We make a joke about Portlandia's "put a bird on it". Amy Ruppel is probably the artist responsible for Portland's bird meme. One of her themes has been bird silhouettes filled with mysterious colored stripes residing in larger illustrations, with light backgrounds. Ruppel has now turned to painted bird portraits, but with a darker tone than Audubon, even malevolence in her Mean Birds show. She has a series of state birds in more a schematic style. This show is Know Your Oregon Backyard Birds. Mot mean, it's a classic dynamic of light and dark, and perfect for the recent Halloween season. Molly Bosley also shows her elaborate dioramas made of thrift store finds and intricate cut paper backgrounds, in mason jars. At Tilde 7919 SE 13th Avenue
Glitch, previously noted, closes at Homeland tonight with a performance. Sue-C from Oakland performs one of her audio visual pieces live, animating work of her own design from photographs, collage, drawings, models and fabric. There will also be short video works by Jesse Malmed, Evan Meaney, Julie Perini, Tom Sherman and Dustin Zemel. At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org 2505 SE 11th x Division 6PM-9, performance 7:30
Potatoes and tomatoes, we would be in a sad world without them. And it would be a sad world if we did not have people dedicated to preserving the old varieties and crossing them creatively to make new tasty and colorful varieties. Tom Wagner is a world expert in potato and tomato varieties and proponent of open source genetics in food. Who can be against that? He has dedicated his career to preserving potato seeds, without the seeds, potatoes are just clones. Wagner speaks on bioregionalism, plant diversity, nutrition and genetics tonight. He also displays his potatoes in the art gallery. At Project Grow at the Port City Development Center. 2156 N Williams Ave at Tillamook. 6PM-9 Free
Nationale is the winner of the copywriting award of the month.
"Like Sartre on shrooms, the playful illustrations in Edward Jeffrey Kriksciun’s second exhibition at Nationale, Bone Less, revel in the absurdity of the human condition. Amidst trippy watercolor swirls and jarring geometrical patterns, his ragtag crew of skater punks, bug-eyed wanderers, aliens and cartoon dogs grapple with the surrounding world through humorous, oſten foul-mouthed, expressions of youthful rebellion. Kriksciun’s unabashedly simple drawings harken to the dazed doodles of a suburban teen, transforming his subjects’ existential and anarchist tendencies into SoCal assertions of joyous self-expression. Shaka a cop, moon your neighbor- life demands the occasional LOL.
In addition to Kriksciun’s framed works, Bone Less will also include smaller digital drawings “faxed” over to the gallery by the artist on a daily basis.
Recent Portland resident Edward Jeffrey Kriksciun currently lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. A self-proclaimed 'artist via skateboarding,' Kriksciun’s work attempts to question the norm through humor and a devilish dash of barbed naivety."
At Nationale thenewnationale.com 811 E Burnside Map
Newspace has three shows. Author Lisa Wells, and photographer Bobby Abrahamson show The 45th Parallel, documentation of small Oregon towns on their way to becoming ghost towns. Live music by Nick Jaina. Jennifer Steensma Hoag shows video pieces Separation and Nearly Five. Coming to Homeland through a national competition, Andrea Land, shows In My Room, enigmatic portraits of children in their own physical and mental spaces. It's not an Arbus gaze, and the work is posed, but it has a great quality. Thus the artist wins the rare second place copywriting award of the month.
"I enter into the process of creating a photograph on both a conscious and subconscious level. My portraits of children contain various layers of information relating to the artist, the subject and a mutual exchange between the two. The work seeks to explore the psyche of complex individuals. Each young girl, while physically existing in the natural world, also thrives in another realm, an insular dream state, with her gaze turned inward. The photographs exist as both fictional and autobiographical creations (growing up in an all female, Midwest household). Relating to the temporary situation of childhood, I am fascinated by young individuals’ imagination and intensity of experience. My curiosity about childhood, as a state of limbo and a game of illusion, creates additional layers with which to contemplate. Visually exploring the girls’ stances and embellished environments, the audience enters into a private world of vulnerability, isolation, imagination and memory. A delicate balance exists between the real and the imagined, the beautiful and the grotesque."
At Newspace Photo www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th
To Make a Flame is a show by Glen Baldridge, Walead Beshty, Mike Bray, Brendan Fowler and Alex Hubbard. At Portland's only member of the New Art Dealers Alliance www.newartdealers.org, Fourteen30 Gallery www.fourteen30.com 922 SE Ankeny 6PM-9
Half/Dozen continues Kendra Larson's Glass Lakes and opens Tia Factor's In Want of the World. At Half/Dozen Gallery www.halfdozengallery.com 722 E Burnside (enter on 8th) 6PM-9
Land has papercut art by Nikki McClure, from Olympia. At Buy Olympia's Land Gallery www.landpdx.com 3925 N Mississippi 6PM-8
