Lowell pairs artists Shino Takeda and Mohamed Omar for show Rain Sun Flower.
The aesthetic language of Japanese ceramics is deep and wide. I think it would take a lifetime to begin to understand. Growing up, artist Takeda http://shinotakeda.com/home was dipped in it by collector parents. Now in Brooklyn, she brings her response by juxtaposing color in organic patterns on small handbuilts.
I am not sure if Portlander Mohamed Omar was part of Project Grow. But his story is related.
Project Grow was created by artist Natasha Wheat. I would say it was partially inspired by the philosophy of R D Laing.
It was Portland's most beautiful Social Practice artwork. I put Project Grow in the branch of 'socially conscious social practice art.' I would like to see more.
Art is a language of individuals, always evolving and branching. We give bundles of branches names by convenience and habit. One branch is outsider art. It has a longer history in Europe; in the US it came into the gallery system as a reaction of the excesses of 1980s New York.
Project Grow ran alongside Oakland's Creative Growth and similar. Today Portland has Elbow Room, North Pole Studio, PHAME, cotravelers J Pepin, and more projects that never went to art school.
Omar brings paintings from his work at Elbow Room https://www.elbowroompdx.org/. He is a musician too, with tapes available at the gallery.
Add, Hospitality House in SF has an overlapping community of artists. Portland participates with similar projects P:ear and Dana Lynn Louis' Gather:Make:Shelter.
At Lowell https://www.lowellshopgallery.com/ 2136 E Burnside 3PM-5 Free
Shrine 13 is a Portland creative releasing project in film, print, and with events. It is Jessica Daugherty and Brad Hamers. One project is archiving the life work of Beryl Sokoloff and Crista Grauer, life partner artists in New York.
They show some tonight in program The Galatea Effect, Or How to Live Forever: The Films, and Love, of Beryl Sokoloff and Crista Grauer. It is eloquently explained on their link.
It's https://www.boathousemicrocinema.com/apr-26-2026/ at the Boathouse Microcinema www.boathousemicrocinema.com 822 N River Doors 7:30PM movie 8 Free
Friday, April 24, 2026
April 25 Intimate Music Self
Kimberly Gronquist forms Intimate Monads, organic ceramic sculptures.
They win the copywriting award for the month. "A word like monad risks sounding grandiose until you stand in front of one of Gronquist’s sculptures and feel the term settle. Borrowed from Leibnizian symbolic logic, it names the smallest indivisible unit of being, a self-contained world. In this way Gronquist’s works conduct a small cosmos pressed into clay. Each object existing solitary, self-possessed, while simultaneously conversing quietly across the gallery, forming a loose ecology of presences.
Originating in touch the clay bears evidence of fingers, gravity, pressure, and air forming a material history of the gestures that shaped it. These deliberate and discovered arrangements that seem grown rather than constructed. The process reveals almost like a form of thinking, or an embodied cognition in which ideas are not depicted but coaxed out of matter.
The shifting scale and intimacy of the sculptures keep them close to the body. Each one holds a small interior drama of time: a vessel formed slowly through attention, then fixed by fire. Psychologist Laura L. Carstensen’s notion of “time horizons”—the way human perception of time shapes our priorities, hovers in the background. These ceramics feel oddly liberated from time even as they record it.
Gronquist describes the work as an investigation into the porous boundary between inner consciousness and the world that forms it. The idea sounds philosophical, but the sculptures communicate it plainly. Their surfaces look weathered by encounter. They materially imply that identity like clay is made through the contact of touch, environment, attention, and relationships.
There is also a quiet defiance running through the exhibition. The work honors sovereign interiority over the social demand to appear legible or productive. They embrace beauty, excess, and vulnerability with a seriousness, as Gronquist leans into those qualities despite the history of them being dismissed as indulgent. What could be read as softness becomes strength; what looks fragile reveals a stubborn independence to exist among the chaos.
One line lingers as a fitting epigraph for the show: “We are two abysses—a well staring up at the sky.” The phrase captures the mood of these objects. Each sculpture seems to look inward and outward at once, holding a private depth while opening toward something larger, formed, sustained, and continually remade through our encounters with the world and with one another."
At at SE Cooper Contemprary, with family-friendly openings, https://www.secoopercontemporary.com/ 6901 SE 110th Map 1PM-4 Free
Patricia Wolf is an accomplished musician, promoter, patch developer and composer. Her branch is electronic field recording ambient. She has hosted showings at Mono Space of movie Hrafnamynd https://vimeo.com/828149745, an abstract documentary she scored.
This afternoon she is the selector for a listening session.
"Maurice Ravel to Ryuichi Sakamoto, Hildegard Westerkamp to Roméo Poirier, Mel Bonis to Elizabeth Maconchy."
https://mono-space.org/blogs/events/gallery-hours-curated-by-patricia-wolf at Mono Space https://mono-space.org/ 608 NW 13th Ave Ste 102. Noon-5 Free
How am I not myself? is a curated selection of 30 self portraits.
At Well on Earth 115 NE Lawrence Ste 111 5PM-9 Free
Volunteer-operated Kalakendra presents classical Indian music concerts. It is a pleasure to experience them. Tonight Ganesh-Kumaresh plays carnatic violin with Patri Satish Kumar, mridangam, and Trichy Krishnaswamy, ghatam, in an instrumental program.
At the First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park. 7PM $35, youth age 3-12 $15, students with ID $20
They win the copywriting award for the month. "A word like monad risks sounding grandiose until you stand in front of one of Gronquist’s sculptures and feel the term settle. Borrowed from Leibnizian symbolic logic, it names the smallest indivisible unit of being, a self-contained world. In this way Gronquist’s works conduct a small cosmos pressed into clay. Each object existing solitary, self-possessed, while simultaneously conversing quietly across the gallery, forming a loose ecology of presences.
Originating in touch the clay bears evidence of fingers, gravity, pressure, and air forming a material history of the gestures that shaped it. These deliberate and discovered arrangements that seem grown rather than constructed. The process reveals almost like a form of thinking, or an embodied cognition in which ideas are not depicted but coaxed out of matter.
The shifting scale and intimacy of the sculptures keep them close to the body. Each one holds a small interior drama of time: a vessel formed slowly through attention, then fixed by fire. Psychologist Laura L. Carstensen’s notion of “time horizons”—the way human perception of time shapes our priorities, hovers in the background. These ceramics feel oddly liberated from time even as they record it.
Gronquist describes the work as an investigation into the porous boundary between inner consciousness and the world that forms it. The idea sounds philosophical, but the sculptures communicate it plainly. Their surfaces look weathered by encounter. They materially imply that identity like clay is made through the contact of touch, environment, attention, and relationships.
There is also a quiet defiance running through the exhibition. The work honors sovereign interiority over the social demand to appear legible or productive. They embrace beauty, excess, and vulnerability with a seriousness, as Gronquist leans into those qualities despite the history of them being dismissed as indulgent. What could be read as softness becomes strength; what looks fragile reveals a stubborn independence to exist among the chaos.
One line lingers as a fitting epigraph for the show: “We are two abysses—a well staring up at the sky.” The phrase captures the mood of these objects. Each sculpture seems to look inward and outward at once, holding a private depth while opening toward something larger, formed, sustained, and continually remade through our encounters with the world and with one another."
At at SE Cooper Contemprary, with family-friendly openings, https://www.secoopercontemporary.com/ 6901 SE 110th Map 1PM-4 Free
Patricia Wolf is an accomplished musician, promoter, patch developer and composer. Her branch is electronic field recording ambient. She has hosted showings at Mono Space of movie Hrafnamynd https://vimeo.com/828149745, an abstract documentary she scored.
This afternoon she is the selector for a listening session.
"Maurice Ravel to Ryuichi Sakamoto, Hildegard Westerkamp to Roméo Poirier, Mel Bonis to Elizabeth Maconchy."
https://mono-space.org/blogs/events/gallery-hours-curated-by-patricia-wolf at Mono Space https://mono-space.org/ 608 NW 13th Ave Ste 102. Noon-5 Free
How am I not myself? is a curated selection of 30 self portraits.
At Well on Earth 115 NE Lawrence Ste 111 5PM-9 Free
Volunteer-operated Kalakendra presents classical Indian music concerts. It is a pleasure to experience them. Tonight Ganesh-Kumaresh plays carnatic violin with Patri Satish Kumar, mridangam, and Trichy Krishnaswamy, ghatam, in an instrumental program.
At the First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park. 7PM $35, youth age 3-12 $15, students with ID $20
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
April 24 Poem Gamelan
The Indonesian archipelago is larger than the US West to East and about 3/4 extent South to North. It is 4th in world population after the US, ethnically diverse. Diverse in music, too. One branch is gamelan music. That has more branches.
The gamelan is a collection of percussion instruments up to about 50 instrument types. They range from small instruments with the ring of bells to large gongs with a shimmer sustain, drums, and add strings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQNxGnQ1Wns
Today, with an afternoon free you can hear the Lewis and Clark College gamelan class readout, free. The L&C art department thesis show is up in the Hoffman too.
Javanese Gamelan Ensemble https://www.lclark.edu/calendars/events/event/388092-javanese-gamelan-ensemble in Evans Music Center’s World Music Room (room 036) 2PM Free
The sea of poetry readings ebbs and flows. I'm not that deep in that world, but Im sensing it flowing. One itinerant project is Poems at Sunset out a Window. They received an opportunity to expand and tonight do Poems out of a Print Shop. At the IPRC 318 SE Main. Readings 7:25PM, 7:45, 8:10 Free
The gamelan is a collection of percussion instruments up to about 50 instrument types. They range from small instruments with the ring of bells to large gongs with a shimmer sustain, drums, and add strings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQNxGnQ1Wns
Today, with an afternoon free you can hear the Lewis and Clark College gamelan class readout, free. The L&C art department thesis show is up in the Hoffman too.
Javanese Gamelan Ensemble https://www.lclark.edu/calendars/events/event/388092-javanese-gamelan-ensemble in Evans Music Center’s World Music Room (room 036) 2PM Free
The sea of poetry readings ebbs and flows. I'm not that deep in that world, but Im sensing it flowing. One itinerant project is Poems at Sunset out a Window. They received an opportunity to expand and tonight do Poems out of a Print Shop. At the IPRC 318 SE Main. Readings 7:25PM, 7:45, 8:10 Free
Saturday, April 18, 2026
April 18 Fuck Thesis Moss Formailities
Gareth James and David Joselit bring Late Night Legal Formalities. Society has a strong interest in word-based art.
"2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Late Night Legal Formalities, originally produced for the Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York. LNLF was devised by James as a way of negotiating Dee’s request for him to join her commercial gallery. Prior to his first exhibition, Dee agreed to hire an art historian or critic to attend every exhibition during 2005 and to write an essay, for a fee of $1 a word, over which the gallery would have no editorial control, and which James would subsequently present in the September exhibition of the following year as his first exhibition. David Joselit lobbed a strikingly candid response back to James who incorporated it into the work on view."
At https://societysocietysociety.com/ 711 SE Grand upstairs above Mother Foucault’s. 7PM-9 Free
The thesis show season commences.
PNCA Visual Studies and Print Media launch theirs tonight. Two locations.
At at Stelo Arts https://www.steloarts.org 412 NW 8th 5PM-8 Free
At NW Marine Art Works https://www.nwmarineartworks.com/ Building5 https://www.buildingfive.org/ 2516 NW 29th 5PM-8 Free
One Grand Gallery has several audiences. They are a member of PADA. They have also opened their attic to events. Tonight is the Fuck ICE show benefitting the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition. The upstairs shows are very popular social art, DJ, and beer events.
At One Grand Gallery www.onegrandgallery.com 1000 E Burnside 6PM-10 Free
Noa Ver, one half of electronic duo Sea Moss, curates an afternoon listening session. Sea Moss is an aggressive sound electronic duo, the opposite of Moss Wand.
At Mono Space https://mono-space.org/ 608 NW 13th Ave Ste 102. Noon-5 Free
"2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Late Night Legal Formalities, originally produced for the Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York. LNLF was devised by James as a way of negotiating Dee’s request for him to join her commercial gallery. Prior to his first exhibition, Dee agreed to hire an art historian or critic to attend every exhibition during 2005 and to write an essay, for a fee of $1 a word, over which the gallery would have no editorial control, and which James would subsequently present in the September exhibition of the following year as his first exhibition. David Joselit lobbed a strikingly candid response back to James who incorporated it into the work on view."
At https://societysocietysociety.com/ 711 SE Grand upstairs above Mother Foucault’s. 7PM-9 Free
The thesis show season commences.
PNCA Visual Studies and Print Media launch theirs tonight. Two locations.
At at Stelo Arts https://www.steloarts.org 412 NW 8th 5PM-8 Free
At NW Marine Art Works https://www.nwmarineartworks.com/ Building5 https://www.buildingfive.org/ 2516 NW 29th 5PM-8 Free
One Grand Gallery has several audiences. They are a member of PADA. They have also opened their attic to events. Tonight is the Fuck ICE show benefitting the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition. The upstairs shows are very popular social art, DJ, and beer events.
At One Grand Gallery www.onegrandgallery.com 1000 E Burnside 6PM-10 Free
Noa Ver, one half of electronic duo Sea Moss, curates an afternoon listening session. Sea Moss is an aggressive sound electronic duo, the opposite of Moss Wand.
At Mono Space https://mono-space.org/ 608 NW 13th Ave Ste 102. Noon-5 Free
Thursday, April 16, 2026
April 16 Neptune Frost
Our nighttime weather is trying to tell the plants not yet.
Atelier Yafe hosts a showing of Neptune Frost, a dystopian Afrofuturism musical involving hackers. It was filmed in Rwanda and released in 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acfBNIXovww
Included in the evening is a discussion of Portland mapping in the service of community placemaking.
This month is the 32nd aniversery of the Rwandan Genocide, still playing out today in warlord control of mining in Eastern Congo, with factions funded by Rwanda. The Portland Rwandan community has events.
At Atelier Yaffe https://www.atelieryaffe.com/ 111 NE Martin Luther King Blvd, enter on Couch 6:30-9 Free
Atelier Yafe hosts a showing of Neptune Frost, a dystopian Afrofuturism musical involving hackers. It was filmed in Rwanda and released in 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acfBNIXovww
Included in the evening is a discussion of Portland mapping in the service of community placemaking.
This month is the 32nd aniversery of the Rwandan Genocide, still playing out today in warlord control of mining in Eastern Congo, with factions funded by Rwanda. The Portland Rwandan community has events.
At Atelier Yaffe https://www.atelieryaffe.com/ 111 NE Martin Luther King Blvd, enter on Couch 6:30-9 Free
Saturday, April 11, 2026
April 11 Small Animals
Lily Seika Jones https://www.lilyseikajones.com/ brings narrative illustrations of creatures.
https://www.nucleusportland.com/blogs/future-exhibitions/jones2026 http://www.nucleusportland.com 2916 NE Alberta 4PM-6 Free
https://www.nucleusportland.com/blogs/future-exhibitions/jones2026 http://www.nucleusportland.com 2916 NE Alberta 4PM-6 Free
Friday, April 10, 2026
April 11- 12 Peddling Synths
The Synth and Pedal show is back with an admission price this year. It's https://synthandpedalexpo.com/portland-synth-pedal-expo/. 819 SE Taylor $5-20
Thursday, April 09, 2026
April 10 Distance
I am the distance is paintings by Colorado-based artists, Marius Lehene + Aitor Lajarin-Encin.
At After/Time Collective https://www.aftertimecollective 735 SW 9th Ave #110 5PM-8 Free
At After/Time Collective https://www.aftertimecollective 735 SW 9th Ave #110 5PM-8 Free
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