Friday, November 22, 2013

November 23 Never Bored

Should you be bored this weekend? Never! And once the last sun ever for ever goes down tonight you can stop by the Portland Museum of Modern Art closing event for their current show, Primitive Moderne: The Art of Mr. Otis. The Woolen Men and Half Shadow are musicing and some people will reading short stories. At the Portland Museum of Modern Art inside Mississippi Records www.portlandmuseumofmodernart.com 5202 N Albina Map 8PM-10 Free

November 22 Funding Tactics

Recess continues its social practice engagement. Emerging Tactics: Our Ordinary Lives is a show of engagements of Goods and Services (reprise) by Industry of the Ordinary, kimchi of here* by Grace Hwang and Untitled (Audio Interviews with Artists) by Crystal Baxley & Stefan Ransom. You can read eloquent descriptions on their FB, or just go and see. Which you should. At RECESS recessart.com at Oregon Brassworks Building, 1127 SE 10th Map 6PM-9 Free



The MFA art program at PSU needs fundage. So they have invited artists from their network local and afar to contribute works of art for a silent auction. Considering their stable, this event should be well worth visiting. This event is publicized to a small audience, so just tell them you were invited because you are a supporter of PSU and the arts, which you should be. PSU MFA Studio Visiting Artist Lecture Series Benefit Auction. PSU School of Art + Design Building, 2000 SW 5th. 5PM-10 $10

Saturday, November 16, 2013

November 16 Who's Who in Whoville?

Alternative art spaces in Portland are often a narrative past. We are inventing the future in Portland, Oregon, US now. So alternative art spaces are a narrative future too.

Alternative art groups, in their time, resulted in the Portland Art Museum. Portland Center for Visual Arts (1972-1988) had its past sun-in-moment. Many, many past influential alt spaces, meetups and one-time events have each contributed greatly to the Portland cultural foment.

Spanning past and now, art and culture, is Disjecta. Disjecta has had its share of landlord negotiations. And it has landed in a low key space in Kenton that is thriving. Throughout its time and spaces, it has attracted in town and out of town emerging, recognized and established artists. If you are interested in visual arts and performing arts, Disjecta should be on your radar.

Tonight is Disjecta's annual art auction fundraiser. Artist donations to non-profits and the value of art are a serious question in need of discussion. But if you look at the artists participating tonight, you will see some of Portland's best voting with their feet by walking in.

Those artistic labors of love mate with lovers of art tonight. If you have some spare duckets and fall in love with a work that would give you pleasure gracing your walls, do it. If you want to meet artists and lovers of the arts come. If you want a well curated survey of most of Portland's top contemporary artists come.

At PortlandORUSNow, we are all about artists. So we laud Disjecta providing links to each artist. They are Delaney Allen, Corey Arnold, Hayley Barker, Avantika Bawa, Mike Bray, Wayne Bund, Ben Buswell, Vanessa Calvert, Calvin Ross Carl, Lea Cetera, Sang-ah Choi, Deville Cohen, Claire Cowie, Alex Dolan, Daniel Duford, David Eckard, Tia Factor, Leiv Fagereng, Eric Fischl, Melanie Flood, Chris Fraser, Damien Gilley, Daniel Glendening, Sean Healy, Vlatka Horvat, Grant Hottle, Chris Johanson & Jo Jackson, Courtney Kemp, Eva Lake, Ruth Lantz, Kendra Larson, Marne Lucas, Shana Lutker, D.E. May, Jeffry Mitchell, Akihiko Miyoshi, Donald Morgan, Emily Nachison, Jenene Nagy, Virginia Overton, Jacob Pander, Virginia Poundstone, Ralph Pugay, Paula Rebsom, Blair Saxon-Hill, Heidi Schwegler, Susan Seubert, Jeff Sheridan, Marie Sivak, Ashley Sloan, Adam Sorensen, Eva Speer, Whiting Tennis, Nathanael Thayer Moss, and Jen Wall. Music by DJ Cooky Parker.

At Disjecta, in the shadow of Paul Bunyan www.disjecta.org 8371 N. Interstate Map 7PM-10/11/12 $25 online $30 door



If you would like to get your prefunk on, I would strongly suggest you get to Place tonight. The Portland MAX Yellow Line is a direct connect. Place has Dreamscapes, Big Booty Bounce, Essentially Didactic, Retritus and Dark Element. You can't go wrong based on the implied narrative of the titles. But there is more.

Artist, curator Tori Abernathy combines social practice into curation and art making. Dreamscapes is a documentation of dreaming, or its prohibition, in public places.

J.P. Huckins mixes visual production and performance. J.P. is not afraid of risk, unlike 99.99999 percent of Portland, and 99 percent of humanity. He is undertaking an endurance performance in booty shaking. Twerk on!

Mark Martínez has Essentially Didactic, a meditation on identity. And finishing out earlier running shows are Karah Bruce-Larkin with Retritus on collecting the physical object and Emily Nachison's Dark Element from one of Portland's finest idea-based installationists.

At Place, www.placepdx.com a gallery on the 3rd floor of the Pioneer Place Mall along with the People's art of Portland and the Woolley Gallery. If the mall appears closed, enter the film theater building adjacent, travel through the tunnel to the Place mall, and take the elevator to the 3rd floor, sometimes the bridge on the 3rd floor is open too. 700 SW Fifth. 5PM-9 Free

At the same location, the Mark Woolley Gallery and People's Art of Portland may have events. Free

Sunday, November 10, 2013

November 11 Turn That Video Up To 11

Getting To Know You(Tube) has presenters Avantika Bawa, Beth Herman and Krystal South tonight. At Getting to Know You(Tube) www.gettingtoknowyoutube.com at the Hollywood Theater www.hollywoodtheatre.org 4122 NE Sandy Boulevard 7:30PM $5



Meanwhile if you are up in Washington, my dear friends perform their annual movement work in the forest to celebrate the spawning of salmon on a small undammed river in the rainforest. The annual 11/11 performance.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

November 7 Westside Art Openings

MSHR is Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. They build installations, they build analog physical synths, and they perform them together live together. Some of the most creative work going on in Portland and the world is noticing too. Get there early. Performance roughly 7:30. Did we say this is recommended? A-OK. At UpFor Gallery www.upforgallery.com 929 NW Flanders 6PM-9 Free



Craig Hickman is a photographer, cofounder of Blue Sky Gallery and professor of art at University of Oregon. He has made photographs of goings on in Portland and Eugene since the mid-1960's. Portland Creative Community 1.0 is his time capsule opened tonight. Friends, lovers, events, visitors, protests, politics in his creative world are all there. For you. At the University of Oregon White Stag Building, http://whitebox.uoregon.edu/ 70 NW Couch Free



I know a cartographer or two which includes GIS now. So I'm looking forward to Cartographers Delight, a show by Maxime Francout (france), Cecilie Ellefsen (Norway), Courtney Blazon (us), Mar Hernandez (spain), Belicta Castelbarco (Italy/Germany), Carolin Lobbert (germany), Becca Stadtlander (us), Mark Giglio – Penpencilstencil (us), Marcus Schafer (Germany), William Buzzell (us), Gregory Euclide (us), David Fullarton (us) and Sylvie Faur (france). Along with Under a Veil of Frost by Melinda Josie. At Hellion Gallery www.helliongallery.com through the lobby of the arched brick entry, up the stairs and to the back. Very upper floor Japan-style. 19 NW 5th Suite 208. Map 7PM-10 Free



As mentioned, a big national late career show visiting Portland is Ann Hamilton. Hamilton has been at installation, sculpture and wall pieces with strong materials, sometimes fabric, words and video. Well worth studying the work in person, beyond books and the web. See last week's notes here for more details. At Elizabeth Leach Gallery www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th Map 6PM-9 Free



A Series of Rectangles is a show by local conceptual minimalists Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen. They do it well where fail is easy. Along with artist, playwright, writer Tad Savinar, who presents I wonder. Savinar tends to be a little more explicit, owing his fascination with language. All around a good pairing. At PDX Contemporary Art www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders Map early close 8PM Free



Danish artist Susanne Wellm shows Inner Landscapes, intimate photographs. Intimate in a less prosaic way is Joshua Lutz with Hesitating Beauty. He has recontextualized family snapshots into the experience of caring for his mother going through psychosis. Sometimes you are in the mood for a good romcom or gaming and sometimes your in the mood for real. At Blue Sky Gallery www.blueskygallery.org map 122 NW 8th 6PM-9 Free



I haven't made up my mind about this. Here we have a relationship between a brand, shoe company Vans and artists. Vans was formed in Orange County in 1966, and made the skate shoe business when skating was early. This would also be early in the exmigration of families from LA, South, and before the Valley, North, filled. Bought in 2004, Vans is part of the company that is 20X, 7 For All Mankind, Bulwark, Eagle Creek, Eastpak, Ella Moss, Horace Small, lucy, Napapijri, JanSport, Kipling, Lady Lee Riders, Lee, Majestic, Nautica, Red Kap, Reef, Riders by Lee, Rock, Republic, Rustler, Smartwool, Splendid, The North Face, Timberland, Vans, Wrangler, Done Right, Downtown Showdown, Earthkeepers, Feels Good, Get What Fits, Green Index, Hard Working Jeans … Guaranteed, Inspired by Travel, Instantly Slims You, Long Live Cowboys, Never Stop Exploring, NEW DIMENSION, Off the Wall, Real. Comfortable. Jeans., S. Café, Storm Rider, Triple Crown of Surfing, We Are Animals. Sort of like P&G, brandwise. That big company grosses about 10B and nets about 1B yearly. Respectable gross margin. This a show of artists connected to Vans, branded Vans and with their own sticky paper on Facebook and Eventbrite to collect your identity. Anyway, I hope the art is good and that some duckets are flowing in the direction of the artists. The big shoe company and the ad agency do support artists, but with less incest between the company brand and the artist brand. Vans artists tour with Marco Zamora, Rich Jacobs, Nathaniel Russell, Tim Kerr, Zio Ziegler, Jai Tanju, Neil Blender, Chris Yormick, Russ Pope and Jay Howell. At Compound Gallery www.compoundgallery.com 107 NW 5th 6PM-10 Free



All encaustic all the time. Somehow Butters gallery has become a concentration point for encaustic painting. Is wax just butter with a higher melting point? Tonight, Infused - encaustic painting by Jeffrey Hirst, List Pressman, Elise Wagner and Kathleen Waterloo, opens. Alongside work by Carolyn Cole. At Butters Gallery www.buttersgallery.com 520 NW Davis, 2nd Floor 6PM-9:30 Free



There are a bunch of things going on tonight at PNCA and you should go. At PNCA www.pnca.edu 1241 NW Johnson Free



Everett Lofts are recommended as always. It's easier for you to see them all than for me to write suggestions. Some close as early as 9PM. At the Everett Lofts 625 NW Everett. Bounded by NW Everett, Broadway, Flanders and 6th Map closing ranges from 9PM-10:30ish Free

Saturday, November 02, 2013

November 2 Talk Talk Talk

The Lumber Room has former Yu curator Sandra Perceval in residence as Zena Zezza. In connection with the current show by Josiah McElheny, artist Ann Hamilton speaks today on The Abstract Body & Fashion along with academic Jessica Burstein. After will be a screening of a video Triadisches Ballett by Oskar Schlemmer, first performed in 1922. Schlemmer is known for innovation in live performance at the Bauhaus. This is an interesting combination of elements which we are curious to see.

A recent Hamilton piece is The Event of a Thread, curated by Kristy Edmunds in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory, New York City. The piece comprises dozens of paired swings, each holding one or two people. A system of pulleys moves a specific suspension point in a large white cloth curtain as determined by the dynamic balance between the weight of the pairs. Readers, writers, radios, and cutting sounds into vinyl and tones made from wind reeds are also part. Hamilton has collaborated with the Henry Gallery at the University of Washington. Unfortunately Portland has no counterpart. Hamilton also opens her show at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery below 6PM-8 tonight.

At The Lumber Room lumberroom.com 419 SW 9th, above Liz Leach Map 3 Free



Place has artist talks by Wynde Dyer and Shelley Chamberlin on their works in the gallery. Both shows end today. At Place, www.placepdx.com a gallery on the 3rd floor of the Pioneer Place Mall along with the People's art of Portland and the Woolley Gallery. 700 SW Fifth. 4PM Free

Friday, November 01, 2013

November 1 Body White Yarn Sextet

I have always enjoyed the work of Ann Hamilton. Her minimal installations often focused on the body. She uses that emotional carrier well. She has also worked in words and video.

She gives a talk this evening at PNCA, and tomorrow at the Lumber Room. Ann Hamilton at PNCA www.pnca.edu 1241 NW Johnson Map



Philip Iosca celebrates the release of his book the White Paper with a reading. A meditation on the disconnect over humanity towards homosexuals and other sexualities from society as a whole, it was first published in 1928. Le Livre Blanc is almost universally believed to be written and illustrated by Jean Cocteau. Iosca has reillustrated and published the book with Container Corps in a limited edition. As a species, we can become caught up in trivial judgementalism. We really need to get onto saving each other and the world. At Portland's only member of the New Art Dealers Alliance www.newartdealers.org, Fourteen30 Gallery www.fourteen30.com 1501 SW Market Street Map 6PM-8



Tonight is First Friday full of wonder

Jaik Faulk has Radio on the Beach. At Nationale www.nationale.us 811 E Burnside Map



Spinning Yarns: Photographic Storytellers is a group show curated by Anne Leighton Massoni and Libby Rowe. At Newspace Photo www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th Map 6PM-9 Free



Steve Hansen has Monochrome Sextet. At Pushdot Studio www.pushdotstudio.com 2505 SE 11th Avenue Suite 104 6PM-8