Last Thursday on Alberta continues with some of the remaining galleries open this evening.
Donna Guardino, who founded her namesake gallery, passed April 9. https://www.orartswatch.org/donna-guardino-gallery-owner-and-a-force-behind-the-alberta-arts-district-dies-at-age-81/.
In honor, some history. (long)
The art journey of Alberta Street is attributed to Guardino and her late husband with their gallery, designer Roslyn Hill who developed properties, and Magnus Johannesson who rented space for artist studios inexpensively in the 1990s.
Artists are the shock troops of gentrification. They seek inexpensive space and tolerate diversity and adversity. Artists occupying cheap studio space in inner NW in the 1970s to 1980s brought cafes, galleries, and the big ad agency. The rail yard shown in the late 1980s movie opening credits to Drugstore Cowboy was torn up and the neighborhood became the Pearl District. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtX03U-jt7A.
Seattle had its own low rent district, Pioneer Square, with artist studios and galleries. They founded a First Thursday gallery opening evening on the first Friday of the month in 1981. Portland followed in 1986 in the Pearl District. Emerging artists, self-taught artists, and art students set up art sale stands to show and discuss their work with art enthusiasts. That was too hoy polloi for the galleries and newly occupying bars and restaurants.
So the artists selling on the street decamped to Alberta Street on the last Thursday of the month. Once a month, especially in fair weather, Alberta unfolded as a home for individual artists and performers from the Burning Man art festival.
It grew organically, eventually the City of Portland stepped in, requiring permits, it peaked, and declined.
The die was cast for gentrification of Alberta from 1997 by the design of the Oregon property tax limitation of 1997. The California property tax limitation reassesses the valuation on sale, Oregon does not, creating a property tax gentrification subsidy. https://projects.oregonlive.com/taxes/property/map.
Many galleries maintain an enduring presence and actually sell art to collectors. Some are open late tonight, some are not.
Antler+Talon has painters David Rice, Taylor White and Yelena Bryksenkova. It is also the birthday of Antler+Talon's late founder Susannah Kelly. Antler+Talon was founded in 2012, maintains a worldwide community of collectors for their prints, and represents in Miami.
At Antler & Talon Gallery www.antlerpdx.com 2714 NE Alberta 6pm-9 Free
Alberta Street Gallery was founded in 2004. They have paintings by Gabe Wolfe, metalwork by
Thomas Hynes and a group paper show. At Alberta Street Gallery https://www.albertastreetgallery.com/ 1829 NE Alberta 6PM-9 Free
Jill McVarish has Small World, paintings; Cheryl Quintana has extremely detailed ceramic sculptures of the heads of animals; Reed Clarke has portrait paintings. At Guardino Gallery https://guardinogallery.com/ 2939 NE Alberta 5PM-8 Free
Dannika Sullivan has portrait and still life paintings, Illuminate. At Blind Insect 2841 NE Alberta 5:30PM-8 Free
Souvenier, Flight64 may be open, Nucleus House and Nucleus may not be open - they have their own very successful opening evenings.
