February 4 Tubular You

Getting To Know You(Tube) is a social practice art project twice removed. Artists Crystal Baxley and Stefan Ransom invite their creative friends to curate about 10-15 minutes each of YouTube video shorts from the vast corpus of often amateur video. The root of the word amateur is amo, to love. So amateur is in contrast to professional, work usually done for money and with a big budget. Maybe we should honor love more? Tonight Tracey Cockrell, Rebecca Carlisle-Healy and Adam Moser share a few of their favorite YouTube videos. The audience is invited to bring a link to one of their own favorites to share at the end of the program. Please no tiresome music videos. Getting to Know You(Tube) www.gettingtoknowyoutube.com at the Hollywood Theater www.hollywoodtheatre.org 4122 NE Sandy Boulevard 7:15PM $5

February 3 On Photography +

Not all good artists are dead. Carrie Mae Weems, born in Portland, is good and very much alive. A retrospective of her work is presented at the Portland Art Museum now; and she speaks there live and in person this afternoon. The show includes her still photography, video and film. The talk may sell out, advance tickets are available at the Museum box office or online. Plan arrival time comprehending ticket checking logistics. At the Portland Art Museum www.portlandartmuseum.org 2PM-3 Free for members, or regular Museum admission otherwise



As mentioned before, the latest Two Weeks/Two Works project at Fourteen30 closes today with a reception. It's work by Jessica Jackson Hutchens, one of a handful of Portland artists operating on a world stage. Highly recommended. At Portland's only member of the New Art Dealers Alliance www.newartdealers.org, Fourteen30 Gallery www.fourteen30.com 1501 SW Market Street Map Noon-2

February 1 - March 2 Authentic African Zeitgeist(s)

The Cascade Festival of African Films begins its 23rd year tonight. Being the real thing, they are more likely to avoid falling into Western and Northern traps and tropes criticized by Binyavanga Wainaina in his Granta piece. The films, drawn from across the continent, range from melodrama to material suited to children. This year several are themed on the African diaspora in the Caribbean. Some cover politics and even include a film on hiphop culture in Egypt just predating the Arab Spring. It's lean forward entertainment. Details at www.africanfilmfestival.org. Films show at PCC Cascade and the Hollywood Theater on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday schedule - check the web schedule. Best of all - free, all free.

February 1 Not So Quiet

Modou Dieng has been busy making his own work, teaching, freelance curating, and continues to lead art expeditions to Senegal, after closing his Worksound project. His latest project is the NOW Portland Triennale, scheduled for 2015. To kick off the project he presents Not So Quiet tonight. In his old Worksound space, there will be visual art, video, dance performance, poetry, DJ's and you.

The Triennale project will bring international artists, selected by international curators to multiple venues. Portland has good standing in national visual art circles. It's time to be known for world impact, and for Portland artists and audiences to become comfortable navigating world aesthetics.

Tonight Jason Traeger shows paintings; Anne Colvin, video; Barry Sanders talks criticism; Matthew Dickman reads poems; Renee Rhodes performs dance; and Golden Retriever performs.

Not So Quiet, kickoff for the NOW Portland Triennial www.nowtriennale.org 820 SE Alder 9PM-midnight $15

February 1 Eastside Art Openings

Newspace Photo has a group show Photography at the Edge. You can read about it on their website. At Newspace Photo www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th Map



Image and Identity is a quirky portrait show at Black Box Gallery www.blackboxgallery.com 811 E Burnside, Suite 212 upstairs 5PM-8:30 Free



Home Bass has a show and DJ's. At Home:Bass www.homebasspdx.com 123 NE 6th 6PM-10 Free



Redux has a love-themed show. At Redux www.reduxpdx.com 811 E Burnside



Pushdot has a show of photographs, Tangled Branches... Stories of Adoption, by Kimberli Ransom. She showed the work previously in her studio in the Towne Warehouse building. It is a series of portraits of families blended by adoption and their stories, which is also the story of the photographer. The styling is traditional portrait studio, unusual in the contemporary art world, but the narratives pull it together. At Pushdot Studio www.pushdotstudio.com 2505 SE 11th Avenue Suite 104



Most chainsaw art is banal. Maybe chainsaws in the hands of artists would be better. Tonight you can see a demonstration of chainsawing art. Then you can decide if you want to attack that particular beast. At adxportland.com 417 SE 11th x Stark Map 6PM-9

January 31-February 17 Love Theater

The Fertile Ground Festival began about a week ago and continues through this weekend. Included are many excellent theater and dance works at reasonable prices. A favorite of mine is Hand2Mouth Theater presenting Something's Got Ahold of My Heart. You can see the schedule, including their shows planned for New York, as well as Portland on their website www.hand2mouththeatre.org. Hand2Mouth at Fertile Ground Festival Studio 2, 810 SE Belmont. Whole festival pass $50 for festival dates January 30-February 3. Regular run $12-20 through the 17th

January 28 Designing Design

Design is not always valued in its time, place or culture. Not so here, now and today. High design, rooted in Northern Italy, Germany and Scandinavian countries faces innovation by designers worldwide who not only produce beautiful objects, but also work with ethnographers to design objects that work. And forward thinkers are thinking about a future in which all interfaces are virtualized and even disappear. That is the vision for ubiquitous computing first proposed by Mark Weiser at PARC.

Portland is a design town. That has been realized by the Portland Art Museum dipping its toe into design shows, including the excellent new design in China show. Meanwhile, the PNCA Museum of Contemporary Craft is backing into design from its foothold in traditional craft. We have also had several tries at Portland craft weeks and festivals.

To further the discussion about what we should do with design, PNCA has invited Sam Aquillano and Derek Cascio, creators of Design Museum Boston to Portland.

Design Museum Boston is a virtual museum: a collection of geographically distributed programs often in conjunction with other presenters and online. So the question is, are museums themselves destined for the museum? Or will brick and mortar museums encompass a virtual model in their program?

Aquillano and Cascio will be interviewed by Randy Gragg and take questions from the audience on their now 4 year old project tonight.

It is part of the Bright Lights series sponsored by local magazine the Portland Monthly and the City Club, a thoughtful public interest group. The crowd runs to Portland thinkers, architects and planners. At Jimmy Mak's, 221 NW 10th. Doors 5:30PM, discussion 6. Free

January 26 Caldera Blades

Crystal Shenk & Shelby Davis are the focus of this open house at Caldera. They are resident artists this Winter. It's a chance to see the studios and talk with the artists. At Camp Caldera www.calderaarts.org, 31500 Blue Lake Drive, Sisters, OR 1PM-3 Free



Aedion 44 has a show, Blade, by their graphic artists Jess Gleasman, Paul Nieminen, Kevin McNally and Derek Jaskot. At Aedion 44 Gallery www.aedionaesthetic.com 4430 SE Hawthorne 7PM-11 Free

January 25 Free is Good

On the last Friday of the month, the Art Museum is free from 5PM-8. So start your new year's resolution to see more free art. At the Portland Art Museum www.pam.org 1219 SW Park 5PM-8 Free



Fourteen30 starts a 2 week show by Jessica Jackson Hutchins. The reception is on closing February 3, contact the gallery for viewing times which do not include tonight. At Portland's only member of the New Art Dealers Alliance www.newartdealers.org, Fourteen30 Gallery www.fourteen30.com 1501 SW Market Street Map

January 23 Bunny Sandwich

Bunny Sandwich is a bi-coastal collaboration by artists Sandra Preston and Cori Champagne, in Portland and Boston respectively. They make illustrations which take a humorous approach to solving serious problems. They have explored modern nomads, the environmental impact of tourism and urb-suburb gardening, in Germany's schrebergärten. They present a talk tonight Open Ground: Wheelbarrows, Backpacks, and Beer - The Collaborative Process and The Bunny Sandwich Collective. It's part of an irregular series of salons on artist work, Neurobics, at Place placepdx.tumblr.com a gallery on the 3rd floor of the Pioneer Place Mall 700 SW Fifth. Doors 6:30PM, talk 7 Free

January 22 Bee There

Avoiding being stung is my earliest childhood conception of bees. We err in teaching that first to children. Instead bee knowledge can be a gateway to the wonder of nature and science. And we should be massively thankful to bees, we would be starving without them.

Matt Reed is on a mission. Bee Knowledge is his physical store in Southeast and Interwebs business providing bee knowledge and bee supplies internationally.

His specialty is bar hives. They are the simplest type and simulate hives bees have been making in trees for over 50 million years.

Matt shares his bee knowledge tonight. A presentation of the Curiosity Club, you can tune into the free live webcast off the Core77 site or visit the talk and demonstration in person at Hand Eye Supply www.handeyesupply.com/pages/curiosity-club 23 NW 4th 6PM Free

January 18, 19, 20 Things by YU

Friday social intellectualism theorist Angie Keefer speaks at YU. From the writeup at the YU website and her websites it's impossible to tell what she does or what she is speaking about. Longtime electronic music academic Curtis Roads performs Saturday at YU. On Sunday, the film Magnificent Obsession by director Douglas Sirk will be shown - at the NW Film Center in Whitsel Auditorium. Sirk's traditional works were an inspiration for Portland filmmaker Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven. All details on the YU website. www.yucontemporary.org

January 18 Controvrsy on the Flat

Controversy and Conversation is a show of graphic collage and screen printing by Peter Moore. He has worked in athletic industry creative, so employs brand-style text and imagery in his art projects. At Gallery Homeland www.galleryhomeland.org in the Ford Building www.fordbuildingpdx.com 2505 SE 11th x Division. Enter through the cafe on the corner if the main doors on 11th are locked. 7PM-10 Free

January 17 Art Spark

Art Spark, Portland's bimonthly art networking meetup, hosts the Dill Pickle Club, the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, Third Rail Repertory Theatre, the Sisters of the Road Journeys Art Festival, Artslandia Magazine, Stumptown Comics and Into The Woods. It's an opportunity for artists, presenters, institutions and funders to mingle. Art Spark www.portlandartspark.com at the Performing Arts Center Lobby 1111 SW Broadway 5PM-7 Free

January 14 The 511 on Creativity

511 is a service code for directions. It's also the address on NW Broadway of a new PNCA building to be made from the old Portland federal building built in 1919. That's fitting, because creative thinking is essential for finding our direction to making a better world.

Tonight project architect Brad Cloepfil and PNCA president Tom Manley discuss the plan for the building with editor and architecture-planning writer Randy Gragg. Cloepfil's first large project was the remodel of the Wieden + Kennedy agency building completed in 2000. Cloepfil's firm Allied Works has gone on to significant museum and other projects, retrofits and bespoke.

It is part of the Bright Lights series sponsored by local magazine the Portland Monthly and the City Club, a thoughtful public interest group. The crowd runs to architects and planners. At Jimmy Mak's, 221 NW 10th. Doors 5:30PM, discussion 6. Free

January 13 Video Wall

The Marylhurst Art Gym is a sensitive detector of the Portland art world. They often focus on mid career artists, but not exclusively. For this show they tap Kelly Rauer and Samantha Wall. Rauer has worked across media including in video. Wall is a gifted illustrator. At the Marylhurst Art Gym at Marylhurst University www.marylhurst.edu/theartgym/ Map 3PM-5 Free

January 12 Knitlandia, Writelandia, Performlandia, Projectlandia and Bundlandia

Writers Patrick deWitt, Jon Raymond and Venessa Veselka read tonight, connected to the current show The Big Fig by Johanna Jackson, graphic knitwear. Recommended. At the Portland Museum of Modern Art inside Mississippi Records www.portlandmuseumofmodernart.com 5202 N Albina Map 8PM Free



There is an art vector tracing between San Francisco and Portland. We have several edge-seeking artists from there here, including Patrick Rock and Harrell Fletcher. In turn, they draw San Francisco artists here to exhibit, talk and perform. Jennifer Locke is a San Francisco performance artist and curator of a visual and documentary show opening Friday at PSU. Tonight she, Keke Hunt and Nicole McClure perform live and in person. Expect a fluid and challenging evening in a good way. Rocksbox is a place for Portland's most contemporary artists to converse and experience art beyond the warm and fuzzy Portlandia genres. Always recommended. At Rocksbox Fine Art www.rocksboxfineart.com 6540 N Interstate Map 8PM-11 Free



Chris Frasier opens a projection mapping project, In Passing. Wayne Bund opens Idle and Blessed, a photographic and video performance of childhood play by adults in the Mt Hood Wilderness. It's a similar theme explored by Justine Kurland in her early work. Bund, in contrast, focuses on men. At Disjecta, in the shadow of Paul Bunyan www.disjecta.org 8371 N. Interstate
Map 6PM-9 Free

Januray 11 Ash Street Art Program

The Ash Street Art Program is kin to Project Grow, Creative Growth and others.

Artists Aaron Cunningham, David Howard, Suni Lovelie, Jim Mary, Frank Mendoza, Robbie Mitchell, Andy Nacoste, Patrick Steen and Terry Wright show their work, some with accompanying narratives.

At Palio Desert House and Cafe www.palio-in-ladds.com in Ladd's Addition 1996 SE Ladd. Regular Cafe Hours. Free

January 11 Fourteen30

Conrad Ruiz is a painter from LA who paints figures in a loose but tending towards photorealistic colorful style. He is the first artist in a series, each exhibiting two works for two weeks at Fourteen30. The works are Punchmonster and Nova. The curator and principal of Fourteen30 maintains a strong relationship with the LA art world. This is an example. 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

January 10 Drawing a Day

Dan Attoe is a now Portland artist represented by PDX Contemporary, and founder of Paintalica. The IPRC is publishing a limited edition book of Attoe's sketches, Everything is New. It's the result of seven years of daily drawings, some of which have been realized in his artworks. Tonight is the release of the book and a brief talk by the artist at the Independent Publishing Resource Center www.iprc.org 1101 SE Division, Suite 2 7PM Free