel for the land and ice, or land of ice. If you have seen the Al Gore film on global warming, you may see in Ott's landscapes, edited to remove humans' affect on the land, a metaphor of hope for the larger impact we have had on the climate, Antarctica's soul.
Until 8 4637 N. Albina Ave at Blandena
Until 8 4637 N. Albina Ave at Blandena
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Outdoor Art Installations Saturday Aug 5 - One Day Only
Scott Wayne Indiana has put together a project of site specific art on the land, in Mt Scott Park. Given our relationship to wild nature, within the city limits and so easily accessible without, I would like to see more. Here's hoping Indiana's LA friends take an interest in creating landscape art here.
Indiana's show is reminiscent of Mathew and Maxine Lennon's Horsehead Project in Seattle in the 90's. I only visited the last one held out in the woods. Searching out the art with no maps brought pleasant surprises in the woodland's nooks. That year the organizers sponsored a raffle with the prize being the privelege of smashing a Chihuly sculpture. I didn't win
Artists making work include: Abi Spring, Adam Graves, Blinglab (Marne Lucas/Bruce Conkle), Bonnie Fortune, Brenda Mallory, Carolyn Zick, Gretchen Bennett, Gwenn Seemel, Hamish Grieve, Harvest Henderson, Jacqueline Ehlis, Justin Oswald, Marty Schnapf, Megan Scheminske, Micheal Keenen, Mylissa Fitzsimmons, Paige Saez and TJ Norris.
http://www.39forks.com/inCLOVER.htm
Noon-7 Mt Scott Park SE 72nd and Woodstock Free
Indiana's show is reminiscent of Mathew and Maxine Lennon's Horsehead Project in Seattle in the 90's. I only visited the last one held out in the woods. Searching out the art with no maps brought pleasant surprises in the woodland's nooks. That year the organizers sponsored a raffle with the prize being the privelege of smashing a Chihuly sculpture. I didn't win
Artists making work include: Abi Spring, Adam Graves, Blinglab (Marne Lucas/Bruce Conkle), Bonnie Fortune, Brenda Mallory, Carolyn Zick, Gretchen Bennett, Gwenn Seemel, Hamish Grieve, Harvest Henderson, Jacqueline Ehlis, Justin Oswald, Marty Schnapf, Megan Scheminske, Micheal Keenen, Mylissa Fitzsimmons, Paige Saez and TJ Norris.
http://www.39forks.com/inCLOVER.htm
Noon-7 Mt Scott Park SE 72nd and Woodstock Free
Eastside Art in August
At 811 E Burnside:
Yes shows "Maximum Warriors", post aesthetic impressions of '80's cultural excursions, curated by Seattle's Devon Varmega and featuring the art of Dearraindrop (New York), Andrew Jeffrey Wright (Philladelphia), Zeloot (Rotterdam), Seripop (Montreal), Matt Lock (Austin), Devon Varmega (Seattle), E*Rock (Portland) and Brent Wadden (Berling, Germany). E*Rock's 1999 unit and Romancing play.
Renowned shows printmakers working in silk-screens, photogravure, intaglio, wood-block, and lithography in styles they term "New Brow". Artists include: Jennifer Leong, Erik Sandberg, Tony Zepeda, Yoko Tanaka, Bowen Park, Pamela Henderson, Thomas Lee Bakofsky, Julie Murphy, Alex Gross, Youshi Li, and Seth Drenner. Most of the artists are associated with Art Center Pasadena, formerly known for for its automobile design programs, now it is a powerhouse art school all around. These prints are quite good.
http://www.renownedgallery.com
Redux recyclers/reusers/repurposers show show Lucia Johnson. http://www.reduxpdx.com
Moshi-Moshi/the Grass Hut Gallery show work by Seattle's Le Merde - lowbrow cute. http://www.moshi-moshi.com/
Small A continues their group show until mid month but closes at 6 this evening. 1430 SE 3rd http://www.smallaprojects.com
NAAU shows paintings by Mazana Bruggeman, her abstractions of landscapes, "You are Here". To me they feel like Google Earth, something that could not be said a year ago. From the artist: '"You Are Here" is an exploration of the relationship between physical environment (in this case Portland) and mental space. Both affect each other and seem to inform each other. A slight shift in attitude, emotion, intellect (mental)? can change the way you notice and interact with streets you move through and visual stimuli you encounter every day. The reverse is also true. This work is about creating a view of these spaces, an unattainable perspective that makes it possible to see the chaos in the grid and the grid in the chaos.' Perhaps this is what NSA is grappling with daily. I say let's paint secret message art on our roofs. http://newamericanartunion.com/ 922 SE Ankeny
Burnside Proper presents "First Friday Under the Big Top" with "clowns (!?*#), music, games, prizes freaks and magicians" as well as handmade goods by Patrick Powell, Hubris and Sophrosyne, Emily McHenry and Moving Circus. 624 E Burnside 7-10pm
Meanwhile over at the Woolley Gallery at the Wonder Ballroom there will be a show themed on motorcycles. There are a myriad of motorcycle cultures, here's hoping the scoot gangs of Portland will softly roar in this evening. I'm not sure if the show will finesse the culture-commerce balance but their announcement sketches out the evening:
"The opening night event begins with the gallery opening at 5:00 pm. At approximately 7:30, motorcycles design and build will be presented by 4 motorcycle designers, including Michael Czysz and his "C1"...the new American Superbike, and Paul Gaudio and the new Norton Commando. After the Design and Build, local film artists including "Lines" will present their motorcycle Film Extravaganza. The opening will conclude in the Wonder Ballroom with Portland's premier DJ Mr. MUMU and DJ Teenage. Admission is free and all ages are invited to attend"
http://www.markwoolley.com http://www.wonderballroom.com 128 N.E. Russell
Newspace photo continues their curated national group show. http://www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th
Yes shows "Maximum Warriors", post aesthetic impressions of '80's cultural excursions, curated by Seattle's Devon Varmega and featuring the art of Dearraindrop (New York), Andrew Jeffrey Wright (Philladelphia), Zeloot (Rotterdam), Seripop (Montreal), Matt Lock (Austin), Devon Varmega (Seattle), E*Rock (Portland) and Brent Wadden (Berling, Germany). E*Rock's 1999 unit and Romancing play.
Renowned shows printmakers working in silk-screens, photogravure, intaglio, wood-block, and lithography in styles they term "New Brow". Artists include: Jennifer Leong, Erik Sandberg, Tony Zepeda, Yoko Tanaka, Bowen Park, Pamela Henderson, Thomas Lee Bakofsky, Julie Murphy, Alex Gross, Youshi Li, and Seth Drenner. Most of the artists are associated with Art Center Pasadena, formerly known for for its automobile design programs, now it is a powerhouse art school all around. These prints are quite good.
http://www.renownedgallery.com
Redux recyclers/reusers/repurposers show show Lucia Johnson. http://www.reduxpdx.com
Moshi-Moshi/the Grass Hut Gallery show work by Seattle's Le Merde - lowbrow cute. http://www.moshi-moshi.com/
Small A continues their group show until mid month but closes at 6 this evening. 1430 SE 3rd http://www.smallaprojects.com
NAAU shows paintings by Mazana Bruggeman, her abstractions of landscapes, "You are Here". To me they feel like Google Earth, something that could not be said a year ago. From the artist: '"You Are Here" is an exploration of the relationship between physical environment (in this case Portland) and mental space. Both affect each other and seem to inform each other. A slight shift in attitude, emotion, intellect (mental)? can change the way you notice and interact with streets you move through and visual stimuli you encounter every day. The reverse is also true. This work is about creating a view of these spaces, an unattainable perspective that makes it possible to see the chaos in the grid and the grid in the chaos.' Perhaps this is what NSA is grappling with daily. I say let's paint secret message art on our roofs. http://newamericanartunion.com/ 922 SE Ankeny
Burnside Proper presents "First Friday Under the Big Top" with "clowns (!?*#), music, games, prizes freaks and magicians" as well as handmade goods by Patrick Powell, Hubris and Sophrosyne, Emily McHenry and Moving Circus. 624 E Burnside 7-10pm
Meanwhile over at the Woolley Gallery at the Wonder Ballroom there will be a show themed on motorcycles. There are a myriad of motorcycle cultures, here's hoping the scoot gangs of Portland will softly roar in this evening. I'm not sure if the show will finesse the culture-commerce balance but their announcement sketches out the evening:
"The opening night event begins with the gallery opening at 5:00 pm. At approximately 7:30, motorcycles design and build will be presented by 4 motorcycle designers, including Michael Czysz and his "C1"...the new American Superbike, and Paul Gaudio and the new Norton Commando. After the Design and Build, local film artists including "Lines" will present their motorcycle Film Extravaganza. The opening will conclude in the Wonder Ballroom with Portland's premier DJ Mr. MUMU and DJ Teenage. Admission is free and all ages are invited to attend"
http://www.markwoolley.com http://www.wonderballroom.com 128 N.E. Russell
Newspace photo continues their curated national group show. http://www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th
Westside Art in August
Tonight I propose a fashion sandwich. You must get an early start though. Begin at City Hall's sustainable fashion show Locally Grown at 5pm. Finish at Holocene's Design Your Own Fashion Show. The details are below.
We have a new batch of commissioners in City Hall and they are shaking things up. Live bands on the steps. Art openings early on first Thursdays, from 5-7. This one I recommend and it's a chance to talk to city staffers about what artists need in Portland.
If you have ever visited the bins, you are aware of fashion's resource intensive short life. Cotton requires large doses of pesticides to grow while synthetics are made of who knows what. Vegans eschew wool, leather and all manner of skins too. So one approach is reuse. The artist Pipiloti Rist, in a 1998 interview, proposes people "sew labels into their clothes; on the labels they would write where the clothes had been worn, what happened when they wore them and so on. Every piece of clothing would carry with it a full record of everything it had experienced." Last summer the Red 76 art collective produced their own version of this idea. Some of the clothing isn't landfilled but ends up in Africa as detailed in "How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back", the oddessy of a piece of clothing traversing continents by returned Peace Corps volunteer George Packer.
Portland designers who reconstruct clothing are tapping this reuse meme too.
Another approach is to use bamboo fibers or fiber mixes and this is the approach Anna Cohen and Sameunderneath have taken. So for more information, just go to the event:
Portland Designers Anna Cohen, Sameunderneath and Saffrona show clothing of sustainable fabric.
Accessories of sustainable fabrication will be shown by Entermodal, Lucina, Nora Catherine and DoubleCross Belt Co..
Artists showing work include: Roll Hardy, Faulkner Short, Miss Mona Superhero, Pasha, Mary Culbertson, Shirley Barley, Shannon Richardson , Matt Raufman, Alia Smith, Colleen Coover, Jennifer Hazzard, Brian Parnell, David Burkvan, Saska Schmidt, and Terence Healy.
They will have food and drink too.
City Hall 1221 SW 4th Between Madison and Jefferson 5-7pm Free
The Music Population Project plays new chamber music in he street on NW 13th between Davis and Everett. Expect two sets, one at 7 and one at 8. L&C music schooled composer, conductor, director, Brede Rørstad, creates cinematic music from traditional classical instruments and sometimes electronic sounds. The Music Population Orchestra only performs a few times a year, so see this. http://thempp.com details the project's raison d'être. 7pm and 8pm sets, NW 13th between Everett and Davis. Free.
The Laura Russo gallery shows watercolors by Henk Pender. Pender is known for somewhat dark interior landscapes with perhaps a touch of surrealism. Dutch, he extends the masters' traditions into much more psychologically complex territory. Until 9 805 NW 21st Ave http://www.laurarusso.com/
Augen shows very bright geometric paintings by Eva Lake. Some would call them op-art, art that taps the base mechanisms of the retina and lower visual cortex in our very complex and not well understood visual system to produce a sense of vibration in the image. Until 9 817 SW 2nd http://www.augengallery.com/
Leach Gallery shows work by late career artist Lee Kelly. Kelly is welll known for large stainless steel sculptures installed outdoors around the Northwest. Any art that involves a crane is worth extra points with me. Where would we be without Sera's Tilted Arc or Seattle's Hammering Man? Perhaps there are clues for Portland's emerging artists, how do you get to late career and working large in stainless steel?
Also on view are works by Hans Haacke, Dinh Q. Le, Ken Lum and Kimsooja inspired by their relationship to their home countries. Le, from Viet Nam, is known for weaving photographs of Viet Nam War cinema stills and photojournalism snaps; he was born in 1968 and relates to that wartime through its artifacts.
Until 9 417 NW 9th http://www.elizabethleach.com
PDX presents Sun Spots, new landscape paintings by James Lavadour. Lavadour is known for his individualistic abstract landscape paintings inspired by Eastern Oregon vistas.From the artist's statement: "Every painting talks about some ancient thing that is as old as ground we walk on and connects us all in a shared existence." If you are interested in landscape painting, you might want to take a look at Lavadour's work.
Until 8. 925 NW Flanders Street http://www.pdxcontemporaryart.com
The Everett Station spaces are always worth a look. I rarely get the whole scoop ahead of time, but did get word of these:
Tilt Gallery shows Freeway Hypnosis paintings by Jonathan Leach and soft sculpture-prints by Amy Steel.
625 N.W. Everett St., #106
Melissa Armstrong shows Entomology 211 themed on bugs in the lobby 625 N.W. Everett St.
Love Punk is a show of visual art and music by hey Lover http://www.heylovermusic.com. Music at 8. Hovercraft 328 NW Broadway #114
Influence, a show by Nicky Kriara, Hadley Hutton & Winnie McDonnald will be at Backspace.
http://www.backspace gallery.com 115 NW 5th to midnight
Just be design presents a new show by Kobe's Digmeout design collective. Details at http://www.justbedesign.com/JBD03/compound/0806_digmeout06/digmeout06.html . Please someone in Portland, let's get something like this going here. 107 NW 5th
Motel Gallery shows Wind Inside by Liz Harris, a show of drawings and a drawing installation. I'm interested to see how this relates to Linda Hutchins work of a few months ago. Harris recently relocated from Oakland to Portland. http://www.motelgallery.com NW Couch between 5th and 6th.
Upper Playground of San Francisco, as we have written previously, opens a store in the old Fashion Incubator space. Artist designers Herbert Baglione, Sam Flores, Jeremy Fish, Mike Giant, Estevan Oriol and Saber will be showing their work. They are out and about Saturday doing graf-murals and then having a book signing Sunday. Stop into the store or check their web site at http://www.upperplayground.com for details. They are a store with a blog too: http://upperplayground.blogspot.com/ Corner of Couch and NW 5th
The Portland Art Center presents several shows in their new space: a show of Art Media employees, past and present, with 40% of sales going to support PAC; Eclipse, a sound installation by David Abel and John Berendzen in the Light and Sound Gallery; Waiting Room, an installation by Scott Wayne Indiana; and Focus Group, an installation by Houston. http://www.portlandart.org 32 NW 5th
Kendra Binney, a talented lowbrow artist, maybe a kindler and gentler Mark Ryden* crossed with some serious kawaii sensibility, shows her paintings at Berbati's. Usually I view this type of work with a jaundiced eye, but in this case it's well executed and I like it. Oh, and very reasonably priced too. 19 SW 2nd until late
http://www.berbati.com/
*Ryden has gotten darker as his painting skills have advanced; in the style of filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet who made Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. Binney's work works for children as well as older children while Ryden's and Jeunet's works are strictly adult.
Sonia Kasparian shows dreamy portraits, rendered in layers. Sometimes the layers are window screen, patterned with bright pigments, suspending the images' highlights in parralax. Also outstanding is a full scale wedding dress in window screen. In lesser hands this subject material would be merely mythical, however Kasparian tempers this tendency by mixing industrial materials and a sensitive touch. http://www.buttersgallery.com520 NW Davis
Valentine's present a show by Alicia Cortney Eggert. Music by Gary Wiseman, Tre', and Bark, Hide and Horn
From Valentine's press release: "Alicia Cortney Eggert was born and raised in New Jersey as the daughter of a Christian minister, and spent four years of her early childhood living in Cape Town, South Africa, where her parents were missionaries during the Apartheid. She studied Scandinavian architecture and design at Denmark's International Study program in Copenhagen, and graduated from Drexel University, in Philadelphia, with a degree in Interior Design. Using common household objects and accessible materials, her artwork explores the essence of human nature in modern society, revealing it's presence and impact on aspects of every-day life, and examining it's relationship to the natural world. In addition to creating and exhibiting her own work, Alicia also organizes and curates multidisciplinary art events in Portland, Oregon, under the name of Kitchen Sink.
All My Clothes is a series of studies relating to the ideas of ownership and identity that focus on the artist's personal wardrobe. Every item of clothing was scrutinized, catalogued and drawn in detail. Each and every tag and label were removed from the clothes and sewn together one-by-one to create a vague shape of the artist's physical profile. The project's culmination will be an installation consisting of every single clothing item tied together to form an enormous mass, which will hang on the wall and be on display for the entire month of August."
Art 6-10, open late 232 SE Ankeny
Consider ending your evening at Holocene for Design Your Own Dance Party with actual designers spinning on the tables along with DJ SewWhat and DJ 1996 Olympics. There will be a raffle of some sweet custom clothing, a showing of 10 Minute Creations, impromptu designs, and an "I'm a top model" photo booth. $5-8 sliding scale at the door goes to support the production costs for the upcoming September Fashion Week 1001 SE Morrison http://www.holocene.org
We have a new batch of commissioners in City Hall and they are shaking things up. Live bands on the steps. Art openings early on first Thursdays, from 5-7. This one I recommend and it's a chance to talk to city staffers about what artists need in Portland.
If you have ever visited the bins, you are aware of fashion's resource intensive short life. Cotton requires large doses of pesticides to grow while synthetics are made of who knows what. Vegans eschew wool, leather and all manner of skins too. So one approach is reuse. The artist Pipiloti Rist, in a 1998 interview, proposes people "sew labels into their clothes; on the labels they would write where the clothes had been worn, what happened when they wore them and so on. Every piece of clothing would carry with it a full record of everything it had experienced." Last summer the Red 76 art collective produced their own version of this idea. Some of the clothing isn't landfilled but ends up in Africa as detailed in "How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back", the oddessy of a piece of clothing traversing continents by returned Peace Corps volunteer George Packer.
Portland designers who reconstruct clothing are tapping this reuse meme too.
Another approach is to use bamboo fibers or fiber mixes and this is the approach Anna Cohen and Sameunderneath have taken. So for more information, just go to the event:
Portland Designers Anna Cohen, Sameunderneath and Saffrona show clothing of sustainable fabric.
Accessories of sustainable fabrication will be shown by Entermodal, Lucina, Nora Catherine and DoubleCross Belt Co..
Artists showing work include: Roll Hardy, Faulkner Short, Miss Mona Superhero, Pasha, Mary Culbertson, Shirley Barley, Shannon Richardson , Matt Raufman, Alia Smith, Colleen Coover, Jennifer Hazzard, Brian Parnell, David Burkvan, Saska Schmidt, and Terence Healy.
They will have food and drink too.
City Hall 1221 SW 4th Between Madison and Jefferson 5-7pm Free
The Music Population Project plays new chamber music in he street on NW 13th between Davis and Everett. Expect two sets, one at 7 and one at 8. L&C music schooled composer, conductor, director, Brede Rørstad, creates cinematic music from traditional classical instruments and sometimes electronic sounds. The Music Population Orchestra only performs a few times a year, so see this. http://thempp.com details the project's raison d'être. 7pm and 8pm sets, NW 13th between Everett and Davis. Free.
The Laura Russo gallery shows watercolors by Henk Pender. Pender is known for somewhat dark interior landscapes with perhaps a touch of surrealism. Dutch, he extends the masters' traditions into much more psychologically complex territory. Until 9 805 NW 21st Ave http://www.laurarusso.com/
Augen shows very bright geometric paintings by Eva Lake. Some would call them op-art, art that taps the base mechanisms of the retina and lower visual cortex in our very complex and not well understood visual system to produce a sense of vibration in the image. Until 9 817 SW 2nd http://www.augengallery.com/
Leach Gallery shows work by late career artist Lee Kelly. Kelly is welll known for large stainless steel sculptures installed outdoors around the Northwest. Any art that involves a crane is worth extra points with me. Where would we be without Sera's Tilted Arc or Seattle's Hammering Man? Perhaps there are clues for Portland's emerging artists, how do you get to late career and working large in stainless steel?
Also on view are works by Hans Haacke, Dinh Q. Le, Ken Lum and Kimsooja inspired by their relationship to their home countries. Le, from Viet Nam, is known for weaving photographs of Viet Nam War cinema stills and photojournalism snaps; he was born in 1968 and relates to that wartime through its artifacts.
Until 9 417 NW 9th http://www.elizabethleach.com
PDX presents Sun Spots, new landscape paintings by James Lavadour. Lavadour is known for his individualistic abstract landscape paintings inspired by Eastern Oregon vistas.From the artist's statement: "Every painting talks about some ancient thing that is as old as ground we walk on and connects us all in a shared existence." If you are interested in landscape painting, you might want to take a look at Lavadour's work.
Until 8. 925 NW Flanders Street http://www.pdxcontemporaryart.com
The Everett Station spaces are always worth a look. I rarely get the whole scoop ahead of time, but did get word of these:
Tilt Gallery shows Freeway Hypnosis paintings by Jonathan Leach and soft sculpture-prints by Amy Steel.
625 N.W. Everett St., #106
Melissa Armstrong shows Entomology 211 themed on bugs in the lobby 625 N.W. Everett St.
Love Punk is a show of visual art and music by hey Lover http://www.heylovermusic.com. Music at 8. Hovercraft 328 NW Broadway #114
Influence, a show by Nicky Kriara, Hadley Hutton & Winnie McDonnald will be at Backspace.
http://www.backspace gallery.com 115 NW 5th to midnight
Just be design presents a new show by Kobe's Digmeout design collective. Details at http://www.justbedesign.com/JBD03/compound/0806_digmeout06/digmeout06.html . Please someone in Portland, let's get something like this going here. 107 NW 5th
Motel Gallery shows Wind Inside by Liz Harris, a show of drawings and a drawing installation. I'm interested to see how this relates to Linda Hutchins work of a few months ago. Harris recently relocated from Oakland to Portland. http://www.motelgallery.com NW Couch between 5th and 6th.
Upper Playground of San Francisco, as we have written previously, opens a store in the old Fashion Incubator space. Artist designers Herbert Baglione, Sam Flores, Jeremy Fish, Mike Giant, Estevan Oriol and Saber will be showing their work. They are out and about Saturday doing graf-murals and then having a book signing Sunday. Stop into the store or check their web site at http://www.upperplayground.com for details. They are a store with a blog too: http://upperplayground.blogspot.com/ Corner of Couch and NW 5th
The Portland Art Center presents several shows in their new space: a show of Art Media employees, past and present, with 40% of sales going to support PAC; Eclipse, a sound installation by David Abel and John Berendzen in the Light and Sound Gallery; Waiting Room, an installation by Scott Wayne Indiana; and Focus Group, an installation by Houston. http://www.portlandart.org 32 NW 5th
Kendra Binney, a talented lowbrow artist, maybe a kindler and gentler Mark Ryden* crossed with some serious kawaii sensibility, shows her paintings at Berbati's. Usually I view this type of work with a jaundiced eye, but in this case it's well executed and I like it. Oh, and very reasonably priced too. 19 SW 2nd until late
http://www.berbati.com/
*Ryden has gotten darker as his painting skills have advanced; in the style of filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet who made Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. Binney's work works for children as well as older children while Ryden's and Jeunet's works are strictly adult.
Sonia Kasparian shows dreamy portraits, rendered in layers. Sometimes the layers are window screen, patterned with bright pigments, suspending the images' highlights in parralax. Also outstanding is a full scale wedding dress in window screen. In lesser hands this subject material would be merely mythical, however Kasparian tempers this tendency by mixing industrial materials and a sensitive touch. http://www.buttersgallery.com520 NW Davis
Valentine's present a show by Alicia Cortney Eggert. Music by Gary Wiseman, Tre', and Bark, Hide and Horn
From Valentine's press release: "Alicia Cortney Eggert was born and raised in New Jersey as the daughter of a Christian minister, and spent four years of her early childhood living in Cape Town, South Africa, where her parents were missionaries during the Apartheid. She studied Scandinavian architecture and design at Denmark's International Study program in Copenhagen, and graduated from Drexel University, in Philadelphia, with a degree in Interior Design. Using common household objects and accessible materials, her artwork explores the essence of human nature in modern society, revealing it's presence and impact on aspects of every-day life, and examining it's relationship to the natural world. In addition to creating and exhibiting her own work, Alicia also organizes and curates multidisciplinary art events in Portland, Oregon, under the name of Kitchen Sink.
All My Clothes is a series of studies relating to the ideas of ownership and identity that focus on the artist's personal wardrobe. Every item of clothing was scrutinized, catalogued and drawn in detail. Each and every tag and label were removed from the clothes and sewn together one-by-one to create a vague shape of the artist's physical profile. The project's culmination will be an installation consisting of every single clothing item tied together to form an enormous mass, which will hang on the wall and be on display for the entire month of August."
Art 6-10, open late 232 SE Ankeny
Consider ending your evening at Holocene for Design Your Own Dance Party with actual designers spinning on the tables along with DJ SewWhat and DJ 1996 Olympics. There will be a raffle of some sweet custom clothing, a showing of 10 Minute Creations, impromptu designs, and an "I'm a top model" photo booth. $5-8 sliding scale at the door goes to support the production costs for the upcoming September Fashion Week 1001 SE Morrison http://www.holocene.org
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