April 4 Design Green Now!

EcoSystems is a Brooklyn-based furniture firm on a West Coast mission: a panel discussion on green design at some left coast schools, including here. Design using sustainable materials, fabrication; weighing lifecycle costs; the cradle to cradle credo; carbon footprinting; human-centered design - all are being incorporated into the programs of leading design schools.

The West Coast Design Green Now touches down at Western Washington University, The Art Institute of Portland, California College of the Arts and the University of California Long Beach. Each locale has a different set of panelists. If you have friends there who might be interested, let them know.

Portland panelists Richard Whitehall, Director of Industrial Design, Smart Design; Debbie Driscoll, Sustainability Group Account Director, Ziba; Peter Kallen - Men’s Product Design Director, Nau; Phil Berry, Principal, Sustainable Product Works present their views.

Full details of the program, the speaker bios and registration, which is required, may be found at Design Green Now. Design Green Now is laying the groundwork for green design competitions, perhaps you are a future participant. I'm a student of quality theory and there is a famous mantra: "quality is free". In the same vein, we will see that green is free too.

Sponsored by EcoSystems, Adobe, Core77, Design 21, GOOD, ReadyMade, Plyboo and Media Temple.

The event takes place Friday at the Art Institute of Portland, 1122 NW Davis. 6PM-8:30 Registration required. Free!

April 4 Eastside Art Openings

Trish Grantham and Amy Ruppel show their individualistic take on Russian dolls. At Grass Hut www.grasshutcorp.com 811 E Burnside

Destroy Store has prolific local artist Chris Haberman. www.destroystore.com 1712 E Burnside

Next door, Life+Limb has a show by Erik Railton, Old Song. Life+Limb specializes in inside zen gardening, including cacti that even I may not be able to kill. www.lifeandlimb.net 1716 E Burnside

Gallery Homeland has an international artist residency program. This month Swiss resident artist Christoph Hueppi shows Swarm Intelligence. The artist statement for the show relates swarms of bugs in India with the distributed algorithms in telecommunication networks that allow electronic outsourcing between the US and India. Me, I'm just thinking about the seasonal return of kitchen ants. www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th

Portland is an encaustic town, owing more to local artists who became interested and taught others, than to winter rains driving artists into medieval studios of art alchemy, mixing pigment and wax over flame. If you are interested in the topic, the Marki gallery is hosting a traveling group show of encaustic work. Talk there Saturday at 3PM by the curator. www.brianmarki.com 2236 NE Broadway

Newspace has Hawaiian landscape photographs on manipulated Polaroids by Ivan Wentland. www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th

April 3 Westside Art Openings

Some of the best time entertainment value viewing art may be had at the Everett Station Lofts and the DeSoto Building.

DeSoto, comprising Blue Sky Gallery, The Nine Gallery, The Charles Hartman Gallery, The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Augen and Froelich cover a range of superbly curated work in for profit and non profit spaces. The DeSoto Building is bounded by Broadway, Davis and NW Park.

The Everett Station Lofts are live work spaces, changing always, showing spirited and usually authentic work. It's faster for you to see than me write about. Some notable spaces are Sequential Art, which has activated its website, including references to other galleries; Tilt Gallery, known for seriously curated installation; and The Pony Club with very inexpensive drawing-style work begging to be taken home by you. The Everett Station Lofts are bounded by Everett, Broadway, Flanders and NW6th. Generally open until at least 9:30PM


Ogle has work by prolific and provocative Scott Wayne Indiana. Indiana has organized park land art shows and embedded dozens of axes in the ceiling above art viewers. He is the instigator of the Horse Project, the toy ones attached to rings in the curb from the pre-fossil fuel days; he has been collaborating with Harvest Henderson and Andrea Zittel on the Cali desert Geochain. This month Ogle has 3 Indiana works: "Blown Over", "Door Man" and "one day you motherfuckers will See". He also has a performance at the gallery "Waiting in Line" April 19. Ogle www.ogleink.com 310 NW Broadway


The Elizabeth Leach Gallery has collages of layered paper cutouts and also bright jigsaw puzzles by Al Souza. Fernanda D'Agostino has blown glass sculptures and a video installation. Elizabeth Leach Gallery www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW9th


James Lavadour paints seemingly effortless abstract landscapes. Sublime. PDX Contemporary Art www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders


Masters Reborn are today's artists reimagining classic old chestnuts from art history. Reimaginary artists inclide Krista Huot www.kristahuot.com, Jeremiah Ketner www.smallandround.com, Makiko Sugawa www011.upp.so-net.ne.jp/makiko/menu.html, Neri www002.upp.so-net.ne.jp/d-bird/, Cristy Road www.croadcore.org/start.htm, Naoshi www.naoshii-u-iii.com, Daniel Lim "fawn fruits" www.daniel-lim.com, Arisu www.arisuart.com, Skaffs www.skaffs.com, Yoshi Tajima www.radiographics.jp, Nishi www.myspace.com/nishi89, Deseo www.deseoworks.com, Anke Weckmann www.linotte.net, Andy Council www.andycouncil.co.uk, Robert Hardgrave www.farmerbobsfarm.com, Kat Leuzinger www.katleuzinger.com, Milk www.myspace.com/logyu, Naomi Nowak www.naomi.se, Re-verse www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/re-verse/, Annali Olander www.anneliolander.com, Aaron Sikstrom http://seethrou.carbonmade.com/, David Macdowell www.macdowellstudio.com, Miss Kika www.misskika.com, Sophie Varela www.sophievarela.com, Tessar Lo www.tessarlo.com, Ippei Gyoubu www.gyoubu.com, Used bandaid www.myspace.com/gingerbreadcoffin, Matt Linares www.myspace.com/kamikazecauser, Nati www.nati-art.com, Jeni yang (jeya pomkuri) www.jeniyang.com, Leeloo www.june-leeloo.com. All at Compound 107 NW 5th

April 2 Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The usual path for art is from artist to gallery, shop, cafe to your wall. Artists often trade works among one another. Art is now finding a home direct through artist websites, Etsy and Myspace. There is a secondary market though, where art is resold. An extreme example are art center auction houses with prices in thousands to hundreds of millions. In contrast, the secondary market in regional art, where it existed at all, has been behind closed doors and conducted in whispers. That is changing.

Seattle artREsource, connected to dealer Greg Kucera, has created a persistent visible secondary market for art. In Portland, Marilyn Murdoch mixes new shows with consigned resale at The Murdoch Collections. A more rational system would follow European droit de suite law, in which artists, or their heirs, receive royalties each time the art is resold. Ideally droit de suite would apply to private sales, and to emerging artists.

Mark Woolley presents a show this month Choice Cuts: Selected Work from Private Collections, a one time version of artREsource. The show is an excellent opportunity to see art of the 1990's in Portland, some earlier. How does that work fit between regional work in the Art Museum and today's art?

Artists include Rick Austin, Rick Bartow, Louis Bunce, Marc Chagall, Tom Cramer, Michael Dal Cerro , Richard Davis, Christian Eckhart, Howard Finster, David French, Gordon Gilkey, Francisco Goya, Paul Green, Anne Grgich, M.K. Guth, Sally Haley, Claudia Hart, Tom Hardy, Tyler Hays, Barry Haram, Charles Heaney, Bill Hoppe, Jerry Iverson, Manuel Izquierdo, William Jamison, Liza Jones, Mary Josephson, Barbara Kruger, LaVerne Krause, Ferdinand Leger, Fritz Liedtke, James Martin, Jack McLarty, Kenna Moser, Royal Nebeker, Alison O’Donoghue, Trude Parkinson, Robert Rauschenberg, Dana Roberts, Ralph Rosenborg, Laura Ross-Paul, Michele Russo, John Serl, Roy Setziol, Ku Fu Sheng, Russell Simmons, Corey Smith, Amanda Snyder, Jay Steensma, Eric Stotik, Jed Thomas, Marie Watt, Milton Wilson and Purvis Young.

At Mark Woolley Gallery www.markwoolley.com 817 NW 2nd

March 27 REBAR Re(MIXING) Landscape

REBAR is an arts group based in San Francisco. They have transplanted samples of offices, like conference rooms and file cabinets, to the desert, and transplanted samples of parks to parking places and bicycles. Orlo, a Portland group creating its own mix of art, literature and environment is bringing them to Portland to speak and agitate. Your ideas and participation are encouraged, maybe re(mixing) Portland's environs. That opportunity would be at the Portland AIA office, 403 NW 11th (x Flanders). Doors 6PM, talk 6:30 $5

March 22 Analog Shutoff as Art

The New American Art Union launches its Couture series with an opening tonight. Ruthann Brown has competitively selected artists to take over the entire gallery with an installation. The opportunity, so rare in Portland, comes with an even rarer stipend.

The first NAAU Coture is The Video Gentlemen - Carl Diehl, Jesse England and Mack McFarland - with their installation Bring Your Own TV (BYOTV).

This affects you. So for a little background, this map shows how radio waves are used in the USA. All the large blue areas are AM radio, FM radio and TV. All of the other little slices are used by everything from garage door openers to WiFi, satellites, taxicabs, navigation for ships at sea, GPS, thousands of little uses. Sidestepping for a moment the content value today of television, the television spectrum is literally valuable, on the order of $5 billion per nationwide channel if it's used for mobile phones. In our democracy, the radio frequencies are considered owned in common by you and me. Thus the government, acting on our behalf, decides who gets to transmit what on each frequency, under the approving authority of the UN. The government decided in the early 1990's, in response to Japanese competition in high definition television, to move TV to digital in a project known as "The Grand Alliance". That situation seems so quaint now. Integral to the move, is shutting off the analog TV broadcasts that began in 1926. (Cable TV, satellite TV and Internet TV are not affected) If your TV gets its programs from an antenna, it will be useless after February 17, 2009 without a converter box and maybe even an antenna on the roof. That is called the "analog shutoff", which was conveniently scheduled to be after the Superbowl TV broadcast.

Note your TV may also be toxic waste because all tube TV's contain lead to keep some of the x-rays in (really). So don't just throw that TV in the trash! The [LCD] flat screen TV's, in contrast, have mercury as a dangerous ingredient for the next few years.

You can read about the Video Gentlemen's take on all of this and bring your own TV to the gallery to receive their artistic transmissions of some pretty awesome content.

The Video Gentlemen reference artists' use of TV and video which is documented in the excellent reference Illuminating Video. Early video artists, such as Nam Jun Paik were invited nto television studios to make work. As equipment became affordable, they moved into the DIY realm. There was a pretty awesome use of infrared video, then available only to the military, in Rauschenberg's Open Score, produced in the 1960's by E.A.T.

The wedge shaped room taking most of the gallery is actually a secret TV studio of circuit bent video gear. It's complete with a green screen to chromakey talking heads live into video's virtual world. The artists will produce live programs from the secret broadcast room at times during the show's run.

The real interests of the show are the videos the artists have selected to broadcast. Check the broadcast schedule, and tune in!

Artists' reception tonight. At New American Art Union 922 SE Ankeny 5PM-7 Free

March 20 ArtSpark!

If you are reading this, you are in the Portland art world. Probably in the segment comprising visual artists, collectors, and creatives compelled to examine the unfolding edge of culture purposed for good. You are probably laying down that front edge.

That's one facet of Portland's art world. But there are more such as institutions like the symphony, museums, theater groups, childrens art programs, dance companies, multicultural arts programs, public art programs and many more.

All this exists beside a representative democracy system elected to tax and spend. The aformentioned groups and the city have created a Creative Capacity Initiative with elements based on the writings of Richard Florida. They have formed two high level advisory boards and are working with RACC which dispenses Federal and State money as well adminstering public art and sculpture projects.

One of the Creative Capacity projects is finding funds to promote Portland's creatives, artists, designers, small fashion labels, exhibitions, and live-work spaces.

ArtSpark is a monthly gettogether with the leaders of the program to meet you. They want to know what you need. If you don't tell them, all the money and effort will go to the aforementioned institutions. So this is your chance. Go to the ArtSpark website and RSVP, then stop by any 3rd Thursday of the month. Tonight it is at the Living Room Theater Lounge, NW 10th and Stark. 5-7PM

February 19 Architects and Carbon Traders Speak

Tonight in a continuing series, Portland architects Jeff Kovel, Carrie Schilling and Bill Neburka speak about their work. Kovel and his Skylab Design Group have built speculative elegant projects such as the East lounge, the Foug Fir lounge, Sinju, soaring modern residences, the mixed use building at SW Alder and 12th, and provided retail design for Nike and Nau. Schilling+Neburka at Works Partnership with its experimental arm, Project Cityscope (responsible Portland Pecha Kucha), have worked extensively with developer Brad Maslin creatively reusing old buildings. It should be a free ranging discussion and it's free! At Design Within Reach, Corner of NW Everett and 12th 7PM


Addressing global warming will require everyone working individually and together. We can do it. It is no secret that over 1/3 of the new money invested by leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists is focused on green projects today. Another emerging business-oriented approach is carbon trading and caps. In this system, carbon emissions are limited to a measurable number, the cap, and each emitter is given credits proportional to their emissions under the cap. Emitters can trade the rights among one another, those investing in reduced emissions can trade their credits to those slower to invest. It is a key element of the Kyoto Protocol. The Western Climate Initiative, under both Republican and Democratic governors, are committed to carbon trading as a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gasses. Tonight's talk in Portland's venture community is on the business of carbon trading. Steve Gutmann from EcoSecurities explains how they facilitate carbon trading in concert with financing new renewable energy projects. The event is sponsored by Tie Oregon, a group of entrepreneurs. At PSU University Place Building 310 S.W Lincoln St. 6PM-9 $35, $15 students.

March 10 Anissa Mack Speaks at PSU

Anissa Mack, famous for baking pies at an art museum and giving them free to passers by in NY, is back. She has shown at Small A. Tonight she speaks of her work, very much in the social practice mold - the idea and connection with and between viewers is the thing. Mack speaks tonight at PSU 5th Ave Cinemas 510 SW Hall Room 92 7:30PM Free

March 7 Eastside Art Openings

Destroy Store has small bright paintings by Nicole Linde. Some look like undersea coral reefs caught in the diver's light and surrounded by blackness. At least that's what she showed at an Everett Lofts studio show. Be surprised. At Destroy www.destroystore.com 1712 E Burnside 7PM-11


In the 811 Block

No one would characterize the art of Grass Hut as lacking character. Thus so appropriate that inaugurating their new space with wider store frontage is the show "Balls Out". Yea enthusiasm! Grass Hut artists Esther pearl Watson, Mark Todd, Luke Ramsey, Martha Rich, Scrappers, Bwana Spoons, Andrew Brandou, Martin Ontiveros, Le Merde, Cupco, Wrecks, Carson Ellis, Brian Ralph, Jeff Soto, Roberta Alyward, Dawn Riddle, Shawn Wolfe, Chris Johanson, Kiyoshi Nakazawa, Rodney Alan Greenblat, David Wien, Maija Fiebig, APAK, Ryan Jacob Smith, Tim Biskup, James Jean, Lisa DeJohn, Reuben Rude, Will McCurtin, Evan Harris, Monica Canilao, Evah Fan, Deth P. Sun, Jesse Reno, Ron Reggie Jr., Kurt Halsey, Clutch, Ryan Bubnis, Chris Ryniak, Arbito, Oliver Hibert, Spencer Hibert, Dave the Chimp, John McCambridge, Colin Johnson, Jun Seo Hahm, Amanda Visell, Joshua Herbolsheimer, Mark Nagata, Farel, Scott Saw, Meredith Hamm, Skinner Davis, Cho-Chan, Jill Bliss, Souther Salazar, Gary Baseman, Kristin Cammermeyer, Mark Warren JacQues, Corey Lunn, Corey Smith and Maja Nakazawa represent! Sharp eyes will note that this is a greatest hits show and for everyone a chance to see the range of art Grass Hut is known for in just one visit. All the artists started with a panel supplied by Bwana and Scrappers but the results are highly varied. At Grass Hut www.grasshutcorp.com

Redux has collage by Sand Francisco artist Lisa Congdon. The shop specializes in art, jewelery and accessories remade from the waste stream. www.reduxpdx.com

All at 811 E Burnside


Newspace is known for straight photography, well curated, ranging to very current. This month they expand with a show based on photography, but incorporating "journal entries, letters, emails, drawings, poetry, found objects and personal keepsakes" in service of a life. That life is a 14 year slice of the photographer Bobby Abrahamson. He has entitled the effort Rabbit, paean to his totem animal, the rabbit, and the rabbit dynamic of running from its fears while at the same time seeking social connection. Maybe also an Updike reference. Part of the project was developed in residency at Caldera. At Newspace Photo www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th


Ann Ploeger has made beautiful portraits of Portlanders at home. Her specialty is an almost faded Kodachrome palate adding instant nostalgia to many of her subject's precious thrift finds; many of them are barefoot too. Her colors though are now shifting to bright hues, almost to the cross processing point. That may be with the controlled assistance of Pushdot who help photographers with color management from scan or electronic file to the final ink jet pigment print. Pushdot has relocated to a new space in the industrial SE, near Newspace and this is the maiden voyage for the gallery attached to their electronic photo printing service. Pushdot www.pushdotstudio.com 1021 SE Caruthers St


Artists Karl Burkheimer, David Corbett, Arcy Douglass, Jeff Jahn, Todd Johnson, Jesse Hayward, Sean Healy, Cris Moss, Jenene Nagy, Joe Thurston, Josh Smith, and Ryan Suther are grist for the show "Dudes Night Out". In the mind of curator Chris Moss, the show is an analogue for the process by which Portland artists exchange ideas and provide support for one another. Recommended. At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th x Division 6PM-9

March 6 Westside Art Openings

A standing recommendation are the Everett lofts. See. Respond. One interesting show is "In The Name Of" at Sequential. Artist Shell Frogge has documented white bikes and roadside memorials of autofatals. Frogge's photos are sometimes titles with those lost to collisions between 3000 pound metal and 100 pound people. www.sequentialartgallery.com Sequential Everett Lofts, Broadaway side.


Elise Wagner is an encaustic painter, she teaches encaustic classes and formulates the pigments too. Her show "Particle Maps" incorporates imagery from cloud chambers in which charged particles in high energy physics experiments are bent to spiral patterns by magnetic fields. The texture of encaustic painting gives the feel of medieval illustration; so a mashup of DaVinci and quantum physics. Butters Gallery 520 NW Davis - 2nd floor


Ethan Rose is a musician's musician. Solo, Small Sails, Adelade; he has made somewhat ambient music which in a group could rock out too. It is music for dreams. He has been generous playing for all manner of art events, making them something special. Now he shows an installation themed on music machines, player pianos, in a gallery. Not to be missed at Tilt 625 NW Everett #106 Until 9


James Boulton launched a new generation of large bright abstract painters here. He has spent the last few years getting schooled in LA's art world and this show is the result. Pulliam Deffenbaugh 929 NW Flanders Until 8


British American artist David Hockney is known for pop imagery and collage. Living now in LA, swimming pools have become somewhat of a motif. Usually his work is seen in museums, Augen this month shows prints. Augen downtown 817 SW 2nd


David Levinthal and Jim Riswold are pop artists in culture sampling. Oh so po-po-mo. Often they photograph toy figures of historical icons, like Hitler, Mao, BarbieTM, sports figures, Marie Antoinette. This month it is Jesus, rising from the dead. Augen DeSoto 716 NW Davis


I'm not sure having an art show "Keep Portland Weird" at City Hall is the best mashup for either. Nonetheless, work selected for "great quality, overall weirdness, and inherent Portlandness" can be seen at City Hall early, 5PM-7


Painter Lorna Nakell started with 1950's style illustrations of meals like something from old cookbooks. Her paintings are abstract now and enigmatic. You can see them at Beppu Wiarda 319 NW 9th


Compound has a group show themed on Alice in Wonderland which somehow has an Easter theme, maybe by virtue of the rabbit. Artists include: Yan Wei, Marie 'Mijn Schatje', Suicide, Orkibal, Brett Superstar , Zach Johnsen , Aya Kakeda , Hannah Stouffer, Mr. Gauky, Jason Graham, Eatcho, Johnny Siu, Jeremiah Ketner, Liz Adams, Geneva Smith, Scrappers, Pooka machine, Tatiana Krasovski, Kelly Tunstall, Axelhoney, Makiko Sugawa, Siori Kawamoto, Kate Durkin, Amanda Weathers Bradway, Panni Malek, Juri Ueda, Yagi Tomoko, Mhak, Imaone, Kaz, Questa, Ogi, Ina Takayuki, Naoshi. Compound 107 NW 5th


Laura Fritz shows a video installation Interspace at Quality Pictures. Fritz is known for laboratory-like artwork, enigmatic and maybe a little disturbing, in a good, puzzling way. At Quality Pictures 916 NW Hoyt


Moshi-Moshi has moved from East to West and is now curated by the owner, seller of vintage action toys and the like. So appropriate his first show is art inspired by b movie vintage character actor Mr. T. 916 SW Burnside


P:ear is taking over Backspace with art by kids in the project. P:ear engages homeless kids in art and more. Maybe that will cause them to move on, off the streets. 115 NW 5th 'til late


India, being bigger, has bigger problems, though it's arguable its family structure is more intact. Tonight, early, will be a party at the shop Chinoise. No cover charge, but sales tonight benefit Kids With Cameras project Hope House - Asha Niwas. It's a home for children born in Calcutta's brothels. At Hope House, they receive a free education through high school and an opportunity to form a new life. They also live in a very cool modern building. DJ The Incredible Kid will be playing the Indian subcontinent remixed and there will be complementary wine and vegetarian Indian snacks. 728 NW 23rd 6PM-10 Free


Meanwhile DJ Anjali will be playing vintage Bollywood soundtracks as part of the Hexasion series. Visuals provided by the Pareidolia consortiuma. A Paint and Copter project. Someday Lounge 125 NW 5th 7PM-9 Free

March 5-9 Reed Arts Weekend

RAW is a student planned and managed arts festival. This year's theme is Ghosts! There are plenty of events, installations and workshops. The artwork of Reed students are interspersed with that of visiting artists. It's all free to Reed students and alumni, with a small fee for the public for some performances. Some things of interest to me are the PaperRad show-films, Cat Chow, ghost stories, tEEth, Lucky Dragons and seeing unseen objects in the library. Spooky. Schedule on the website.

March 4 Dine for Darfur

There are plenty of awful things going on everywhere. So unnecessary. Death in the Darfur region of South Western Sudan in Africa is one. I thought starvation was common in Africa, but my experience there was different. Starvation in Africa is caused by drought sometimes, but more often, war. War disrupts farming and the flow of food. It concentrates large numbers of migrants or refugees onto land beyond its carrying capacity. That is Darfur. The conflict is overflowing into the Central African Republic and Chad. It may ignite all of Southern Sudan. It is getting even sadder.

Portland has attracted a center of Darfur concern with NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, born in Yamhill, visiting and writing extensively, the Portland Amnesty International chapter raising funds and awareness, and other local organizations involved. You can't get more involved though, than putting feet on the ground as does Portland's Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps provides emergency medical and relief workers, then works to develop community centered and directed long term programs.

Tonight dine or hoist a beer in a restaurant participating in Dine for Darfur and 25% of the bill goes to Mercy Corps for Darfur programs. So easy. The participating restaurants and taverns are listed on the website. Thank the venue, thank yourself. One night only. So easy.

March 3 Julio Cesar Morales at PSU

Tijuana born Morales studied in the SF Art Institute's New Genres program, graduated and now teaches there. He works in video, performance, murals, photography, tapping the aesthetics of Tijuana street art. A new generation of artists with a cause, Morales examines the Mexican cross border experience. Morales founded the Queen Nails Annex gallery near Bernal on the fringe of SF's gentrifying Mission district and has worked with Oakland's Creative Growth Center (see ANP#6), a program for artists with disabilities. Morales speaks tonight at PSU 5th Ave Cinemas 510 SW Hall Room 92 7:30PM Free