For my writing efficiency and your viewing stop by the multigallery DeSoto Building NW Broadway and Davis and the Everett lofts NW Broadway and Everett. 'Nuff said.
Chemistry-based photography is strong still in Portland. Newspace Photo is one resource if you need a darkroom. The New Antiquarians is a show by Chris Bennett, Rachel Heath, Leanne Hitchcock, Christine Laputa and Sika Stanton, some of whom are closely connected to Newspace. Each photographer's work has a look harking to classic photography. Bennett's landscapes recall the post-Civil War Western photographers like O'Sullivan and Jackson. They hauled up to 24 inch glass plates, coated them in a tent darkroom, exposed them, them hauled them back East by donkey. Heath photographs unclothed women. While painting nudes was acceptable earlier, in photography is suffered taboo for years. Heath's approach is more akin to the current work of Leonard Nemoy with a Bellocq aesthetic. Hitchcock works in gridded landscape multiples, producing a meditative whole from the cognitive dissonance of her windowed visual field, aka sampling. Laputa is known for fiercely detailed black and white landscapes. The overwhelming visual detail is an aesthetic dear to me. Stanton is bold in her portrait making. Sometimes working in archaic processes, she experiments with identity, and its ambiguity. See it for yourself at Chambers Gallery www.chambersgallery.org 207 SW Pine
Cynthia Mosser shows Cool Perennials, psychedelic abstractions at Augen. www.augengallery.com 817 S.W. 2nd
Amanda Wojick wowed Portland as a museum biennial selectee with her sculptures made of thousands of paint chips. Her new show, sight line, is a collection of sculptures one related to another. At Elizabeth Leach www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th
