Sunday, August 28, 2011

August 28 Research Club Brunch #17

Guests today are Church!, Tessa Hulls, Will Justice and Lisa Radon. It's a potluck with speakers and a chance to talk to other artists. In a focus on reducing waste, please bring a cup, plate and utensils! At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th x Division Noon-3ish Free

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

August 25 Last Thursday

Appendix has a series of five sculptures, Passengers from the Relative to the Absolute, by Sanela Jahić. Jahić, from Slovenia, is known for artist-viewer controlled kinetic sculptures including electronic fire sculptures. Her thesis traces the history of kinetic sculpture. It is a great accomplishment by Appendix to present Sanela Jahić's first show in the US. Portland's Publication Studio has a survey of her work in book form and that lead to the connection to Portland. There will also be a performance by Sarah Johnson which may involve music. Appendix Project Space. On the alley between 26th and 27th, South of Alberta. www.appendixspace.com Map 7-10ish Free



Dustin Zemel opens Towards Omniscient Documentary. It is usually easy to identify personal experience as "real". It's the trick of documentary film-video to make a simulation of reality that attaches the cinematic response we've learned from childhood. It's done by choices in everything from lens selection, camera moves, lighting, camera settings, how sound is captured, to editing and the added soundtrack. Zemel is interested in exploring an expanded documentary, with more presentation variables and interaction possibilities. This work made on the iPhone, traces a family reunion. False Front Studio www.falsefrontstudio.com 4518 NE 32nd Map 7-10 Free



Ampersand has War. Always War. by Seattle painter Chris Crites. They are acrylic, and based on primarily portraits from the news or the archives of war, on paper bags. A book of his other series, Mug Shots, will also be released by Ampersand. Amersand Vintage Printed Material www.ampersandvintage.com 2916 NE Alberta, Ste B. Map 6PM-10 Free



Printmaking studio Flight 64 presents Multiple Maniacs! It's a benefit sale including $5 prints to fund better ventilation for the studio and setting up for etchings. Flight 64 Print Studio www.flight64.org 2934 NE Alberta Behind Bella Faccia Pizza on the NE 29th-30th Alley. Map 4PM-9 Free



The Goodfoot opens artists andyvanoverberghe, Brenda Dunn, Erin Nations & Tony Morgan. www.thegoodfoot.com/gallery 2845 SE Stark Map Starts 5PM

August 24 Philosophy Talks Beauty

The art and philosophy discussions, Praxis, continue tonight with Jason Brown's discussion of beauty. His talk, In Defense of Beauty: The Guise and the Intangible, focuses on neuroaesthetics. At Place, a gallery on the 3rd floor of the Pioneer Place Mall. 700 SW Fifth. Doors 6:30PM, talk 7-9. Free

Thursday, August 18, 2011

August 20 Plazm Letterpress Place

Plazm is a magazine and designhouse that has been spanning literary, design and art for a while, 20 years, in Portland. So they have constructed an interesting set of creative orbital bonds. They are having an in-person event this evening to celebrate, so it's a great in-person creative networking opportunity as well as a fun party. There is an early patron dinner, then DJ's, modern dance performance and video by Vanessa Renwick, Lena Munday, Adrian Freeman, Shana Moulton, Duncan Malashock, Nic Chancellor, Bruce Bickford, Hooliganship, Andrew Benson, Andrew Jeffrey Wright & Clare Rojas. At Disjecta, in the shadow of Paul Bunyan www.disjecta.org 8371 N. Interstate Map 8PM-2:30AM $5-15 sliding



Portland is a paper town, maybe it's the trees, maybe it's the Gilkey Print Center and the IPRC. Letterpress is more the branch of printmaking devoted to type, and there are many letterpress enthusiasts in Portland, print pressing everything: books, business cards, invitations, media covers and more. They gather for a letterpress fair today. Printers and shops Alisa Walton, American Amateur Press Association, Archie’s Press, Art Bureau, AutumnAttic Press, Bedouin Books, Cathemeral Press, Caitlin Harris, Cindi Pedersen, Em Space Book Arts Center, Fortress Letterpress, Independent Publishing Resource Center, Ink in Tubes, Keeganmeegan & Co., May Day Press, One O.A.K. Book Arts, Monograph Bookwerks, Painted Tongue Studios, Phillip Stewart, Platemark X, Power and Light Press, Red Bat Press, Rendij Studio, Robyn Ward, Tiger Food Press, Triangular Press, Twin Ravens Press and Zebra Press. There is something about the small of presses you never forget, the mix of ink small and mechanical oil small, that goes back to Gutenberg. It's at Em Space 323 SE Division Place. 11AM-2PM $2, after until 5 Free



The gallery in the mall Place has one of it's aperiodic openings with adjacent spaces. At Place placepdx.tumblr.com, a gallery on the 3rd floor of the Pioneer Place Mall. 700 SW Fifth. 6PM-10ish Free

Sunday, August 14, 2011

August 16 Implications of the Internet of Things (and People) for Product Design

Sheldon Renan gives a talk based on a book he is writing about the constant connectivity of people and things. You can tune into the free live webcast off the Core77 site or visit in person at Hand Eye Supply www.handeyesupply.com/pages/curiosity-club 23 NW 4th 6PM Free

Friday, August 12, 2011

August 14 Some thoughts on Africa

Africa is a continent not a country. I've spent some time in some of those countries. Before that I thought starvation was rampant. It's not. The population distributes itself to survive, even prosper. Where the problem lies are rapid changes in the ability of the land to produce food, like droughts; blocked trade routes due to war; rapid migration, often due to war, producing unsustainable geographic concentrations beyond natural. Artists Roger Peet and Ryan Burns created installation Vianede de Brossue on the theme of bushmeat in Africa. They discuss their theories of the food supply in Africa. To be fair, one of the areas of their focus is Eastern Congo, arguably at war since 1994, beginning with the Rwandan genocide. The Portland chapter of Amnesty International includes a focus on Eastern Congo. At Place, a gallery on the 3rd floor of the Pioneer Place Mall. 700 SW Fifth. Doors 4PM Free

August 13 Garden Dance Performance

You can't get more intimate than this. Internationally known butoh performers Hiroko and Koichi Tamano and Arizona performer Delisa Myles, who is known for performance on South West landscapes, perform in a St Johns garden. Infos at witdpresents.com 9233 N. Bristol Ave 7PM $10-15

August 12-13 Quiet Musics and Undulation

When an artist curates music pay attention. Building on Portland's successful Hush Records and adjacent microlabels, artist Chris Johanson has organized the Quiet Music Festival. Schedule on the Disjecta website. We're especially interested in Saturday's Lucky Dragons, who are also visual artists and of whom we've written. At Disjecta, in the shadow of Paul Bunyan www.disjecta.org 8371 N. Interstate Map 8PM $7 a night or $12 both



Belly dancers like to hang out. Bedroom belly dancing is just not the same. JamBallah is their mini festival. It's also a bazar for belly dance accessories and clothing. Classes, workshops and performances. Free events, all ages events, performances with an admission fee, and DJ dance after parties. Details at the website: www.jamballahnw.com

August 12 Indian Hoe Down

Portland Oregon has a vibrant community of the Indian subcontinent. There are several presenters in the area of the shared musical traditions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Tonight is a free one in a library. Sreevidhya Chandramouli, founder of Dhvani plays the veena, accompanied by family members. At the Tigard Public Library, 13125 SW Hall Blvd., Tigard 7PM Free



Before - after that you have a choice, up tempo or down tempo. See the next listing of the Quiet Festival if you are down for downtempo. If you are up for uptempo, Project Grow is having a dance party hoedown. It's a disco party and the resident artists there have been taking an active role in selecting their favorite dance music. It's also the Boss' birthday. She has been writing regular columns for their newsletter. At Project Grow at the Port City Development Center. 2156 N Williams Ave at Tillamook. 6PM-9 Free

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

August 11 Finnish PAM Appendix

Nationale is a small store and art presenter with an international network. Tonight they activate their oh so Finnish network. Finland occupies a cool reserve in design and art between the other Scandinavian countries and Russia. It's the home of Nokia, mobile phone pioneer, and a leader until recently, in ethnographic research on our mobile connected life. And while smart phones are cool, Nokia has been rocking Internet access through feature phones on sub$10 a month carrier contracts around the world. Tonight Elina Tuhkanen presents her sculpture performances Pilose Crux. Schooled in the US and Finland, Tuhkanen is fascinated by the Finnish landscape. Her films are performances in that landscape. She shows them tonight and engages the audience in discussion. She also will be at Nationale Friday 6PM-9. At Hollywood Theatre www.hollywoodtheatre.org 7PM $5



Chris Johanson engages a small part of the big institution tonight. It's part of the Museum's program in which a working Portland artist selects a single piece from the exhibited collection around which to craft a narrative for you, the participants. It could be interesting as Johanson would have been considered an outsider artist pre-his participation in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. At the Portland Art Museum www.pam.org 1219 SW Park 6PM-8 $5 members, otherwise regular admission $12 so tour the Museum before



Appendix, one of Portland's most adventurous galleries, and maxing back alley cred, presents Paragon+ by NY artist Katie Shelly. Some interesting ideas in her Foo Camp-thought like copywriting award of the month.

"Paragon+ is an absolute installation about the ever-arriving fantasy of digital utopia. In an idyllic future where technology enables everyday people to oust dictators, to fully fund a feature film in a week, or to be (tele)present on all five continents at once, how does an ideal citizen look? Thought leaders often map social ideals onto the human form. If 19th and 20th century societies were embodied by archetypes like the yeoman-farmer, the artisan-scholar, and the citizen-soldier, will the 21st century paragon be a hacker-amputee? A videographer-coder-forager? Serene & despotic, Paragon+ suggests that a dematerialized future includes a drastic re-visualization of the body politic."

At Appendix Project Space. On the alley between 26th and 27th, South of Alberta. www.appendixspace.com Map 7PM-10ish Free

Sunday, August 07, 2011

August 8 Vacation Culture

Vacation is a curious word. Because the destination rarely is vacant, of its natural inhabitants or of our heightened experience. Holiday is a better descriptive. Rebecca Steele and Modou Dieng have been giving some thought to the topic and present their collaboration Vacation Culture. Especially interesting as Deng brings Portland painters to a residency yearly in Senegal. At False Front Studio www.falsefrontstudio.com 4518 NE 32nd Map 7-10 Free

Friday, August 05, 2011

August 6 More Shaping Problem

The big Elizabeth Leach Gallery retrospective continues this evening. The gallery is easily Portland's most accomplished. But before Leach was PNCA, and many later PNCA artists created the NYC-PDX cross fertilization, for example PCVA, now carrying on with YU. The Leach 30 takes over part of PNCA with PNCA artists connected to the gallery. At PNCA 1241 NW Johnson 5:30PM-7:30 Free

Thursday, August 04, 2011

August 5 Eastside Art openings

Performance has been an insiders' club for audiences since its inception with the Greeks. A fifth wall encloses the audience with performer. When theater and dance has been captured by the camera, it often languishes in places like the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. Some performances in that library require written permission from their creators in advance to even be seen. Seattle's On the Boards has recorded modern performances and they can be seen by anyone in the world by video on demand. So you could say they break through the fifth wall of performance: audience time and space. Theater company Hand 2 Mouth is arranging showings of select pieces, including tonight, the lyrical Kidd Pivot modern dance work Dark Matters, which will later come to Portland with White Bird. Very beautiful work. By hand2mouththeatre.org 810 S.E. Belmont St., 7:30PM $5



The big Leach Gallery 30 year show, The Shape of the Problem, continues with video by Dinh Q. Lê, The Imagined Country. Lê samples media culture, street culture and just culture. Media culture sampling is much more often than not trivial, but not Lê. Judge for yourself. At Reed's Cooley Gallery www.reed.edu/gallery, in the library building, 3203 SE Woodstock. 5:30-7PM Free



"Wish I Was There" is a universal human sentiment, as is the inspiration of a world of our own making. It's also the theme of an art collaboration by Driscoll Reid and Amy Ruppel. They painted imagined landscapes populated with creatures, outdoors, together, for this show. Opening at Buy Olympia's Land Gallery www.landpdx.com 3925 N Mississippi 6PM-8 Free



Worksound has a group painting show, Identity Paintings, with painters Kate Allred, Jeremy Okai Davis, Gavin Eveland, Luke Fuller, Dorothy Goode, Ruth Lentz, Chelsea Linehan, Elizabeth Malaska, Devon Maldenado and Alexis Sarah Rittenhouse. At Worksound www.worksoundpdx.com 820 SE Alder Map 6PM-10



Reading-Writing is an art show with Abra Ancliffe, Lindsay AuCoin, Derek Beaulieu, Justin Bland, Pat Boas, Sean Joseph Patrick, Carney, Patrick Collier, Carmen Denison, Emily Ginsburg, Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Sarah Greig, Sydney S. Kim, Sam Korman, Katarina Petrović, McIntyre Parker, Lisa Radon, Helen Reed, Namita Gupta Wiggers and James Yeary. Many of these artists teach at universities or otherwise are facile writers. At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th x Division 6PM-9 Free



In the 811 Building

Redux has wire sculptures by Joe Diemer. At Redux www.reduxpdx.com 811 E Burnside

Back in Black is a photo show curated by Chris Moss. At Black Box Gallery www.blackboxgallery.com 811 E Burnside, Suite 212 upstairs 5PM-7:30 Free



Across the street is Half Dozen Gallery. It hatched from the Everett Lofts, then migrated to the East side. They presented a muscular program of minimal energetic visuals and adventurous performance, which they continue in a new basement spot, under Le Pigeon. Tonight they have Harmless Environments by Ellen Jane Michael & Megan Scheminske. The former is inspired by romance novels, the later by artist live work spaces. At Half/Dozen Gallery www.halfdozengallery.com 722 E Burnside (enter on 8th) 6PM-9 Free



There is a small concentration of spots in this part of town, including The Stables, which hosts a live art benefit this evening: SHARE. Artists Mark Warren Jacques, Ryan Bubnis, Timothy Karpinksi, Chase Velarde, Stephanie Benhaim, Morgaine Faye, Lynn Yarne, David Wein, Alec Zemper and Sohaila Adela will be making work for sale to benefit world water projects. At The Stables www.thestablespdx.com. 910 SE Taylor 6PM-11 Free



Project Grow has the Street Art Show with Varinthorn Christopher, Travis Bonneau, Chris Haberman, Walter Lee,
Amy Steel, Amy Bay, Mark Jondahl, Sandy Sampson, many of whom operate in the social practice realm as well as being visual artists. At Project Grow at the Port City Development Center. 2156 N Williams Ave at Tillamook. 6-10PM Free

August 4 Westside Art Openings

Elizabeth Leach Gallery opens the first third of the Shape of the Problem. Summer is a time for group shows. This is literally the mother of all group shows. Included are Henri Matisse, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Sol Lewitt, Fred Sandback, Sarah Cain, Joseph Park, Stephen Hayes, Judy Cooke, Christopher Rauschenberg, Malia Jensen and many, many others. At Elizabeth Leach Gallery www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th Map



PDX Contemporary shows modern prints from vintage negatives by Terry Toedtemeier. These landscape photographs were exposed at Mount Desert Island in Maine, Chaco Canyon and The Lightning Field in New Mexico, Taos and Tuba City Arizona and Winnemucca Nevada. At PDX Contemporary Art www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders Map early close 8PM



Hellion has Digmeout illustrator HR-FM from Yokohama. Angel Davis takes over the window with its view of Roseland's storied rock bus temporary autonomous zone. Photographer Tatiana Wills and Roman Cho present ther new book Heroes & Villains, portraits of art world figures and illustrator Blaine Fontana, his book Amalgamate. At Hellion Gallery www.helliongallery.com 19 NW 5th Suite 208. Through the lobby of the arched brick entry, up the stairs and to the back. Very upper floor Japan-style. Map



In addition to the regular gallery openings, the Everett Station lofts have their annual opening of spaces and the deck upstairs. At the Everett Lofts 625 NW Everett. Bounded by NW Everett, Broadway, Flanders and 6th Map



Longtime Portland encaustic painter Elise Wagner has a ten year retrospective which has already shown on the East Coast. At Butters Gallery www.buttersgallery.com 520 NW Davis, 2nd Floor



High Five! is a 5 year group show of Ryan Bubnis, Bradley Delay, Meredith Dittmar, Jeremy Fish, Sam Flores, Bishop Lennon, Justin Lovato, Munk One, Amy Ruppel and Skinner. At Fifty 24PDX in Upperplayground.com 23 NW 5th



Jodi Darby shows photographs in a show titled Transit. At Valentines valentineslifeblood.blogspot.com 232 SW Ankeny



Rocksbox at Fourteen30's 937 presents a performance Stuck, by Jennifer Locke & Lucas Murgida. In addition to their art careers, these San Francisco artists have worked as a professional dominatrix, champion submission wrestler, artists’ model locksmith, cabinetmaker, busboy and yoga instructor between them. Performance 7PM-9. For much of the rest of the month, the gallery has Summer Movies, selected by artist friends, August 5 - 13. The artist curators and their dates are Brian Bress (Saturday, August 13th), Jeremy Deller (Friday, August 5th), Kim Gordon (Saturday, August 6th), Kristina Kite (Sunday, August 7th), Michele Maccarone (Monday, August 8th), Javier Peres (Tuesday, August 9th)
Nathan Howdeshell (Wednesday, August 10th), Ana Vejzovic Sharp (Thursday, August 11th), Bob Nickas (Friday, August 12th) and Brian Bress (Saturday, August 13th). Films at 8PM, bring blankets, friends, snacks, drinks. At Fourteen30 Gallery www.fourteen30.com 937 NW Glisan 6PM-10



The ad agency has a show in the lobby by a comic artist and tortured singer Daniel Johnston from Austin. Johnston is the subject of documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. He performs on the 25th. Bold move by the ad agency. There is also a show by some staff at the Cleaners space in the Ace Hotel.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

August 2 Robots Pack Attack!

The Curiosity Club hosts the Riverdale High School robotics team discussing their experiences building and competing robots. Robots are a big thing in schools, providing an opportunity for teamwork and a tangible computing experience. The robot team competes with other schools in a game of robots with rules. Each year there are new game rules, which subsequently orient the design of new robots. Think of it as a gene pool of robot species that evolves once a year, not in millions! You can tune into the free live webcast off the Core77 site or visit in person at Hand Eye Supply www.handeyesupply.com/pages/curiosity-club 23 NW 4th 6PM Free