January 27 Ethan Rose Musics at Oaks Park Skating Rink

Musician Ethan Rose creates soundscapes. A previous canvas was in a group setting with Adelade-Small Sails. Solo Rose is also known for the sounds of film work and sound installations in art context. Oaks Park is a hundred year old amusement park on the banks of the Willamette River. There is a beautiful old skating rink that has survived submersive floods. Rose has sampled the organ in the rink, processed it and tonight performs live and processed sounds of the space. Admission to the show includes skate rental, so you can listen and skate if you like. At Oaks Park Skate www.oakspark.com Doors 7PM, Show 8. Duration 90 minutes. $12

January 25 Cult of Arduino Strikes a Blow for Poetry in Spare Rooms

Arduino is an electronic device popular with artists and creative people. It is a small chip you can attach things to for the purpose of sensing the environment and taking action like lighting something or moving a motor. Progressive art schools like the Royal College of Art have incorporated them into the curriculum for some time.

Arduino is used by artists worldwide and it is also a favorite of interactive clothing designers.

The chip is programmed in a simple language by plugging it into a USB port on any computer. Greg Borenstein can give you a short introduction. Portland Dorkbot offers a workshop today for you to build a basic Arduino with a LED you can control. It is smaller but not as elegant as the lilypad.

In 4 hours and for $25 you will build your very own Arduino to take home that actually works! Bring a laptop and some other stuff covered in the announcement. All the details here. At PNCA 1PM-5 $25


The Spare Room is a long running poetry reading series in Portland. They are 100. Not years, but readings - I have no idea what 100 is in poetry years. Today in celebration, local poets read 100 poems by 100 poets from the past 100 Years. You can find all the particulars here. At Gallery Homeland 2505 SE 11th x Division 2PM-6ish Free

January 24 Tribal Dance Collaborations Meet Indian Music Rollergirls from Tuva

Tracy Broyles, Meshi Chavez, Stephanie Lanckton are longtime dance collaborators now split between East and West Coasts. They have prepared a dance piece, Peregrinate, at a distance, to be presented both places. In each place, they started by walking simultaneously, gathering impressions and inspiration. The first instance of the resulting piece was performed at the Judson Church Movement Research Studio. Performance 7:30PM, DJ dance party after. At Performance Works Northwest 4625 SE 67th 7:30PM $15


Znama fusion bellydance dance company samples tango, flamenco, and cabaret. They perform tonight with live musicians Negara. At Marino's Cafe 4129 SE Division 8PM


The Rose City Rollers begin their new season with a rollicking evening of derby competition. What I like about roller derby is that it feels great to cheer. Details at rosecityrollers.com At the Portland Expo Center. Go by Train. Doors 5, rollers at 6PM $14/20 in advance $18/25 at the door


The diaspora of the Indian subcontinent runs forward and now increasingly in reverse. In either case, Portland has a strong and vibrant Indian community. One facet are performances of classical Indian music. Tonight sisters Smitha and Swetha Chakravarthy perform Carnatic vocal music, accompanied by Sailaja Dharmala on Violin and Ramamurthy Dharmal on Mridangam. There is something ethereal about the harmony of siblings and I'm sure this is no exception. The event is at the Intel Jones Farm Conference Center (JFCC) Auditorium, 2111 NE 25th Avenue, Hillsboro. If you are not familiar with the area, you might leave some extra time. 3PM Free

Janurary 23 Opening at Fourteen30

Artist Jessie Durost shows Fabrications and John Sisley, Endgames at Gallery Fourteen30. www.fourteen30.com 1430 SE 3rd 6PM-9 Free

January 22 Tuva!

Tyva Kyzy, Daughters of Tuva, are an all girl Tuvan throat singing troupe from, well, Tuva. They promote throat singing among the women of Tuva. It is controversial for women to sing, so that puts them somewhere between riot grrrls and the Rock and the Roll Camp for Girls. Tuvan throat singing requres singing the fundamental [note] while symultaneously establishing an overtone resonance in the vocal cavity. Easier to say than do. Throat singing is often performed in the landscape as part of the traditional nature-based Tuvan spiritual tradition. Tuva is a region of the Russian federation between Mongolia and Siberia which entered Western consciousness in the form of a book Tuva or Bust, chronicling the attempt of brilliant physicist and Nobel winner Richard Feynman to visit Tuva.

Tyva Kyzy performs in the khoomei, sygyt, kargyraa, ezenggileer, chylandyk, borbangnadyr and damyrak borbangy styles.

At Lewis and Clark Chapel www.lclark.edu 7:30PM Free (they also perform in Eugene Saturday and down the West Coast and in Hawaii - check the website)


The same evening the gallery shows reGeneration:50 Photographers of Tomorrow curated by William A. Ewing, Nathalie Herschdorfer and Jean-Christophe Blaser of the Musée de L'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the Hoffman Gallery on campus. 5PM-7. Free

January 14 Mass Sustainable Drinking and Drawing

The NW China Council China Business Network hosts a lunch with Bob Wise speaking on Sustainable Development Business Opportunities in China. Wise specializes in big picture consulting with governments on developing sustainability and green building programs. Past work includes developing programs for the City of Portland, Multnomah and Clackamas Counties, the State of Oregon, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Taiwan and Taipei. The lunch takes place at House of Louie Restaurant, 331 NW Davis in Chinatown. Reservations www.nwchina.org. Lunch and talk $20 members, $30 otherwise, talk $15 students. Noon-1:30


Drinking and Drawing is descriptively named; combining open source concepts, Henry Ford's mass production genius and fun! It's well known that animation is labor intensive. For drinking and drawing, preformed and ad hoc teams work sequentially and in parallel to produce a thousand frame animation in an evening. This is the second instance in Portland of this international phenomenon.

Teams of ten have 10 minutes to complete 8 frames each on index cards, 75 seconds per card. Frames are evolved by working on a light box, with the new frame overlaying the old. The work of subsequent teams are synced by starting on the light box with the last frame in the previous set. The first public D+D was at Portland's Platform Animation Festival seen in this video.

The resulting frames are seamed into a movie for a web treat.

The next D+D is sponsored by the Portland chapter of SIGGRAPH, geniuses at putting computers to work for beauty. Participate or watch at Someday Lounge www.somedaylounge.com 125 NW 5th 6PM $5, free for SIGGRAPH members

January 8 Westside Art Openings

Stumptown Coffee presents Universal Blobhand anchored by the Lucky Dragons' Sumi Ink Club cooperative illustrations and including work by E*Rock and Josh Orion Kermiet. Recommended. At Stumptown Coffee www.stumptowncoffee.co 128 SW 3rd

Valentines opens a collaborative fiber art show and show of crush portraits early and later hosts a party for Universal Blobhand with DJ Hostile Tapeover. At Valentines myspace.com/valentineslifeblood 232 SW Ankeny Art 6PM, party 9:30 Free

Fontanelle Gallery continues the show by collaborators The Oregon Painting Society maybe Portland's royal art lodge. They also perform music at 8 on electroacoustic musical instruments of their own construction. At the Fontanelle Gallery www.fontanellegallery.com 205 SW Pine

PNCA shows paintings by Molly Dillworth. Dillworth was part of the Suddenly! show and has collaborated with MK Guth of the Red Shoe Delivery Service and Ties of Protection and Safekeeping. Also showing is longtime artist and professor Robert Hansen and BFA student Clare LaMont Industries' "Grand Opening Going Out of Business Sale - 99% Off!!!" At the Feldman+BFA Gallery at PNCA www.pnca.edu Corner NW 13th and Johnson

Quality Pictures presents another strategic show of Portlanders complementing their strategic international stable of photographers and painters. NWX4:New Northwest Photography comprises Liz Haley, Andrew O'Brien, Alexis Pike, and Mark Searcy. Haley's photography, video and performance has been mentioned here before. Chas Bowie, assistant director at QP also has some interesting photographs in his That's a Negative blog this month. Show at Quality Pictures Contemporary Art www.qpca.com 916 NW Hoyt

More photos make an interesting show at Reading Frenzy of found photographs from Japan. Basically like a Found Magazine instant relatives project. Assembled (found?) by Neojaponisme art director Ian Lynam, and poignant in light of Japan's aging (and shrinking) population. Neojaponisme is an evolution of the fascinating Neomarxisme. See at Reading Frenzy www.readingfrenzy.com 921 SW Oak

The Mark Woolley Gallery presents a sweet pairing Land, Air and Sea by Trish Grantham, Evan Harris and Amy Ruppel. Grantham creates enigmatic, almost narrative illustration/collage. Harris' finely detailed work is of similar feel. Ruppel often works of the bird theme and wax media with a smart stripe sample from Photoshop. At Mark Woolley Gallery www.markwoolley.com 817 SW 2nd

Roller Derby is too outstanding. That is what the Rose City Rose Buds think too. They are the mom's auxiliary, raising money to buy equipment for young roller kids and creating a Jr. Roller Derby League. The roller derby moms analog of soccer moms. Take that chearleaders! They are having an art show at Moshi-Moshi. Stop by. At Moshi-Moshi www.moshi-moshi.com 916 West Burnside

Beppu Wiarda shows Winter Light, a show of light boxes by artists Deanne Belinoff, Bill Dean, Jennifer Doheny, Eric Franklin, Ellen George and Jerry Mayer, Ron and Kathryn Glowen, Jessica Hirsch, Midori Hirose, LeAnne Hitchcock, Kate Kaznowska, Heidi Kirkpatrick, Dam Markson, Dave Meeker, Noah Nakell, Cynthia Nawalinski, Gillis Neuray, TJ Norris, Nick Raffel, Ken Shores, Stephan Soihl, Steve Tilden, Mark Teresa and Judy Vogland. The show was curated by collector Leo Michelson. Some of the artists speak January 17 at 11. At Beppu Wiarda Gallery www.beppugallery.com 319 NW 9th

Always recommended for your exploratory pleasure are the Everett Station Lofts, NW Broadway and Everett, though some are taking the month off, and the DeSoto building NW Park and Davis.

January 7 Laura Fritz at The New American Art Union

Laura Fritz makes sculpture and installation with the feeling of an enigmatic science experiment. If you have worked in science, you know that is often how real experiments feel. While Susan Robb's take on science is playful, Fritz adds a layer of unease for the viewer, paralleling the sometimes profoundly disturbing directions research takes, but once something has been thought, it cannot be unthought. Taping societal unease with science has a long history - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the conflicts among the scientists who developed the bomb, reprised in Dr. Atomic, the political entanglements of the Critical Art Ensemble; many more will follow as science unfolds worldwide. See Fritz' science experiments. At New American Art Union www.newamericanartunion.com 922 SE Ankeny 6PM-9

January 4-5 Lucky Dragons

Lucky Dragons are a beautifully named collaboration of art and music, named for a Japanese fishing vessel, Lucky Dragon No 5. Lucky Dragon No 5, Daigo Fukuryu Maru 第五福龍丸 was contaminated by radioactive fallout from the test of the first practical hydrogen bomb, Castle Bravo, on Bikini Atoll in 1954. The fishermen were in the official safe zone, but unexpected explosive power of Castle Bravo resulted in burns and radiation sickness for the crew and contamination of their fish. When Lucky Dragon No 5 returned to Japan, it ignited the Japanese anti-nuclear movement. The film Godzilla, in which a dinosaur contaminated by radiation takes revenge upon civilization was inspired by the incident. The fishing boat is preserved today in a museum in Dream Island Park, Tokyo.

Lucky Dragons performances are interactive, that means you. They have developed a participatory musical instrument make a baby. Their Sumi Ink Club is a cooperative drawing project which spans independent instantiations such by a group of third graders, to instances sold in galleries, shown in museums or free for download, all of identical work, simultaneously. The Lucky Dragons Sumi Ink Club project shows at Stumptown beginning Thursday.

The Sumi Ink Club open drawing session is Sunday 2PM-5 at the Perfect Fit. They perform later Sunday at Hush with White Rainbow, Rob Walmart, & Dash. 14 NW 3rd upstairs. 8PM $5-10 They talk Monday in PSU's Shattuck Hall, Room 212, 1914 SW Park Avenue, at the corner of SW Broadway and Hall on the PSU campus. 7:30PM Free

January 2 One Eastside Art Opening

Many Eastside art spaces are taking a new year's rest this evening with last month's shows up through Saturday January 4th.

Grass Hut invites you to make art with us. They are supplying paper and pens, so come sit on the floor or anywhere and make whatever and hang it on the wall! At 811 E Burnside 5PM-9 Free