December 31 Movement for Peace

Tahni Holt makes idea driven performance in the realm of modern dance. Her performances have themed landmines, the simultaneity of time, safety & material, office work, a theater within theater, repetitive movement & narrative and open source movement.

New York dancer and choreographer Miguel Gutierrez has created a work, Freedom of Information, to be danced by dancers across the US. Each performs a personal continuous improvisation blindfolded for 24 hours with ears plugged.

It is Gutierrez' meditation on war and refugees, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each dancer moves from 12:01AM to 11:59PM Wednesday December 31. It is each mover's meditation too. Maybe something for us each to give some thought to.

I had an opportunity to visit a UN friend in Afghanistan and toured the landmine museum. It was a surreal experience as our guide recited an explanation, memorized in perfect English. The mines, missiles and bombs in the museum are found daily throughout the country with sad result. One of our Afghan hosts had lost a few fingers as a child to a Soviet cluster bomblet, disguised as a toy.

Holt takes up this open source social practice project at Performance Works Northwest. Audience may stop by to see or connect to Holt's webstream.

At Performance Works Northwest 4625 SE 67th 12:01AM-11:59PM Free

November 12 SciFi Inspired Art and PNCA Homeland Films

Impossible Instruments / Future Flags is a show curated by artist Nathaniel T. Price. Science fiction has only a loose connection with either. It is more a prediction of a future. Science enters only as a signifier of the monotonic unfolding without end of technology.

Perhaps art is the same, continually expanding the edge, while occasionally resampling the ghosts of art past which isn't done so much in technology. It's not as if steampunk is real for instance, or that mysticism surrounding the mythical undiscovered discoveries of Tesla is anything but misplaced.

Artists Alex Felton, Kristan Kennedy, Corey Lunn, Chris Johanson, M Blash, Dana Dart McLean, Rob Halverson, Steven Wirth, Jo Jackson, Nathaniel T. Price, Arnold J. Kemp and Bobo provide art inspired by our strange future.

All this at Fourteen30 Contemporary www.fourteen30.com 1430 SE 3rd opening 6PM-9


Also this evening are new Portland films sponsored by PNCA. Movies are by Adrienne Huckabone, Brennan Broome, Bryan Colombo, Chris Bodven, Israel Lund, Jacob Winfield, Jim Hill, Joey Lusterman, Julia Perry, Kevin Tinnell, Morgan Ritter, Sarah Burke and Tesar Freeman. At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th 7PM

December 5 Eastside Openings

The Eastside is huge now. Here are some suggestions.

There is a show by 100 artists, each making 10 things each in 10 days for $30 each. Each piece is unlabeled, except on the back, so go for love and beauty. That is at the Olympic Mills Building 107 SE Washington.

EBu: the 811 Building, 811 E Burnside; NAAU 922 SE Ankeny; Destroy Store and Life & Limb, 1712 E Burnside; artist books at 23 Sandy 623 NE 23rd Sandy

SE: Newspace Photo, 1632 SE 10th; Pushdot 1021 SE Caruthers; Gallery Homeland, corner SE Division and 11th

December 4 Westside Art Openings

Portland painter Adam Sorensen makes fantastical landscape paintings filled with schematic surreal elements. It's a welcome variation on the Northwest fascination with landscape. This show, False Fjords, will brighten the cloudiest of days. What's more, Sorensen's statement wins the copywriting award of the month: "The Narrative of the Romantics had long been to capture and present the awe and strength of natural vistas. Landscape, which was often found on the fringes of human exploration, was imbued with mystery and danger, and was therefore stirring to the viewer. It seems as if humanity has conquered the once harrowing wild, and in turn made it strange. This is where my work sits, attached a century later to the romantic narrative. The abstract, the awkward, and the absurd have much more of a presence in contemporary life, and cannot be ignored when painting the landscape. Emphasizing the strangeness of modern nature, and embellishing it with contemporary aesthetic ideas, is in a way, a type of contemporary romanticism." At PDX Contemporary Art www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders until 8



Rain. Puddle Town is an art show themed on rain. Artists Robert Pellicer, Scott Rohlfs, Angel Davis, Sam Tudyk, Dane Svenningsen, Max Kaufman, Timothy Karpinski, Keenan Havens, Jessica Rosario, Eliott Wall, Geneva Smith, Rudy Fig, Eli Effenberger, Miette, Sophie Franz, Tatiana Krasovski, Jason Graham, Eatcho, Josh Heilaman, Lily Pham, Andy Gouveian, Ricardo Rodriguez, Alex Willan, Nati, Jun Seo Hahm and Clone provide their response to rain's inspiration. At Compound www.compoundgallery.com 107 NW 5th



The Everett Station Lofts are always recommended. They change hands aperodically, each occupant has been curated and the ground floor spaces commit to open their living rooms an evening a month to you. Bounded by NW Broadway, Everett and 6th.



The Desoto building bounded by NW Broadway, Davis and Park includes several established galleries, the Museum of Contemporary Craft and Blue Sky, with its Nines Gallery. All are often worth a stop. This month in that building the Charles Hartman gallery has Fish-Work. Corey Arnold makes documentary photographs of the life on fishing boats in the North seas. At one time fishing was local. Today ever larger boats travel further to the last fisheries yet to be endangered. Meanwhile fish farming is not only causing pollution by concentrating fish waste beyond local carrying capacity, fish farming consumes about 1/3 of wild fish caught in the form of fish meal. At Charles Hartman Fine Art www.hartmanfineart.net 134 NW 8th



G Lewis Clevenger makes abstract paintings of rectangular pattern. He is loosening up his patterns while maintaining a strong sense of beauty. His pallette and the textures are worth studying. At Pulliam Deffenbaugh www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com until 8



Stumptown downtown has a holiday themed show. Gretchen Vaudt is a multiartist and curator for a time at Albina Press. Her work spans photography, ceramics and design. This evening Going Home is a group of individual small works, each as different as a snowflake reprising winter holiday sense memories of her Midwest childhood. Another Midwesterner, Norm Sajovie, shows Polaroids Holiday Drifter of a Christmas wandering Portland's mainly empty streets for inspiration. At Stumptown www.stumptown.com 128 SW 3rd



Skate decks as a canvas are pretty archival. Ditto snowboards. Someday they'll show up on some museum walls. Monsieur T is an artistic streetwear concern, based in Portland. Monsieur T has invited many artist friends to make designs on decks or create skate themed art and this is the result. Jeremyville, Andrew Pommier,Bwana Spoons, Lance Mountain, Martin Ontiveros, APAK, Adam Haynes, Le Merde, Jon Humphries, Ruben Sanchez, Fred Mortagne, Huskmitnavn, Andrew Groves, I Love Dust, Arbito, Shawn Wolfe, Ryan Berkley, Scrappers Betsy Walton, Jay Howell, Klutch, Mark Warren Jacques, Lee Zeman, Jeff Proctor, Tom Webb, Brett Superstar and Steve Matthews have made work. For the opening of the show, which will also be online artwise throughout the month, Kez spins. At Hecklewood www.hecklewood.com 114 NW 3rd



Portlander's are all weather skaters everywhere. There is another skate deck art show tonight, benefiting Complete Skate, a youth tutoring and skating project in schools. Many Portland artists have made decks which are being auctioned online, ending 8PM tonight. You can see the decks in person at the auction closing party at DWR. Details at www.completeskate.org/ondeck/ DWR Portland Studio 1200 NW Everett until 8



PNCA photograd Chloé Richard ’06 shows candid portraits of friends from LA and Berlin. The work has a French New Wave feel, very light and real. The show's title makes the reference too. And, well, she's French. At Valentines 232 SW Ankeny

December 3 Social Practice Everywhere

I was not aware that social practice art had infiltrated even the undergraduate PSU art program. The BFA students have a Public Social University project of short talks on useful things for the public. Today's classes are:

Eric Steen provides his survey, best to worst, of film depiction of utopia and distopia, in science fiction. (1:30PM-2)

Greg Wandering Yeti and Adam Stone speak about Permaculture and demonstrate Chinese internal martial arts, drawing a relationship between them. (2PM-3)

Tracé Hulette demonstrates basic mending with thread and needle. (3PM-3:30)

Davis Eliason Brown gives practical advise on hip hop rapping including positive message, collaboration, rapping with others and linguistics (3:30PM-4)

You can find more about the project at psuart.blogspot.com It's at the main downtown library in the US Bank Room 2PM-5. Free

December 2 Wild Beauty as a Book

The Art Museum has a show of photographs of the mighty Columbia River, curated by Terry Toedtemeier. The West drew post Civil War photographers who imaged landscapes for a society influenced by transcendentalism. Ultimately the combination inspired the preservation movement, the creation of national parks and finally the Columbia Gorge scenic overlay, the first of its type. Tonight hear Toedtemeier and coauthor John Laursen present the book Wild Beauty, Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957 and discuss their selection of images for the show and the book. At Powells Books www.powells.com Corner West Burnside and 10th 7:30PM Free

November 24 Matthew Higgs at PSU

Portland seems to be having a run of talks by curators and this is one. Matthew Higgs was deeply immersed in the Young British Artist movement, and sometimes critical of its direction. Then he hopped the pond to immerse himself into the artist world of San Francisco. He is now curator at the White Columns which takes enough of an interest in Portland to have rented a room at the art Affair at the Jupiter Hotel. He has curated at the ICA in the UK and CCA on the West Coast. He is able to discover the most interesting vectors in the artist world in each location, in advance of sometimes the commercial art machine or independent of it. Let's hope he can advise the Museum on curator matches. Part of the most often excellent Portland Monday Night Lecture Series at PSU. Higgs spins disco on vinyl at 320 SE 3rd late, free. Talk in Shattuck Hall, Room 212, 1914 SW Park Avenue, at the corner of SW Broadway and Hall on the PSU campus. 7:30PM Free

November 20 Inner China

China. Over 2500 years of unbroken history and a quarter of the world population. A lot of MFA graduates yearly. I think it is an individual responsibility to try to understand China. Here is an opportunity. Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow William A. Callahan and Richard Kraus, Portland State University professor, speak: "Who is China?"

Chinese is peppered with idiomatic slogans. Education incorporates a study of classic literature far beyond the Western approach. These ideas are woven deeply into the culture along with a dose of Confucianism. The speakers explore Chinese culture filtered through leading public intellectuals known in the West such as philosopher Zhao Tingyang, writer Jiang Rong, film directors Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee, and artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

This talk is part of PNCA's engagement with China and is cosponsored by the International Studies Department at Portland State University, a strong recruiter of Chinese students to Portland.

At PNCA NW 13th and Johnson 12:30PM Free

November 20 LAIKA at Artspark

If you don't know what Artspark is, you should find out. It is a way for artists to organize as their own advocates disguised as a series of short talks and plenty of meeting other creative people. Each presenter has 6 minutes at 6PM to speak about their projects. With one presenter a month, the rest of the evening is unstructured person to person time. Tonight LAIKA gives a short update on their projects. At the Livingroom Theaters. 5PM-7 Free. RSVP at Artspark

November 19 Designing Dreams, Engineering Desire

This topic is as vast as it is important. There has been a broad shift to human-centered design augmented by ethnographic practices to capture the functional and emotional needs and embeds of people who will actually use objects. Most believe the process heavily hinges upon the intuitive insights of creatives. I would add the brain chemistry response of similarity, novelty and sampling critical life stage associations. Beauty is good too.

A panel considers design and possibilities created by ever changing technology. What is our emotional relationship to objects? How do we imagine the future? Are we entering an era of significant green and sustainable design? What is the role of "open source" design, also known as open design?

Some who have considered these ideas include Marc Gobe on emotional branding, Kevin Roberts on emotion, branding and objects, Donald A. Norman on emotional industrial design, William McDonough and Michael Braungart on biomimetic design. Of course R. Buckminster Fuller who proposed meeting the needs of the world's population by doing more with less.

Panelists considering your questions:

Sohrab Vossoughi founder of ZIBA Design (www.ziba.com), which has incorporated artists and sustainability into branding projects in addition to its well known industrial design of objects.

Portland architecture blogger, writer and filmmaker Brian Libby (www.portlandarchitecture.com).

Musician, thinker and community outreach organizer for Portland Center Stage, Tim DuRoche.

Daniel H. Wilson, robotics engineer and author of Where’s My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived.

This event is part of DWR's Designs on Portland series and presented in cooperation with:

R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe at Portland Center Stage (www.pcs.org/bucky) The Viridian design movement is an example of Fuller prinicples, I would declare it successful rather than kill it.

Manufactured at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (www.contemporarycrafts.org)

Raymond Loewy: Designs for a Consumer Culture at Oregon Historical Society (www.ohs.org)

At DWR Portland Studio 1200 NW Everett. Doors 6:00PM, program 6:30 Free

November 19 All Julie All the Time

PNCA faculty member and artist Julie Perini presents video and performance at PCC Cascade entitled All Julie All the Time. There is something about a sit down snack in the gallery too. I think at their core all artists are activists, some are just shy, but not Perini. She fuses this philosophy with thoughtful sampling, politics, documentation, social performance, teaching and organizing. Opening event PCC Cascade Gallery in Terrell Hall. 705 N. Killingsworth 4PM-7 Free (continues gallery hours to December 31)

November 18 Public Access Findings as Cinema

The Cinema Project usually presents artist and obscure films on film. Not always though. Tonight is is a compilation of public access television from Winnipeg, Canada. As cable companies use the public road right of way to string their cables, cities extract public studios and channels for anyone to make video and show it. We own the right of way and we get the access. (In Portland it is www.pcmtv.org - free classes, free equipment, your own show free).

The greatest strength of open access is its greatest weakness too. This program addresses that by presenting a curated slice of tens of thousands of hours of cable access produced in Winnipeg Canada in the late 1970s through the 1980's.

More details at the Cinema Project website www.cinemaproject.org.

At the new Cinema Project space 11 NW 13th Ave, top floor. Elevator access is provided, please come to the door to request. 7:30PM $6

November 18 Pecha Kucha 5

Pecha Kucha is an international series of short informal presentations focused on design and culture. Originated in Japan, it was an opportunity for designers to show work and influences as images without a language barrier. I believe the Portland series was inspired by Teruo Kurosaki. Each presenter has 20 slides to present for 20 seconds each - a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Pecha Kucha draws an audience of designers and architects. The presentations have been engaging and thought provoking, such as a photo essay on abandoned high rise building shells in Bangkok repurposed into high rise gardens. The loose theme tonight is discretion. Tonights presenters are Heather Hanrahan and Rodger Bridges, www.nemodesign.com; Kevin Cavenaugh, www.14parcels.com; Paige Saez, www.paigesaez.org; Garrett Strickland www.unwin-dunraven.org; Larissa Hammond and Tigerlilly Holyoak, www.myspace.com/feyvenue; Ron Blessinger , www.thirdangle.org; architect Aaron Whelton and writer Matthew Korfhage. Locally organized by architect-planners Cityscope. At the salad warehouse 939 SE Alder Doors 7:30PM, talks 8:20 (20:20!) Free (donations encouraged)

November 17 Diego Piñón and Stephanie Smith

Diego Piñón is a Mexican branch of the global family tree of butoh. Founded in Japan in 1959, it has been passed from teacher to student, from performing group to individual performer and from performer to audience. Along the way each individual has drawn from it, and contributed.

Drawn to dance and movement, Piñón studied many movement and theater systems, incorporating his own uniquely Mexican traditions. Along the way, he encountered butoh, performing with Byakko-Sha and Min Tanaka's Maijuku. (I would disagree with the article's statement that Tanaka is second only to Hijikata, that is absurd. Tanaka is a gifted primarily self taught mover.) My experience with Piñón is as a workshop teacher who uses psychodrama techniques derived from each individual's history to create unique and sometimes intense movement. Piñón speaks of his work in a talk sponsored by Portland butoh's Headwaters Studio and Portland State University's Department of Japanese Language, Dance and Theater. Piñón has been teaching a workshop the last few days, so his students may be able to relate their experiences.

At Smith Memorial Center, Room 328/9, 7PM Free



Meanwhile, at the always excellent PSU Art Department Monday Night Lecture Series, Stephanie Smith speaks. Sustainability is big in Portland now, but Smith has been exploring it as a theme in her curatorial activities for some time. Her interest in socially engaged public practice in art is a great complement to similarly themed work in the PSU art programs. It has moved to a new location this semester - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, 1914 SW Park Avenue, at the corner of SW Broadway and Hall on the PSU campus. 7:30PM Free

Past Monday night lectures can be viewed at PICA normal working hours. Free.

November 15 Iceland to Rocksbox

Rocksbox presents Asmundur Asmundsson, known for his wry and irreverent installations. This is perfect for Portland artist Patrick Rock, a good agitator in his own right, to bring to polite Portland. At Rocksbox Fine Art www.rocksboxfineart.com 6540 N Interstate Opening 7PM-11 See the website for continuing hours.

November 15-16 333 Studio Open House

This long operating artist space at 333 NE Hancock opens its studios this weekend. It has incubated many years of artists and continues to do so. There is a group show in the common spaces curated by Anna Fidler. The current list of artists may be found at their website boxliftbldg.googlepages.com Stop by Saturday 4PM - 10 (Performance at 9PM) Sunday 12Noon - 5.

November 13-15 tEEth Performs

I have only had peripheral exposure to this experimental dance performance group. They present their performance Grub. More info at www.rubberteeth.com At IFCC. Performances 7PM and 9. $15

November 13 Ignite Selfless

I am interested in many things, but this blog hews to art - with a few excursions, including Ignite. Ignite is a cross between Toastmasters and speed dating for the software and web development creative community. Speed dating in the sense that short presentations equal shorts programs in film festivals. If you are bored, a change of scenery is only minutes away. Each presenter has 20 slides, 15 seconds each, 5 minutes total. Very ADD - in a good way. Portland presentations have been a mix of irreverent, how to and occasionally serious.

The existential hobble of Powerpoint acknowledged, these evenings tend to be fun events with smart people. Ignite Portland 4 is at the Bagdad Theater. There tends to be a long line occasioned by the required OLCC ID check for age 21 admittees only. Holders of the free sold out advance tickets at 5:30PM, the line at 6:15PM, Presentations 7PM-10 Free


Portland filmmakers span shorts to features. The nature of the art can be the transition between making small and making large. Longtime Portland artist-filmaker Jacob Pander has created his first large film Selfless with brother Arnold. Its timely Portland themes of architectural ego, green and identity theft play out in a feature length thriller; premiere here. Part of the NW Film and Video Festival. Portland Art Museum Whitsell Auditorium. Arrive Early. 7PM $7-8

November 12 CCA Curator on Curation

Jens Hoffman is the curator's curator with a strong background in London, arguably a more contemporary environment than New York. He speaks at PNCA NW 13th and Johnson 6:30PM Free

November 10 Southern Exposure Talk

Southern Exposure is a long running experimental art center in San Francisco. Hear Courtney Fink, director of 15 years, speak on sustainable art centering - Southern Exposure has been in operation for 34 years!

It is part of the PSU Monday Lecture Series. This series has been consistently engaging. It has moved to a new location - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, 1914 SW Park Avenue, at the corner of SW Broadway and Hall on the PSU campus. 7:30PM Free

November 8 Global Local Butoh(s)

Hard choice tonight.

Kyoto butoh artist Katsura Kan presents a performance with his students drawn from Portland butohists. Kan is one of the deep thinkers of butoh as noted earlier about his lecture. He is a Buddhist, informing his work and draws dancers and inspiration from across Asia, South America and Africa. He explores the regional differences in indigenous butoh. Our Portland butoh is different than, say the butoh of Thai shamans. We spent some time out at art openings discussing arts funding and art culture here and in Japan Thursday. He brings that same curiosity and brilliance to creating and exploring movement. This evening, Sheri Brown and Douglas Ridings from Seattle make a special appearance. Brown is known for evocative facial presence which almost disappears. Ridings incorporates South Indian dance into his butoh. The performance is in the Headwaters Studio at Disjecta. The space is intimate, holding about 20, make a reservation. Reservations email mizudesierto (AT) gmail (DOT) com 8PM $5-15


A different butoh are hip hop moves by b-boys and b-girls. Hip hop culture is life and we are living it. Part of it are beautifully unbelievable b-boy/b-girl moves. One of the most mad dope b-boy/b-girl events of the year is The Foundation. Eight years strong. On no publicity outside the community. 2 on 2 battles. DJ's Sugarman and Computer Fam of the Buttermilk Baby Makers. All proceeds benefit Ethos www.ethos.org In the Reed Student Union doors 6:30PM, show 7. $7

November 7 Eastside Art Openings

The Eastside has serious galleries mixed with pure fun. For example Fourteen30 Contemporary presents NEW CONSTRUCTION by artists Nick van Woert and Nicholas Pittman. Sculptor van Woert, inspired by the Russian Conctructivists, used material high and low for formal sculptures. Manwhile Pittman creates bright abstract patterns which would be at home in the Ecstasy show of a few years back All this at Fourteen30, www.fourteen30.com 1430 SE 3rd Avenue


Meanwhile over at Worksound is a meditation on Air Nouveau. Psu professor Horia Boboia shows work along with LA artists Andrea Fellers and Darcy Bartoletti. Rounding out the show are San Francisco artist Sophie De Lignerolles and continuing from last month Samantha Wall. At Worksound www.worksoundpdx.com 820 SE Alder


Must Find Truth... I think we dis, but it is always a continuing endevour, including at Gallery Homeland. This is the name of a show of Roxanne Jackson of macabre beasts. At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org corner SE 11th and Division

There is more fun to be had including shows in the 811 Block at Redux and Grass Hut, Newspace Photography, Destroystore and I'm sure plenty more!

November 7-9 Flocks and Tumbles

Portland has many interesting creative concentrations. One is a small concentration of composers and experimantal soundscape creators inspired by and coinspiring the NW Electroacoustic Music Organization. Multi artist Seth Nehil presents Flock & Tumble based on these ideas. "Flock & Tumble is a concert for 6 audio speakers, 4 video projections, and a 12-person choir. Shouts, voices and songs articulate a “creatureality”, evoking the patterns which emerge among frog calls, fish schools and insect swarms. While performers navigate the space around and among the audience, glimpses of dance by Linda Austin and "Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner" flash across screens, percussive bursts scatter and melodies cluster. Each performance will be different, guided by a rhythmical/musical choreography that determines rules of interaction. Bold sound and intentional play merge wildness and precision in a multimedia celebration of 'becoming-animal'”. All this takes place November 7, 8, 9, at AudioCinema, 226 SE Madison, doors 7:30PM show 8:00 $10

November 6 Westside Art Openings

City hall shows art themed on Portland's music world, a very successful creative community in Portland. Artists include Laura Domela, Norm Eder, Mike King, Anthony Pidgeon, Diane Russell, Gary Houston, Alica J. Rose, Alexander Rokoff, Guy Burwell, Jason Quigley, Ben Wilson, Casey Burns, Josh Elliott, Josh Elliott, Sarah White, Michelle Motta, Nicolle Farup & Autumn de Wilde. At City Hall 1221 SW 4th 5PM-7 Free


At Stumptown Coffee, White Rainbow performs. 128 SW 3rd. 7-8ish


Backspace shows Ladies of the Rib: paintings by 5 women artists: Anna Todaro, Alisha Wessler, Chowchessna, Taryn Tomasello & Nicole Linde. Their work is inspired by the Sumerian civilization of 4000 BC near the conflience of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers - that would be in present day Iraq. Lady of the Rib is a reference to a Sumer myth which may have inspired the Eve from Adam's rib myth. At Backspace www.backspace.biz 115 NW 5th Ave


Painter Laura Ross-Paul is known for her rich use of color in impressionistic portraits. This work captures the light of summer modulated by our gentle leafy canopy. At Froelick 714 NW Davis


I love cast glass, but it is a material that sometimes overwealms the work. However this month Silvia Levenson shows "It's not Living Alone", a crituque of our love-hate relationship with mood-stabilizing pharms. She comments that her work is inspired by Chuck Palahniuk. At Bullseye 300 NW 13th


PNCA continues it's global engagement with work by Iranian Shiva Ahmadi and Chinese artist Baochi Zhang In the Feldman Gallery www.pnca.edu Corner NW Johnson and 13th


The Woolley gallery has a group show of small works by Michael T. Hensley, Bernard O. Gross, Alison O'Donoghue, Julia Stoops, Jennifer Mercede, Jenny Rideout, Carol Yarrow, Brigitte Dortmund & Angelina Woolley. Mark Woolley Gallery 817 SW 2nd Ave


Video art is too little seen in Portland. A great example is the 4 screen installation at The Urban Farmer by Matt McCormick. I have not seen the group show at Quality Pictures curated by artist Jacob Dyrenforth and Eva Respini, Assistant Curator of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art, but if you are interested consider Videos and Vodka: Selections from Video Salon. Artists include Guy Ben-Ner, Ian Cooper, Tanyth Berkeley, Duke and Battersby, Christopher Miner, Ohad Meromi, Lisa Oppenheim, John Pilson, Lisi Raskin, Robin Rhode, Laura Riboli and Halsey Rodman. At Quality Pictures 916 NW Hoyt

November 3 Global Stages and Social Practice

Katsura Kan is a longtime Kyoto butoh master. He performed with Byakko-sha, formed by Isamu Osuka, an offshoot of Dairakudakan in a Kyoto factory. While Byakko-sha presented a wild, mad and chaotic flavor, Kan is very analytic and considered.

A friend studied with him in Kyoto. After a year or two of classes, she learned of a performance his group was making in another Japanese city. She implored Kan to allow her to assist, collecting tickets, doing lights, anything needed for the performance. His response was a note of the location, you can make it if you like.

Finding a location in Japan is a challenge for Japanese. For Westerners without the language, it is a supreme challenge. Within a neighborhood, banchi, of pedestrain-oriented curvalinear streets without names, addresses were assigned in chronological order of building in a neighborhood, not linear order on a named street!

My friend set out early in the morning to the performance. She arrived, miraculously, an hour before the performance at the site. There Kan was surprised to see her. "Oh, you made it?". "Get in costume, the performance is in an hour and you are in it." You can imagine her response. She performd and well, continuing with Kan's traveling performing group for a year or two. Later he was planning a new performance. He selected dancers, but not her. She protested. His response: "Do you remember your first time on stage? You were raw, with an intensity. It is time for another to feel that."

Kan has worked to form a pan-Asian butoh, collaborating in Indonesia and Thailand. He is also known for drawing movement, sampling, from his dancers. Tonight he speaks on the origins of butoh in Japan.

Butoh was first performed in 1959. A common theory is that it was inspired by the atomic bomb in 1945. I believe it was inspired by the youth and artistic cultural movement for Japanese cultural soverenity. At the time, writers such as Mishima represented a return to traditional Japanese values along with creative and social liberalization. There were also massive protests in the streets against the terms of the US-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty. The founder of butoh was from Northern Japan and was influenced by Japan's nature-based philosophy, Shinto. This is the explanation in Michael Blackwood's documentary. Byakko-sha's Isamu Osuka does relate that he was in the womb of his mother in 1945 Hiroshima and has a prebirth memory of the bomb's illumination. Kan, a Buddhist, perhaps will have a comment on the impact of Japanese philosophy on butoh and how Americans can find their unique butoh. That would be social practice.

The lecture has been organized by Mizu Desierto and Professor Larry Kominz of Portland State University's Center for Japanese Studies and with the help of the Dance program at PSU's Theater Arts Department. Kan teaches workshops and performs this week at the Headwaters Studio at Disjecta.

The lecture is in Smith Hall room 327/8/ 6:30PM Free!



Darren O'Donnell is a polymath. Writer of novels, maker of theater and a social practice artist. Mammalian Diving Reflex forms a pattern for O'Donnell's performances. They range from his haircuts by children project to on stage work. I think his talk will be entertaining, but I'm not really sure what he does so maybe just see his website and decide if it sounds fun and exciting.

It is part of the PSU Monday Lecture Series. This series has been consistently engaging. It has moved to a new location - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, 1914 SW Park Avenue, at the corner of SW Broadway and Hall on the PSU campus. 7:30PM Free

November 2 Baraka at Jáce Gáce

An amazing film shot all over the world on 70mm. At Jáce Gáce, Art, Waffles and Beer. 2045 SE Belmont 8PM Free

October 31 - November 2 Wilkes+Barber

There is something about duets. Cydney Wilkes and Mike Barber have been doing them together for some time and it shows. Music in the Middle is based on a score from composer Heather Perkins. The duo created movement based on a visual version of the score, without hearing it. They also perform a Deborah Hay work. All this is at small
Conduit 918 SW Yamhill Street, 4th floor. Friday-Sunday 8PM and 2PM Sunday $15, $12 artists & students Reserved tickets at brownpapertickets.com/event/45382

October 31 Holloween and Elections

I am very serious about elections. In many other countries, people are literally loosing their lives to vote. But politics and voting are fun and exciting too, it is an opportunity for optimism. Changing the world is a challenge, it should be a fun challenge! Trick or Vote is the Bus Project's very fun effort to get voters to turn in their mail ballots. It's a nation wide effort in some other cities reminding people to vote, person to person. In Portland come in costume at 3:30PM or 5:30PM to Audio Cinema, 226 SW Madison. Bring your friends! Groups will head out from there to neighborhoods where they will knock on doors reminding people to VOTE! After there is a free party for volunteers at the same meetup location. ($10 for non volunteers) At 1000 realistically idealistic people, it will be the funnest party in Portland! Details http://www.trickorvote.org/

October 30-November 2 Catlin Sale

Cultural anthropology is so fascinating. There is an opportunity to practice it by examining findings at the Catlin Gabel Rummage Sale. It's a fund raiser for financial aid for the school. Everything from fancy jewelry, toys, furniture, clothes/costumes, kitchen stuff and old super-8 gear. At the Expo Center "Go by Train". Thurs. 5PM-9; Fri. 10PM-6; Sat. 9AM-9PM 25% off everything; Sun. 9AM-3PM 50% off everything and special cheap bag sales/ make a deal.

October 27 Matt McCormick on Film

The slow food movement proposes local ingredients, minimally processed with loving care and consumed with gentle relish. It is the opposite of fast food. Many question other forms of human endeavour, spawning slow movements in design and other activities. In a way, slow is not exactly the right adjective, it is more about appropriate speed and intent.

Mat McCormick's films are slow films in intent; they are really not slow though. They are perfectly adapted to our place. They allow the viewer to enter quietly without being browbeaten by action or theatrics. They unfold quietly and manifest themselves unexpectedly. McCormick created and ran the PDX Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival for a few years which he curated with like films.

His work spans documentary-like material, public service announcements, friends' music videos, art installation and increasingly projects with actors, including a recent feature which has just finished shooting.

See McCormick show and speak on his work at the PSU Monday Lecture Series. This series has been consistently engaging. It has moved to a new location - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, early arrival recommended. 7:30PM Free

October to Thanksgiving

A beautiful installation has been up for a few weeks. Artist LeBrie Rich has made a felted Thanksgiving dinner in a display window. You can see it anytime in the 11th Street side window at Knit and Purl, corner SW Alder and 11th.

October 20 Public Artist, Architect, Planner

Every field is crying out for creative thinkers. That has allowed sculptor Buster Simpson to expand his projects from public sculpture to planning and designing civic structures. You may have seen one of his public sculptures by the Convention Center light rail stop - it is a large forest log and watering system creating a plant succession of tree sprouts. Simson speaks at the PSU Monday Lecture Series. This series has been consistently engaging. It has moved to a new location - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, double the old location's capacity. 7:30PM Free

October 18 Classical Indian Flute Master

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia is a master of the bansuri. From this bamboo flute of six finger holes, he produces tones spanning five and one half octaves. He is considered one of the finest performers on the instrument in the world. His raga playing is supremely sensitive as you may judge from these three videos. He has collaborated with Western musicians and is chair of the World Music Department at the Rotterdam Music Conservatory. Tonight he is accompanied by Rupak Kulkarni, flute; Rakesh Chaurasia, flute; Subhankar Banerjee, tabla and Bhavani Shankar, pakhawaj. Presented by Kalakendra www.kalakendra.org at the First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Avenue. 7:30PM $25 advance, $30 at door, discounts for members.

October 17 Yuko Ota Butoh at Headwaters Studio

Jinen Butoh takes as its inspiration everything, not differenting between nature, objects we make and our constructions in thought. The founder joined Bishop Yamada's Hoppo-Butoh-ha in Hokkaido. Hoppo-Butoh-ha evolved from Dairakudakan, active to this day.

Yuko Ota, a Jinen influenced performer, journeys all the way to Portland to perform tonight. Later she offers a workshop, bringing a different thread of butoh to movers here. The performance is at the Headwaters Studio at Disjecta in Kenton, very close to the Paul Bunyan statue.

Joining Ota will be Death Posture from Seattle, much less scary than it sounds, and purveyor of sublime duet. Mizu Desierto and her Portland group perform too. Mizu directed the very amazing Midsummer Night's Dream at Peninsula Park. At 8371 N Interstate. 8PM sharp, doors close. $15

October 17 Photographer Jim Lommasson at NAAU

Lommasson is known for idea-driven photographic meditations on American life. An outstanding example was his work in New Orleans after Katrina, Heaven and Earth. As part of the visionary NAAU Couture series, he is back with a show of portraits of Afghan and Iraq War veterans, Exit Wounds. Lommasson's interviews accompanying the work trace their experiences of war and returning. Many of his veteran subjects display photos they made at war. At New American Art Union www.newamericanartunion.com 922 SE Ankeny Opening 6PM-9 Free

October 17 Equilibrium: The Human Mash Up

The Human Mashup is a collaborative project of the Working Artists Studio-Gallery, visualists, DJ's, the Software Association of Oregon and developer Brad Malsin's Olympic Mills/B&O Warehouse Building in its gallery helmed by Chris Haberman. Wherecamp, with other events later, is also involved.

Working Artists principal, Adrienne Fritze, issued a call to artists for work themed on the survival of all species in a changing planet. The show is the result. Artists Adrienne Fritze, Angela Gay, Dante Cohen, David Burke, Jack Gabel, Jesse Lindsay, Judy Devine, Lea Keohane, Mario Robert III, Richard Schemmerer, Rio Wrenn, Sabina Haque and Theresa Weil participate. We hope these mashups will continue to bring creatives from radically different communities together, sharpening the art dialog.

3 hours only. At 107 SE Washington. 4PM-7 Free

October 15 Hillary Pfeiffer's Love Bugs

From the artist: "Every year the Lovebugs swarm. It's their mating process-traveling in a giant mass of writhing pheromones. In recent decades, as their native habitat in the forests has been depleted, the Lovebugs have migrated toward the roadways to act out their seasonal ritual. They are drawn to the scent of automobile exhaust fumes, which chemically replicates the odor produced by the female insect to attract their male counterparts and alert them of their fertility. Quite often, individuals in a swarm are randomly looping, spiraling, or corkscrewing around in a dizzying search for their mates, rather than following a linear flightplan.

People swarm too. In bars, parks, highways, gyms, malls. We often gather together and watch each other, observing our mating rites which include clothing, gesture, demeanor. We flirt, looking into each other's eyes for the kinesthetic cues that it's okay to do so. sWarm by Hilary PfeiferLanguage is a big part of courtship, and it is from this place that I chose the title for this installation. When George Gershwin wrote 's Wonderful, he was taking note of the way that humans often elide the spoken word, letting some parts drop away and others merge. When we are speaking affectionately to lovers, our language is softer and more melodic than usual. Words loop from thought to thought, much like the lofty flight pattern of a giddy bug. -hilary."

Artist Hillary Pfeifer shows her Love Bugs until November 15 at Relish www.shoprelish.com. 1715 NW Lovejoy

October 15-18 Cinema Project Opens New Home

The Cinema Project shows films on film. Properly exposed, processed and projected film has a wider dynamic range between light and dark, more gradations, greater resolution and color more closely matching the real world than does video. No compression artifacts either. Not only will this be the case for some time into the future, but some experimental artists' work from the past is only available on film.

The Cinema Project has done itinerant outdoor showings, programmed Film Center showings and maintained a long, often sold out residency at the New American Art Union (thanks Ruthann Brown!)

Now they have their own home sweet home downtown. They open it with this program. It is an opportunity to see rare film and in person discussions with filmmakers and artists.

Full details on all at the Cinema Project www.cinemaproject.org


Wednesday Opening Night

Todd Haynes on Film

Portland director Todd Haynes is famous for outstanding sensitive commercial films such as Safe, Far From Heaven and I'm Not There. He started with beautiful experimental work such as Superstar and Poison. Velvet Goldmine forms somewhat of a transition. Superstar, 1987, tells the tragic story of very successful singer Karen Carpenter who died of anorexia. In the film, BarbieTM dolls play the characters with stop action animation. Watching for only a few moments, you are drawn in, the strange nature of the 'actors' disappears far beneath the compelling story. The others I have seen include a Far From Heaven, a lushly filmed exploration of the inner life of a 50's housewife and Velvet Goldmine, a madcap search for a missing pop star's life. From humble BarbieTM beginnings, Haynes is famed as an actors' director.

This evening, Visiting Professor of Film History at Hamilton and Harvard, Scott MacDonald discusses the films with Haynes, interspersing film segments as context.

At the Portland Art Museum Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park. 8PM $8


Thursday Canyon Cinema

Canyon Cinema began as an itinerant venue for artists to show their films in 1961 San Francisco, backyards to basements. Later it evolved into a distributor and archive of experimental film. Today you can find artist films at Canyon unavailable anywhere and on film, unfortunately the rental prices are oriented to institutions, following the film model. This would be in contrast to subsequent models such as VHS/DVD sales and rental, Netflix, BitTorrent, Hulu, YouTube, MobiTV and so forth. Hey but we started out with this saying film was good!

Tonight there are 3 programs: 6PM - Canyon Men, 8PM a talk on Small Cinemas, and 9PM Canyon Women. All of the programs have been compiled by Scott Macdonald.


Friday Lost and Found Party

This evening the focus are two filmmakers, Ina Archer and Kevin Jerome Everson. I believe both work in the manner of Craig Baldwin, intercutting found footage with a sharp political intent.

The evening program focuses on Ina Archer at 6PM; a discussion on sampling the archive of black representation on film as a tactic, 7:45PM; and the films of Kevin Jerome Everson at 9PM.
At 10:30PM there is a dance party wrap.


Saturday Archives and the Films of Joseph Cornell

This is an action packed day -

12:00PM-2:00 Archiving Portland Arts Now, moderated by Matthew Stadler (free)
2:30PM The Women’s Film Preservation Fund
3:30PM Afternoon Tea & Social (free)
5:00PM The Films of Joseph Cornell - Infinite Affinities: Film and Collage
7:00PM Preserved and Unpreserved Films From Anthology Film Archives
9:30PM More Films of Joseph Cornell


Sunday Projecting The Future

More
1:30PM Artist Distribution Avenues and Choices: Why, Where, and How
3:30PM New Experimental Cinema by the Cinema Project
5:30PM Filming (In) War: Recent Lebanese Video
8:30PM Expanded Cinema Comes Alive
and
10:30PM Closing Night Party Live Music by Evolutionary Jass Band, Tara Jane O’Neil, and Sad Horse. 21+. The Cleaners corner Stark and SW 10th $10/ Free with event ticket stubs

Unless elsewise noted, events are at at the Cinema Project's new screening room 11 NW 13th Street 4th floor. Limited capacity, doors 30 minutes in advance. Each event $6 or $3 for Cinema Project members. $30 all event pass available.

The Cinema Project website details the individual films and artists at http://cinemaproject.org/screenings.html#expframes.

October 13 Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel has made making new objects for everyday life, and living with them, her work. One striking example are lightweight living pods in the California desert landscape. Zittel has made clothing and furniture too. Her clothing projects were inspired by office work where she was required to wear something nice. Her response has been a self-designed piece of clothing she wears daily for months. She develops and lives with her experimental, practical and economical furniture. She is an almost practical, almost impractical, industrial designer, only constrained by the fact that she lives her life with the work. The result is beautiful.

After a few years prototyping her living pods in the California desert near Joshua Tree, Zittel cofounded the High Desert Test Sites. Once a year artists converge on the site to make and share art in landscape.

Another Zittel open source social practice project is her Interloper hiking club. Walkers gather in costume for wilderness hikes. Sometimes their hikes inhabit art fairs.

The essence of Zittel's effort is to create a minimal implementation of something we each are familiar with from everyday life. In the viewer, that can create a new sense of creativity.

She speaks at the PSU Monday Lecture Series. This series has been consistently engaging. It has moved to a new location - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, double the old location's capacity. 7:30PM Free

October 10,11,16,18 Seattle Butoh

Haruko Nishimura presents her latest production Silvering Path. She describes it: One dance of eros, earth and the slug; one battle of the Weeble Wobble vs. the Ninjas; and one Monstrous Grandmother. Nishimura has been making lush, humorous and intense butoh in Seattle, often in collaboration with musicians the Degenerate Art Ensemble (formerly the Young Composers Collective). Opines Seattle's Stranger: "Nishimura is a hypnotic, versatile, and harrowing performer. Part Butoh maestro and part woodland creature, she can shift from a spider-monster to Marlene Dietrich to a forlorn ghost with a few simple gestures." I would say that is accurate. With Mandy Greer, crochet art; Ian Lucero, film and Colin Ernst, sculptural costume. Live adventurous music by Jeffrey Huston and Joshua Kohl. Dress art by Anna Lange. Video art installation by Leo Mayberry. Show review here. At the FREE SHEEP FOUNDATION 4408 3rd ave (at Battery) in belltown * $15 * http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/42588/

October 9 Dishwashers on Bikes

Once upon a time there were copy machines. That spawned photocopy art and self published zines - paper-based - before the world wide web. One Portlander, Pete Jordan, rode that ride, traveling the country as a dishwasher and writing of it in his zine as Dishwasher Pete. That zine morphed to book: Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. Then Pete headed to the Netherlands to study city planning and fell in love with Amsterdam's bikes. The city's winding streets, canals and bridges constrain streets to small cars and slow speeds, ideal for bikes. So in love with the city bike culture, he asked his wife if they could stay. Now six years later, they have a small bike shop and Pete writes two bike columns in the local paper. He will read from his book in progress, In the City of Bikes: An Up Close Look at Amsterdam, tonight, against a projected backdrop of street scenes from the city.

Nickey Robare shows her film Small Movements on the Sprockettes, Portland's pink precision minibike dance team. She performed with them, so this is an intimate view of their amazingness. Art on the wall by Tiago DeJerk, bike themed. Musician Baby Dollars closes the evening with probably dancing.

Organized by original zinesters Reading Frenzy. At the Cleaners, corner SW Stark and 10th 7PM Sliding scale $3 or greater.

October 4 Visualization Center Opens with Dumb Type (NY)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a university known for strong visual arts and engineering programs, is opening a performance and research center, EMPAC. The first director is a founding director of Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. This is a new building and program for a project that has been established for a few years.

They will have residencies and collaboration opportunities ongoing. Facilities include immersive projection, controlled sound environments, supercomputers and a very technical staff.

The program is focused on visualization for art and science.

There are some amazing opening performances, including Dumb Type's Voyage tonight. Every time I have seen this group, I have been floored. They mix idea, emotion, movement, sound, video and lighting in a way that works together, rather than distracting.

So if you are reading this in that part of the country, you might enjoy it!

EMPAC is in Troy, NY, 120 miles North of New York City

October 3 Eastside Openings

Taking inspiration from James Baldwin, "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers", Reversed Reality is a show of Chinese, French and Portland artists. Wei Hsueh, at PNCA, brings four Hong Kong artists. Pang Qian Guo, Beatrix Pang draws connections between prople in Hong Kong and Portland using photography and sound. Lau Xue Cheng, Hanison Lau samples traditional Chinese culture such as poetry and landscape painting and repurposes it to contemporary art. Wong Wai Yin, Doris Yin samples everyday objects and remakes. Ma Ho Yin, Florian Ma samples pop culture and high culture. For this show he has a lighting installation. Cheikh Ndiay from Lyon presents paintings and installation, some inspired by streetscapes. Samantha Wall from Portland shows drawings themed on strong women. Don't miss this. At Worksound www.worksoundpdx.com 820 SE Alder



In the 811 Block

Grass Hut shows work from Islands Fold™ artists' residencies paired with Grass Hut artists. Islands Fold is the home of Angela Conley and Luke Ramsey on Pender Island, B.C. Artists visit for a time and make work. It's a beautiful intimate project. Luke has a poetic explanation for it all. Artist resident matchups include Spencer Hibert + Marco Zamora, Johnathan R. Storm + Dawn Riddle, Luke Ramsey + Jill Bliss, Zeesy Powers + Scrappers, Ben Jacques + Le Merde, Irana Douer + Betsy Walton, Bwana Spoons + Theo Ellsworth, Charlotte Walton + Fawn Gehweiler, Oliver Hibert + Owen Plummer, Maseman + Arbito, Shawn Wolfe + Kinoko and Howie Tsui + Apak. In each pairing, one artist drew an island and sea, then mailed it to the other, who added the island home and inhabitants. Luke himself shows his solo-island drawings too. At Grass Hut www.grasshutcorp.com


Sword and Fern has the pen and ink drawings of Seattle artist cybele phillips. Sword and Fern swordandfern.blogspot.com


Redux, queen of reuse, has drawings and paintings by Norman Chambers, "space cadet". Another copywriting award is in order:

"In my work I constantly look to the future past that never was, where obsolete electronic devices and other strange gizmos that don't do anything in particular, coexist with stifled cartoon people, science fiction ephemera, idealized and simplified landscapes with exaggerated, oversimplified clouds and horizons. All of these coexist as a combination for a sort of perverse utopian/dystopian still life approximation. Logan's Run meets Zardoz on the set of Sleeper perhaps?

I take quite a bit of inspiration from the 70's illustrations of Jean Girard (Moebius), the amorphic blobs of Hans Bellmer, the future visions of Syd Mead, the vivid pop-art Psychedelia of Guy Peellaert, and of course my own skewed perspective, filtered through a sort of absurd sub-Archigram collage futurism. I try to tell stories that don't necessarily reveal themselves, yet provide a wealth of visual information from which the viewer may draw his/her own conclusions". At Redux www.reduxpdx.com

All 811 E. Burnside



Rio Wrenn shows work on fabric patterned by rust. This work was last seen at Rake. It's a great metaphor and definitely sustainable. At Lille Boutique 1007 E Burnside



NAAU is in the last days of a great show previously noted. The camera obscura is best seen in daylight, the brighter the better. Ends October 5. At New American Art Union www.newamericanartunion.com 922 SE Ankeny



John Brodie, in probably the best named show of the year, presents painting collages in a show titled "My Carbon Footprint Weighs a Ton". Brodie is bright and poppy, capturing well current memes and zeitgeists of the culture at large. To do so, he samples and reuses the layered archaeology of wheatpasted old school paper billboards and movie posters. This work is best seen in person, big, bright and up close. At Jáce Gáce www.jacegace.com 2045 SE Belmont



galleryHOMELAND is hewing to a regular first Friday opening schedule. This month it is "Instinctive Inquiry", installations and works on paper by Susan Murrell. Murrell fully occupies Homeland's sprawling space with maybe biomorphic abstractions including organic sand paintings! This is a great show to get lost in, in a good way! www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th Avenue



Pushdot has "Letting the Horses Loose", Polaroid shots of toy horses, Pushdot reprocessed, by Elizabeth Soule and "Patterns of Change", lightboxes with patterns suggesting Japanese indigo prints, under water life, and things found only under microscopes by Meagan Geer. At Pushdot Studio www.pushdotstudio.com 1021 SE Caruthers



Newspace has photos by Myron Filene & Jeff Shay of built landscapes. www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th

October 2 Westside Art Openings

Brenden Clenaghen shows "We Became", schematic paintings. Many Clenaghen paintings remind landscape in a mysterious modern fairy tale way. Some of the paintings have cool titles like "Curing Astral Woe" - I'll vote for that! With Laurie Reid's watercolors in a show titled "Landscapes/Lifescapes". At Pulliam Deffenbaugh www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com 929 NW Flanders early close 8PM



The PDX Window Project shows "Weather" wood burn patterned panels. This is a new direction for the artist known for small polymer sculptures. In the main gallery are book art works from Nazraeli Press. At PDX www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders



Portland is a printmaking town. Sarah Horowitz is the printmaker's printmaker. Her exploration of handmade papers has led to new pen and brush original drawings on Japanese handmade papers using inks from natural materials such as persimmon, oak, iron and soot. Her subjects are plants too, in a botanical illustration style.
At Froelick Gallery www.froelickgallery.com 714 NW Davis



Mark R Smith creates sculptures and collage from found fabric. Early work comprised every hue imaginable in clothing left in arenas after sports events or concerts. He sewed them into relief sculptures in the pattern of the seating charts, with the lost clothing sealed in clear plastic corresponding to the area in which it was found. Later clear plastic sculptures stuffed with fabric took on different shapes. Smith has added 2d work of bright fabric to the mix. Christine Bourdette shows drawings complementary to her retrospective at the Marylhurst Art Gym. At Elizabeth Leach www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th



Blue Sky shows two artists' meditations on our society's relationship to mental illness. "Library of Dust" are David Maisel's photographs of 3489 canisters of ashes, the remains of people in Oregon's last mental institution, the Oregon State Hospital. The poignant sad story is a deep metaphor. We certainly haven't gotten it right yet.

Claudio Cricca shows "Faceless", photographs of men in Italy's last remaining mental hospitals. Forsaken by family, they live out lives measured by the mind's endless time. The work recalls Ward No 7 (The Psychiatry, 1984) by Alfonsas Budvytis photographed in crumbling Soviet mental institutions. Budvytis reportedly suffered post traumatic stress syndrome himself from wartime photography experiences.

Maisel speaks at the gallery Wednesday October 1 at 6PM and Cricca Saturday October 4 at 3PM. Free

At Blue Sky Gallery www.blueskygallery.org in the Desoto Building, 122 NW 8th. Opening 6PM-9



The Independent Publishing Resource Center, IPRC, shows small prints by Shannon Buck and Carye Bye. Known for zines and now electronic publishing, the IPRC also has ancient iron presses. Buck and Bye met at those presses, formed a friendship and then each started their own presses! Buck founded Loaded Hips Press while making folk art style whirlygigs and performing tarot readings. Bye operates Red Bat Press, organizes the Bunny on a Bike ride every Easter and operates the Bathtub Museum collection of bathtub themed art. Bye and Buck tell the story of the ideosyncracies of each of the presses they have worked on by example works in lino-cut, woodblock and letterpress.

At The Independent Publishing Resource Center www.iprc.org
917 SW Oak St 6PM-9


As always the varied work at the Everett Station Lofts and the current show a the contemporary Craft Museum are recommended for your viewing pleasure.

October 2,3,4,5,6 Suddenly Ends

The Suddenly show - Suddenly.org, themed on landscape, settlement and social forces closes this week. The last events are interactive.

October 2 Nashville as Urban Metaphor

In Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville (158 minutes), an ensemble cast of seemingly unrelated individuals cross paths and dialog building toward an unexpected ending. Just like cities. Art historian James Glisson believes the film depicts a certain desperate ennui occasioned by suburban landscape: “Robert Altman’s ‘Nashville’ (1975) is a film whose sprawling narrative structure reflects the equally sprawling fabric of the automobile-dominated, postwar boom town in which it takes place. The odd segues with scenes passing like batons from one character to another often depend on the medium of traffic, whether as traffic jams or impromptu roadside meetings. Down to the film’s floating camerawork that captures actors from awkward viewpoints, it is a film in which nothing settles and its narrative momentum, like so much rubbernecked traffic, has a stop-and-go quality.” — James Glisson, “Photographing Sprawl,” Afterimage, January, 2008. (Maybe he should show Timecode)

After showing the film, everyone is invited to a drunken discourse, I mean to discuss and debate the thesis.

In the Chapel (big room, old building) at Milepost 5 www.milepostfive.com 900 NE 81st (go by MAX) 7PM Free



October 3 Indigenous and Modern Urban Patterns : Two Talks

At 3PM Thomas Sieverts gives an architecture focused talk. (See more about him next in the Back Room)

At 5PM a panel: Thomas Sieverts, University of British Columbia historian Coll Thrush (author of Native Seattle), PSU archaeologist Kenneth M. Ames (co-author of Peoples of the Northwest Coast), anthropologist Melissa Darby, and University of Puget Sound historian Douglas Sackman, discuss indigenous settlement before cities. Did it influence city patterns later?

Both in the UO White Stag building, Events Room (main floor) 70 NW Couch Free



October 4 Back Room Dinner and Discussion at a Parking Lot in Beaverton

The Back Room series of smart dinners have been noted in this blog before. They have been in special and varied locales drawing a salon of special and varied participants.

Tonight it is in an abandoned parking lot in Beaverton.

Thomas Sieverts meets Aaron Betsky. Sieverts was an architect of the revitalization of Germany's rust belt along the Ruhr River. The resulting web of small cities, connected by transit and webbed with greenspace, replaced the ghosts of mines, blast furnaces and contaminated soil. The plan area surrounding the Emscher River was so polluted that the river itself required its own treatment plant before draining into the Ruhr.

Now the area, of similar size to the Willamette Valley, is home to 5 million.

Aaron Betsky is director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and director of the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture. He has served as director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA.

A tasty Thai dinner and drinks with talks and an engaging audience is yours for $50. Info at the Back Room website.



October 5 Can Art and Writing Shape the City?

If the pen is mightier than the sword, is it mightier than the backhoe? Thomas Sieverts, artist Fritz Haeg, writer Lisa Robertson, curator Stephanie Snyder, and writer Matthew Stadler discuss it with you outside on Reed campus. Check the Suddenly.org website for details. 2PM Free



October 6 Discusion - Can policy liberate design, is it the reverse or are they orthogonal?

Thomas Sieverts, urban designer; Brad Cloepfil, architect and Reed Kroloff, director of Cranbrook take on the topic. Thomas Sieverts believes ”shaping of the landscape where we live can no longer be achieved by the traditional resources of town planning, urban design, and architecture. New ways must be explored, which are as yet unclear.” Brad may have some thoughts as a recent project mired for a time in a preservationist swamp, only to be dissed by reviewers on its completion. (needlessly in my opinion) Personally I believe there is a happy medium but policy and design have different time cycles and information flows.

At PNCA Swiggert Commons, Corner NW 13th and Johnson 6:30PM Free

October 1 ShowPDX Furniture Design

ShowPDX is a biennial furniture design event. Expect sustainable material themes, and ultra modern. Some of these one of a kind pieces may be selected by Design Within Reach for worldwide production. The opening evening will be a designers meet and greet with refreshments. At Portland State University Shattuck Hall, 3rd floor. Open Monday, Wednesday and Fridays in October 1-5. Free. Designers talk October 21, 6:30PM at Design Within Reach NW Everett x 12th. Opening Reception, Shattuck Hall, October 1, 6PM-9 $10

September 30 Creative Capacity, Racism and the Staff of Life

No one would argue that art in Portland couldn't use more money. Three interrelated questions are left to you to ponder. To whom, from where and for what.

The Creative Capacity initiative is organizing the art community to develop a consensus and lobby for a tax to create the funds.

That means you.

You can bet that well organized large cultural institutions are in line. The tax concept means gathering and spending funds in the Portland suburbs. Art it schools will no doubt be an apple pie ingredient to any plan. If you want money, you have to speak up!

My interest is how can we grow economically sustainable careers for the next generation of artists. That means making enough money from artmaking to support a family. Personal branding help, mentoring, sharing networks, coaching and mastering getting your art out into the world through the gallery system, web sales and commissions - public, corporate and individual. Out in the world means outside Portland.

Visual art is not the only Portland creative capacity. Independent fashion here operates in an ecosystem of design cotravelers. The Fashion Incubator was a great model for assisting designers in their careers. Similar principles apply to music, product design and performing arts.

A likely component of any plan is an expanded RACC, so understanding how they work is a good start if you are interested. Also recommended, get on the Creative Capacity mailing list.

There is plenty of information on the Creative Capacity site. The first public - you - town hall for the project is tonight. Free pizza for hungry artists. Bring friends! At PNCA, NW Johnson and 13th 5:30PM-8:30. Free



One artist who has created a career is Portlander Damali Ayo. Ayo makes visual art, installation, writes and performs around our intimate relationship with racism. And she has a sustainable clothing line, CROW. Ayo is much more articulate than I can be about her creative projects. She speaks about what she has been up to - “Shut up and change: A life as a social change artist” - tonight in the first of a series by Bitch Magazine. At Portland State University, Smith Memorial Center Ballroom 7PM $30 series of four talks or individual tickets at the door.



After all this if you are stilled bored, see an underground butoh dance performance. Carlos Ivan Cruz Islas of La Comedia Humana, creates ritual performance theater focused on social issues. His piece tonight, Arbol de Maize, Tree of Corn, explores changes adversely affecting Mexican life such as privatization of water and land, once cultivated in common, toxic contamination, deforestation, and genetic tampering with corn, Mexico's staff of life. Joining tonight is Portland Mexican Soriah. Soriah is a noted Tuvan throat singer, recently winning third place a worldwide competition for throat singing in Tuva. This will be an intimate performance at a new space, Headwaters, in the Disjecta complex, 8371 N. Interstate Avenue. Reservations please: mail@hand2mouththeatre.org 8PM $10-15

September 28 Art on Landscape

We have landscape. We need more landscape-based art.

A seminal series was the Seattle-area Horsehead. Zittel makes great work in SoCal. Anna Fidler has done installation performance on Utah and New Mexico landscape. Scott Wayne Indiana hosted a great group show at Mt Scott Park.

For a few years, Tryon Creek Park has invited a few artists to make land-based art. This year it is Brennan Conaway, Portland, Oregon (Invader); Lee Imonen, Dexter, Oregon (The Source Series); Julie Lindell, Seattle, Washington (Nontrivial Pursuit); Jen Pack, Warrenton, Oregon (Forevergreen Tuffet) and Vicki Lynn Wilson, Portland, Oregon (Fung-US).

Sunday is family opening day for this year's artists. The park is located 11321 SW Terwilliger Blvd. More information on the project is at www.tryonfriends.org 1PM-4 Free

September 27 Rocking Demagnetic Biomorphic Style

Artist Patrick Rock, schooled in SF, has been making idea-based grand sculptures, including a giant inflatable hot dog. A person or two can get inside its 25 foot length. For some time he has converted his storefront home into a challenging art gallery, Rocksbox.

Tonight Rocksbox opens work by Bruce Conkle. Conkle samples the NW landscape and culture, including Bigfoot, through an ironic and playful lens. Owing to its storied commercial past, including as an alarm company, Rocksbox's labrynthian spaces are a perfect venue for Conkle's instalations, sculptures and 2d work. www.rocksboxfineart.com 6540 N Interstate 7PM-11 Free


Artist Hillary Pfeifer speaks on her biomorphic work, beautifully installed at Ogle, this afternoon. Worth seeing and you may enjoy the artist's bright sense of playfulness. At Ogle www.ogleinc.com Corner of NW Broadway and Everett 1PM Free


Another thing is a new experimental cabaret at Gallery Homelend, Demagnetic. Performers active in the experimental poetry, theater and dance scenes, David Abel, Linda Austin, Tony Christy, Bethany Ides, Mark Owens will no doubt bring a dada slant. www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th x Division 8PM

September 26 Gallery Love Menu

Jeanine Jablonski opens her new gallery FOURTEEN30, named by address. That would be 1430 SE 3rd, passed by Hawthorne Bridge viaducts above and near by Audiocinema. It was Laurel Gitlen's old space, Small A Projects.

Jablonsky knows not only the spirit of art but its innards. She plans to show sparky contemporary work, educating Portland collectors. The first show is by Devon Oder. Photographer Oder creates abstract photographic work which has been exhibited in group shows in LA's more experimental Chunk King Road gallery district.

We are looking forward to FOURTEEN30 unfolding before us great work!

www.FOURTEEN30.com 1430 SE 3rd Opening 6PM-9



Pop up shops, big thing in branding, have taken some time to get to Portland. But they find themselves so perfectly adapted, here, now. Pop up shops are short term retail instantiations, often with unique merch, in otherwise vacant retail-other spaces, sometimes with receptions and music. The perfect storm of beauty. There for a day, a week or a month.

Seaplane, Portland's first independent clothing store and early adopter of modded up reuse opens a pop up shop for Emily Katz this weekend. Katz has two primary vectors. The locally adapted embriodered shirts and jackets in her Bonnie Heart Clyde style; and clean design dresses which are sold here and in LA. Included too will be modded up shoes and jewelery. And her artwork, zines and music. Saturday and Sunday, you can bring a piece of clothing to be embroidered for a very reasonable fee. Friday Love Menu plays at 8.

At 919 NW 23rd www.emilykatz.com and www.seaplanedesign.com Friday 7PM-11, Saturday & Sunday retailish hours.

September 25 Fashion / Design

This is last Thursday on Alberta which is experimenting with closing the street to fossil fuel vehicles and turning it over to organic vehicles - you - until about 10 or so. I'm more interested in contemporary advancement over the vernacular as is well known (though I respect everything with integrity that is creative). Office is a lone outpost of contemporary on Alberta other than select street work - though Office promotes the reuse of metal typewriter machines over metal melting recycling. This Thursday Office opens the work of PNCA senior design students. This would be in advance of their thesis shows. To date, PNCA design has been 2d graphic as UO, AI and PNCA consider 3d industrial design programs. At Office www.officepdx.com 2204 NE Alberta 7PM-9



Though this blog is oriented to visual art, it is also interested in many Portland creative communities breaking new ground at international scale. That includes fashion for those interested in wearing something unique sometimes. I freely admit that's a challenge for me as a minimalist. Portland design-makers Emily Ryan and Liza Rietz make girl clothes in intimate quantity of infinite quality. Ryan tends toward a soft sensitive vibe and Rietz structure and pattern. What a sweet combination for a show tonight. They show their Fall clothing designs to you at a show at the Ace Hotel Cleaners. Advance tix at A Broken Spoke shop 2305 NW Savier. Show Ace Hotel Cleaners, corner SW 10th and Stark 7:30PM $5 advance 7 door

September 18 Stay Wild or Beginner's Luck at IPRC

Artist Justin "Scrappers" Morrison talks creative strategy. Make art and make a living! He also wins the copywriting award of the month: "Some themes he will discuss: staying wild, exploiting your cultural significance, brands are personalities with a message, everyone is an artist, the importance of doing it your damn self, optimistic losers always win, not keeping all your eggs in one basket, getting to the point, fun is sexy, and being resourceful". It's all part of the closing reception for his book - show at IPRC CAMP, which he self published. At IPRC 917 SW Oak #218 www.iprc.org 7PM free

September 14 City Dance

A free thing is a collaboration between modern dancers and 21st century music. Local dance designers Linda Austin, Linda K. Johnson, Tere Mathern and Cydney Wilkes have wrangled dance movers Jess Bollaert, Chane Gilbert, Julie Katch, Paige McKinney, Kaj, Anne Pepper, Rikki Rothenberg, Noelle Stiles, Jennifer Camou, Fawn Williams, Emily Stone, Karen Alexander, Heidi Diaz, Taryn Johnson, Lena Sradnick, Dina Colosimo, Kathleen Keogh, Lily Gael, Elizabeth Longphere, Lizzie Karr, Amit Bohara, Hannah Downs, Esther LaPointe, Faith Levine, Tere Mathern, Jim McGinn, Keely McIntyre, Eric Nordstrom, Mike Barber, Tracy Broyles, Meshi Chavez, Jenn Gierada, Carla Mann and Lucy Yim. The Third Angle Music Ensemble has selected music from Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley. Randy Gragg provides writing and research.

All of this is a meditation on the collaboration of seminal modern dancer Anna Halpern and her landscape architect husband, Lawrence Halpern. The sites are the fountains and plazas designed by Lawrence Halpern in Portland. The music has been selected from composers who collaborated with the Halperns on their dance "happenings" in the 1960's. The event kicks off at the Keller Fountain, between SW Market and Clay. 3rd and 4th. Then it migrates South along the 3rd street to the other Halpern fountains. Repeats twice 1PM-3 and 4PM-6 and it's free!

September 12 Slavery Film and Indian Musics

Call+Response is a documentary on the outrage of the continuing existence of slavery around the world today. Yes, it is depressing that there may be more slaves in absolute numbers today than in the past. The film combines interviews with Madeleine Albright and Nicholas Kristof, a current soundtrack and pop figures into a volunteer-funded, virally distributed film with an email vacuuming website which would make Howard Dean and David Plouffe proud. It's a model any organizer can learn from. The film opens later in the month in theaters, but you can see it tonight in the community room at Milepost 5. www.milepostfive.com 7PM


In a epic example of misscheduling, there are three classical Indian music concerts this evening.

Kalakendra presents the Mishra Brothers, Sajan and Rajan. The esteemed vocalists have won the Padmabhushan, awards from Sangeet Natak Academy, Kumar Gandharva, Snageet Bhushan and Sangeet Ratna. Everyone knows the special character of siblings singing together. The Mishras will be accompanied by Subhen Chatterjee, deciple of Swapan Chowdhury. Chatterjee has collaborated with many Western musicians. Sanatan Goswami accompanies on harmonium. www.kalakendra.org At the First Congressional Church 1126 SW Park 8PM $25 ($75 for a year of concerts)

Up the street, Shubhendra Rao, disciple of Ravi Shankar, performs on sitar. Rao will be accompanied on tabla by Ty Burhoe, disciple of Ustad Zakir Hassain. Rao also performs as a duo with his wife, the Dutch cellist Saskia Rao-de Haas, though not tonight. The event is organized by some of the people responsible for music at Yoga Shala and takes place at the First Baptist Church, SW 12th and Taylor 8PM $25

At PCC Rock Creek in Beaverton, Raskia has a master class, essentially an informal concert in music speak, by violinist brothers Dr. Mysore Manjunath & Mysore Nagaraj accompanied by Srimushnam Rajarao on Mridangam. Info at www.raskia.org Event PCC-Rock Creek 7:30 Free

September 10 Sudenly Milepost 5

Reed's Coolley Gallery mounts serious and challenging shows. I once saw an installation with live sheep in the gallery. Their current show, Suddenly, is mediation on cites in the form of collage.

Milepost 5 is experiment in non- and for-profit development of artist space. Reed's Coolley has established an instantiation there.

Smart talks, installation, art and sound inagurate the space tonight on the 4th floor deck. Anthropologist-traveler Colin Beattie opines on greater Beaverton, which encompasses Guatemala and the Sonoran Desert in it's mini-melting pot. Mike Merrill™, the man who is a free market corporation presents his latest projects. Michael McManus has a sound installation; Shawn Records, photographs and Gary Wiseman, famous for his collaborational-explorative tea parties and Kitchen Sink installation projects is up to something new.

At Milepost 5 www.milepostfive.com 900 NE 81st (go by MAX) 7PM Free

September 7 Urban Edible Art Gym

Urban Edibles is your local guide to stalking the wild asparagus. All food plants were once wild. Yes, maybe they have improved for the better by millennia of cultivation and breeding. But maybe they have not. Many medicines too are derived from plants and there are many more yet to be rediscovered.

Urban Edibles leads a plant discovery walk, identifying edible and medicinal plants in Northwest yards and Forest Park. Plus you get a nicely designed guide with useful factoids like "Wild Carrot - Use with caution, looks similar to poisonous hemlock. Root can be eaten like a carrot. Historically used as a contraceptive." Their zine, 10 Weeds You Can Eat! is available at Reading Frenzy

Meet at the corner of Wallace Park, NW 25th and Pettygrove. A bonus is navigating some of the secret hill stairs in the neighborhood. 2PM Free



The Art Gym is a gym repurposed to gallery at Marylhurst College in Lake Oswego. That means high ceilings. The school has a good art program, in approach more akin to Evergreen College, meaning self designed and directed, and with many returning students. The school is quite a distance down Route 43/McAdam Blvd., and once on the campus, the gallery is not the easiest to find. It's worth it though, as they have been curating shows of accomplished regional artists and documenting them with catalogs for 28 years. They have a knowledgable curator, who primarily seeks mid- to late-career artists, though sometimes emerging artists may be found in group shows.

This month sculptor Christine Bourdette shows Riddles, Bunnyheads and Asides. Bourdette was in the Art Gym's first show in 1981 as an emerging artist. She was the first winner of the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship. If you are designing your art career, artists like this can be a guide.

At the Marylhurst College Art Gym. 17600 Pacific Highway (Hwy 43-McAdam Blvd.) The gallery is in the top floor of building A. Reception 3PM-5 Free

September 6 Classical Indian Violin

Dr. L. Subramaniam's considerable creative art spans the Carnatic music of India, Western classical music, world fusion music and collaboration with noted western jazz musicians. He is also a medical doctor. He performs, with a team of percussionists, for the ten year anniversary of local Indian music presenter Rasika. At the Northwest Children's Theater Building 1819 NW Everett 7PM $20,25,35 or advance at the website. If you become a member, all the concerts are included.

September 5 Eastside Art Openings and 24 Hour Repair Project

Pancake Clubhouse Historic Township and Activity Destination for the Living Arts cordially invites you to a new Neighborhood Project! 24 hour artist-handyman in residence, Brian Merkel, requests you to bring objects in need of repair to the Clubhouse. Of course, the definition of "repair" is entirely up to the whims of the artist! Really, could it be any other way? It begins with a reception at 6PM. At 9PM Merkel will knock down a wall in the house. You can pick up your "repaired" items at a performance -ceremony Sunday. I guess you just have to come to see the results. There will be an installation by Urban Edibles and tasty refreshments too. The Social Practice Group is hijacking TBA, they will distribute their own supplemental TBA catalog at the event. At 906A NE 24th 6PM-9 Free


Some of the most interesting shows have already opened, but that doesn't mean that they can't open twice. Included are:

The New American Art Union has a camera obscura show by Ethan Jackson. Orbis Viridis Obscurus is more than I expected and worth the time to hang out in the camera obscura (the more daylight, the better) and see what he has done with video. At New American Art Union www.newamericanartunion.com 922 SE Ankeny 6PM-9 Free

Volume is a group show curated by Jeff Jahn at Worksound. See artists Sean Healy, Nathan Shapiro, Joe Thurston, Salvatore Reda, Laura Fritz, Stephen Funk, Ellen George, Arcy Douglass, Jesse Hayward, Josh Smith, Adam Sorensen, Karl Burkheimer, Stephen Slappe, Damien Gilley, Stephanie Robison and Philippe Blanc. At Worksound 820 SE Alder


In the 811 Block Redux has Ryan Berkley's Dream Circus and Grass Hut continues Andrew Brandon.


The brother, Stewart Harvey, of the accidental entrepreneur who converted a wild irreverent Cacaphony Society desert campout into the money making Burningman festival of 50,000 shows photos of Burningman at 23Sandy. There are plenty of photographs of the surreal event about, but the vast blankness of desert space and neutral density filter eating glare, to say nothing of mechanism-hostile alkaline dust, makes capturing good images more of a challenge than it looks. www.23sandy.com 623 NE 23 at Sandy


Newspace Photo shows two photographers dedicated to chemical processes. Maro Vandorou shows platinum prints of a very old cemetery in her native Greece. Kay Denton shows gold toned prints imaged with a very good focal plane - 8x10 inch film - but through vintage lenses, back before lens design became good. At Newspace Photo www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th

September 4 Westside Art Openings

Sean Healy shows wall sculptures at Elizabeth Leach. Healy has long been known for work incorporating large numbers of similar elements in cast materials. Tonight these elements include colorful miniature teardrop camping trailers and his take on picket fences. Another body of work are skeletal dyptic tracings of wild animals paired with quilts and lace. Healy has been successful at bringing his work to Europe and creating public art commissions. He is also represented at the Volume show at Worksound. www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th


"Blurring the Line: the art of thread" are modern extrapolations made with fabric and thread. Artists Hildur Bjarnadottir, Diem Chau, Linda Hutchins and Jen Pack produce minimalist work with just enough complexity, elegance and mystery. At Pulliam Deffenbaugh www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com 929 NW Flanders early close 8PM


Portland sculptural artist Hillary Pfeifer creates agglomerations of handmade elements. Sometimes they remind of toys, or bugs or some microscopic creature rendered large. This work is perfect for Ogle which often fills its space with grand sculpture or arte povera-feeling work. www.ogleinc.com 310 NW Broadway early close 8:30PM


Tad Savinar is a smart Portland artist with a smart conceptual bent, often word centered. Some of his work falls into the realm of information aesthetics. Along with sculptures by Goldsmiths-minted Seattle sculptor Victoria Haven. At PDX Contemporary Art www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders early close 8PM


P:EAR is an art program for homeless youth. Each kid is different and some are reached by making art. P:EAR pairs the kids monthly with a local artist and they all make coinspired work which is shown in the gallery. They have moved from their old decrepit building with flooding and a failing roof to new digs with a larger gallery space opening tonight. Artists Hayley Barker, Irana Douer, Maureen Gubia and Nicole Erika Smith share the walls with the kids. At P:EAR www.pearmentor.org 338 NW 6th


"All I can do is dream" is a show of dream inspired work by Lisa Beyer, Kristie Louderbough, Meg Peterson and Shanon Schollian at a new gallery, the Fontanelle. www.fontanellegallery.com 205 SW Pine


For an art history moment, see prints by Catalan surrealist Joan Miró at Augen www.augengallery.com 716 NW Davis early close 8:30


You have to admire the scale of Dutch-now in Portland artist Henk Pender's work. They are grand realist works with a rough surreal edge. I haven't seen this show, his edge may be tapering. At Laura Russo Gallery www.laurarusso.com 805 NW 21st


Don't forget the other Desoto block galleries including the Manuf®actured show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. The show, curated by ID Magazine editor Steven Skov Holt and art historian Mara Holt Skov, encompases work made from repurposed mass manufactured objects. Sort of a crafty take on artists like Choi Jeong Hwa. This is an excellent example of where the Museum of Contemporary Craft wants to take the discussion of craft aesthetics. Yes! At the Museum of Contemporary Craft www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org 724 NW Davis


The Everett Station Lofts are recommended, as always - bounded by NW Everett, Broadway, Flanders and 6th.

August 30 Butoh on Vashon

A friend is living at a beautiful Indonesian temple on Vashon. (That is not my picture, thanks whoever took it though!) A successful Seattle importer disassembled it in Indonesia then brought Balinese craftsmen to reassemble it here. A dream linking islands.

Tonight another dream unfolds linking islands.

Butoh originated in Japan. Initially all the performers were men. Women performers soon added their own inner body history. That is the story tonight.

Three performers, Jyl Shinjo Brewer, Maureen Freehill and Bridget Scott have all studied butoh and Zen in Japan for several years. Two started their training with Joan Laage, who studied with Hakutobo, an all woman group created by the founder of Butoh, Hijikata, in the last phase of his artistic development. So the lineage of the three is special and this night too.

This evening they present 3 Ways To Change.

The spot is small and private, so if you know me, contact me and I can provide more details.

On Vashon Island, Washington. 7:30PM $10

August 30 Pump up the Volume

Volume is a group show with artists Sean Healy, Nathan Shapiro, Joe Thurston, Salvatore Reda, Laura Fritz, Stephen Funk, Ellen George, Arcy Douglass, Jesse Hayward, Josh Smith, Adam Sorensen, Karl Burkheimer, Stephen Slappe, Damien Gilley, Stephanie Robison and Philippe Blanc. Should be good. Curated by Jeff Jahn. At Worksound 820 SE Alder 7:00PM-9:30 Free

August 30- September 1 Anime Festival

Portland is far from Japan but has a special relationship. Some say Hood resembles Fuji.

Anime is one of Japan's most successful exports. Some lands here with Kumoricon, Portland's anime festival. This mostly all ages event features cosplay chess, anime jeopardy, an AMV iron chef competition, karaoki cosplay, gaming, anime showings and outtakes, dance events, workshops, pirates vs ninjas and the Ramen Fire Bowl Attack! All too dificult to explain, but you can get the flavor at www.kumoricon.org At he Lloyd Center Doubletree Hotel. Saturday, 8:00AM-2:00AM; Sunday, 8:00AM-2:00AM; Monday, 8:00AM-5:00PM $20-35