5/14-16/06
ACROSS THE DIVIDE (PT I - III)

Escape from NY….

In our last episode, I visited the Met and Whitney in one day. Why did I torture myself so? I am forever saying that a museum is a full-day exploration. You have to take it in like you do with aromatherapy, time-released makes for smoother intake. But, as usual I ended up being a bat-outta-hell zipping at the speed of light. I need to find more and more Zen in my life. Portland helps me center my energy. OK, so here’s the startling conclusion to my eastern travels.

After Kieran and I stepped out of our stroll on Madison Ave, we darted to somewhere in the 20s for a NY classic, Burritoville. Meeting up once again with Joel, I had the Mega-Soy Burrito (tempeh, tofu sour cream, soy cheese, brown rice - you get the picture). Though I could have spent hours with two of my favorite buccos in the City that Never Sleeps, it was about face to make good time to le airport. And after they dropped me off (by foot mind you) at Penn Station (which was a complete zoo), I was quickly boarding the LIRR towards Jamaica Station once again. What a rush, and a frenetic joyride. But I got there with just enough time to spare before the airline monitors reported that my 8:15 flight would be leaving at 10PM (due to inclement weather in Boston). Ahem, they had some rain. “Whatever”!

If I had known I would have most certainly spent more undivided time talking and loving my friends, as it’s all you get in this life (and it’s plenty!). I am missing them as I write this - funny how this has suddenly turned into a “blog” (I hate that word).

After returning safely back to Beantown, and another comfy, restful night at Mom’s it was off again to MIT to see my friend, curator Bill Arning at the List Visual Arts Center. We had sushi for lunch and then he toured me through their two new exhibitions, Choreographic Turn which he curated, consisting of a large room with four cameras all synched to a dancer, on a loop. The film is 16MM, by Daria Martin and Peter Welz in collaboration with William Forsythe and it challenges you physically in a space where the action is larger than life. The movement is chunky, choppy, twisting, awkward and very acrobatic. The live sound plays well in the space with a concrete floor.

Speaking of floors, I was completely floored by the strident collection of 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966, curated by Catherine Morris. See here for fuller information about this documentary exhibition with more twists and turns than the Lorax. Bringing together these ten artists with several engineers (my kinda show), Bell Laboratories’ Billy Klüver was the ringmaster of this daunting (and supremely overlooked) collaboration of dynamic proportions. Wires, helium and physics - oh my. And did I mention the original performances included such artworld heavyweights as Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, Lucinda Childs and Steve Paxton?

Aside from presenting some of the original blueprints from Rauschenberg’s private collection, great documentatry black and white photographs of the performances and artists, some of the original instruments used by genius David Tudor - and my favorite part of the exhibition was being able to watch and relive something that happened right after my birth, there on video. The films are fantastic and capture hours of performance and oddities, some edited, and some a bit raw. These guys were serious about presenting the psychedelic and the macabre, dealing in geometric hypnotism and minimal sound space. Their pieces were large-scale and temporary, bold and fearless.

My final few days in Boston/Cambridge included stops in my favorite nooks like O’Naturals and organic apothecary Harnett’s (which was closing the store for good w/75% off everything!). I had the funniest moment in Harvard Square with Kevin. While venturing into the incredible chocolate kingdom, Burdick’s I proceeded to order an Iced Noir, a tall glass of delish - something dark chocolate with whipped creme, a dash of hazelnut and a whole lotta yum - it turned heads. Oh yes, and a small stack of Luxembourgers as well (my weak spot is my stomach, if you haven’t noticed). But nothing like what was about to transpire. As we looked over at a very suited African man sitting across from us, who was reading the Financial Times, with the reverse headlines, unbeknownst to him, which read “Chocolaholic In The Hot Seat”. When I pointed it out to him he had a great laugh, in turn we did as did the couple alongside us. Chocolate and laughter. Life’s sweet!

Seeing my favorite people in the world:

A fun get-together with my forever best girl, Kim Airs of Grand Opening! (who was in mid production of “You Outta Be In Pictures”), we went to the legendary (and infamous) Tony Floramo’s “Where the meat falls off the bone”. In the coming months she is packing up her act and moving it to Tinseltown. She knows our very own Marne Lucas and said to say hi.

I met up with Adam, former partner of my friend John Beresford who was disturbingly murdered while intervening as a stranger was being mugged last year. John was an artist and community leader. I’m still reeling…however, a foundation has been set up in his name and his legacy will live on. I brought him pro-portraits that I shot of John back in 1999, that he had never seen, and it was quite moving. Adam has put together an amazing evening of entertainment that will open this week at the Emerson Majestic Theater in Boston called Forest for the Trees. Rest in peace dear John, you were and continue to be well loved!

Got to have dinner with the two longest loves of my life (former husbands) and great friends, “Providencetown” (that’s for Mr. Waters) attorney, Kevin Redmond (who had our pet manatee in tow) and out jazz-legend-in-the-making, Charlie Kohlhase. Kevin was amazing during the tenure of my trip - driving me virtually everywhere, he’s a gem. We dined on divine Japanese cuisine at BlueFin, and then indulged in a few glasses of ruby pinot back at Charlie’s (where I got to see the princess lovebucket after these several moons have passed). Wonderful night.

And lastly got to see my oldest friends, composer/singer David Walther and Irish step-dancing champ Jim Spellman who is also a dance instructor at Boston University. Jim fixed us an Italian dinner at his new condo in Jamaica Plain. We reminisced about old times, and new times discussing everything from weightlifting to the fine art of relationships. Jim and I broke away to head down to the Museum of Fine Arts, as he had bought us tickets for opening night at the 22nd Annual Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. It was amazing to be in a totally sold out room of mostly men, and not to recognize more than two or three, and only vaguely. My mind is sharp on faces and forms, it’s the transitioning of people to other cities, to the burbs, the rural regions and outside of the area that has changed. In years past I would have known nearly half the room - the community has broadened and the diversity in the museum that night was wonderful to see. Screening was Allan Brocka’s Boy Culture, which is already making waves at other festvals worldwide. This film, set in our sister city, Seattle, where Brocka is based. The film is centered around three roomates in a broken up love triangle that never quite meets on any side, but shifts comically to a sweet conclusion. In the interim, the characters, a super flamboyant late teenager, a toughy (but motherly) hustler and an African-American dreamer all galavant in their own business, and wind up in and out of trouble with each other. There are sideline love stories and passionate moments that twist truths. It has a soul and remains super-fluffy enough for all audiences.

The scene where the two supposedly travel to our Portland for a wedding of an former fiancee of his is hysterical when the hustler meets his roomates black family (with yet another sibling twist). I’m not giving much away here because it’s real good and will most likely pop up this summer down at Cinema 21, so watch for it! I asked director Brocka if he really filmed in Portland and he made it clear that the budget for the film didn’t allow for a two-city shoot and that most “Portland” scenes were shot up north.

…and that ends my tale of two cities.

PS: I was lax in mentioning my sighting of celebs…but that was in Portland. Just before I dashed away on my trip I noticed none other than Sarah Graham inspecting the construction at the tower of the Portland Aerial Tram. Her intense gaze was brataking to watch. And just today I saw the Rockstar-drinking dad of Oregon’s newest quints, Chris Ford in my office - what a very nice man, and he’s a spitting image of my bud Coobs.

PPS: Scott Wayne Indiana made some headlines this week!

——–

…TJ Takes Manhattan

Well, after engaging in a delicioso meal fit for a prince (I had the catfish sandwich btw - and we shared a four-way banana split) we jammed home for a restful night’s crash. I also was remiss to mention Kieran’s illustruous partner, and realtor supreme (as sources say), Luis - who is funny and serious in one note. And the accomodations, though tight as they usually are in NY, came complete with most of the coforts of home, and others like a clawfoot shower, that I am not as used to - but always enjoy navigating new (er, old) things.

The next day after the essential Brooklyn edible, the bagel (i’m addicted), at some low-fi cafe Kieran and I were off towards the Manhattan skyscrapers once again, in search of high art in that skyline. So, where else to crack open the day but the Met? And because we were a bit leisurely in our approach (and becuase I was only there for about 30 hours or so) we darted straight to the roof to catch a glimpse of Cai Guo-Qiang’s Transparent Monument complete with large glass and “dead birds” and a few other reptilian surprizes that looked more like porcupines meet Farberware. The work has a quirky cartoon silence and parodies its physical space. We took some silly pictures with the pigeons and crocs and oogled at the lovely city skyline (another first for me atop the Met) and then descended into the den of thirtysomething (only cuz I’m jealous) Kara Walker.

After The Deluge was not an easy swallow for my friend who was a Walker-virgin. His response, and I concur with his expressive confusion, was something like “I don’t get it…what does this say about where we are with race relations”. A young caucasian student-type said to him, something like “Kara is a young African American woman who plays with stereotypes of her ancestors, you should Google her.” He politely smiled and then said to me “why should I listen to a girl who hasn’t experienced discrimination”. He was preaching to the choir, we laughed and moved on. As we did I tried to make sense of her work for him from a context of her using negative stereotypes almost as reverse psychology, or turning lemons into lemonade? I tried voicing this in so many ways, but her work, truly enigmatic, has spoken. Her interpretations and re-caricaturization of lost modernity can raise eyebrows in liberal times, however, this exhibition was quite interesting, pairing her work alongside Winslow Homer, J. M. W. Turner (I wrote an essay on this one moons ago), Joshua Shaw and others who dealt with images of people of color in turmoil and as slaves.

The small show could leave you with a sputtering enormity of questions. Intellectually interactive, never a quick read. Walker uses fanciful-cut, flat, matte-black silhouttes to tell her version, or her own folk stories. In this way they are quite associative with work of the dadists, creating her own story, retelling something through appropriation, as if it were passed down for generations and missed parts and what was left was somehow permissable as “truth”.

We dashed through lots of rooms of silver, furniture, tombs (wow) and statuary, pausing for a moment to shoot some quick candids imitating the busts and heroic nudes, managing to keep our trousers on of course. I wondered about how different my actions in mocking these defenseless (except for th expert security team) marbles must be in light of what we just witnessed in the other room?

Without much planning we then were dashing up towards the Whitney when out from the concrete I noticed the letters G-a-g-o-s-i-a-n. I was curious, so we went inside. Well the new(ish) space on Madison Ave just blew me away, phhheewwww. Endless “private rooms” the place appeals like an installation/penetentiary. However, for all the overly fu-fu awkward allure that may appeal to people more attuned to getting their art ya-ya’s out in an office building - the place is dead nice.

Two shows were on view. The first we walked into was the fantastic fantasy watercolor work of Monica Majoli (definitely an artist to continue watching). Her Rubbermen, these creatures of the dark shadows of the night, were actually quite lovely (and also seen at the Biennial up the street). Some with dimensions up to 96 inches on paper, the use watery shows, extremely painterly, to completely demystify the actual circumstance, without losing any mystery in the process. Some of the figures are bound and hug by hammocks between trees like sacks/cocoons.

Depending on how you look at these you might be viewing still-lives or organic objects, in washes of purples and blues, greys and whites. The press release refers to these are sexually explicit, but I see something outside of this grid of thinking. I see work that breaks the stereotype of s/m as being something debaucherous and “other”. But at the same time it’s fascinating to see work by a female artist taking the reigns of underground sexuality by the cahones and and predesposing herself to a new dialogue with audiences. It’s also intriguing to see her compositing these bodies and figures into an outdoor landscape, furthering them from their usual dens of iniquity. Supposedly earlier in her career she worked with a gay male friend for a year or so and documented his sexual life, conquests, experiments in the taboo and unsafe territory. This series seems like a natural progression of her research and development. Powerful and probably maddening to some, it’s ye olde push/pull of attract/repel in work simultaneously challenging AND pleasing to the eye. (I want one!!!!!)

It’s hard to imagine Ed Ruscha will be 70 next year. He seems to be one of the biggest rages over the past several years, and rightfully so as I again learned by ascending the staircase at Gagosian to his latest Drawings show. Though the work, even some dating backwards four decades, all uses fonts and phrases in unique ways, sharp and undulating, with wry humor, he never seems to quit. He’s sorta got a permanent edge about his approach. His Will 100 Artists Please Draw A 1950 Ford from Memory? (1977) is a great example of tongue-in-cheek sarchasm. I simply love that he didn’t attempt to draw the car himself. The pink work with lightly faded text, is it a challenge, and how many artists would have known what that variety of automobile would look like twenty-seven years later anyway? What purpose would it serve to even bother drawing the picture, or driving the car? It’s conceptual work that doesn’t spare a shy curl of the upper lip.

Next up was the Whitney Biennial, yes I was a virgin, and this was what got me to take this sidetrip in the first place. OK. I’m gonna try to be somehow brief in my overarching thoughts on this gig. There were several shows going on within the multiple levels of the museum. There were many known names, many unknown and too many themes to circumvent the maximus. The “War Room” was strong, and that was where I first encountered strolling minstrel, Momus decked with his eye patch and megaphone. He spoke in hushed broken politics, celebrities and about the art world in general. His voice is very pleasant and worked well wherever he appeared. Though, I was bothered by the sense of separation from this portion of the show, general Bush-bashing seemed alive-n-kicking throughout, as did the message of peace spelled Mark Di Suvero (three sightings on this trip) and Rirkrit Tirvanija.

Emerging from the chaotic exhibition were subtler themes of dramatic psychedelia in the work of the incomparable Kenneth Anger, Jay Heikes, Ed Paschke (RIP) and Francesco Vezzoli’s absolutely hysterical faux-film trailer/parody of Caligula (my second favorite work in the show). It’s a real trailer for a fake movie and it’s fully cast with broad-spectrum sound and lots of nudity. CALIGULA!!!!

If I cut to the chase I can easily say that there were few standouts like these, and lots of totally boring, academic and plain bad art. I was unimpressed (after much self-anticipation) by Jim O’Rourke’s 20-minute video installation Door, projected with a sound loop on three sides of a medium-sized room. Yeah, it was somewhat “pretty” but boring, yeah his sound is interesting, but here seemed out of context with other work. For a room-sized installation, it was flat, and I even got to experience the room all to myself - so no crowd to weed through like in many other portions here. I recommend he stick with his soundwork. But it still wasn’t as bad as Gedi Sibony’s pale installation work The Qualities Depend on Other Qualities which was a cardboard drivel. Cut it however you like (if I only had a boxcutter) - but I don’t buy this at all. But some collectors have, and I would love to get them in a room for a nice chat. And why were there a grouping of African-American artists segregated to a room amongst themselves?

Aside from any mentions above, standouts were Christopher Williams object-fetish photography; Josephine Meckseper’s raucous tableau The Complete History of Postcontemporary Art; Mark Grotjahn’s minimalist, gridded canvases; and my absolute favorite work in the show - Marilyn Minter’s “shit-kickers” like Stepping Up. This daring lady can wield a paintbrush and I was only sorry to have missed the just sheer week’s before presentation of her Billboards by Creativetime (who deserves your support).

Oh yah, and what was with the big broken down wall?

…Stay tuned for more.

——

Glad to return to Portland after a bit over a week on the other coast. While most of my trip was dedicated to spending time with friends and family (including new addition, my adorable niece, Briell) I segregated some cultural time as well.

“Uncle’s Away!”

My first leg took me to Boston, visiting with my mom upon Admiral’s Hill just under Chelsea’s Mystic River Bridge. The accomodations were comfortable, and heck, she even had quesadillas with all the fixins - and chocolate cake/ice cream waiting for me! That’s a return royalle. After a few days visiting with my sister and new husband (and his family), new baby, and my other niece Adrianna, it seemed like time to relax, eat big and take in more Boston intonations than I have heard in several years. Even my broken accent was difficult to restart, but there I was in the fray of things once again.

Due to some nasty inclement weather I unfortunately did not get out to the hinterlands of New Hampshire to see my aunties, but they did come see Portland last October. I don’t think they enjoyed driving down the one way streets downtown, but they loved the restaurants and waterfalls. Glad to be back to the madness and mystique I left exactly five years ago this week.

And ya know - the ONLY thing I miss are the people in my life, each a unique gemstone. Oh, yes, AND Toscanini’s (which I visited in my first few days back). Believe what the NY Times has to say. I shall long not forget the late evening I was desperate, hard-up for some dark chocolate or white chocolate almond (my fave). The shop had closed 1/2 an hour before, but owner Gus saw my nose pressed upon the plated glass staring soulessly into the vacant sweet spot. As a serious regular he came to the door rescuing me from my pangs by offering me some free ice cream to take away. That man is a saint (who makes many sinners!). No trip to Cambridge should be without a visit to the legndary 899 Main Street.

But, I digress, as I am sure that YOU would rather hear about what I may have stumbled upon artwise. Well, that all came to be once I shot back into the air aboard the most newbie ship in the sky, JetBlue (affordable and lots of entertainment). Into the skies, a short hour or less to New York I flew into JFK Airport, first thing in the morning. As someone who is eternally directionally challenged (never give me a map, I’ll either cry, tear it up or yawn). So, once I landed I hopped the AirTrain to the Jamaica Station Metro. Good thing I only had my briefcase, and I’ll tell you why. First off though I have visited NY countless times from 1980 until the present, this my first ever landing at JFK - so I had to coordinate with a plan shared by friends. Upon departure from that Metro stop all seemed fine. Until I looked up from my IPod haze (Ladytron’s Witching Hour on repeat) to notice we were at 23rd St. I needed to get off in Chelsea and the 30’s…so, I popped over the subway platform one stop back and exited the station, only to learn I was in Queens. LOL. But true.

My poor buddy Kevin had to listen to my diatribe of expletives, which is not my style, but NY makes me antsy, the pace is divinely insane. I guess my rooting down in the Pacific Northwest has chilled my bones considerably. Anyhow, Kevin was incredibly calm in my storm of F this and that’s and provided me with directions as I paced up Northern Avenue on some scary back alley looking street. A cultural re-awakening? I think not. But as I proceeded all went mostly smooth from there forward. Once back in the subway, and on th correct side, minus a few spare fares wasted, I was back on track as it were.

Down in Chelsea as I emerged on to West 22nd my first stop was to meet with Elisabeth Ivers, the director of Marianne Boesky who gave me a private tour of the current John Waters’ Unwatchable show (of which most of the editions were sold). Standouts were Slimy JW, a dozen foot long rubber snake swizzling across the concrete floor, Playdate which are two hyper-realistic silicone baby dolls in the form of diminutive versions of Charles Manson and Michael Jackson.

Totally creepy and unexpected designed by the folks that brought you Chuckie. Of course, if you follow the way Waters flows you know he is infinitely interested in all things serial-killer based and one-upping Jeff Koons’ nearly two-decade old version in a single step is saying a lot, even now - especially now. I also nod his On Me Rag a humungous towel with equally giganto towel bar with its reference to the early Queer Nation safe-sex mantra “On Me, Not In Me”.

Other notable pieces were the interactive Baldo, a large comic illustration of the back of Waters’ head complete with metal dust and a magnetic pen to cover up his bald spot, encased in a brushed steel and glass case. A take-off on the many similar-like games that were widespread from the 60s-80s. Though Waters has grown well known for his photographic work, in which the exhibition includes dozens, I enjoyed the more sculptural, experiential work. Also here was the Faux Video Room which was a “room” behind a typical museum installation-looking curtain with sounds audible enough and muffled enough to lure your curiosity. As you attempt walking into th room, however, you are surprized by a big cushy pad that stops your attempt to go any further. It’s a teaser. This along with Waters’ very humorous self-bashing in Bad Director’s Chair which includes various phrases about dirctor styles like “Hack”, “DGA Reject” and “Tested Badly” is searing sarchasm. I love it. Lis gave an incredible tour, and many references on other must-see shows. Everything in Waters’ show was so “on” for this very recent septegenrian who has barely ever ceased to amaze, taunt or otherwise twist someone’s panties into knots. Oh, there’s so much more, but I only have two hands (no jokes).

The Liz Piece

< detail from Scott Wayne Indiana’s new book work

As I left the gallery DK Row of the Oregonian phoned me asking some local questions and about my upcoming curatorial stint grey|area (nice plug, eh?), starring thirteen interesting artists who will deal (in)directly with anything that falls between the cracks sideways. We spoke for a while as some British supermodel (have zero idea who) sauntered out of a big ole limo and was walking into a studio aside me as two mini-van papparazzi photogs secretely photographed her from a few car lengths away. Wherever those photos end up, who knows, I may end up in Vogue. No, that isn’t on my “to-do list”. After I spoke with DK, I started my all out art-viewing assault on Chelsea. And, boy/girl - was it an eyeful. I am gonna rant through this….

First stop was Tanya Bonakdar to see Your engagement sequence by Olafur Eliasson. This space is truly dedicated to work that flares boundaries, and does it with technology, light and space in this particular forum. The central work, Your negotiable panorama dealt wavy water, its reflections and light in the round - all enabled by the motion of entrants to the space. A slight bouncing platform uses your weight to trip the light…fantastic! The uncertain museum was another work dealing in cylindrical space with light and shadow (and motors). Panels of steel and projection foil dangled from a centered tubular freestanding space. Upon entry the space creates large cast silhouttes to the exterior walls, along with large circular ornamental geometries rotatating in space from the ceiling, offering inner/outer projections and multiple experiences within a convex space. Upstairs were a huge geo-prism of mirrors that hung like a Seussian chandelier, and a super darkened room that acted as a camera obscura. The best part was your ability to walk right inside the “camera”. Great show where he is again dealing in larger than human scale optical dimensions.

From there I decided not to go to the Andrea Zittel show at the temporary New Museum of Contemporary Art space because I needed the $5 I had in my pocket for a slice and soda, even though it was a reasonable $6 admission (compared to the $15 per museum I paid the following day). But fast and furious I prodded from W 21 to W 25 with a mission.

Next was deKooning’s Sketchbook at Matthew Marks (523 W 24). These really raw mid-to-late 70s drawings, many presented in double-sided movable frames, were just barely readable. I’m a fan, yes, but the drawings, hmmmm, I’ll say it, looked incredibly more like the doodles of a aged artist past his prime rather than anything remotely like the misogynist madman he was in his heyday. Not to condone that particular angle, but he had righteous angst that was distorted, collected chaos, so textural, removed from reality and most often a bit irrational. Here was smudgy graphite that actually seemed sad when you compare them with the haunting, powerful works of the early 50s. His interest in despair, however, carries through these poorly drawn works. These are also drawn during a period of intense alcoholism for the artist, but should that ever be an excuse? Drugs/alcohol have often had the creative effects equal to elusive gloss or psychedelic genius - but it’s often a scope of delerium and deterioriation that comes of it.

At Marks’ other gallery (522 W 22nd) the super-scale painted-steel early 60’s work of Tony Smith is daunting and a grand delight to see all in one space together. Their enormity is welcome, I felt tiny walking under and through them, their angles and sense of balance, the muscle of size, all enveloped me.

I stopped at both Paula Cooper spaces and found An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery (@ 534 W 21) organized by Bob Nickas to be beyond just cherry red all over the place. Though I was particularly drawn in Louise Lawler’s Something About Time and Space But I’m Not Sure What It Is (One) Cherry. I like her minimal sense of tonal color and humane humor. Not rally sure what to have made of Allan McCollum’s,
Natural Copies from the Cola Mines of Central Utah which reminded more of a ripped-raw bloddy molar, and I shy from such things. Props to Nickas as this was a very visually riveting show, lush enough to keep you looking and with enough variety of materials and artists like William Eggleston, Wolfgang Tillmans (whose work was red and wavy - a dream) and the intimacy of works by Bard’s Nancy Shaver - you just can’t go wrong here.

Over at Cooper’s larger, much more heavenly space (521 W 21) - no I mean it - the ceiling seems high enough to touch the sky - was a spot-on grouping of Mark DiSuvero’s drawings for and the master 2005 work Time Out for D’Oresme. The steel work seems nearly custom-fit for the space at 27 feet tall. It’s musical, five I-beams come in contact like choreography while also resembling a canon of sorts. It’s like a game in the sky.

I missed Jack Pierson at Cheim & Read - damn it! (sorry, but it closed a few days prior).

The shows of mixed media work by Ashley Bickerton (who has some crazy symbolist ideas) at Sonnabend (536 W 22nd) and Hamburg’s Andreas Slominski at Metro Pictures (519 W 24) lost me somewhat, and the latter was reminiscent of washed up, overworked recycled styrofoam palettes that tried to hard to seduce with color (but I loved the frames). Though the stills upstairs were complemented by a screening of Isaac Julien’s classic Looking for Langston - just lovely in contrast. Provocative, classic, even sensual.

Isn’t it great when you stumble upon a small gallery you’ve never been to before? That’s exactly what happened when I walked through the doors at Freight + Volume (542 W 24th). They were showing the work of Shane Ruth (as opposed to my friend Shade Rupe, who I also missed on this trip - but there may be another trip back in November). The work here would certainly have local appeal with its use of native/heritage imagery and inference. The mixed media work in wood, mirror, veneers and more pull from wild natural settings, animalia and insects (hewn as portions of Gucci bags). The work mocks this generation’s sentimentality when addressing the delicate balance we destroy daily. It’s blatant work without being overtly ecologically political. And somehow, needs to be.

More shows/galleries I missed: The much talked about Bodies exhibit, Bellwether, Phillips, de Pury & Company, Printed Matter (though I did hear that the latest issue of Butt Magazine has an amazing spread on Portland!), as well as David Smith @ the Guggenheim. Oh, I even missed shopping at Other Music (those who know me realize I “must” have been completely strident playing the part of art astronaut.

The biggest hits of the day were both found on West 24th Street. First was the stellar, eye-popping magnetism of Boston-born Josiah McElheny at favorite haunt Andrea Rosen. The super-scope chandelier that fills an entire room, the infinitely reflective glass/mirror objects - can you say chrome for days!? I can. My few exposures to this man’s work has made me a huge fan. This is the type of guy I would like to work with, learn from as a teacher, and I don’t even care that he is younger than me. In addition there is a continuous film loop that basically deconstructs the process of making the large An End To Modernity, points, arrows, dots and connectors. His take, jabs and all, at the death of modernity as we knew it is captured so radiantly, with an affinity for the ultimate human resourcing, striving for a version of perfection, but ending up with clear-cut feng shui, in multiples. Talk about seduction….

The piece-de-resitance was walking into Barbara Gladstone not knowing I would be entering Matthew Barney’s The Occidental Guest. Now, mind you…hold on a sec….wooooahhhh….ok….I am experienced in the fine art of Barney’s film work, and have researched him heavily, but this was my very first in-person, full frontal, completely accidental opportunity to see the work live and in the flesh (er, silicone…). SURPRISE!

And for the show to actually include the self-lubricating plastic - well, let’s just say, I had a moment! Dramatic referential sculpture, noir in white. Totally colorless, totally mighty, matey - with endless symbolic references to the lost deep. He’s cast portals, and roping for anchors that is strewn all around the space. I loved to be able to walk through the work, avoiding parts on the floor, stepping gingerly around things, having to turn to watch yourself. I was truly immersed in these various sculptural works that are, for me, the only post-Beuys works worth their water (oh buoy!). Included here are works that should be included in (or inspired by) the just opened Drawing Restraint 9.

At this point my feet were done in. So I put them up at a local pizza joint on 7th where my good friend (and talented sound artist), Joel St. Germain (aka Humectant Interruption - you have a beautiful smile, too) met up with me. After the initial stun between years, our cafe search led us to meeting with my longtime buddy (and publishing guru) Kieran O’Leary who I hadn’t seen in a few years. Old friends, new again. We all couldn’t stop talking, and walking, through Manhattan and back to Park Slope where we drank deep red wine and listened to the cheesiest music of the 80s. After I rapturously spilt my glass all over the table and wall - they cut me off and we darted out for dinner at Blue Ribbon - amazing.

More on the Met, Gagosian, my personal tour of the List Visual Art Center’s great new documentary show, the opening of Boston’s 22nd annual GLBT Film Festival and my take on the Whitney Biennial…

…..to be continued……

5/5/06
SPARKLING SIGH

Sigur Rós astounded a near sell out crowd with a brand of something simply unexplainable, yet physically uplifting. From the stage I looked back into the sea of people filling the two balconies and entire scope of the floor. At points during the performance you could probably hear a pin drop - the isolated connection between the band and the audience was that keyed in. The quintet played a range of works from their ongoing catalogue, which went from silence to symphony in seconds. For a band who just embarked on their North American tour a few days ago the sweet cacophony seemed super driven and very well oiled.

The Schnitz may have never seen such a wildly diverse and attentive young audience, though there were folks of all ages, the halls were alive with the sounds of (sublime) music. It was my first time in this absolutely stunning facility, and most likely for many others in this evening’s crowd. The rococo overfloweth, and the stained glasswork glowed effervecently, wrought iron cubbies and other details made the entire affair very polished, a near religious experience. Speaking of which - spirits most certainly flew from the mouth of singer Jónsi, sticks for arms at center stage, who also wielded a mean guitar and bow, which at one point he completely demolished (inadvertently) as the band went into a high velocity Godspeed You Black Emperor-like (August at the Doug Fir) mode. His vocal range recalls a toned-down version of other throat singing ventriloquists like Jimmy Somerville and perhaps even Klaus Nomi, all incomparable originals. Jónsi’s passionate approach is as very genuine as it is a bit removed. Sigur Rós proved both their rock chops and their infinite sensitivities, highs, lows and many shades of in betweens.

For once a well deserved standing ovation (unlike the typical PDX Standing O seen all too often) as the evening came to a sonic, grinding finale with firework-like video, stage smoke and incredible theater lighting effects. I managed to get to the rear of the theater where the sound balance was as good as at the rim of the stage. This was in line with other finer shows of my top 10 historical best including Spiritualized, Cecil Taylor, Dumb Type and the aforementioned GYBE. Yeah, THAT good!

It was an evening of multi-instrumentalists who went from playing organ to bass (with drumsticks) back to drumkit to synths and guitars and vibes. Backed during their set by Amina, a female four-piece who also acted the opener, we heard a range of quirky to refined sounds coming from water glasses and toys to violas and xylophone. Their short set offered a taste of acoustic ambience and other poetics that flowed through the entire evening. In 2006 we have become less Bjork-dependent to get our Icelandic fix, as this performance more than proved to be a world requiring much further exploration.

They also offered beautifully hand printed merchandise including prints, notebooks and clothing as well as typical concert fare. It was a magical evening of sights, sounds and spirits.

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With your permission, I am now going to take a week off to fly to the other coast, spend time with my family and friends who live there, and probably stop by to see the Whitney Biennial while I’m at it. I’ll speak to you soon, have fun without me in the meantime. Peas, TJ

5/4/06
ICELAND vs. PORTLAND

Well, it’s not really wrestling - though it may be a synergistic match of the senses between one of the most ethereal, intrinsically mysterious international touring acts and a youthful city in a constant state of change.

TONIGHT:
Sigur Rós will be in Portland for one night only playing at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in support of their new recording Takk…, and only stopping in eleven cities nationwide before hitting Canada and all of Europe.

If you are not already familiar with their brand of ambient meets opera with a twist of fate you will be pleasantly engaged by this Icelandic import. They’ve been called “post-rock” but what does that mean, really? Since 1994 their sound has defied definition, is calming and alarming, sometimes simultaneously. In the ensuing dozen years they have released just four full-length recordings, and though not super prolific, they seem to emerge with something more methodical that smoulders with a sense of precision every time. Lead singer Jónsi has a uniquely androgynous vocal style that can lull you to sleep and creep you out. Add to that lush videos which tour film festivals worldwide, and you have a magical combo that has its own path. This is really the must-see experience in town this week.

PS: Ryan Jeffery’s presentation of Fallen at PDX Contemporary (925 NW Flanders) is also essential viewing (through May) - it was nice to see Gus Van Sant out at his opening last night.

5/2/06
ON CURATING

http://weblog.dev.advance.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=136984&blog_id=451

5/1/06
MAY DAY, MAY DAY

NO WORK / NO SCHOOL / NO BUYING & SALES

May Day, also referred to as International Workers’ Day, has always been an (in)famous day, filled with the rich celebration of anarchy and change. The day has oft posed interesting demonstrations, riots and boycotts across our land, and 2006 is like no other given the current political profile on immigrant people in the U.S.

Today marks the first (un)official day to acknowledge Day Without Immigrants/Immigrant Solidarity Day, a historically important moment in our collective cultural consciousness. This year, let us focus on the balance of peace.

NO GUITARS

4/25/06
THE WEEK IN PREVIEW

SIGHTS & SOUNDS AROUND TOWN: Per usual, lots of cultural goodies here among the trees and rivers. And whether you glide or butterfly your way through the local ’sphere - get out there and see some of these recommended works of art:

THURSDAY, April 27

8-10PM: Rake (325 NW 6th)
Out of Sync/Performance Night
Includes video installations, sculptures, performances, and single channel works.

9PM: Berbati’s Pan (231 SW Ankeny)
Ladytron bring their icy cold, chronically robotic pop to the Pacific Northwest and stun the masses.

11PM-12AM: KBOO (90.7FM)
A spontaneous mix of Seth Nehil’s past/present sound work. Definitely expect the unexpected. More.

THURSDAY, May 4

7PM: Chambers (207 SW Pine)
Research & Development/Lisa Radon and Tim DuRoche meld le spoken word with all sorts of seriously quirky sounds, found, improv and other.

Through April 29….

Allyson Vieira
Small A Projects (1430 SE 3rd)
A Brooklynite artist among us, don’t be afraid!

4/22/06
ANGELS & MONSTERS

PREVIEW: Film/Video artist Ryan Jeffery has truly defined his vision over the past three years. On the verge of presenting his work Fallen during the month of May at PDX Contemporary, the new moving picture also presents sculptural elements (developed by Jeffery with Kari Merkl) which also appear in the video.

As soft, poetic smoke undulates over the screen and transitions into scenes of a grassy knoll in macro and distance, Jeffery sets up a quiet space. Slender grasses and bare tree branches quiver in minimally shot details from which a single nude emerges. The female figure, pale skin and jet black mane, blends evenly into the scape by way of the overcast skies and muted surroundings. Color pops subtely as saturated by the even scope of light as Jeffery works the slowly shifting depth of field, unveiling a mysterious discovery. In the field the woman spies a greenish, transluscent machine of sorts (also recalling his earlier 2002 short, Small Parts). The internal spokes and wheels start moving with a sense of eerie, detached power.

As she approaches, a relationship is formed between nature and other in a curiosity to touch one of the pointy surfaces. In doing so a single drop of blood is drawn by the ambiguous machinery, entangling in the mechanism and giving way to synergy in the skies. On contact the human serum seems to cause a molecular/astrological chain reaction. A starburst in the sky, like falling stars (or fireworks) fills the air and sparkly drops of light land softly all over the horizon.

With infused and inferred fantasy narrative, this work captures a rural spirit of angels and miracles - and the quiet monster in the machine. Fueled by a lovely, sparse soundtrack by Ethan Rose this will be a work to watch. The video piece premiered at Holocene back in March as part of a live performance, though this setting will be apt for this lovely piece of cinema that vaguely recalls flashes of music videos by both Bjork (All Is Full of Love, Isobel)and the Pet Shop Boys (I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Anymore without the overt starpower. And if you like what you see check out more of Jeffery’s work!

***TONIGHT ***
In related news…Just returning from a recent U.S. tour, see Jeffery and Rose play with their band Small Sails live at the Doug Fir Lounge opening for Helio Sequence. 9PM sharp!

4/21/06
LEIPZIG CALLING

Entering stage right in a lengthy pre-WWII trenchcoat, and opening the set with his first ever single Leipzig (b/w Urges, circa late 70s) Thomas Dolby was back in form on the stage of the Aladdin Theater tonight! After not being seen live on stage for almost two decades, and only eight days into his Sole Inhabitant Tour. Dolby will make next stops in Boise and Seattle this weekend before storming New York and elsewhere.

Now, the show was not without its stereotypical technical difficulties, but the man is out there by himself, and probably the only one with knowledge of his entire techno-geek gear, and there’s plenty of it! He had glitches early on during house favorite One of Our Submarines and vowed to give out free t-shirts if there was another snafu, and though confident, made one small click-clash towards the end of the show and, with wide grin, kept to his promise and tossed a few tour t’s out to the hungry arms of the audience. And the audience, by the way seemed quite mixed, with geek-boys and much heavier on the 40+ range, many fifty-somethings in the house, as well as the retro-chic. Though, everyone mixed like a sweet martini - and no one seemed to hesitate when Dolby suggested to come hither towards the stage and dance, many (including myself) did just that.

Performing Hyperactive and the show closer (or so he thought) She Blinded Me With Science like a well-oiled pro (and soundtrack/video game technician and producer) he had the audience enrapt in syncopation - even to lesser known work like Budapest By Blimp and I Live In A Suitcase. Further endearing the audience, Dolby noted that he had friends and family in Portland, including his brother and niece. I liked his timed style, and natural smile. He seemed comfortable on stage, enough to note he was playing songs he really wanted to for this tour, earnestly admitting his having limited live material. When one considers his legacy thusfar you may imagine many of the chords and melodies extending into longer non-vocal, updated electronica passages fit for all audiences. And there was certainly a layer of that in his synth play last night.

by J. Lehmkuhl

The power play performance of the evening was his dead-on rendition/update of Windpower which both recalled the original while keeping the tight digital lick somehow freshly futuristic without becoming retro-cheesey. The accompanying video work was well-balanced and added both hints of Dolby of yore as well as live action from his head-cam, attached to his trademark spectacles. Yes, he was super wired for sound, and looked to be in great physical shape as well, especially for a man who not too long ago turned the magical age 40 (which is, I’ve heard, the new thirty). I mention this only because it relates to his very last release, simply titled 40, released by Salz. Gone is the blonde wiry hair, now sporting a perfectly clean-shaven globe of a skull. Speaking of which - after the crowd showed its gratitude with endless applause, out again he popped from behind the velvet curtain to close with a sole (and seemingly unexpected) encore of Airhead. The night was well-rounded, indeed!

PS: Opener Basic Pleasure Model were unfortunately the equivalent of chewing on old crusty gum from under the theater seats. Completely processed and out of date. Dolby mentioned this was their first live gig in eight years, let’s hope it to be their last. A friend noted, “who is this on stage, “Frankie Goes to Idaho”? They were a poor-man’s Go West, and that ain’t saying much, especially if you are sappy enough to remember who they are!

4/20/06
OH DEAR, OH DEAR

Audion is the latest pet project from Matthew Dear (Ghostly/Spectral Sound). With his own spin on his hometown-found Detroit Techno, this Texas-native was one of the first younger electronica artists to appear as a featured artist on iTunes. Recording since Y2K, Dear also has appeared on Ritchie Hawtin’s (aka Plastikman) M-NUS/Plus8 labels (check it)!!! His latest, Suckfish is a powerhouse dancemix that evolves from a cortex of changling rhythms and funky bass haze.

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FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 9PM
Holocene (1001 SE Morrison)
TIX: $7 (the best bucks you’ll spend this week)
Jackpot, 360 Vinyl, and at Holocene

——————————————-

Catch him at the hottest nightspot in the Southeast (PDX, that is) Holocene and support his current tour celebrating the just-released mix CD on Fabric UK. Fabric is a subscription label that releases out of London, and has seen previous efforts from Swayzak, Andrew Weatherall, Carl Craig, John Peel (r.i.p.), Howie B, and several dancefloor heavyweights. If this show is anything like the hot night spent at the Metropolis (Montreal) a few years back, Portland is in for a sweaty evening of bizarre beats with constant gliding and shifting undulating atmospheres (don’t forget your scrunchy).

Dance you down n’ try before you die: MP3 clips….

We are touched by your presence, Dear!

4/19/06
B-L-I-N-D-E-D

He was multimedia before the term became common. Recalling the classics of 80s new wave, no one could escape the wiggly electronic meanderings of (sir) Thomas Dolby! Super hit records like The Golden Age of Wireless and The Flat Earth were fueled by passionate pop songs that are as tongue-in-cheek as they are thought provoking, even now. Songs like She Blinded Me with Science recall the fun frivolity of early pop electronica. A man true to his roots in technology, Dolby has decided to take his Sole Inhabitant tour on the road, making Portland one of his first stops - in nearly two decades since performing in front of a live audience!

Reminice the days when Hyperactive was on non-stop MTV rotation or One of Our Submarines was a poetic, near lullaby about lost winter boys below the Baltic Sea. The song is based on a true story of his uncle, Stephen Spring-Rice (1920-1943) who, with his crew died on a manoevre in their submarine besides the battlefields of WWII. Of course, over the years things are re-invented, as was this single in the hands of hardcore dancefloor favorites Hardfloor, Ricardo Villalobos, Salz and Akufen! Definitely one of the downright most amazing singles of the past few years - renewed, reused, reconstructed, revamped, updated…fresh.

One of my favorite tracks from those days was Europa and the Pirate Twins (will he perform it live?), and like most of his singles, the allegory is sea deep and out of space (anyone remember Aliens Ate My Buick?). You may recall some of Dolby’s historic collabs with the likes of David Bowie, Lene Lovich, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ofra Haza (r.i.p.), The Fall and even Jerry Garcia among many others. But maybe you just want to catch up with him while you can….

Thursday, April 20, 2006, 8PM

Thomas Dolby (w/Basic Pleasure Model)
The Aladdin Theater - 3017 SE Milwaukie Avenue - Tix ($20/22)

4/19/06
RADIO MEMORY

Over the years contemporary composer, editor and sonic theorician Brandon LaBelle has been long at developing an (errant) body of work. I had the true pleasure of being involved as a contributor in his most recent Radio Memory project. This ongoing work collects and catalogues personal relationships to music/sound as instigated through broadcast media, such as radio. To be shown this Fall as part of Radio Revolten in Halle, Germany.

tender buttons

His Errant Bodies series of books and recordings are must-read essays and experiments in sound that swim in the most subtle seas of the banal everyday and the extraordinary unknown.

4/18/06
SOCIAL (LIKE BUTTAH)FLY

Technical difficulties brought about the deletion of my first go at this particular column entry so, though first time around I was flowery and power-packed the adjectival tongue, I am going truncate everything I wanted to say for the sake of time. You, the reader, may inadvertently benefit from this action

In my failed attempt I wrote about me mum being a gourmet chef and how that honed my palette from a wee boy, acknowledging cuisine as one of the finest art forms. As such, I noted in detail how romantic, intimate and superb both the wines (Cotes de Rousillion) and French bistro delicacies of L’Astra (22 NE 7th Ave) are. I also noted that as celebrating my friend David’s birthday there recently, that the secret of our find is out (and I linked the reviews by all major media in Portland). The two-person operation is just divine (I used this word originally, and it came back to me).

I politely apologized to David for any indescretion in sharing our secret with the masses. Then I attempted to highly recommend the super-cutesy, yet refined, Saint Cupcake for being anything but virtuous. They gain megapoints with their decadent baked goodies which we substituted as b-day cake (in flavors like: Red Velvet (buttermilk cake with a hint of cocoa),
Chocolate with Purple Cream Cheese, and my fave (of course), Big Top (vanilla cupcake baked with big chocolate chips on top)! Sheer sin.

Then I went on and on about how truly great (and talented) the Jamie Lidell gig was down in the basement of the Doug Fir. Detailing intricately the ways in which Lidell has taken the whole Brit white-soul to the nth degree, as he kicked out the proverbial jams, beats and harmonies with real sophisticated style. Going from wiry laptop wielder to refined old Motown crooner in seconds flat. But, again, nothing flat about this sold-out performance, and Jimmy Edgar, who opened (and just got signed to Sheffield’s finest, Warp) was no loose change himself. Complete with taxidermied black crow and darkened, twisted noise beats. It was a sensory evening filled with spirit and spectacle.

I tried to be smart (though I am so naive about theater) when I mentioned that I was cordially invited to join critics Timothy Krause (Just Out) and Richard Wattenberg (Oregonian) for a night out at the West End Theater (220 SW Taylor St) to see InsightOut’s production of Daniil Kharms’ penned A Thought About Raya. In from NYC, demure Hannah Bos paired with tall bearish Paul Thureen staged and acted with finesse and folly, it was absurdly funny, awkwardly repetitive (spelled hysterical and raw), and noted that it was low on budget and hi on the laughter scale. Bos could easily fall in line with the cast of SNL, her dead-on timing is syncopatic, her body language said more than her lips. The silences developed a perfect edge throughout. And I used other quips that I lost in the electro-crash….but, alas, I think I went on too long rather than summoning up that it was really good, and recommended.

It’s probably also essential to point out that I went to meet my friend Paul at Taqueria Nueve (28 NE 28th Ave) last night, but I got the night mixed up, so I was there solo. The good thing was running into Jennifer Armbrust (Motel, PORT) who recommended the fish tacos that were recommended to her by Laurel Gitlen of Small A Projects - and sooooo glad word of mouth works better than Foder’s (great recommendation). They used rock cod and not only was it grilled to juicy perfection, but the savory sauce was creamy and tasty, along with their homemade green salsa which is just plain extraordinary. The very busy and attentive bartender concocted me a mojito with its pummeled mint, sugar cubes and good ole rum. Not much of a drinker, I have enjoyed a traditional Cuban mojito only a few times, and this one wasn’t too bad at all, though I prefer it with sugar cane, and said so to the man at the bar. My man Richard then joined me in lieu of my screw-up with Paul, and sat alongside me at the oceanic tiled bar, behind us the lovely shades of warm pink walls and pine slats make the place very contemporary in a slightly rustic way, not off-putting, maybe even a lil’ homey, but still chic. We delighted in the roasted spaghetti squash and a few more tacos, he went for the Carnitas (wild boar - recommended by Jennifer) and I had a Vegetal (w/chiles and some yummy sauce). Tastebuds explode with these contemporary Latin offerings, food favorites reincarnated with a flare. This place is now, officially on my food walk of fame mile.

Tanaka

The rest of my week has been fully dedicated to the continued curation of the group show grey/area (opens June 2) to be presented at Guestroom (128 NE Russell) who opens a brand new show, Compound Concoction, a group show of emerging Japanese and US artists curated by Katsu Tanaka, this Friday (6-9PM).

Mangia!

4/17/06
MULTIPLICITY SQUARED

Artist, Teacher, Writer, Web Designer
Julia Stoops: Renaissance Woman

New Zealand native and Portland-based, Julia Stoops is an multi-dimensional artist teaching in the Intermedia Department at PNCA. Behind the scenes she has established a penchant for working with some of Portland’s best known artists, designing websites and more. We had an opportunity to chat a while to dig a lil’ deeper into what drives her daily creative ritual.

————

TJ Norris: Julia, how are you doing?
Julia Stoops: Really good thanks.

TJN: Quite good. And I am very excited to be able to chat with you as I am a big fan of your web work. Well, I’m probably most curious about how you got interested in web design in the first place. And if in some way, you see the work you do as using the same side of your brain as when you’re painting. After all Blue Mouse Monkey Design is hardworking websites for interesting people. I like the concept behind the subtext.

JS: Wow. Big juicy questions. Well, I used to be not exactly a Luddite, but I wasn’t attracted to computer technology. It looked hard, like math, and lacked an aesthetic draw. Then in 1999 I attended a lecture about new developments on the web, and I was blown away by what I saw. Visually I was intrigued by what were then innovations in animation and effects, but what was more profound was the realization that the web is a place to move through. We use standard spatial metaphors to describe it, but the experience is actually something quite different, and very exciting. And the global nature of the web was attractive, too, along with the dissemination of knowledge and ideas outside of traditional institutions and controls. Inspired, I blithely set out to learn web design so I could jump on that bandwagon. Ha ha ha. I almost died, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever studied in my life. I wasn’t wrong about the “like math” part.

Learning web design stretched my brain. I had to figure out ways of thinking that involved holding a lot of relationships in my head at one time while I worked through them. It’s very different from making art, and very different from thinking about theory or philosophy or other liberal-artsy subjects. It was some time before the activity became easy enough that I could simultaneously make aesthetic decisions as I went along. And it’s totally absorbing. I’m guessing it’s an all-brain activity, because you’re making decisions about colors, layout, shape, form, edges, narrative, theme, symbol, and so on, while also thinking about what it looks like over time with interactivity or animation, and how the visitor encounters it, what their possible and desired reactions and actions will be, how to make sure those reactions and actions happen and not undesired ones, AND you have to build this experience both visually and in code. And you have to know how to make the code cross-browser and cross-platform compatible. So some aspects do feel similar to painting. — Try this color. Nope. Try it a little darker. Nope. Stand back. Look at it from across the room (weird I know, since who looks at websites from across a room, but I do this when designing sometimes). Adjust it lighter. Move that circle over a quarter inch. — Actually, it’s more like collage than painting, but it’s still about making formal aesthetic decisions. But then there’s all this other activity happening to do with what you are building (and here it feels like sculpture or architecture) and that it is going to be a time-based experience for people. And that experience needs to be facilitated. Not controlled, but facilitated, because otherwise the visitor will just get confused or bored and jump to another website.

The Hardworking Websites for Interesting People comes from the sites really doing work for my clients. They don’t just sit in cyberspace and look pretty, they actually help my clients with some aspect of their creative lives, usually by consolidating and streamlining their self-promotion efforts. And my clients are all really interesting people. I’m super lucky that way!

TJN: Touché! Where did the blue mouse name come from?

JS: Back in 1999 when I was new to this, I wanted a domain name. It was frustrating because everything I could think of was already taken. Around that time my husband had a dream about playing ball with a small creature that was a cross between a mouse and a monkey. I added blue because it sounds good, made a collage from actual mice and monkey photos, made a painting from that, and there she is, the Blue Mouse Monkey.

TJN: Can you say some about where you grew up and how you landed here in Portland?

JS: I was born in Western Samoa, grew up in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Washington D.C., where I studied at the Corcoran College of Art. Went back to my native New Zealand for a few years, where I did another round of college, and met my husband Thomas Martin. Together we decided to try the Pacific Northwest. It was April 1994, and we bought a car and drove up from San Diego, camping along the way. Neither of us had been to the region, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, or where we’d land. April is a good time to camp in California, but that’s not the case for Oregon! We arrived in Eugene in the pouring rain, stayed a few days, decided it was too small a place to start out with nothing and no contacts. Thoroughly damp, we pushed on to Portland. I remember the approach on I-5, looking through the trees and across the river, and having this really hopeful excited feeling because all the trees made the place look friendly and loved. We decided to stay. And I’m very glad we landed here, it’s the best city I’ve ever lived in.

TJN: I’m interested in your work as a painter. You are represented by Alysia Duckler, right?

JS: I am an uneasy painter. I am not a purist and have always been interested in combined media, and I have done a number of installations in my time. I think of myself as an artist who makes images and spaces, and painting is the arena in which I have developed more skills than in say photography or printmaking. If I had any facility with sculptural things I’d love to be a sculptor, but I don’t have a good intuitive grasp of the laws of physics. So it’s just as well the internet came along because it’s all immaterial and I don’t have to worry about the things I build falling down and donking someone on the head. And for a few years I put more energy in to web projects and writing, but this spring I’ve had a renewed interest in working in the studio, and hope to exhibit a body of work in 2007.

TJN: It was such a pleasure to be a visitor to your Hybrid Painting class at PNCA. How did you develop that and what have you learned in the process of teaching it?

JS: It was wonderful to have you! That class is part of the Intermedia Department, rather than the Painting Department. It’s an Intermedia response to making work that is informed by painting, but which tends to be off canvas and often away from paint. So it’s all about experimentation, play, combining media, exploring content, and seeing how far you can stretch the idea of painting. Students work using their bodies in new ways. They explore working on multiple grounds (surfaces) new to them. They work with power tools as mark-making devices. They collaborate with thrift store paintings. There are a lot of projects that open doors for further exploration and development.

That course is relatively new, it’s only the second time I’ve taught it. I’m better known for Image/Text/Media, which is a media studies course, and Dialogue and Process, which explores existential issues artists face. I also teach Cyber Art, which is web design for artists, and Art and Philosophy, among other things.

TJN: You keep your docket quite full it seems. I immediately noticed you have worked with a small group of those represented in this year’s Oregon Biennial on various web projects. I really like the update in David Eckard’s site and Daniel Duford’s is one of my faves (a touch of Flash without unnecessary flash). The design is clean and simple, with just enough levity and interactivity. Can you say how it’s been working with Eckard, Emily Ginsburg, Pat Boas and others? How do you cultivate your clients?

JS: All those people you mention are also colleagues of mine at PNCA, and it’s been fantastic working with them on their websites. A really satisfying part of this web gig is to be able to get to know someone’s work, or in the case of my colleagues, get to know their work even better, and figure out the best way to showcase that work in the space of the web. It’s about the person, who they are and how they want to appear to the world. It’s about education, because I’m often educating clients about aspects of the web along the way. I love demystifying things for people, and I can totally relate to many artists’ sense that the Internet is a mysterious place full of technologies they don’t understand. I was like that once, and now I’m in the role of being the person who went over to that other side and came back and can now explain it in layman’s (lay artists?) terms. It’s not like I’m a super-expert about web technologies, I just know enough to make certain things happen and make them work and be inventive and creative with it. Despite the heavy presence of commercialization, the web is still a place of freedom of information and expression, and I want everyone to feel like they can be a part of that, and in their own way, a way that looks like them, not shoehorned into a standard blog like Flikr/Myspace/Google Videos type of format. Because how it looks is important to artists.

As for cultivating clients, so far it’s all been word of mouth. I’m now getting clients in the spheres of writing and music and film-making, which is really exciting. The business is picking up fast, and every time I think I should do some active marketing, I don’t get the time to organize it because another project lands on my plate! The impression I get is that creative people feel they can trust me to do right by them and their work. I know what it’s like to be in their shoes, I know what it’s like to put your work out there, all the questions and anxieties that come from that experience. My role is to guide people onto the web, creative people who don’t have the knowledge or the time to acquire the knowledge to get themselves there. And because I work collaboratively with my clients, they don’t lose control of the process. That’s another thing important to creative people. When it’s your work, you need to know the person handling it is going to take the time to understand what you want to say with it.

TJN: Those boxed free products always suffer from the hidden (and not so) corporate end goals and ads, etc. You really seem to help an artist showcase their work and break down the complexities of getting right to the core of the work.

And…Speaking of the Oregon Biennial… as a Biennial alum yourself, what’s your response about the selectees for this year’s Biennial as opposed to former years?

JS: It’s good there is such a variety. Some of the selectees are a surprise, but then I’d be more surprised if Jennifer Gately selected exactly the same people I would have. Then I’d wonder if she was my long lost twin or something. Overall I think it’s going to be a really interesting show and I’m looking forward to it. And I am super proud of my friends and clients who have work there!

TJN: Ditto, I think this year’s version will be challenging to audiences and will not simply pacify the passive viewer. What’s your current pet project?

JS: I’m writing a novel. And learning how to write as I go along. It’s been a huge huge thing for me, to fall in love with writing out of the blue. I’d always been firmly grounded in the visual, never had any ambition to write, then bang, this story started spilling out of me in 2001 - a year of upheavals. The fantastic critique group I belong to has taught me so much. I just finished a website for them, too, called the Intentional Ducati. A short story of mine is on that site, but it has nothing to do with the novel. The novel takes place in Portland during the year leading up to the invasion of Iraq. It’s character driven, set against the background of what was happening in the news and on the streets during that time. It’s where I’ve channeled my activism energies, while working out how to make the material accessible and inviting to a general audience.

TJN: Well that’s a read and 1/2!

Do you see an aesthetic that can be described as distinctively Pacific Northwest? Are there trends that have emerged in your eye over the last handful of years? And if so, how would you visually describe it for anyone who may never have visited our neck o’ the woods?

JS: I see trends manifest at PNCA, but they are as much likely to be generational, I think, as regional. There is a softness, a relative lack of “edge” in newer art around here, which I find emotionally refreshing, but socially insular. But of course as soon as I say that I can think of many counter-examples. There’s so much pluralism in art, and concurrently, so much creative stuff happening outside of the artworld, like on the internet, that I don’t think it makes much sense to talk about regional art trends, at least not separately from a discussion of emerging technologies, or generational zeitgeists, or social pressures. So a few people are painting intricate doiley-like flowers, or whatever. Those sorts of details pass by quickly. I am more interested in trends in behavior, regional as well as global, and wish I knew more about that. Like I heard Shanghai described as ‘the new Prague’, and that’s really interesting. Ex-pats go there to write novels, and living is cheap and the city is overflowing with cultural excitement and innovation. So much is happening in so many places, and the Internet speeds up cross-pollination.

TJN: Hmmm. I’m not sure I was up on what the “old Prague” was all about. I guess I am overdue travel time to be quite honest.

What’s your current guilty pleasure and your biggest pet peeve?

JS: Right now I’m looking around for a new guilty pleasure because I just used the last one all up. For a few months I was addicted to DaVinci’s Inquest, which plays nightly on WGN. I’ve seen all seven seasons now, barring a few missed eps. They’re on some sort of ongoing rotation, so it’s not too late for newbies catch them all! Hands down the best TV drama in a long time.

Pet peeve - or more like pet heartbreak: the corporate news media. And people who lack the will to challenge it. Media corporations have made a farce out of the original mission of the press, which was to be a cornerstone of democracy, existing to enable the informed public participation in that democracy. The news media is the only private business protected by the Constitution, and media corporations have violated that trust. And so many people shrug their shoulders and say that’s the way it is, as if it’s a totalitarian state.

TJN: Never give up on finding your own voice within the threads of new media to breach the foibles of the majority. Vive La Revolution!

Parting words?

JS: It’s been wonderful experience to respond to such interesting and thoughtful questions. On the rare occasions I get to talk about my work in any kind of public way it’s an artist’s talk, or I do a fiction reading. Thank you so much for the opportunity to blend several aspects of my life together in one discussion!

fin.

4/13/06
SOUL’D OUT!

Jamie Lidell is probably one of electronica’s best answers to vaudeville. A bright talent whose lopsided performance style has earned him fans and foes alike. If you’ve ever seen this cat live, you know what I mean. You NEVER know what to expect, even when jumping stylized ships in the often tireless sea of promotion of a new disc like Multiply (Warp) that is getting rave reviews, he’s shape-shifting all the while!

Now, this is a call-out to the unexposed, to those who have a Friday night to themselves and want to do something peculiarly wild with it. Lidell has been seen by thine eyes performing (er, trying to balance a bad wig while yodelling) in skag-drag (in Barcelona) and with Dr. Who-esque cheasy lighting and sonic aural control (in Montreal). In the past few years he’s been featured in some awkwardly pop, yet universally clever, made-for-MTV-style videos, but all the while has kept his sense of immediate candor for his audience. His oeuvre is subversively hard to pin down and kooky enough to remain just millimeters below the radar screen of pop-superstardom.

Supposedly he’s soul-searching these days, as his new disc would infer, going from buzzed-out laptop-twiddler to well-oiled crooner at the speed of lite - expect the unexpected….it’s anyone’s guess what may emerge on the stage over at our resident log-cabin, the Doug Fir Lounge. One thing is for absolute sure, he will present a fusion of performance art that is at once lyrically arresting.

Since ‘97 his discography prepubescently grows longer than a Disney nose….

TIME: 9PM (w/openers Jimmy Edgar; and The Beauty)
PLACE: Le Doug Fir Lounge, 830 East Burnside
COST: $12/advance; $13/day of show

fin.

4/13/06
CUT FROM A DIFFERENT LOOM

OHSU’s Center for Women’s Health is entering a new phase and will be a featured resident in the soon-to-open Peter O. Kohler Pavilion atop Marquam Hill, opening on June 1. Surrounded with gardens created by volunteer landscape designers repleat with medicinal plants, water features and children’s play areas this state-of-the-art women’s health and well being center will be like none other in the country.

Image/Anne Rybak

At the epicenter of this new facility will be a pledge to cultural traditions in the arts, as the Center will feature formidable works by artists both regional and internationally known including tapestry by Pam Gibson. Gibson will start the unveiling process of her work to be hung at the Center by cutting it from the loom at her southwest Portland home today at 4:30PM. This process always marks a momentous and tangible step for any artist in this tradition, and this commissioned piece will proudly hang for the opening of the facility.

Adorned with keepsake stories, Native American agate carved into the shape of a frog (fertility symbol), swatches of a Christening gown, a Chinese vest made by a kindergarten-aged child from the International School, military/nursing buttons, and several intricate details illuminating mother-daughter relationships.

Sophie Ryder

Telling many impactful stories of women, even more impressive is learning that all of the art that will be shown on the walls of the new center has been donated by women who are both donors and patients. Including a piece by celebrated British artist Sophie Ryder whose bronze piece Lady Hare with Dog (1988) is a newly acquired public work to watch.

Go Girls!

4/12/06
SATURATION

Co-curators Matthew Stadler (Clear-Cut Press) and Kristan Kennedy (PICA) announce the inductees selected for Saturation, Portland Modern #4. 25 artists from 160 submissions were chosen with several unknown discoveries, newbies to the area and a handful of those represented locally:

Eva Lake

Roberta Aylward, Amber Bell, Michael Boyle (PDX Window), David Corbett, Alex Felton (Prints for PICA), Anna Fidler (Pulliam-Deffenbaugh), Caleb Freese & Justin Gorman, Sarah Gottesdiener, Liz Haley (cool website!), Levi Hanes, Mary Henry (PDX), Philip Iosca, Eva Lake (Augen), Jonathan Leach, Isaac Lin, Marne Lucas (!!!), Rae Mahaffey (Laura Russo), Jeannie Manville, Chelsea Mosher (Disjecta), Daniel Peterson (Elizabeth Leach), Shawn Records, Spirit Quest (Khaela Maricich & Melissa Dyne), Amy Steel, and Casey Watson.

Marne Lucas

Mixing independents with those seen in some of Portland’s top gallery spaces, this is an alluring selection of fresh talent. The curators have painstakenly selected artist teams as well as individuals, and have significantly increased the number of those appearing (ie: issue #3 only presented 6/100 entries) and effectively offering better odds per artist submission this time around. This is growth. Attributed in large part to publisher Mark Brandau’s endurance, this is the lil’ publication that could, and is now reaping rewards. With his own inclusion of video work in the upcoming Portland Biennial, as well as his thriving southeast Radius Studio, Brandau is a man to watch who continues to be on the pulse of urban culture herein.

Anna Fidler

At first glance the works selected deal in geometries, color theory and breezy allegories. Curious also, was in the search for many of these artists were linked in ways to the cyber mecca, Urban Honking. This show will most certainly appeal to the “connected”.

The printed catalogue for Saturation will be released sometime in May (available at finer galleries and hotspots locally) with late Summer exhibitions to follow.

4/12/06
BURNSIDE @ BLUE MONK

Speaking of Tongues…

Tonight the editors and winner’s of the Burnside Review 2nd Annual Chapbook Contest invite you to join them in the whirling, wild wonderment of weird wordiness.

Place: Blue Monk (3341 SE Belmont)
Time: 7:30PM

Readers include Henry Carlile and Michele Glazer; also editors, Sid Miller, Bill Bogart and Virginia Mix join in the lip-service.

***** Recommended: The coconut curry polenta and veggie ravioli of the day!

4/8/06
TGIF: ART RUN (er DRIVE)

Still energized from Thursday night’s art crawl I decided to culturally immerse again (how much can one body take?), by treating myself to my very first 1st Friday. It was a lovely early spring evening to ingest a bit more before retreating to a hopefully restful weekend. And there was plenty of ground to cover.

Ness

One of Portland’s most dynamic young painters, Dan Ness, brought together a solid grouping of selected works from the latter 90’s to the present. Woolley at Wonder opened its space to these works ranging in scale and media, but sonically consistent over several years. A graduate of the Zeitgeist Gallery, Ness has spent several years honing his craft to a clear fine art. It was a coups for Mark Woolley (who was looking very Southern Cal tonight) to pick this young artist up a few years back, and this show is proof in the pudding. My favorites were the escalators, but I simply love the way he imparts the crosshairs between old-fashioned signage with an implicit contemporary style that uniformly leaves the work in an unfinished state. He openly borrows from the closet of most original pop artists (Warhol, Rauschenberg), tag teams with the 80’s guys who followed like Salle and even a bit of Basquiat sans the layers of tethered lost language, and ends up with bold work that looks at our past through advertising, and fantasy television as well as reinterpreting old photographs. The work is a bit more docile and homey than those gents, more like an adult take on the introspective toying with models and airplane glue (with a similar projected high). I took some time to flip through his scrapbooks of drawings and collages and the man is clearly busy at work. His subject matter ranges tremendously, but so does his sense of a common banality, heightened by a clever use of space and recycled materials. The wood surfaces are worked, and plotted. Symbols appear and fade, time is morphed in the face of his retro sensibility. Powerful work from an artist who has always been a pleasure to view.

Franklin

In the adjoining space Guestroom Gallery offers Glassmateria (through April 15) curated by Eric Franklin whose own work, a caterpillar-like piece that radiated with an internal gas-light essence (actually flameworked borosilicate glass) is the clear standout here (and he is represented by Laura Russo Gallery). I’m really not a glass aficionado, though many of the pieces here were exquisitely lit, many delicate and fragile, with feminist overtones throughout. I spied thread bobbins, a red dress bust and a few lip-shaped vase/bowls. Artisans in this ornate yet uncluttered overview include Bullseye Gallery’s Mel George, Contemporary Crafts Museum Artist-In-Residence Helen Otterson, Erika Kohr (who’s whown at Guardino Gallery) and teacher Pat Bako.

Cannon

It was a straight shot over to the New American Art Union next. This month you can catch Cecilia Cannon’s This is no dream! This is really happening! The show is the culmination of Cannon’s assembling technique of bringing found glass shards to the surface of wood panels to form abstract and organic patterns. I made the mistake of going right up close to the broken-mirror-like works to inspect the details, when the viewing is really much more appreciated from a distance. As a very long-since recovered Catholic the images of saints and virgins are almost always immediate detractors, and while this show doesn’t exhume the demons of eras past, it left a hollow of questions to contemplate rather than answers to be sought. It was nice to take a few moments and aquaint with the artist as she showed me the bowl full of raw shards, like her own personal palette of Seurat’s pixels at her disposal, and her admittal for liking “shiny things” made me smile (as I do too). The one work that drew my attention was Reflecting Pool I which plays on famous paintings of water lillies by using her own collage-puzzle technique. In all, though, I would say this work needs more time to be fully realized in order to be born again. Appearing to be work-in-progress in its early phase, I could imagine these being less about process and more about the end result, and why stick with the flat aesthetic of such material. Glass is easy eye candy in its reflective nature, I say use that to the nth degree. These works can grow off the flat surface by layering the materials. It’s more than just a passing grade for effort here, though getting a grip on the organic abstractions seems more interesting faire then the icons or the works in Flight Pattern which stole the flow of the show.

Mallory

Center Space Gallery (420 SE 6th) presents encaustic works by Andrea Benson and wax/cloth sculpture forms by Brenda Mallory. Benson’s work are simple, yet elegant shapes with layers of hand written scripts, small details, tablet paper and other secrets embedded under a layer of pigment and wax. Two of the newest works used pop-chartreuse and the elipse to work a striking diptych, while the other had a very recently finished top layer of turquoise and journalistic script that may have still been somewhat “wet”. Mallory continued her repetitive organics with this collection of recent and slightly older works that flowed together seamlessly. The snakelike floor sculpture was the power piece here, stealing the whole corner of the room, though I could see it in the center of a much larger space to be quite honest…or…completely by itself with nothing to interrupt the gaze. Her School piece of multiplying shapes built off a wrought iron wall frame used the light to present something aquatic and fishlike. A great compliment to her show at Tilt. Don’t miss this double shot, and don’t tell me I didn’t tell you so.

Bennett

The Light Leak group show at Newspace was jam-packed with photo denizens of all ages and varieties. Of note were small tintypes by Director Chris Bennett (especialy the Freemont Bridge perspective) and the fanciful child images by Bryan Wolf (he just seems to get in there and catches emotive moments of joy, pain and genuine off-guardedness). The work he has shot in India (viewable on his website) depicts an honest outsiders perspective into a third world country’s people - genuinely realist and formally he knows his sense of space. Also included in this exhibition are freelance photojournalist Bobby Abrahamson (I enjoyed the hardbound book, One Summer Across America as it reminded me vaguely of Wolfgang Tillmans’ attitude and includes words by the master, Robert Frank), Lyla Emery Reno, Faulkner Short and Gretchen Vaudt. Virgins, children, cityscapes, and quirky space. The themeless show works as a body somehow depicting people, places and things as commonplace and off-center in the same room.

Parsons

Last stop was catching the 12×16 (1216 SE Division) group before they folded up the sails for the evening. On view this month is the incomparable collage work by Eunice Parsons and this time around they are slightly smaller in scale (but not “precious”), and she’s named each of the pieces after famous artists, Motherwell, Schwitters, etc. These hang alongside Edward Story, whose lively work is mixed media collage and painting that is illustrative, straight away. The show has the group’s consistent trademark (pending?) patterning of the fine art of classic collage. I spent some time talking with gallery artists LeeAnn Slawson, her husband Israel Hughes, Cary Doucette and Luke Dolkas (who has a show of photo collages currently open at The Goodfoot (2845 SE Stark). It’s a great group of artists who have a clear common thread, and their new website is now up as well. The CEAD member gallery continues to move along a path of combining cryptic and narrative layers of texts, color and other angular concerns in strips of found and made materials. If you like works that deal in the piecing together of a myriad of ideas, themes, languages and (in)formalities, this is one of the best small showcases in Portland. Visit them Thursday through Sunday (12-6PM).

I will revisit the show soon for further discovery, but now I must rest….(zzzzzzzzzz)

4/7/06
1ST THURS DASH - DISH

April brings few fools.

OH MAN. I’ve been around town now for five years come next month (happy anniversary to me) and this was one of the First Thursdays of note. It went from phat to flat and sprung right back again - in less than a few hours (and meandered somewhere in the safe area of the betterment of an emerging local scene). One of the striking walks for many of the past moons. This is just a skim of the edge of the cream that rose to the seams last night. I look at it as a mad dash map of hot dots.

Johnson

First up was down to SW 2nd to see Todd Johnson’s Lace Patterns at Augen. These gravity-defying silver gelatin prints are ornate paisleys and decorative emblems that simply float sparingly on a pure blackdrop. Some act as mirrors, others like my particular favorite, Untitled #11 use the space of the image to bleed from the bottom edge, making it a bit less “formal” than the others. I remember finding his work in the Symbiont/Synthetic show a bit more startling (though some of these date circa ‘04), and immediate - but one can see where he’s growing the patterns, playing on the physics of the feminine. They leave me a slight bit out in the cold. If they were larger, mural-sized, or if I were looking through some mechanism (viewfinder…) to “observe” them maybe they wouldn’t seem as blatant. They are stark, but for all their simple rhythm things would become broader if these would pop out of the frame somehow, on to the wall, out of the container, as wallpaper, dangling perhaps. Maybe that’s the tension, right there - but these are a bit 2-D in the moment. Though they are worth contemplating a while, not work you would want to pass by without following your eyes intently over the flat delicateness of it all.

Dongen

Next door Charles Froelick offers something as genuinely ornate, but a bit more pastoral, in the work of photographer Ron van Dongen whose show Effusus is a pure hit! OK, I will let the proverbial cat out of the bag by gently noting that taking pictures of beautiful things moreover offers an end result of, well, something beautiful. When I first saw the flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe I thought, hmmmm, more beautiful images of beautiful things printed beautifully…but how do you transcend this basic beauty? How do you find the core essence of its spirit, dig deeper into its roots, find life beyond the shell of the surface? Of course, I opted for the more “risque/controversial” X portfolio from the 70’s which was on view at the ICA in my hometown when I was just a newbie, first exhibiting my own work. Those raw black and white, sexual images weren’t the norm for many eyes, often garnered to the corners of darker gay s/m clubs and super private collections, but the work blew the doors off the mother, didn’t it? So, here were some callalilies in a vase, shot in black and white and palladium printed on to linen. Gorgeous! But souless all the same. Vapidly deadpan, almost in the ilk of Hallmark to me. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mapplethorpe was a great technician with his camera, and was well endowed for the work he made (did I say that?), but this series has its detractors and I for one don’t mind admitting it.

Dongen

OK, so, we were discussing Ron van Dongen before I rudely interrupted myself with that diatribe, but lest I say that the work he’s now showing at Froelick’s is absolutely stunning. In what appear as almost super-real ads that radiate with colors, lines, gestures - these observations of the delicacies of the earth are sheer miracles before our eyes. This is a celebration of the most vivid and macro lives of plants I may have seen in years. His Mint is virtually transluscent with a creamy background and his Echinops ritro are like toy palm trees, though they would, in essence, fit in the palm of your hand so to speak. This piece, in particular, in sizes ranging from 20×16 to 40×32 is expertly printed by the best players in town (of the art digital print variety, that is), Pushdot (hey, they do a great job for me, and this is NOT a paid advertisement). With an ethereal fuzziness for a spot-on sense of dreamy whimsy the image floats serendipidously. Now, I am not one too interested in pretty images of flowers (though I do like a simple lock of lilacs in a small vase), but, this show jumps right off the shelf. The standout piece was actually Ranunculus ‘Volaire’ a work that was not actually hung as part of the exhibition, in pure coal shades of black, gracefully leaning downstairs in a floor grouping. For all who enjoy the essence of the season, this will add a shot of the vociferously surreal to your petunia, indeed!

Olsen

Chambers was rightfully packed to the gills. It was so nice to see some unfamiliar faces in the crowd. And always a pleasure to see Jim Archer, Abi Spring (who’s building her new firehouse studio) and proprietors Wid and Eva (who just announced an upcoming showing at Augen in the heat of August - and judging by the looks of her recent toiling, this next show should be an eye-socket explosion!). The new show is not one that can be reckoned with in one fell swoop, it sort of lingers, roams and otherwise has a ton of stories, not instant repore, more the type of work that relishes in its narrative weight. So, this show will have to have a double take before I would be able to say anything meaningful to be quite frank. Though, at first glance, its engaging and intelligent, and the installation seems even. Peter Archer’s honeycomb and strangely octagonalesque-shaped wood works deal in artillery, fish and fowl. This tattoo artist-cum-painter has stories to tell, some interlock, some disconnect, but these are contemplative and lithe with meaning. Paired with the proto-pop work of post-Crumb illustrator/draughtsman Don Olsen the balance is in its sheer collected chaos. In shades of Philip Guston the artist has tacked a whole host of smaller drawings directly to the wall in a large montage of multiple thoughts, ramblings, linguistically dada as grouped upon first take. He’s also painted an entire wall panel in a cool watery blue with chalk-like white markings associating the space as giant fish tank perhaps. His large humor is omni present, and a bit ominous too - especially in pieces like Beaver logs. Yikes!

Edge

The eyes have it! Motel offered new works on paper by Allison Edge. The Pretty Boys grid of drawings in watercolor were immediate yet innocuous images of teenagers gazing, or rather, staring, right at the viewer. It’s a banal gaze, though there is something almost eerie about the calculated capture of the moment here. And as hung, these staid headshots are like a bevy of beautiful youth caught in momentary, casual yet vaguely self-conscious repose. You’re The One For Me also includes some images of cats, which interestingly counterbalance the poker-faced staring on both sides of the room, but they are cats. Cats are cats are cats and that’s that.

Sync

Strolling down to the Everett Station Lofts my first stop was the slowly warming up Rake Gallery presenting Out of Sync, an exhibition of video work in collaboration with the PDX Film Fest. Including eighteen artists, this show puts this space clearly on the map with clearly focused curatorial selections of genuinely hot works on celluloid by Holly Andres who’s My Little Pony is dymanically sexy and naively self-aware, Jo Jackson’s four second animated loop First and Last Men which is colorful and cracked, and the show-stopper which is a semi-circular video installation for four monitors called Increasing In Significance by Stephen Slappe. The dizzying piece shifts from left to right and moves in tandem as the camera in each view makes a 360 degree turn ’round mostly industrial Portland. In one set, then on two, you see a man running, and then out of view. It’s a bit disconcerting and makes the viewer slightly ill at ease watching, but you just may find your eyes glued across the periphery of the space to catch glimpses of life in motion. Also included in the show are house favorites Sue C (whom I have personally collaborated with) and collaborator AGF (Antye Greie-Fuchs) - her cds (Orthlorng, Quecksilber) are essential. They just may be the first to have presented them in a Portland gallery! Good show, chaps!

Mallory

Around the corner to Tilt hosting the aforementioned solo stint by Brenda Mallory. The project space was lit “just so” to hint at the varying shapes creeping out of corners, and undulated towards the ceiling. These multiplied, hand-sized pieces, made from beeswax dipped cloth and formed into snaking organic patterns were for the purest of senses. A vague essence of the wax perfumed the air so slightly as the folded and painstakingly bolted parts intertwine in a brilliant display of originality. IF you are going to use the word…THIS is daring, fresh work. And while I already mentioned that she has another show that opens tomorrow night, one could only imagine that Mallory has been working day and night to pull something like this together. Hardworking, she’s honed a craft out of work that completely blurs the lines between sculptural forms, installation and quilt-making to some degree. Eva Hesse would be proud. Offcuts is the best show in town.

Allen

Zeitgeist, one of the longest running truly live spaces at the Lofts (thanks Paul!) opened a show of works by one of Portland’s up-n-coming better painters, Rachael Allen whose alegorical wonders on wood have one hand in the terrifying world of Francis Bacon, one foot in the path of the elongated and decorative essence of Gustav Klimt without being too self-righteous to have a bit of tongue in cheek about it all. I was simply aghast at the face of these paintings, stopped in my tracks, I had to buy one. Not an impulse purchase. This work will last like grade a honey, but as it’s gilded, will continue to be worth its weight. This is the lil’ gallery that could, over-and-over again.

Hutchins

Another perennial favorite stop, who’s been consistent, fairly priced and certainly expanded over the years is Vincent Clervi’s Genuine Imitation space who offer the latest animated characterizations from Kimberlee Hutchins (proprietor of the former Angry Fairy Gallery) this month. Her work has significantly soared several notches in theme and quality. They depict teddy bear monsters and young women sans pupils that aimlessly stare into space. Quirky, superflat, and presented both as small vertical and horizontal panels, these just keep improving upon themselves. She’s become a Portland artist to watch in my opinion. Making the Lofts, yet, again, a vital component to the city’s cultural kinetics.

Wu

Last stop before the Pearl was Ogle who this month presented an installation of sifted flour, by Washington-based artist Mi Wu. Temporary, meditative, and highly delicate the work plays in the art of disappearance. She’s created work that deals in the subtle references of growth and change, really metamorphic. The neutral humps of processed baking material creates more of a contemplative space where anything, the viewer included, can at any time seem an invader. Air, or any of the elements can potentially change the work in a split second. It’s this balance that frees the work, creating a virtual infrastructure between us and it. Demarcated in three rectangles, these floor pieces are organic work meant to change and evolve in the same vein with artists (and house faves) such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Ann Hamilton. These three pieces resemble minature aerial views of salt mines, or the purity of a beach on a windy day caught in a moment. It would be an amazing site to see one of these works fill an entire large room from end to end and try to create a way for visitors to walk right through it and immerse themselves without destroying its “eco”. (* I had been sneezing all day…and contained myself while visiting Ogle..could you imagine! Achoo.).

Bocci

I dashed down the street to ogle (grin) the much talked about new show Fresh at Elizabeth Leach including striking works by Chandra Bocci, Daniel Sturgis, Sean Healy (who I spied briefly earlier in the evening chatting with Todd Johnson and Jeff Jahn at Augen), Yuki Nakamura and Matt McCormick (who takes over the video window installation this month). The best pairing of artists here, by far and large were that of Bocci and Amanda Wojick who are perfect foils for each others’ tediously well planned assemblages in mixed media. Both create dwarfed wall-based villages with a ton of detail and happenstance. They are miniature fairy tales, toy-like almost. Definitely lyrically playful, dealing in color and repetitively cut shapes. Less fresh were the few pieces by Kristan Kennedy which I found to be purposefully sloppy yet playing on the magnetics of abstraction in observant ways. I could stretch my imagination and go out on a limb to try and guesstimate what the heck she’s doing here, but these pale in comparison with her usual quirky, detailed faire that deals with outlines and geometries. Gone is the casual invisibility of space, offering something more void-like, and simply splat! Ghostlike (Poof) and a bit lax, the shapes she’s using are just dead center and vaguely interesting. These acrylic and mixed media works on paper are blatant and direct to say the least. Well traveled, Sturgis’ work is a definite highlight. Dealing in folly, Pantone for color and bold cut shapes, his work lightens the room with a whole lot of simple humor. Easy on the eye, quizzical and pop. The show is about 87.5% truly fresh, and the remainder is herstory and I’ll take a rain check. Speaking of which, another Happy 25th to Liz for her endurance and superb taste - and I mean it.

Burrus

My final stop in the area was to pop in to see Kevin Burrus’ Line = Form show at PDX. The tubular-shaped wood works are well crafted and cleverly use the medium in ways that bring the shape of design/craft to a higher art form. There’s an eleoquent and quirky zen in this series, even though it’s not my instant cup of tea. The humor of the shapes he’s crafted deal in mechanics and though mostly ebony in color, recall visits by your local plumber, audio speakers or even exotic musical instruments. Though with striated bands of white running through most of these twisted pieces, they have a finished, wrapped appeal. These bound sections actually look as if he’s cut a hardcover book and shaped it to be inserted into sections of the sculpture, I had to take a closer look. Solid (and minimal).

Parry

My final stop was my first visit to the still somewhat new Sugar Gallery. I showed up sometime around 9ish and the small crowd (at that point) was rather young and grunge/hipster-like. The Street Wave photographic work on view, however, by Jason Lee Parry was instant gratification. Large-scale, vivid, and even somewhat in yer face. The work’s got edge appeal, and judging by the prints, installation and subject matter this dude is on to the fringes of fashion, paralleling (or mocking) the medium with a rock-steady aesthetic which bites hard. He’s the would-be great hope for a contemporary-minded Larry Clark with a bone to pick with his peers. He obviously catches people in lovely moments of surprise, whether privately or posing coyly for the camera. But this ain’t just lipservice in these multi portraits of “dangerous” life through eyeliner. He captures some of what can be assumed could be fueled by the youthful dalliance in drugs, partying, etc. And it’s all perfectly channeled in the house of Sugar. In pieces like Mexico and Weekend the identities of the people he’s focusing on are hidden behind sunglasses or splayed panties. Though, he has reference to the Nan Goldin’s and Jack Pierson’s of our time, he’s more informed by the overture of ID (I had seen Lisa Radon earlier in the evening, I wish we could have gone to this show together and had a dialogue about it)….

….with that, it’s to bed.

4/5/06
BLOGGIN’ ALONG

Even though I see this forum as more a “column” than a “blog” (blogs should be a two-way public dialogue in my humble opinion)…I’m chugging away. And contrary to my usual faire, this post will be a bit more personal and bloggesque. These past few weeks have been filled with some interesting personal developments, so I haven’t had much of a chance to dig deeper and write my heart out about all things cultural in Portland, but there have been some observations along the way. And some other thought balloons have emerged as well.

Waters

So, yeah, I have been taking care of myself. After a recent studio move I have embarked in a budding new relationship, and a serious revisit back to health and fitness. A one/two punch in my timeclock. It was an awakening to have a few close friends whose parents are ill, as it keeps me mindful that a forthcoming trip back to New England will be filled with family, friends and fun. I do miss my folks. A sidetrip to NYC to see the Whitney Biennial and John Waters’ latest exhibition Unwatchable that has me extremely excited to breakaway from Portland for a bit.

In the meantime, I’ve been approached by two local, independent galleries to present a solo show, and am considering one of them, if the time is right. Simultaneously working towards my first true international solo exhibition outside of North America at the Neon Gallery in Brosarp, Sweden (who’ve worked with Christian Marclay, Jim O’Rourke and Jacob Kirkegaard) this Fall. This is to co-jointly open with the release of triMIX (Tribryd Soundtracks Deconstructed), a compilation I put together with eleven international electronic composers and Innova Recordings. This year I’ve also scheduled curatorial efforts with Holocene/Stumptown, Guestroom and a potential event as part of the Decibel Festival in Seattle with Consolidated Works.

Deep breath….

Taking all this on leaves less time for other things, and sometimes (the “royal”) one wonders if he feels “saturated” or sated. And in some ways it’s probably a bit of both. ADD….not! Busy, and project minded…yes!

Though, 2006 has truly just begun creatively. This past week I had the opportunity to present to Julia Stoops’ Hybrid Painting class (look for an in-depth interview with Stoops/Blue Mouse Monkey Design to appear here soon), discussing my ongoing Tribryd cycle (which concludes this year). It was truly an honor to talk with and present to PNCA’s gifted students, and acknowledging the fact that within the next handful of years we may potentially be showing side-by-side.

Over the weekend a friend of mine and I managed to get out to see V is for Vendetta. And while I’d like to present some type of masterful review that might suffice the masses, I will simply say it was engaging and highly stylistic. With a full cast of the best British actors working today, the retro-futuristic world, full of political tyranny, human/nuclear experiments and a vendetta-seeking lead, it’s a topsy-turvy Orwellian gem. John Hurt (1984, Midnight Express), Stephen Fry (Harry Potter, Gosford Park) and Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, Michael Collins) all put in amazing spot-on performances. Oh, did I mention that it was extremely bloddy? Not for the squeamish (ahem) - but doesn’t really take the audience for a fool by surprise either, instead playing on the motion of The Matrix. Recommended for fans of action and sci-fi everywhere.

SOUTHEAST GALLERY OPENINGS: FIRST FRIDAY

On an art note, Brenda Mallory is on fire this month, showing both at Tilt (625 NW Everett) and with Andrea Benson at Center Space (420 SE 6th, Thurs-Sat 1-5PM, through April 29), a must-see glimpse into the work of one of Portland’s best unknown organic sculptors. And catch Brenda’s Tilt talk on April 21 at 7:30PM.

Story

Also, Newspace will present a group show cleverly titled Light Leak, New American Art Union presents Cecilia Cannon’s This is no dream! This is really happening!. Lastly, but certainly not leastly 12×16 (1216 SE Division) will present the return of Eunice Parsons’ new collages with works by Edward Story.

PS: My discovery this week: ARTDISH

3/31/06
HOW THE BALL BOUNCES…

A FUNRAISER:

On Tuesday April 4th the House of Disjecta (regular programming begins this Summer) will present an evening of rock music and b-ball to benefit Portland Public Schools and their own future build-out.

Long Range: A Benefit for Disjecta and Portland Public Schools

The new home is Burnside’s (in)famous Templeton Building, where, on Tuesday starting as early as 6PM the music of Stephen Malkmus, Sexton Blake (awesome website!), the Kingdom and a stint of turntabalism from the troublesome British twosome Queens of Noize (hot!) will be on tap alongside a celebrity three-point shooting contest featuring Trail Blazers Darius Miles and Voshon Lenard. For the heck of it, other bouncers will include city commissioner Erik Sten, Stephen Malkmus, Nicole Vogel (Portland Monthly) and others. Sources say “Dr. Suereth” may not simply be sitting out on the sidelines dribbling as he’s been spotted around town getting jiggy with ye olde orange thang.

The ten best shooters will face off against our celebrity players for the city-wide triple crown at 9:15 PM. $5-15. Tickets, 230 E. Burnside

3/28/06
SETH NEHIL: Back in Town

Q: WHAT TO DO TONIGHT?

A: Apotheke (1314 NW Glisan), one of the coolest establishments to open its doors in Portland these last few years offers the return of electro-acoustician and recent Bard grad Seth Nehil this evening at 9PM. Nehil plays alongside Dutch imports Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer in an evening of delicate A/V electronic atmospheres and wonderful Scandanavian concoctions. Their menu boasts such exotica as house-made Gravlax (salmon lox) and their soon-to-be-famous Raclette - at $15 per person this Swiss/French meal is sort of a post fondue for the lounge set, although it provides healthy staples (cheeses, fruits, meats and more) that will keep you listening all night long. Finish it off with an Underberg digestif!

Listen…eat/drink, be merry!
You HAVE to check this place out.

3/28/06
FIRRY, MUFFLED, BUZZ

The Fir was “alive” with the sounds of music…or something like that. Upon the eve last, three bands took to the stage at the retrofitted log cabin-cum-nightclub known as the Doug Fir.

From a whisper to a scream: First up were little known Minnesotans A Whisper In The Noise (Transdreamer Records) fronted by voca/instrumentalist West Thordson who, even though playing an extremely short set, took the night. The quartet had an interesting range with speckles of what I will refer to as (for this piece only) the three P’s: Pulp, Pink Floyd and P.I.L. in the mix. Melodic French horn, powerful percussion and the vocal mechanics of multiple mic’s kept the beat with the distinct bassline. These gents may just be starting out, but, aside from the lax band name, they are more than a whisper. In fact, Thordson’s primal scream ‘tween his murmuring and sultry baritone clearly attested more validity to the extent of le “noise”. A band to watch….

On another note, His Name Is Alive (”Michigan’s finest”) were everywhere but there (in the room). Since 1990 Warn Defever & co, has brought to the fore many different chambers of sound. Though I am more pitted towards the earliest 4AD material, they have gone through so many shifts in personnel, that they’ve ended up with a touring vaudevillian pop opera of sorts. One part misguided Velvets with a twist of Partridge Family, and add a sense of humor, I’ll give em that! They joked about their hometown Detroit, hobos and general good-humored nonsense. For a band that rarely tours they sounded together musically, even with the vast range of klezmer to pop-rock to polka variations hidden under the guise of a combustible cover. I enjoyed the vocal style (and sharp look) of Lovetta Pippen. A young, soulful singer whose poetic lipservice may float above the band’s rawness at times. All in all they conjured a distinct disonant disconnect between choruses, maybe playing into the overall slacker theatrics of a band in reformation.

In support of their latest effort, The Last Romance, headliner Arab Strap was instantly abrasive on stage. The live fivesome played watery post-Wolfgang Press (long defunct, also formerly on 4AD), peppered with one too many raspy expletives sung in a passive, yet classically stereotypical drunken rock pose. The soundboard wavered and echoed with a lost abandon, making their already deadpan lost pop more ill at ease. Though when they were on, they were ON. It was loud, proud, basically brazen. Though I can only take so much of the bearish Aidan Moffat’s sandy gnarl, and semi confrontational style (he should keep his eyes open more often), he always seems to have a “point”. It’s good songwriting with an anarchistic overtone - but - he spot-on plays the Scottish martyr to the nth degree. That partially gets in the way of the live experience, in his unkempt, beer drinking in-between-lines on stage. The whole back-to-the-audience abandon, post rock antics sometimes seem old. Though here it had an earnest and immediate sensability. I guess I liked it.

3/27/06
NEW art

Three very exciting shows that will all push boundaries are upcoming in the month of April. Please mark your calendars early and often!

April 1-30 (Wed-Fri, 11-4)
Gwenn Seemel’s Mutually Beneficial
Concrete the Studio (222 NW Davis #317)

April 4-29 (Fri & Sat, 12-5)
Brenda Mallory’s Offcuts
Tilt Gallery & Project Space (625 NW Everett #106)
*** Artist talk on Friday April 21, 7:30pm ***

April 6-May 27 (Tues-Sat, 10:30-5:30)
FRESH
Elizabeth Leach Gallery (417 NW 9th)
Chandra Bocci, Sean Healy, Kristan Kennedy, Melody Owen, Daniel Sturgis, Amanda Wojick & others

3/27/06
STRAPPED ALIVE!

Arab Strap

The return of two long-standing performing duos…

9PM Tonight ($10)
Doug Fir (830 E Burnside)

His Name…

The Scottish twosome Arab Strap + former 4AD sensation His Name Is Alive (have you seen their Brothers Quay videos?)

Enchantingly Haunting…. Be There.

3/22/06
#100

This marks my 100th entry to Is It Art?!

I’m still wondering and wandering through town, and am sorta in cahoots with people like Willamette Week’s Richard Speer this month avoiding the overload of catered ceramics. Though there is one show I can recommend at the Portland Art Center, which is amazingly laid out after the last few months where the physical installation of shows suffered dramatically from carpets and columns.

Multiplicity is a group exhibition of contemporary ceramics curated by Kate Bonansinga, Director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, University of Texas at El Paso. It’s not only well laid out, but some of the individual works (though many neutral) just pop in the space. The show is stark and contrasty, centered by an icy white sprouted work by PDX represented artist Bean Finneran who anchors the installation. You are stylishly welcomed into a show that fields depth, and at the same time transcends the medium beyond the utilitarian nature of kilns and kitschens.

You can also see Finneran’s latest bevy of bodacious work exploding in bright, almost neon colors in her Shift exhibition at PDX Contemporary Art through April 1. While nearing 60 in ‘07, Finneran’s work deals fearlessly in beefed-up tonal hues that update her past work with a sense of gravity and grace. The work is shown in rings, stacks and clumps - but no matter how you look at it, there’s a fluctuating sensability of magnetism and levity. The work truly stands by itself, in space, acrobatically. It does, by way of placement only, no soldering, no fusing, it’s about the way the pieces fall. These pieces fall into place like a baroque chaise lounge. Ornate, but simplified and contemporary.

3/19/06
HOMELAND: WALKING FORTUNE

Bonnie Fortune just departed Portland this morning after completing a week-long residency with the folks of Gallery Homeland. I had an opportunity to catch up with her before she dashed out of town.

————
me: Hello Bonnie - how are you doing today?

Bonnie: Great. Today I went on a walk from 32nd and Madison (SE) to 6700 block of NE Haight. It took about 3 hours. Great day in PDX: very sunny, apparently rare. Rare anyway from my one week here!

me: Surprize! Rain, rain go away, come again some other day. How are your feet?

Bonnie: Tired. Feeling well used.

me: [smile] So, tell me…how did you get involved with Homeland?

Bonnie: I am a Chicago based artist/arts organizer and I worked with PDX artist Sam Gould/Red76 for the year that he lived in Chicago. Sam introduced me to the Homeland folks.

me: Oh, great, Sam has been in the news a bit lately and doing some great stuff in his travels. There seems to be a movement afoot (pun intended) where artists who use the city as their “space”. Can you briefly tell me about your walking project?

Bonnie: I began the Free Walking project in 2004 as a personal response to living in such a vast urban space (Chicago) and I wanted to create a framework for folks to get together and discuss issues of urban space. History of their adopted city. Basically to have peripatetic experience building collaborative networks.

me: OK, so you dialogue with a group during your walk? You mean it’s like a tour or field trip of sorts, in places that you are familiar with or not?

Bonnie: Yes they are places that we may have seen as we moved through on a car, bus, or bike but never ecper­i­enced directly. Thinking about being present with your space, socially and physically is very important for the Free Walking (FW) experience.

me: So, is the work a collective performance, a documentary of sorts?

Bonnie: It is definitely a performance, but not neccesarily a collective. I create the framework for folks to fit into and participate with but a collective implies a consistent group of participants, and FW is often in flux.

me: I see. I would be interested in finding out your experience thusfar in Portland. Have you been here before? Your In The Weather project could be quite apropos for this big town. How are things going? You are here for a week?

Bonnie: Yes, I was here March 13-20. I leave tommorow at 7am! I have not been here before. I have already received submissions for In the Weather from Portland folks. I would love to receive more, as it’s an ongoing project and will be featured in the Toronto Images Festival this spring.

me: How does the project change from place to place, what are the outlying factors you have mainly dealt with in the various environments you work in? And can you give a visual description of how that manifested itself while here?

Bonnie: I have enjoyed a wonderful openess from the Portland folks and have dubbed my time here PDX=PDA, as in public display of affection. A large part of my walking project is the conceptual idea of direct contact with space through touch.

me: That’s really wonderful feedback. And I really appreciate the connection to the senses. I, too, find the community here quite interested and hands-on.

Bonnie: The most apparent factor that changes is landscape. I recently did a 180-mile 10 day walk through Illinois and that was a very flat, boring agricultural landscape. The Portland landscape is more dynamic.

me: It’s the greenest region in the US.

Bonnie: Yes, so the affection was not only touching the ground with my feet but a rapport that easily developed around ideas of socially engaged art practice.

me: Are you a creative, conceptual alchemist?

Bonnie: I am not sure if I have ever defined myself in that way.
I am a collaborator and there is no such thing as not collaboratin’ in a good art practice.

me: So, tell me a lil’ bit about your background…

Bonnie: I grew up in Nashville, a somewhat urban environment but distinctly more rural than Chicago. There I developed an affinity for hills and walking. Graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. I plan on developing a project about hills this summer, as I have been working on the walking part for so long!

me: Well, you are also getting some great exersize! And how was your residency set up with Homeland? What did it consist of? I believe you are the first person in this series, is that right?

Bonnie: I am the third Homeland resident after the Dynamite Group and John Paul Jeankins.

I simply wrote to Paige and Paul and picked a time. I am really the first official Gallery Homeland resident with the new collaboration between Paige and Paul. So, that is an accurate de­scrip­tion in that sense.

My time here has been very productive. The system that Paige and Paul set up is laid back but very well connected to resources, such as the IPRC, Reed College, PSU, and various media outlets in the Portland area. They also really make you feel at home, which is important to have a space to feel creative.

me: Homeland made you feel homey! Great to have that spirit about a residency like this. Well, just a few more questions..Is this work grant dependent?

Bonnie: Gallery Homeland gave me a modest stipend, but I fronted most of my expenses.

me: Well, that’s always honorable for a arts start-up. It’s great for them to be doing this. Where are you headed next?

Bonnie: I am headed to Nashville to visit my folks and give a talk at my mentors sculpture studio, artist Adrienne Outlaw. Then it’s back to Chicago for more collaborating! I would like to mention that I work with Chicago artist Melinda Fries on In the Weather.

me: Will you come back to stumptown? Did you have good coffee, wine..while here? Did you have the opportunity to see other artists work while here, meet some of the folks behind the scenes and canvasas?

Bonnie: Oh brother, the Coffee!!! I went to Stumptown at 34th and Belmont every morning before going to Paige’s studio to work. I am going to miss it so much and I love my local Chicago coffee from Liberty Roasters at Atomix Coffee shop, but I am a total convert. The beer ain’t bad either.

me: [wink] When you complete a project like this does it culminate in work you will present elsewhere, in any other media?

Bonnie: I did meet alot of artists. Ethan Rose, Ryan Jeffrey, Adam Porterfield of Small Sails, a couple of ladies from the M.O.S.T, Stephanie Snyder, and Harrell Fletcher, and of course Paige and Paul, to name a few.

The work is documented online and in a small zine version.

me: Sounds like you were in good hands.

Bonnie: Yes very much so

me: Just for reference, there have been a few artists here in town who have done walking projects , Brad Adkins, David Eckard (check out his new site built by the incredible Julia Stoops!) and Scott Wayne Indiana come to mind…were you familiar with their work?

Bonnie: Oh I am remiss, on Tuesday Scott, Paige and I took a walk around 20th and Raleigh. This is a walk that Scott takes often around a one block area. He actually submitted it to In the Weather. I did not meet Brad,
we had great discussion about the meditative aspects of walking.

me: And MK Guth did a project called the Red Shoe Delivery Service that was featured in Core Sample a few years back and dealt with hitting the pavement and being escorted through town by vehicle.

Bonnie: That sounds awesome.

me: Yes, Scott asked me to be involved in a group exhibition in a public park in Southeast come August, I have never worked outdoors. It will be a challenge for me - but it sounds like you beat your own path….

Well, Bonnie, it was great to have the chance to have this brief IM chat - I wish you well in your travels…thanks for treading here….

Bonnie: You too.

3/18/06
OREGON BIENNIAL INDUCTEES

2006 Oregon Biennial
34 Artists (as reported by Oregonlive):

Brad Adkins, Marcy Adzich, Holly Andres, Pat Boas, Chandra Bocci, Michael Brophy, Benjamin Buswell, Matt Clark, David Eckard, Ty Ennis, Anna Fidler, Emily Ginsburg, Heidi Preuss Grew, Jesse Hayward, Mark Hooper, Jo Jackson, Kristan Kennedy, Zach Kircher, K.C. Madsen, Federico Nessi, Lucinda Parker, Matthew Picton, Brittany Powell, Shawn Records, Vanessa Renwick, David Rosenak, Storm Tharp, Mariana Tres, Laura Vandenburgh, Bill Will and Amanda Wojick.

Plus two teams:
Grace Carter & Holly Andres (it’s a twofer for her)
Andrew Ellmaker & Mark Brandau

Of the above inductees seven were personal favorites for this year (pretty good odds). Looks like a good group, actually, a few surprises and four directly related to the most recent issue of Portland Modern. And I am personally extatic for a few of the younger artists (Ty Ennis, Chandra Bocci and Jesse Hayward), a bit of a balance of old/new school. This is a career boost in good company with Lucinda Parker and Michael Brophy. Some folks names I don’t know at all (probably a good thing). There are at least 3 or more repeats from former versions of this regional event. There are a handful of really pertinent artists who were overlooked. And it looks as if there will be, per high anticipation, film, installation, etc! Congrats one and all. And a BIG WELCOME to Jennifer Gately, hats off!!

3/16/06
BREAD & WINE

Is it appropriate to emote like Susan Lucci? It’s moments like this that one wonders. Again, I have been snubbed by the academy and I do not, at all, mind making a public statement about it. Well, this “academy” is the Portland Art Museum. And while I could pull an Annie Proulx (whose recent statement to London’s The Guardian was priceless - go, sister!), I will suffice to say I only had a sad clown face for less than two point five minutes after emptying the contents of my mailbox yesterday.

Yes, another Oregon Biennial (I am calling this one the “triennial”) will come and go without the privilege of having my work grace their walls down on SW Park Avenue (an address I shared up until recently) - though I do have hope, high hopes. I mean, it better be a g*ddamn blockbuster (lol). OK, maybe not in the George Lucas sorta way, but one hopes that the museum will deliver, and not just offer another staid overview of oily bliss. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some very solid artists presented in years past, some of my local favorites, in fact. But let’s please see some installation, some big-ass sculpture (no filler please), some media work, some technology, something other than a few dimensions.

Enter recent transplant Jennifer Gately, the newest museum curator in town, taking on this momentous task of piecing together something sage after endlessly sifting through 750+ microviews (4 slides each) of artists’ work to cull down to 20 some odd. That’s a real, serious critical challenge. I am one to give her a break, knowing full well that this curatorial duty is something vastly complex, exploratory, and given that, we just may see some amazing results. With the exponential number of artists in this big town our expectations are quite high (as they should be). And yes, some artists feel that their reputation is at stake, and are, rightly emotionally attached to the process and outcome. Not to make light of the personal and professional expectations, but for heaven’s sake, as Donna and Barbra once sang, No More Tears pa-leeeze.

And even though I was feeling quite solid about my proposal this time around, there will be another like 720 rejections. While the applicant numbers are down by nearly 250 this year, it’s a biased view (thank goodness for that) from an “outsider” perspective. That’s quite a good thing given that her ltd street cred managed to get her out of the museum walls doing the necessary legwork and studio visits, what a concept! And besides, my rejection letter clearly points out that next time around Biennial ‘08 will include both submissions and invitations. So, dress to impress!

I’d rather turn any semblance of sour grapes into a fine regional pinor noir, not quit art to work in a vineyard. Or perhaps just sit back and as Ty Ennis noted in a recent work “don’t give up, until you drink from the silver cup” (oh, I hope he sent slides!!!). Acknowledging that I may not be the greatest artist since sliced bread (hold the carbs), but I am nutty, work organically and sometimes can be considered an acquired taste. I’m OK with that.

Port’s Jeff Jahn recently sparked a short dialogue about the unfolding anticipation.

Pass the ketchup…..or raise your glass.

3/15/06
SIGN HERE!

A Signature Piece

Artist’s signatures. From Warhol’s monogrammic production house to Jan van Eyck’s hidden self to Marsden Hartley’s symbology, even Disney’s Hidden Mickeys are part of this ongoing dialogue. There are font packs dedicated to the subject, and registry/databases that catalogue and analyze the scrawl. Sometimes hidden or mysterious, sometimes blatant and garish - the artist signature is often a very essential part of the creative process.

A while back I solicited a large and varied group of international artists and expert insiders on what they felt about the artist signature. Surprisingly I did not hear back from barely a soul in the region, but I did get some very solid thoughts on the matter. Below I list a few areas of emphasis that I used to spark discussion around this little talked about topic:

- authenticator/symbol of authenticity
- trademark/copyright
- watermark, limited edition scoring
- overture of “star”
- familiarity with brand(ing)
- sense of ownership/value
- absence of/work that has its own visual signature
- hidden within work (subtle or obvious game)
- defining edge
- overbearing/overshadows work (detractor)
- ornate/blends with work/penmanship-based
- gesture of completeness

…..And this is what they had to say:

John Guthrie: You are opening up a big psychological can of worms for me! I guess it has to do with not wanting to draw attention to myself. I never sign my paintings or drawings on the front. The signature is not part of the art for me. I always sign on the back of everything.

Abi Spring: The Signature.

I think that I want to see art that is specific. Unless the work is about “the signature” I don’t want to see it. My own signature I don’t feel has anything to do with my work. I guess I essentially feel that I am a misguided minimalist, and I avoid signatures to the point that I often forget to even sign the back of the work.

When I was showing in Santa Fe my gallery director asked my to do a piece on commission. A woman was giving it to her husband for his birthday. The piece was essential a blue square, very minimal, the director, whose name I won’t mention, asked me to sign the front of the piece “Happy Birthday Thomas” and sign it. Needless to say my relationship with that gallery went down hill pretty quickly. (And just so you don’t think I am a total curmudgeon I did write it on the back.)

Lawrence English/Room 40: The signature is an interesting area of research, especially in the contemporary setting, where logos and visual identities are so strong and commonplace, the ‘role’ of the signature is perhaps challenged. Whereas it was once the realm of those with the ability to write (and read) and to have a purpose for such an insignia - its place now is something perhaps less vital as a signifier of self background/class etc. and more a utility of simple recognition or personal legitimacy…it’s position as the dominant way we come to ‘legitimise’ ourselves is second to pin numbers, id cards, passports etc. which now carry or identity in other less transferable/copyable scripts.

Onajide Shabaka/Miami Art Exchange:
Signature and art.

The notion of the signature in art relates to authencity and authorship as much as it relates the ego and defining oneself in the world (regardless of whether the person is an artist or not). In this we are looking at the signature from the perspective of the maker of the mark and the person viewing that mark. Some artists don’t sign their work. Other artists do it in non-obtrusive ways. Others still plaster their names across the front of works with great swirls and embellishments. In the recent case of Jackson Pollock’s painting being authenticated without a signature, it’s obvious signature could mean a great deal of money. Maybe, millions of dollars.

Writers and athletes that do lots of signings probably have different signatures for personal checks than they do for posters, clothing, and book covers. Included in the differences between personal and public is the fact that Robert Rauschenberg does not sign autographs unless with a Sharpie. That I know because he told a parttime hiree during the time I was working at a local museum. I have a different signature for artworks than for checks and other legal documents. All of my signatures are with some flourish and not specifically following the form of the written letters that make up my name. That habit was made many years ago while working in banking were I had to sign every document.

Since my superiors couldn’t read my handwritten signature, it was followed by handprinted version. That is often the case at the present time. Since much of my work is photographic, my signature is on the reverse side out of sight. Works such as drawing could also be done that way although, some are signed on the face such as small works. I think artworks should be signed but, in non-obtrusive ways.

Tor Lundvall: Apart from a few rare exceptions such as Albrecht Dürer, I have always found the artist’s signature to be a distraction. I always sign my paintings on the back for authenticity and as a mark of completion. The last thing I want anyone to see is my signature obstructing the view into the world created in the painting.

Eva Lake: It is a tricky question, as to whether a signature is important to a piece of art, or necessary.

They seem to work better on representational art for some reason. Perhaps that is because we are used to seeing “Vincent” - this kind of thing. On Randy Moe’s portraits, every single one is signed and it seems like a part of the whole thing. In his case, you get the feeling that he has written his name that same way since childhood.

But on abstract works, I have never liked it. And I certainly don’t want to see my own name, over and over again, on my own work - and that is a reason I specificaly sign on the back of a piece.

The quandry over the Warhol estate is part and parcel with how he operated as an artist. Many people were a part of the production, so it seems only right that the authenticity of works would be challenged: because even when it is a Warhol, it is still much more than that. It’s an empire. Who knows where it stops!

Chris Hand/Zeke’s Gallery (Montreal): I don’t have anything deep to say on the matter - I ask my artists to sign on the back, more as a way to signify that the painting is in fact done than anything else. However over the weekend I was reading a book with Riopelle and got this for you, a direct quote:

“At first I signed everything I did. For us, the young postwar painters, the inventor of the non-signature was the American Sam Francis. There were probably others before him. But for my generation, it was him. Sam Francis signed the back of his paintings: not the front. That posed problems for buyers and speculators. Might not unsigned works decline in value over time? He made buyers nervous!”

“Sam Francis’ approach was wonderful, he had a marvelous theory. For him, putting your signature at the bottom of the canvas could only deform the painting space. You can’t argue with that. Besides, as I’ve already said, to sign is to add something to the canvas, to add “the end.” What end? When I used to sign it was because, like giving titles to works, I felt caught in the trap of identifying them to myself, inscribing them in memory. In fact, the signature is a cheat. A painting is already a signature. It’s only the signature that counts. Some artists think that signing paintings will make them easier to track down and identify. They’re afraid people won’t be able to immediately put an artist’s name to what they’re looking at. That makes sense for little known artists. But the signature is a means. Never an end.”

Brad Adkins: (responded in visual form)

———
unsigned.
(though, this as a live document, send me your thoughts…)

3/13/06
SMALL SAILS / BIG SCREEN

Tonight Holocene (1001 SE Morrison) presents the work of Ethan Rose and Ryan Jeffery in an evening of sight/sound. As half of the electronica quartet Small Sails these two will present the premiere of Jeffrey’s film short Fallen with a record release for Rose’s latest effort, Ceiling Songs on Locust. Showtime: 8:30PM

3/12/06
CHARGED ENTRIES

Talk about caffeinated!

Scott Wayne Indiana puts up doors on walls and takes over downtown’s Stumptown (128 SW 3rd). Numerology plays into his oeuvre as in these seven (lucky) mixed media pieces, each of them seven footers, Indiana perfectly synchronizes with the arched divisions of the cafe-cum-gallery. And fairly notable, these works are serenly minimal for his usual output, here dedicated to neutrals, glazes and random blurts and lines as opposed to modern day urban scrawlings and mish-mosh collage we have seen from his studio in the past. This man has styles, yes, many. From the teeny toy horses seen citywide corralled to sidewalks to making lengthy improvised scrolls with the post-dada verbiage of a psychedelic sage, this prolific artist, who rarely seems to stop what he’s doing for a moment to think has taken a concerted moment in time to focus.

Now, don’t get me wrong, he thinks a LOT (see his site for evidence of that too), he just is a workhorse, and this shows that, even if these door paintings were done in an hour, that he stopped and breathed something beyond the surface into them. Sure, the only evidence of him hiding the utility of his surfaces is that he’s in many cases left the brass on and not painted over it. And while other artists like Jim Dine, George Segal, the Kienholz’s and Robert Rauschenberg have used the door as metaphor to other worlds, etc, Indiana’s paintings are more like straight-forward abstract minimalism, rather than conceptual to me. Actually, they are quite lovely as a group, almost all identically sized, they probably have the power to give good coffee addicts something to buzz about as they retreat a lil’ while, sitting and sipping.

I stared at the way the glossy transluscent drips ran from the top and sides of matte, creamy surfaces, only marked randomly, simply, intently with black lines and other sienna dribbles, like, well, rich coffee. Enamel and other concoctions script the scene. Only one piece in the group used anything outside of the immediate surface and it was two-parts joined by hardware, with a hint of tar-like Pollock splatter. These communicate in code. But you probably may need to travel down every drip and line to read into it, but decoding, for the patient few, will only reveal what you offer back to each horizontal work in this show.

While lushly rich in their thin surface coats, there is something vaguely, dare I say, decorative about these. Sure, its raw and simplified, but these surfaces have an unusual alienating disconnect. That’s probably a very good thing, aloof is in these days, and Indiana is on the pulse. That’s also not to infer that he isn’t physically and passionately charged, you probably have to be even moreso to paint outside your introspection, to deal in only the suface, the contained and controlled clash between live hand and hard surface. But, here, he has a delivered precision that has a subtle, sexual charge without having to blow his wad, instead, he just oozes all over the inches and planes of his panels. This is not action painting, he’s harnessed his gestural voice, only hinting, teasing. My primary issue with the work here are the nuts and bolts. No, I mean it. The hardware that only seems to be present on the surface of the work for means of acting as hanging apparatus. Their metallic punctuation intrudes and seems too uniform. But in the scale of it all, these are pretty much microdots.

His recent statement at first seems candidly naive as read “an art object, an art thing, “art” is something that opens up a person’s eyes to recognize everything as art.” But as he continues a truth unfolds, “in so far as all things existing and being a part of a developmental process toward something good, which i believe to be true, all things are beautiful. “art” has always been on a track to reveal this to everyone. even death, torture, suffering, these are all part of the path. despite our suffering, the path is beautiful. art acts as a sign post on the path.” There is reason to pause and contemplate his words and images in the moment, it’s about the moment, the time in which subrealities, dreams, consciousness comes together with breath and ding, a light goes on. And we are still breathing, whatever our reality may be.

His works will be on view during cafe hours through the end of March.

3/9/06
EMERSIVE POP PSYCHEDELIA

©Vadim

Yes, it was worth the wait! If you weren’t in the crowded house of Wonder last night you just missed it, and I am telling you so (nya nya nya). Oh, I’m not kidding.

Stereolab truly exceeded most expectations, and transcended funked-up technical problems with a pro-level of grace. The show floated between decades of internationally-inspired pop-laden music with an ear towards the experimental. A feat for a band who’s now been at it fifteen years. However last night they actually rocked, crooned, and otherwise kept keen resonances alive with zing. And even though their just-released Fab Four Suture wasn’t available at the merch table (product was shipped on to Denver for their next show) they were actually a septet with brass, strings, keys and percussion. Frontwoman Lætitia Sadier lightened the room with bilingual dualities that were brazenly luminescent at times eclipsing into hush, sweet softness.

UK-based, their sound seems so familiar, and live its impact just surrounds you, the sound is large, but not too loud, psychedelic but not lost in some hazy impromptu mix of spontaneity. There are patterns that emerge, disappear, layered sound collages under the surface of the perky pop tonal structure. They managed to make the cavern of the space seem intimate. I floated between the mid center and the foot of the stage to compare and contrast the experience, and no matter where you were standing in the space the impact was purely ON.

Even during the big finale, all amplitude in check, strumming and chugging, they replaced din with a sweet crystallization of something compared to tight chaos theory in harmonics. It sorta reminded me of similar performance tactics taken on by Godspeed You Black Emperor. Sam Coomes from Quasi who was standing next to me and nodding away really seemed to enjoy it (they play the Wonder on April 14th). Daniel Menche was also spotted.

Snowy dreams become doorstep realities as Portlanders rub their eyes in the bedazzlement of the forcast, tread lightly today in each and every aural step that surrounds you. But don’t listen to only what I say, I managed to poll a few folks for their opinion:

©Vadim

Kevin P says: “Stereolab managed to overcome the poor acoustics of Wonder Ballroom and performed a lovely set of old and new songs.”

Paul M says: “Stereolab had a aura about them that set the mood forty years back in a Parisian night club, truly a therapeutic night of rock.”

Troy R says: “For a band whose recorded sound seems synthetic and edgeless, their live performance is surprisingly vibrant and raucous.”

———

PS: The opening act was switched out at the last minute and I am unsure who they were, it was a mixed ensemble and I only caught a few minutes. What happened to Hot Chip?

PPS: I wonder: Though trained well, and pleasant enough, what’s with the ultra security and multiple hand stamps that only cause delays and confusion and wonderment? Last night I had every crevace of my back-pack checked and had to fumble through the crowd to show ID, even though I wasn’t drinking, or going to the bar. The set-up is a bit confusing and cumbersome. I noted this at a previous show, but last night it hit me like a ton of bricks for unbeknownst reason. Needs better investigation - call me a delicate flower.

3/8/06
RANDOM DOTS & DUST

Sssstereolab is not all about hiss and hum and bumps in the night. They make sweet, distinct, harmonies that distill and filter and collage tropicalisms with broken-beat jazz, bass drone with layered vocals and the unexpected.

TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE!

In fact, tonight, they will re-emerge with a taste test of Fab Four Suture, just released this past Monday and available on both CD and the limited edition double 10″ (pretty, ooo la la!). All tickets from this previously scheduled show will be honored tonight at the Wonder Ballroom. Don’t miss this essential show. 128 NE Russell Street, 8PM.

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In the mood for something slightly different that deals in beats of the exceptional variety? Well, suit up for Thursday evening’s performance of Aphex Twin re-mixer DJ Cyclob who is opening for the incomparable bent techno master Richard Devine (check this guys equipment twice, he’s obviously been nice). All unfolds at the Dunes (1905 NE MLK Blvd) tomorrow night (March 9). For times and more info dial 503-493-8637.

PS: Though the room is smaller than his sound, and with Eric (E*Rock) Mast in da haus, all the way from Berlin Jason Forrest (aka donnasummer) graced the smoky Towne Lounge last night. In what may have been a total repeat, or deja vu, of an exact show I witnessed, minus the large stage and rhinestoned tux, from a few years back at Montreal’s Mutek. Or not. He was loud, proud and throbbin’ to the thirteen mostly twentysomethings who were a bobbin’. Tight!

3/6/06
PAST DUE MUGSHOT

circa 12/05

Courtesy of Paul Smalley (aka Wolfgang), here is the overdue illustration of my fifteen mins spent with the master of disaster, the cardinal of carnal, the grandfather of the grotesque, Mister John (”poison”) Waters (and myself, of course). And, no I was not pulling an all-nighter, the red eye flash moment is something I, personally, have mastered - thanks Mom (and Andy Mangels, too) - will I ever be ready for my closeup?!

Semi Related CNN piece

3/6/06
DONNASUMMER IN PDX!

This just in….and he don’t play guitars!

The artist formerly known as donnasummer (er, Jason Forrest) will play the Towne Lounge on the ‘morrow (originally planned for Berbati’s it’s just like him to keep us guessin’). That would be Tuesday the 7th of the ides of March for those curious. If you like quick cut mash-ups here is zee master. 10PM + FREE!

3/6/06
STEREOLAB POSTPONED

Just in case you are Wonder(ing), after two nights at the Bay Area’s famous Fillmore, last night’s Stereolab show was postponed until this Wednesday, March 8th (@ Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell). There was no reason, save a single sheet of paper on their front door window mentioning the date change, even their website still notes it was last night (at press time). Sources say they got stuck in a snowstorm heading up from Northern Cal. But for the probable near capacity crowd who dashed from their Oscar parties and trekked over there last night, disappointment was had by all. But just as the friends I was with said, at least it was not postponed until Summer, or cancelled altogether. Monqui reports that all tickets will be honored on Wednesday. It’s been a while, they have settled into a small lineup change in lieu of the tragic bicycling accident by founding member Mary Hanson just a few years ago. Many thought the show couldn’t go on, as the sound would evolve, change. But, fear not, even though the band’s website doesn’t mention the inclement hiccip, and with their very tight tour schedule, the show must go on. So, you will be redeemed on Wednesday, they will have already warmed crowds in Seattle (tonight) and Vancouver (tomorrow night). It will most certainly be worth the wait for the harmonies, the extacies, the sheer coming together of sonicisms beyond rational compare of a band who has taken a few years off to retrofit their normally exquisite operation. So, take a breather and expand your mind. Free your refried ectoplasmatic stereo headphone mind! The Wonder Ballroom, Wednesday, 8PM, be there (again).

3/5/06
TRILOGY OF DIFFERENCE

In a month ceramics are king (the NCECA is here and most are celebrating and capitalizing on the event) some will curl an eyebrow backwards in reckoning with breakable, dust-collecting chachkis while others will revel in the post/neo/transmutable possibilities offered at nearly every gallery in Multnomah County. In this town of eleven bridges passing over the mighty Willamette, three Pearl area exhibitions that almost completely avoid the bandwagon, and all at least have floating power.

INGREDIENT: velcro
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The Basil Hallward Gallery at Powell’s Bookstore has The Velcro Show, new work by Cyrus Smith (not the Jules Verne protagonist) that approaches “a historical and sociological study into the implications of the presence of transformative materials in the every day”. Now, for something as common and poked-fun at as velcro, the effort gets an immediate transgressive nod. The male/female sticking logic that’s all so flat and flimsy, here has been applied to common objects like model ships, electrical wall sockets and an iron/board. In a few of the cases the work depends on the viewers anticipation of the objects’ use and predicatable failure due to the interruption of these black strips aapplied to iron and ironing board. This is a one-note comment on the purpose of the object, but as a cluster of items, as in the black strips becoming black stripes, the design comment on 70s-style neckties is a bit of a daft shift. The repurposing of the object itself is the actual subversion, rather than the intended remodelling of an object in other materials (ceramic, bronze, etc). So, the work itself may not be the most remarkably conceptual, nor is the application of material - but the show says plenty about still life. And in its current state can be moved from place to place with ease (this could be a tongue-in-cheek infomercial)…

INGREDIENT: hydrostone
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Next up is the very first exhibition at a brand new teeny tiny, wonderfully industro space called Room 744 (located at 744 NW 12th). The space is dusty, chalky, and contained. That’s purposeful presentation of new work by Jennifer Anable who is also a ceramics instructor at the Oregon College of Art & Craft. The show, titled Replicating the Object does just that. Though these objects, either casts of fingers, feet or mini chalices and spare parts are each unique, fragile, almost breathing - hardly “crafty” at all. The work is stark white, powdery - the most immediate work is a wall piece, ebb and flow, in which an assemblage of hundreds of fingers within 24 square inches reminds me of wavering sea anemones. But this is above surface, and pointing at and around the viewer, right/left, up/down, touching the surface of each other in a harmonious pattern. When I walked out I recalled having been introduced to The Guist Gallery many moons ago. The body, in its parts, multiplied and segregated as object. It’s both study and circumstance. The work is slipcast in hydrostone, so it is familial with its sister ceramic, but appears as if it could be plaster of Paris. I love intimate spaces like this, welcome to the Pearl! Gallery hours are Tues-Sun 12-4PM. More info: 503-233-2360.

INGREDIENT: digi-image
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In the process of perusing I made my second visit to see Washington photographer Daniel Barron’s In the Knee of the Curve at Pushdot Studio, saving the best for last. And this gallery/digital print house has been on a role after strong showings by Mark Hooper and Jonathan Elliott. Though, this is, by far, the best I’ve seen on their walls since Tamara Lischka a few years back.

This show is downright peverse, in the best way possible! It’s like secretly walking into the middle of some really high-tech scientific laboratory experiment. Vivid colors mix with fleshes and mucousy milky whites, dripping and flowing. Again, the body, though distorted and non-specific, is inferred quizzically. These are like outtake stills from recent Chris Cunningham works like Rubber Johnny or videos for Aphex Twin. They filter and distort the carnal body inside out, with cotton candy pinks, powdery blues, and rich edible greens as backdrops to the seemingly sinister goings-on. One piece depicts razor sharp metallics that are teeth-like growths from human flesh, another with just a hint of milky flesh with a wisp of hair thats more like a suture than a ’stache. The angles and actions are curious, the human/macro scale is to be reckoned with (some pieces measuring over 5 feet in some directions) and powerfully manipulated from a pseudo bio-like menacing reality. A must-see exhibition.

3/3/06
CATHARTIC PERFORMANCE ART?

Yes, it’s come to this. Get your ya-ya’s out. Tonight, Friday, March 3rd at 7PM, Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square is hosting, of all things, an unadvertised ginormous, word-of-mouth, pillow fight.

The rules are:
- Keep your pillow concealed until 7PM
- Hit only others carrying pillows
- No heavy objects in pillows

Spread the word (and the feathers)!

Blog: Tommy Gworek’s take
Blog: Vadim’s Flikr Pics
Blog: San Francisco’s Valentine’s Day version

3/3/06
DOWNTOWN LADIES

Two recent stories immediately peaked my interest, because they featured very endearing/enduring women whom I have enjoyed for their conversation, and unique roles they play in the cultural fabric of this city of roses.

- WILMA CADY -

Yesterday’s Oregonian featured Spencer Heinz’s front page Metro piece on septegenarian elevator operator Wilma Cady is a great profile of a Portland figure whose responsible for driving people to the Sugar Gallery and several other creative businesses in the building which formerly housed the recently defunct Gallery 500. Cady, whose familiar face has greeted so many visitors to the one hundred year old Bullier Building at 420 SW Washington over the years. Making 50+ trips up and down daily, this sort of work is something of the romantic past, of days gone by, and pretty scarce nowadays. The old fashioned elevator car, lovingly named Sparky by a patron, holds about 3-5 passengers maximum and comes in quite handy when scaling the New York loft style building that of late has been home to many parties and exhibitions. Stop by to take a ride and give Wilma a nod for keeping Portland weird. Going up!

- ELIZABETH LEACH -

The other story is Elizabeth Armstrong Moore’s Making A Scene piece on gallery impresario Liz Leach in the March issue of Portland Monthly. The piece is a quite personal overview including talk of her family, professional and educational life of past, present and future. At nearly 50, Leach has spent exactly half her life (this year her eponymous gallery turns 25!) configuring and forecasting the heartbeat of the Pacific Northwest’s cultural potential with fresh talent alongside the established and art historical. And she has done such with the highest level of aesthetic shrewdness and complete style of her own design. In many ways her vision is that of the proprietor of a museum annex showing art world heavyweights Sol Lewitt, Kiki Smith, John Baldessari and Robert Rauschenberg alongside emerging regional discoveries like Jaq Chartier, Sean Healy and Dinh Q. Lê.

Step into her gorgeous new space at 417 NW 9th in the heart of the Pearl (opened in 2005) and it is immediate to see that she has a few things going on that easily trumps every other like venue in town, height and width - a whole lotta room to ingest, digest and otherwise consider the offerings. And whether you’re a newbie collector or a well-oiled pro, Leach can offer a sense of choice to most anyone on a budget for a starter piece to an investment opportunity to a museum purchase. You will come to expect a level of blue chip quality comparable with major players in Los Angeles and New York with her years of expertise and downright straight-forward style. After all, Leach is the president of the Portland Art Dealers Association which birthed the entire First Thursday movement along with her representation on several other regional boards and affiliations.

The most important thing to note is her constant upkeep and management of longstanding relationships with the artists whom she represents, this is uncatagorically the most important ingredient in the melting pot here. And represents them well, she does, at major national and international annual art fairs (San Francisco International, ArtCologne, Jupiter Hotel, ArtLA) from the East to the West coasts, and some of her roster has even caught notice from the venerable world biennials in Venice and in NY. And, furthermore, Leach has her eyes wide-open, she’s aware of trends, does studio visits and goes to other galleries, keeps current and privy to local currents which is gratifying in a small town where you don’t see much of that. If it’s contemporary art you want you will not need to look any further in these here parts, but as in her own quest for what’s “now” (and to a greater extent, enduring) you will want to stretch out and look around anyway. So, there!

3/2/06
FREEDOM STATE

Where freedom is a state of mind…

Freedom State, from director Cullen Hoback and company, is a new local film that is getting rave reviews outside of our green pastures. Filmed mostly on Sauvie Island with glimpses of other area scenes without revealing the actual place is not quite homey at all. As a matter of fact, quite peversely the inverse. This is a sardonic glimpse into the asymetrical world of eight mental home patients and their collective journey led by their “President” Krystal, crazily played by the endearing Megan Murphy. After realizing her life as a housewife is pretty dull, transparent and average she enters a mindset that causes her to question the “normality” of daily life. After consulting with the house nurse of Lost Acres, a mental health retreat which she has seemingly self-checked in, the nurse vanishes from the story soonthereafter. Slowly she befriends the others in the home who each take on roles like “cook,” “lookout,” “executioner” et al. They are live wire caricatures on an adventure in a mini school bus throughout the lush “edge of the world”.

The solid film has got a hint of Wes Anderson in the hands/eyes of cinematographer Shawn Sundby whose use of distinct off-color and light becomes a minimalist stage for these quirky characters. Every scene is uncluttered, allowing the actors to provide the fine lines, both verbal and visual. Added to that, Hoback’s sharp editing of this introspective tale of discovery manages to illuminate some of the arbitrary, non-linear overall style of the film brought to the screen by emerging producer Aaron Kirk Douglas, who also originally penned the screenplay. Providing allusion aplenty, the film guarantees its place in the world of cult oddities.

Watch the trailer!

A very contemporary One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest that has an immediate visual language. Drenched in lyrical metaphors, it’s part acid trip, part vision quest and all about the wobbly edge of what possibly defines the norms of sanity. As the characters drive through their own version of the apocalypse, each set has something lush to look at, reminding us of something strangely familiar, but a road less travelled. The confessional vignette has the necessary claustrophobic countenance to steady this bunch of misfits long enough to learn what makes them tick. Though they can’t really be contained, their minds, actions and horizon line is vast with possibilities to be explored.

It’s a refreshing look at the human spirit through the mind of our inner child as effected by a collective mental health. In the end, the house nurse returns to a cornbread catharsis, an homage to Animal House, which is just priceless.

< Hoback (Director), Douglas (Producer)
Photo by TJ Norris

Don't Miss the PORTLAND PREMIERE
Hollywood Theater (4122 NE Sandy)
Friday March 17th (7PM), Saturday March 18th (1PM)

3/1/06
PNCA THESIS REVIEWS

Yesterday, over twenty regional artists/arts professionals were invited by Senior Thesis Chair and artist David Eckard to take part in midterm thesis review panels at PNCA. In attendance were Sean Healy, Brenda Mallory, Bruce Conkle, Laurel Gitlen, David Cipriano, Gavin Shettler, Paige Saez among many other notables. Each panel of three met with up to six students who are mid way through their final thesis project. As expectations might have it, the energy was greatly impacted by emotion, desire, passion and personal messages that ran the gamut from conceptually developed to just scratching the formal surface to breakthroughs. With fifteen minute breaks in between, panelists regathered and discussed the impact of the youthful creative energies purcolating under the rooftops on NW Johnson Street. Bright talent, emerging, questioning, struggling - what you may expect from budding artists at this very stage of their education, prior to having their undergraduate fine arts degrees in hand.

The atmosphere was collegial among my fellow panelists including artist John Mace and PICA’s Performing Arts Director Erin Boberg Doughton - with whom we wove an overture of advice, impressions and feedback to this wave of hungry newbies. We met with students of Nan Curtis, MK Guth, Dianne Kornberg and others. Our repore was fluid, all adding to each other’s ideas, making gentle suggestions, offering constructive criticism, stating art historical references, offering rhetorical questions and the like.

We met with artists in four different media, but all with similar concerns. Their anticipation was delightful, and self criticisms aside, their overarching need to have the work speak from a personal perspective seemed paramount. Working through formal and technical issues to establish a stronger communicative/language was also a concern. Otherwise each are attempting to entertain and question the outside world, find their audience, and voice. None of the students that we met with seemed to have an exact commercial end result to their project, which is probably healthy from a strictly vocational perspective. Though, the strongest two students spoke in puns that targeted big business and Hollywood in their psychic/subliminal seduction of the mass market. With technology-ready tools these students offer ideas of how we have been manipulated by advertising - this offered with a bright (not trite) fresh voice. I found the students we met to have a degree of self-effacing candor that allowed for open feedback and dialogue. It’s a brave thing to have a group of strangers descend upon your personal, creative space. Knowing that some of these folks will be showing in and around Portland in the coming few years is inspiring, and being part of the process is a true honor.

2/24/06
EXPRESSIVE/IMPRESSIVE

.:

Escorted on to the stage by area artist Soriah (Enrique Ugalde), Guillermo Gómez-Peña turned the stage out last night (see below preview). The half-booted/half-muled “chicano punk” entertained and mused the PNCA full house with a witty, multi-lingual style that was bright and left. Donning a flaming pink and solar orange headress, his memorable quips included “original sin is crossing the Border” and “embrace your inner chihuahua (or Aztec)”!

Dealing in the desirous, the astutely political Gómez-Peña used the velocity of farse to manage his sharp points interactively with the riveted audience. His rant on “God Bless….” with everyone in the room given the opportunity to fill in the blank went on for five minutes plus (expounding on countries “other than America”) and unified the crowd in a communal way. His pun on the 700 Club, organizing the audience to belt out names, uncovered the likes of usual moral majority suspects Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jesse Helms, Bush/Cheney and etc, noting that many are older white Republican men this seemed to hammer the proverbial nail. In fun comparison he created the “69 Club” tauting the names of thinkers, artists and civic leaders like Howard Zinn, Dalai Lama, Bjork, Frank Zappa, Desmond Tutu….indeed!

The evening was topically relevant, with a spirited performance format that read like a more traditional monologue, which was apt in this Annual William Jamison Lecture. This was patriotism deconstructed for the inner masses, a wave of acknowledgement and solidarity embraced through performance. A cross-cultural reckoning.

“The only difference between a performance artist and a madman is that a madman doesn’t have an audience!”

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Portland Modern Closes Tomorrow

If you haven’t had the opportunity to get down to the Portland Art Center Annex (32 NW 5th) and right around the corner at Ogle Gallery (310 NW Broadway) to see what curator Pat Boas and publisher Mark Brandau have collectively concocted with the bent of six vastly different independent artists - this is your last call. Pop in to view the work today and tomorrow before 6PM (when the show closes). In the meantime, read all about it (or pick up bits and pieces to make your own puzzle):

Victoria Blake for The Oregonian
Jeff Jahn for Port

Portland Modern is now accepting entries for its 4th installment over the next few weeks. This one will be co-curated by Matthew Stadler from the amazing Clear-Cut Press and artist Kristan Kennedy (any relation to Wieden &/Or - “The K…”?) who is also the new Visual Art Program Director of PICA (and whose work was recently admired at the Art Gym recently).

2/23/06
IT’S WHITNEY (if you’re nasty?)

Q: How excited am I to make the fateful trip out to NYC this year?
A: VERY!

THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL: Day for Night
With the pertinent inclusion of this year’s sound and film prospects, not to mention the daring sculptors and photo artists - I am on that plane (well, in April) to see some of my faves involved in the first Bienniel of its kind in my mind which includes: Kenneth Anger, Tony Conrad, Mark di Suvero, Robert Gober, Taylor Mead, Marilyn Minter, Momus, Jim O’Rourke, Tony Oursler and Dan Graham, Ed Paschke, Richard Serra and Michael Snow (among one hundred others). I’m like a giddy childlike munchkin. My daydreamy thoughts range from outstretched hairy limbs growing from staid walls and big video eyeballs staring right back at me to overarching sheaths of metal stopping my entry into the entire affair to a cacophony of silence, or maybe my iPod burped?

ANGER RISING

I have been a huge Anger fan since I took a few of Saul Levine’s film classes in the early 80s. Mister Anger is the grandad of edgy gay cinema verite in his golden years, and even though most of his pertinent vision was shot over four decades ago, he is a living testament to the coming of age of film as a true art form. His inimitable Scorpio Rising paved the streets for amazing visionary minds like Derek Jarman and to some extent, the Kuchar Brothers, who have also come and gone.

Back then Levine really focused on the appreciation of the medium and exposed many young urchins, like myself at the time, to works by Anger and others like Jack Smith (Flaming Creatures) and Brakhage. It was an influential time to me, on my work, my to-be-future-creative life. And aside from everyone calling him a “curmudgeon” (blah-blah-blah) some of Anger’s critics fail to recognize his genius of separateness. Part of this, I believe, is the limited access to his work which has yet to be delivered in modern DVD format (a topic for another column - artists and the readily available consumer format). And also because he lives by his own cloth, and one sewn by folks before him like occultist Aleister Crowley for instance. You could say his work is bathed in a mythical shroud of sorts. The artist becomes removed to some extent - or removes himself (he may still live alone in a double-wide situation in the Bay Area). At nearly 80, this is his just dessert, however, a few decades delayed some might say. If you are interested in further reading (and video) I suggest a verrrrry interesting and far-reaching piece that the producers of the now defunct/censored Disinformation show did on him six years back.

SOUND-CENTRIC

I am as candidly excited about the buzz going ’round in regards to some of the folks I have met, covered or worked with over the past few years. Especially the embarkment on such projects are house favorites Christian Marclay (intoxicating - the SFMOMA show a few years back - made my jaw droop like his endless cassette tape) and Carsten Nicolai (his live show at Mutek ‘04 was body altering and, btw, his monograph is pristinely lovely). These two are getting front page ArtNet news! Nicolai has been included in Documenta and Kunsthalle Basel among many other international exhibitions while Marclay shows at Margo Leavin in LA and Paula Cooper in NY, two of the States’ hottest galleries, bar none. No one is making art of this caliber as far as I am concerned. And we will see a LOT more of this wave, breeding architectures, sound-scaping, digitized think-tanks and stunning minimalism. Keiji Haino is even performing as part of a live performance with The Melvins (a must-see site) in conjunction with the Bienniel’s tenure this year (May 17) - which should appeal to cross-current tastes. Even though I was pretty much preaching to the choir I will never forget bantering with some of the heavyweight panelists (Plunderphonics, Richard Chartier, COH/Ivan Pavlov, Asmus Tietchens and Nicolai himself) in both Barcelona (Sonar) and in Montreal about the coming of age where this infusion of intermedia, and its larger importance in the art world was ready to explode…and NOW is the time!

Though, these reasonably younger artists (in their 40’s, like me) are jump-starting their careers - others included in this Biennial like Taylor Mead, Tony Conrad, Richard Serra and Robert Gober are each having something of a renaissance-like recognition. There will be lots of comparisons between old and new schools for sure. Lots to erupt over, discuss and otherwise engage.

Usually I am not geared-up for this as it can really be a crap-shoot showcase passing fads of gaseousness - but as far as I am concerned the 2006 organizers (Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne) have struck embedded treasures that will truly blow the roof off Mother Whitney, once, and for all!

PS: If you are looking for something to do tonight (after The Mexterminator @ PNCA) head over to Holocene for their “It’s Importland To Me To Be One Step Further Than One Step Beyond” (Holocene Music) release party (8:30PM-close)!

* The Whitney Biennial runs March 2 - May 28, 2006

2/22/06
MEXORCIST

“A sight to give Pat Buchanan a coronary.” - The Daily News

Portland welcomes Guillermo Gómez-Peña, an extraordinary interdisciplinary cross-cultural artist beyond classical description, for one evening, this Thursday, February 23 @ 7PM at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

The 11th Annual William Jamison Lecture (..body/war paint aside, not a lecture at all)

Recipient of both the MacArthur (genius grant) and the Bessie, Gómez-Peña stands in such company as Steve Lacy, Meredith Monk, Lucinda Childs, Bill T. Jones, Ran Blake, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Ann Hamilton, John Ashbery and Cecil Taylor. And beyond just naming names - that’s some darn good company!

Aside from his participation in the Venice, Whitney and Sydney Biennials, at 50, this Mexico City native’s work freshly deals face-front with raw, nervy socio-ethnic-politico-psycho-sexual topics that often reach the great divide of censorship. He uncans worms long extinct and serves something of a fiesta for disaster! Fusing performance and literary arts with his own flight of fancy, Mexterminator vs. the Global Predator presents vernacular explorations untold until right now (yeah, it’s that topical, that immediate).

Special thanks to the many folks that are sponsoring this happening including 2 Gyrlz, Oregon College of Art & Craft, PNCA, Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery (the craft hits the fan!).

PNCA, 1241 NW Johnson Street
ADMISSION: $ Zero Dinero $

“In a place accidentally called America” - I think Jamison and I would have hit it off.

2/22/06
LOOK MOM, NO SLIDES!
.:

Newspace Center for Photography announces its call for entries for their 2nd Annual National Juried Exhibition…

OK. How refreshing is it for a juried exhibition to “GET” the plight of many living artists who either have gone digital or just cannot afford $400 to hire someone to shoot a body of their work with a dying media (slides)? Quite. Well, I guess some may say that systems are hard to change, and expensive to upgrade, but, look at what happened to film and video…I guess there’s a romance about old slides, yes, though, for practical purposes like this, the expense to artists is what counts in higher numbers. And CDRs are much more “disposable” I suppose, and easier to obtain. When applying for grants and/or submitting to any exhibition, it’s about time that all entities pay heed to the reduction in cost all the way around (printing purposes, etc) to only accept digital submissions. Oh, and by the way, I recently had digital images transferred to slides, and that cost over $100 just for the transfer on to that medium, so the cost is associated in many ways - and makes it more difficult for low-income artists to participate in opportunities. The fairness in the process is limited. So thank you Newspace!

Entries Accepted: March 15 - May 12, 2006
Exhibition: July 7 - September 3, 2006

Newspace v.2

Newspace is evolving, with lots of classes (darkroom to digital), a new non-profit restructuring, a capital campaign and facility build-out plan. Their growth in the coming years will be far-reaching and truly anchors the Southeast arts district.

For the competition the first, second, and third prize winners will take home prizes up to $100 plus selected sponsorship items. Winners will also be awarded a 3-person show at the Center in 2007. The competition is open to all photographic processes and themes but work should be less than 2 years old. A non-refundable entry fee of $20 (5 images) gets you in. Materials are not returned.

Judges are Christopher Rauschenberg and Jennifer L. Stoots. Rauschenberg was a founding member of Blue Sky Gallery and Photo Americas, now Photolucida (who recently announced their results in their Critical Mass competition), and is a prominent figure in the Portland photographic community. Stoots was the Assistant Director of the SK Josefsberg Gallery (I still miss that space) for 6 years. She now heads Stoots Fine Photography, which specializes in the sale of modern prints by 20th century masters and contemporary photographers and appraisal of fine art photographs.

Sorry no slide submissions!!!

Their first exhibition featured photographers from 16 different states using color, black & white, digital and alternative processes and was juried by Terry Toedtemeier who says “The diversity of images in the 1st Annual National Juried Exhibition form a broad survey of the kinds of work being produced by emerging photographers today.”

Diehards and traditionalists will rejoice in time as cheaper, alternative means to submit work are available now. 2K6 is upon us and with the ease of an embedded file, a few clicks and maybe a few dollars, you too can have the opportunity to show with imagemakers from in and outside of these growth boundaries.

2/20/06
RAISING FLAGS

This Prez’ Day let music take virtual lead. Walking the planks of Holocene tonight are the newly-named hometown flag raisers small sails (formerly Adelaide) with a slightly extended lineup. And as they ready to kick a tour from the Bay Area to the Windy City soon, come hither as they’ve upgraded their melodic sound with tasty electronics and captivating visuals. Add Mice Parade and this is the only place to march upon the eve. Anchors away matey…

While you are aboard try a house fave happy finish from the delectable menu. 9PM, Be There, Carpe Noctem!

2/18/06
HOME ON D’RANGE

The Den is a retro, mish-mosh pit of altered histories. Peter Burr and Ross Christy team in this weaving of mutated solipsism that roars and retreats. By using the shifty artifice of go-lucky rainbow halos, log cabin logic and the thought balloons of a by-gone era they’ve slyly made awkward comparisons to the industrial takeover of primates and primitives. A flock of actual fowl feathers (wild turkey, pheasant, woodpecker, eagle) tie the surreal edge of this installation to that of a grounded, regionalist treasure hunt. However, to the naked eye, the concept outweighs the application in this den of modernity.

Upon entry the whole room comes together visually as a casual, sacred place of sorts. Centered by the hanging spirit catchers over upright birch logs, and 60’s colonial-style hardwood framing - it is warm and immediate. A gallery, transformed into a place of worship. Add poster-bright pop colors wed with cowboys n’ indians styled illustration and things start to shift at the seams. While I can certainly appreciate the laborious task of cutting, pasting and piecing what must be several hundreds of small paint samples, the end result of a gallery-wide rainbow cobra has my eyebrows in a twist. Its vague references to childhood dreams of Legos-gone-wild are matched with the amphibious Freudian creature who swallowed a microchip - cut from another cloth, indeed.

Pantone a go-go: Peter Burr’s resulting paintings get lost in this gesticulation of calibration. Repetitive half-moon rainbows overlaying a chocolatey mountainside. Burr takes us both in and outside of these mud hut “dens” where the snake, to some degree, becomes a lost, hapless caricature. Though two-dimensional, its technicolor skin, like animated pixels is anything but still life - it harkens to a purposeful amateur approach to painting. Though when he matches glossy magazines to puff paint things seem to get even more vivid and wild. These six works, snugly hung together in the rear of the gallery may be his most potent. Super-glossy, these foot-square novelties are drenched in the haphazard party-favor colors of a drunken teenage-girl birthday cake in flames. It’s good “bad” art - based primarily on ingredients rather than metaphors or result. When the pastel twins of Bountiful Little Dudes #10 = Front Massage jump for joy its in the same gaiety that brought us the likes of the 80’s Stacey Q who once chirped “I explode when we connect”. Burr must have gotten a lot of fresh air while in residence at Vermont’s Hall Farm Center.

Ross Christy’s view on the world is just as layered, frayed and otherwise steeped in the tongue-in-cheek of harsh contemporary rural vs. urban realities. His How The West Was Won sums up much of his work in the show. Steel-tipped cowboy boots stomp upon a pair of soft, malleable suede moccasins, all tied together in a storybook-style rope emblem - illustrating a captured trophy. ‘Nuff said.

His symbolic and repetitive use of birds objectifies their migratory sense of place. Now simply greeted by chimneys spouting captions Welcome Back, Everything has Changed! and Welcome Home, We’ve Reorganized. These sentiments, normally heavy-headed and opportunistically politically correct are more palpable in this context and his expert handling of colored pencil to paper. But it’s the subversive greeting-card style homeiness that brings the viewers’ intimate stance more upright. Something vaguely akin to Matt Groening’s emphatic approach is present here.

Hey Buckaroo!: But Christy’s concerns have deeper meaning than straight-ahead pop culture. He’s destroying artifice in a voice that equally steals from the palettes of both the Old West and classic children’s tales. From a regional perspective, having lost a lionshare of the lumber industry in these parts, this dialogue may be moot and dusty at this point, however, his point is well taken.

Hoot, hoot - meep, meep! (through February 26th…)

2/18/06
OLD TOWN EVENT NIGHT

Simultaneous events to kick-start your long, chill-out weekend. Check it out:

7-9PM
RAKE, 325 NW 6th

Gallery Homeland founders Paige Saez and Paul Middendorf will be unveiling their newest projects - Staking Claim, Welcoming Committee, Reed Arts Week, Cinema Scope (NY), Homeland’s Residency Program, and other collaborations with Rake Art Gallery.

Tonight David Eckard and Holly Andres (pdf file) speak of their latest projects. For more information please contact Gallery Homeland at 503-819-9656.

8:30-10PM
Portland Art Center, 32 NW 5th (Burnside/Couch) in the historic Goldsmith Building

Portland Art Center is opening its doors for its first-ever listening party, Hexasion. Spun out of the wonderful web of Kranky Hexasion is an opportunity to showcase experimental music by local, national and international artists. Curated and presented by Jason Frank and Andy Brown, the evening will feature recordings by World, David Tollefson, Strategy, Nudge, and Decopod Claw. There will also be a short film by Phillip Cooper.

There will also be a live simulcast at PRA Radio.

2/17/06
Smashing Flow

Echo 17

If abstract expressionism was born yesterday Dorothy Goode maybe the doyenne of it all. Butters presents two new series of her works called Medium Matters, Echo and Circular Saw. In the Echo series, the smaller of the two groupings, she recreates the relationship of an old-fashioned technique of egg tempera on panel. In these 16″ x 11″ beauties her white-washed variations of color and deliberately improvised mark-making reminices with modern day graffitti and its removal within the same context. The works are little capsules, er windows, into urbanity. Feathery lines and double layers of hidden meanings or secret languages. Though there is no actual text, her corrugated approach to stylizing, or redefining shapes through obliterating parts of them is as romantic as it is cryptic. Some are simplistically immediate (Echo Series 8), while others are a bit of an acid wash rapture of off-beat color (Echo Series 13). What works mostly about this series is that they can be viewed micro/macro and still offer an impression, they are like contained, blown-up details of a de Kooning (formalist, not feminist perspective). In this same breadth this is what remains puzzling about the work, the quality of editing something that would ordinarily be uncontainable.

Circular 7

Her other Circular Saw series here, all from 2006, are extensions of the smaller pieces, less “framed” at 48″ x 16″ - but also more minimal somehow - incorporating mixed media sculptural elements and attempting to reveal the naked, and partially deconstructed panel surfaces. These pieces, though spiritedly physical on the whole, seemed less realized to me. Though the elongation and gestural immediacy do have a tribal-like quality. Color seems to be to a lesser extent the focal point as layers of whites coat the surface of color creating various neutrals. This approach dictates a haze of meaning, a cover-up, bloody secrets in the snow (Circular Saw Series 7). Open shapes are hinted at when revealed, and concealed, but Goode prefers the double-take in order to discover something hidden in the light of looking. Something about the act of the momentary gaze, just under the surface. (Through February 25).

2/14/06
HEARTS/HAMMERS

Never a Valentine’s Day goes by without my thinking of, identifying with and otherwise being mused by the work of Jim Dine. His repetitive themes are ever-changing and iconic, his use of multi-dimensional color, substantial. You would think a cute heart-shape may be the Hallmark approach to fine art, in all its frilly levity. Dine (now 70) sees the heart’s darker posibilities and all the various shades in between. He folds, truncates, severs, drips and virtually blurs the boundaries of this all-too-familiar shape, capturing the multiplicitous and pulsing organ of modern art. Part smart Pop whimsy (Jasper Johns) and part heady Dada structure (Schwitters, Cornell) Dine rarely fades into pastel, as his object-based assemblage works on wood, in bronze, paper and canvas could never be assumed half or soft-hearted.

I don’t give a damn
’bout my reputation!

2/13/06
B/W PERSPECTIVES

No Pussyfootin’! This weekend I managed to get to both sides of the Willamette in one afternoon.

Extended Run: First, it was over to Guy Swanson’s Photographic Image Gallery to see a small retrospective of works playfully titled Serendipity Happens by “hexagenarian” Cherie Hiser dating from the 60’s to present day. Before entering the downtown gallery/frame shop, specializing in everything from master prints to posters, I was already familiar with several of Hiser’s images. While looking around I overheard Swanson querying a visitor regarding Hiser’s body of work, and asking “if I were to create a poster of one of these, which one do you think would be best?” (I wish he had asked me, but I remained anonymous for now, and didn’t want to interrupt their conversation - I felt like a voyeur in plain sight). Actually, the astute visitor chose a few that I also thought were visually immediate, as a poster needs to be. But it wasn’t the immediate images that caught my attention in this show, it was the gentle freedoms, the sort of Sun-generation synergy of the 60’s/70’s, the candid qualities.

Hippy-energies caught on film. Hiser has a long history (herstory, many stories, indeed) that is illustrated in many of the images where she stands along celebrities from Saturday Night Fever-era John Travolta to Gene Hackman to Paul Newman (and they look like a smashing pair, self-referential with Hiser’s oustretched arm towards the shutter). Of course I was more interested in her comparitive portraits, many taken 20 years plus apart and framed side by side. One such image, of Lee Friedlander (1968/1988) was particularly notable to see a man age dramatically, though becoming softer-edged in his latter years, but all with the same posture, gesture, the way his gate seems so relaxed. It’s an obvious reposing (from memory perhaps) of the same references in the earlier portrait, gone is the shadow from the brim of his hat, and a new “knowing” sensability in the gaze. Though her images of nudists in body paint, or her own family portrait with her “two husbands”, and their vast generation gap, supply a warmth and inherent vision of the true free-love generation, one snapshot speaking volumes about the era.

You can see the comfort that people have with Hiser in baring themselves knowingly. Her 1977 self-portrait (from her birthday series) with Ansel Adams is quirky and wonderful. They both don these big clunky glasses and pose for the camera like old chums. It’s a straight ahead instant candid moment where their wide smiles tell miles of stories. Many of these images fall under this description and are immediately self-aware, but letting Hiser get close enough to capture the simplest spirits. Images like First Birth, Dad and Mexico, Anti War speak in a more documentary tongue. These images are stark realities of life, death, aging and decay and while fascinating for the goings-on aren’t easy to look at, but speak to a grittier side of the realities at hand.

Dealing with the body: Hiser dives in headfirst and hones in on the sensual shapes of momentary bodies that are tattooed, nude and lithe with light. Of these, the standout here is a wet Larry Clark gazing into Hiser’s lens while standing dead center in a swimming pool in Colorado. She caught the reflective light just right (”the perfect moment”) that illustrates Clark’s younger, lean muscular body and gnarly wet locks. In frozen, hesitant masculinity it speaks plenty about the inverse of exhibitionism (look closely at the tension in his arms). An attitude of honest directness. Many of Hiser’s tattooed bodies curiously remain sacredly anonymous as she’s captured torsos and backs without depicting faces. These bodies become structured objects rather than portraits of people.

Hiser is still actively at it, these days shooting birds of a feather - doves. Color works that delve into more reflective abstraction. The show has been extended through the end of February.

——————————————–

Crossing the bridge I waded my way under the Morrison overpass to Laurel Gitlen’s Small A Projects for the final day of Michael Bise’s Joey and Melissa (don’t hate my tardiness). The pencil to paper takes off with a bold, narrative voice that is completely encircled within shapes/perspectives of its own Escherisms, and subtle domestic banality. These works are like thought balloons without the need for texts, cartoonish reality complete with all the scrapes and pollution of our time. I like the way Bise repeats certain themes of boring, still moments of domesticity. The way car exhaust and cigarette smoke billow/smoulder in its own lingering inorganic solidity. By capturing a couple with exposed blemishes, coarse stubble, ponch and circumstances he is weaving a tale most viewers know all too well. The virtual disappearence of the middle class to the melting pot of a hard working class struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. But in these images he finely tunes hints of suburban white trash culture over and over. Sex in the back seat in a garbage strewn alley, the overbearing floral motifs covering up the starkness of a bathroom, cheap beer and cigarettes constantly aflame.

In fact, this whole discussion about economy is a constant among artists in Portland. Doing odd jobs and struggling all the way to court the needs of those who can afford the “luxury” of owning a piece hewn out of virtual poverty in many cases. The gypsy aesthetic (for me its in the making of “portable” work). Fortune magazine ranked Portland as one of the top five most expensive cities to live in this country based on incomes, taxes and accounting for all those lovely highrises going up seemingly everywhere. Some are caught like deers in headlights in a hard place, others sit back in their comfy microsueded fortress overlooking a new downtown sliced/diced perspective view of Mount Hood.

But Bice’s stories are told, leaving the cracks and crevices included, and are powerful in their vast perspectives, especially when the scale gets more expansive and dimensional. The ceiling view of the two rooms in Walls are sort of pun on a floor plan, while bending and twisting the viewer physically to absorb the intricate details of wall hangings and chackis (posters taped to the wall, brooms in corners, exposed insullation, Bic firestarters).

My favorite piece in the show was a lengthy work amidst tall pines, an adult Baptism to a gawking crowd. There’s just a comic sensuality in the dirty, dusty corners of all of these pieces. Next up at Small A are the fantastical worlds of Josh Mannis’ (you may remember his work from their inaugural show) Iron Eagle. He certainly has made a scene (or two!).

2/12/06
TWINISMs?

Well, it may not read on a DNA spectrometer, but by coincidence I screened two films this week that overlapped in more ways than Jabba the Hut.

Bruce LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich (2004/Strand Releasing) and Richard Wolstencroft’s Pearls Before Swine (1999/Caciocavello) have enough sex and violence to wrap all the isms into one fat gulp (facism, marxism, sadism, nazism, sexism). They’ve both gone wildly wayward in these hapless stories of vapid existentialsm. Guns a go-go, with plenty of flesh and blood.

Terrorist Chic Reigns

In LaBruce’s tale Che Guevara is “king” in a film that declares “the revolution is my boyfriend”. While a perfectly flat Boyd Rice stars in Aussie Wolstencroft’s supposed take on A Clockwork Orange (wishful thinking) - it’s terribly bitter in the tagline “I have so much hate to share with you!”. Watch as they shoot up, execution style, a batch of street urchins, or as the tables turn after the “accidental” murder of a key supporting character that makes paranoia flare among friends. Of the two flicks on the chopping block I find the former (which also contains LaBruce’s signature explicit porn) a bit more palpable because it makes fun of itself in the process by being playfully bombastic in its post-post nazi masturbatory sequences. This overshadows Rice’s deadpan badboy narration of Mein Kampf redux (it puts Springtime for Hitler in B-flat). He’s got a great face, a look, but when he has to speak it’s just plain dull. Both films repackage and question the taboos they present with mild results that are more clumsy than prolific. But they are at least saying something about these 20th century powers that hypnotized and mesmerized a generation or two. Both films pose nakedly plain-faced for the camera taking a few risks by way of the hedonistic, militaristic dialogues.

Pearls Before Swine has cleavage and then some, slick looking, but obviously cheaply made, its randomly and casually violent in ways that don’t really admonish the viewer at all. It’s characters are internalizing self reflective nincompoops who are completely careless and staid. The acts of random violence and other scatalogical and sexual deeds performed are played out like a cardboard box unfolding - save a shower scene that was somewhat steamy (ala The Color of Night). The film does, make no mistake, sport a solid soundtrack, including work by Rice himself, as well as his other configurations as NON and Death in June (Douglas P. also stars in the film).

The Raspberry Reich on the other hand, while artistically heavy handed in its MTV cut-up style with its Photoshop-like tricks of the trade, seems to have something cheaply stylish going on. Susanne SachBe is over-the-top and vividly stands out as the ringmaster of the revolution (as opposed to the luke warm dishwater acting of Lisa Hutchinson in the other film above). She and her boyfriend are non-stop physical lovers as they pound each other from room to room, down the hall, into an elevator and back again. Terrorism to LaBruce is a gay gang in matching track suits, giving gang-bang another ring, indeed. Violence here is more suggestive (a character sucks his revolver) than blatant. The sex is graphic and raunchy and fits for the overall aesthetic, but at times you might think you are watching one of those late 70’s concept porn films rather than something that may play to an art house theater crowd. The actors are young, hung, etc. and waste no time blurring the lines of sexual ambiguity, it’s freelove as dictated by the revolution they cast.

In the end, however, both films are basically unapologetic, with an air of self-righteousness, feeding into the modelling of rarely seen and overly fetishized, politically incorrect (and indirect), new-found stereotypes. Many may find this wave as inherently refreshing and repulsive in the same breath.

Vive La Revolution!
* Not necessarily a family affair.
* May cause bloating (and unavoidable questions).

2/10/06
ROLLING!

The 29th Annual Portland International Film Festival opens today and runs through February 25th. With 134 flicks from all over the globe, there will be plenty of celluloid to keep your R.E.M. in check. These include over a dozen foreign films from Romania to Iraq that are up for an Academy Award this year. So, whether you view this as a sneak preview or indulge in the spotlight for hours, the three venues presenting works welcome all in a darkened room in the center of downtown for two whole weeks of moving pictures. Films by stateside’s Jonathan Demme (Beloved, Swimming to Cambodia) and Terry Zwigoff (Crumb) to Japan’s well-oiled Yôji Yamada and Finland’s award winning Klaus Härö. Many of these are premieres and special screenings, so check listings and plan your evenings accordingly…or buy a pass and come and go as you please.

2/5/06
OUT/ABOUT

After injuring my foot by stomping on a shard of glass (still embedded at press time) I still managed to cover a lot of ground this week. Some known quantities, some discoveries.

(added late) THURSDAY PM:

First Thursday included a rapid-fire run on my way to the opening of the Portland Modern shows (which I will leave to others to dialogue - though I was mightily impressed by the big bold work of photographer Holly Andres over at Ogle, who is also concurrently showing at Alysia Duckler). Molly Anderson’s Girls In Bathtubs photos at Rake Gallery miserably failed to impress. The sight of most of these garish hipster gals languishing in porcelain tend to spell b-b-b-bad with a capital B! For a big ole gallery (and a great hope of reviving the Everett Station Lofts) just sprouting its roots, these clawfeet have stubby legs to stand on. I don’t consider them “cute” or “fun”. Even though the photographer is a woman, the women, and the retro/afro man in these images are mere slacker objects, staring aimlessly, vapidly, into Anderson’s lens with a big old blase flatness. That’s all I can muster. I may have taken more time to experience Ryan Lydon’s watching if I didn’t feel confronted by these pin-ups (I recommend a long chat with Marne Lucas) upon entry. The small lightboxes depict colorful panoramic cityscapes, the low-tech construction of the boxes pulls some from the images, but the images hold some weight, but are more like looking at actual negs under a lupe than the broadness of the horizon lines they depict. It plays subtley on the intimateness of our peripheral vision. Look a little closer at how big everything really is. The gallery gets a nod for offering “emerging” (the buzzword that everyone is analyzing these days) artists who may not otherwise have a venue.

FRIDAY PM:
I started my journey by popping into Chambers to see their current show, and after hobbling from the bus spoke with Wid and Eva about James Lavadour, breeding, how less-is-more, and arts economies.

First greeted by photo works on deckled edge paper by Chas Bowie, I was struck by the immediate presentation of this frameless series virtually adhered directly to the wall. Many of the images from his Never Loved Milk blog (which seems on hold?) are here available in three sizes. In ways it’s like an open scrapbook, but he’s holding something back, or its just an aesthetic breather. After having been exposed to his work at the Modern Zoo, and then as part of the Oregon Biennial, I may have been expecting something larger than life. But he offers a humble memento-styled journalistic voice in quirky images that capture the insanity of the object in our urban/suburban daily lives, often over looked. They are amusingly humorous, but may formulate an untraditional artist book style document rather than the installation format here. Not quite salon-style, it seems a bit idiosyncratic in an edited sorta way - like I am only getting half a story.

Each and every image tells its own story, mind you, though, as a grouping I either want a larger, untamed explosion of wild abandon, or perhaps simply three specific works that interrelate. The wry sense of humor in the mundane shines brightly, Hulk Hogan at the convenience store greets you tearing off his singlet parodying the whole pop aspect of wrestling and prodding PDX’s porn culture. A dome-shaped building with a single window dripping a few flowers (lashes) is the eye of a cartoon dinosaur (ala Barney). These tongue-in-cheek moments are balanced by the Horizon of its title. Stark landscapes merge with witty cityscapes easily as Bowie’s style emerges as documentarian of hilarity as he employs a draughtman’s attention to the shapes and formalities of each environment he captures. The steel tiered birthday cake is a hoot!

Then for a quick change comes PNCA/Lewis & Clark teacher and recent Bay Area transplant LeAnne Hitchcock’s colorfield dip/triptychs. These flow with unreal color, tinted worlds of stunning ether, darkness and a grande rescripting of falling to earth. The work segregates color by negating its purpose in the actual landscape. Most use the extatic sky and ocean as a foil that stand more like hyperbolic haikus than any conventional photography. And the “untitled” piece I liked best was unsold in this near sell out show (wink). It’s a vertical beauty of slate blue and a creamy red-orange shifting clouds in open space which will look quite fine on the walls to a place I haven’t yet lived. Meditative punctuation to a very long week. And off I went home to baby my feet.

I missed the SE openings tonight, but will get to the shows soon, promise.

SAT AFTERNOON:
The day started out quite well, shooting my Olympus all around the scraps of industrial downtown and the fringe of the Pearl. And an eye-popping art walk.

I stopped in at Mark Wooley’s to see part of his Three Mavericks show he told me about. Greeted by repetitive images of John Lennon was not really something I was ready for, but I suppose, in William Park’s homage to twenty-five years after his unnecessary slaying, these have a historical context, but I looked at them as paintings first and content/context second - which is strange for me. I think the familiarity of the subject is just too mass media, even now, and subverting that for a while was necessary to see Park’s use of light, paint and process. And there’s plenty of that. But my favorite pieces weren’t the more immediate visage of Lennon, it was the squeegeed abstract monotypes and self-portraits. These works presented his inner vision most succinctly. The standout has to be the Phase of the Moon, depicting a group of several selves, versions of the back of his naked balding skull, randomly on canvas, each lit differently, some dim, and one garishly glaring. His capture of light has a precision and the values of many great Dutch painters of yore. The head becomes a metaphor for outer space and the glow of “moons” make for more than a casual smirk in this painstakenly accurate sense of space/dimension. Stunning. Though when he ventures further on to the surface of the light side of the “moon” as in Appreciation of Beauty (a bird’s eye view of the head/dome covered in lipstick kisses) the allusion becomes too slapstick for my taste. But some of these works could be “for the masses” to be seen in perhaps a quirky comedy nightclub or some such venue where it would retrofit the existing mood, instead of the converse. A solid painter who seems to chew more than necessary at times, but with complete control of his faculties. He is driven by the circle - in Lennon’s glasses, his heads and feminine curves. [Note: I absolutely appreciate that his artist statement was about hating artist statements!]

Venturing into the other room was the latest work by Rebecca Guberman-Bloom called The Dream of One Thousand Birds. And while I found the quirky imagery romantic and allegorical, and the fairytale colors alluring, there is more in this style of work than I am best versed at, and it didn’t immediately appeal to me for its storybook qualities. I was slightly curly-browed by the lush varnishes atop some of the canvas surfaces, which in one or two cases slightly muted the imagery. For some reason I wanted to see more of the hand in the work, meaning the illustration of the line. The poetic titles are wonderful, and in the age of all things Harry Potter these will be of interest to all those who endured through the consequences of Chutes and Ladders. There was, however, an extraordinary connection to the work of one artist I enjoy, Tor Lundvall. Maybe his works are a bit darker?

After darting through the drippy day I managed to spy Jeff Jahn’s romantically quiet window case over at PDX. Romance Languages indeed. In the month of Saint Valentine, his sense of perverse love is a spiky, sparse separation of drippy, temporal material. His ongoing adult “swiss” sandcastles fantasize of peaks of architectural perfection ala dreamy Gaudi (and in the spirit of the month, was a major hunkola in his 30s I hear). If these two works are a conversation between a blushing curvaceous queen and a phallocentric dreamer I get it, but I disagree with the basic posture. Though, if it’s a plume-like craft time-travelling to a sacred/mythical place (say, Atlantis) then let’s take a freeride. The work is light, with a awkward humor that comes off more flatly lonely than anything else. It would sure be a sight to see the sand meet the sky, higher than any window space would allow. But this is only a murmur of the heights of heaven.

Inside PDX were the fragile beaded paper/fruit wrapper works of Kristen Miller called Waiting. Included were large-scale wall works, like quilts, hung from the ceiling on dowels. Transluscent, finely stitched, threads becoming free pattern as in 1998’s Falling/Settling (108″ x 96″). Some pieces use substrata monochromatics to layer words with lines with layers of tissue like papers and gauze. A few, a bit too illustrative, a few dealing with the erasures of brand names, concealing beautifully the wording on wrappers, either cutting away into patterns or beading in and around making it impossible to read the original. The repetition of the center circle in almost all of the smaller works keeps a formulaic flow, but also observes the staid patterning of the produce industry’s flat use of design, and Miller doesn’t venture outside of this safe center. One could easily be endeared to the elegant approach in materials here, but unlike many of the other shows shown under the PDX roster, this talks classic craft more than ever. So, I guess it has that duality, but it seems more one-sided in that these works, while beautifully spun, don’t have the depth I’ve grown accustomed to at this address.

I snuck into Elizabeth Leach’s breathtaking presentation of works by Carol Hepper (Selections 1996-2005) and Judy Cooke’s Cairo/Paris. By far, since I have been trekking in and out of this first class venue, this is principally the most contextually and visually stunning dead-on pairings of artists I have seen in an age. And it bends both of these ladies’ “typical” materials in ways that transform painting into 3D work that glows with reverberation (Hepper) and uses the sly humor of mistakes (Cooke’s NY Times collage). Hepper uses scally layered fish skins that are hung to form vertical lines interwoven within multiple fishing lines with a back painted color splash directly on the gallery walls in reds and chartreuse - they make these organics magically float in space. Her contorted metal sculptures are a conundrum, and though they are included here, only dot the space for me, even though they are pretty sizable. It’s something about the physicality of works made from the disposable, the generally repulsive nature, here completely subverted that makes works like the sensational Weightless and Sahara more than mere contenders. These are master works hewn from an out-of-body place not ventured, er, not by these eyes. They would hang perfectly in any museum alongside a Kiefer or Flavin - yeah, THAT good.

And Cooke, on the otherhand, takes the minimalist approach one step further in new works like Breaker taking apart wood panels, applying shapely constructivism across the separate surfaces as if its the same, transgressing the purpose of canvas. Her colors range from bold-face matte/flat to contempo/deco blends that are a pun on mix-n-match in ways beyond these walls. The stellar Typewriter is a page ripped from her sketchbook that zigzags with clipping apart and transforming text into textile. It’s a single surface rebuilt in layers, stages, something borrowed, something drawn. Seems like collage is making a steaming comeback! Certain entries like Untitled, April 25, 2003 just baffle in obscurity, but breed a sense of tension to the overall show. There is fresh humor here where you may not guffaw, but if you look closely you may slyly laugh to yourself.

I stopped in at Blue Sky for a brush with John Divola’s colorfully pale sky palettes in dwellings plopped in mid-nowhere. His Isolated Houses series is pretty dry and strange, so to speak. They question the myth of American domestic bliss. Period. They reminded me of hints of work by Joel Meyerowitz.)

Alysia Duckler was temporarily closed with an apologetic note on the door (I did peak in - I wouldn’t have done justice to the current offerings - so it’s best unseen at this time) so I just rooted around the dumpsters and PNCA’s Feldman Gallery (which was also closed). After touring the rust and circumstance I headed over to Pushdot where they are showing drawings and cast bronze pieces by Junko Iijima. (Note: I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed last month’s work by Mark Hooper, on toying with the Lewis & Clark story, which seems to be a recurring theme ’round here - but his rendition was not only visually descriptive and funny, it was technically perfect, from 4×5 Polaroids….I’ll be watching, waiting…). Anyhow, Iijima’s work called Hybridization takes the ancient art of old-fashioned tea kettles. They are bulbous, shapely - like floating blowfish meets kiwi. The works are all small, except for the tapestry-based work in the front space which freefall from dowels, openly allowing light to pass through. Each work has a traditional style red monogram signature. Three ways of looking at the object in space.

As if this wasn’t enough in one afternoon, my restlessness took me towards the Urban Grind (try the Vanilla Dragon Chai, free wi-fi and the amazing melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip cookies!) to meet up with the filmmakers of the upcoming Freedom State (an official selection at CineQuest) which recently toured the Sundance alternative Slamdance.

Director Cullen Hoback of Clear Sky and Producer/Writer Aaron Douglas were both quite charming. Fellow Oregonlive columnist Vanessa Harless invited me to meet and greet the two as well as get a better vision of what is cooking for the Portland Premiere on March 17 & 18th. Let this be simply the coming attraction…More coming soon to a Hollywood Theater near you.

SATURDAY PM:

Swept downtown it was Liminal Performance Group’s Far Away that took the night. A sporadic and twisted tale in three parts that was visually arresting in the patchwork space of the 70s-wreaking Goldsmith Building, which is slowly which is making its transformation into a multimedia arts facility, home to Portland Art Center. But on Saturday night the audience chose (by way of hand written ballot) to flock with one of three species, starlings, deer or cats, all reflected back in the forthcoming work. All four lead actors had strong characters with the young Joan (Hallie Blashfield) taking the most kudos for a girl, most probably under 12, who was powerfully courageous in a story that dealt with secrets, abuse and questionable parentals. She’s confidant, quizzical and doesn’t take her Aunt Harper’s (Jennifer Olson) word for truth. She’s the doubt, the foil, the innocence. Far Away combined interesting video projected visuals across a narrowly elongated and block-long stage set with moving fabric panels. The sound combined spooky ambience and electronic blips and sharp detonations.

Part two, set in a hat factory, introduces two characters, the slightly terse Joan (Madeleine Sanford) and the handsomely matter-of-fact Todd (Jeff Marchant) meet and share dreams of career climbing in their industry, building avant-garde costume hats. They build a lovely tension, up and down stage, coy combo. They dance, hint at romance, and are oddly upstaged by a parade of a cast of extras in art hats that seems like filler, but looks great. With the hutspah of say, a pre-pubescent Bill T. Jones this crew walks into our face and offsite stage left. In the final scene we are again confronted with the tribulations and realities of Todd and Harper but this scene seems drawn out and less constructed than the previous two, repetitive by nature of the cultural paranoia they rattle on about - races and fear. It’s all cut up staccato-style (which rings well), but the pseudo Philip Glass sound interlude seems slightly derivative. Hey, I am no theater critic, but this is what I was served, momma! Though, the performances of Marchant and Blashfield were strong, clear and multi-dimensional, the other two were also quite good, but more in a supporting light. And they offered free complimentary Typhoon appetizers, drinks (at least for the audience members who chose to be deer), and members of the cast valeting visitors through the vast building space, through hallways and down a way cool rugged-interior service elevator. It was a trip. [Through February 18th.]

I missed the Silent Auction at Newspace (to tend to my ped injury), but the show goes on, and with work of this caliber, and as they are newly developing into a fine non-profit organization - it comes highly recommended.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON:

Rounded out the weekend by heading over to 12×16 with my friend Stan to see their sophomore offering - a two-man show of collage works by Israel Hughes and Luke Dolkas. The works, mostly small/intimate, were well crafted, some mysterious (like Hughes’ Blue) and some distorted from foreign poster texts as in Dolkas’ two History’s Walls pieces - though I felt the cardboard matting was slightly raw and heavy handed - the actual piece was well layed out and colorful in its overall scrappiness. Where Hughes sensitively pieces delicate pastings with postcards and found imagery with some of his own hand work, Dolkas has a tendency to want to reference retroisms as clearly paid homage in works like Rauschenburger. But, though I aspire to criticize, he’s got a pretty good handle on his basic materials here, he just needs to learn from the textbook style to breathe his own voice more critically into the work. Again, the gallery makes all offerings under a $325 price point, perfect for young collectors who want to start a collection with something small, but well crafted, yet not craft, per se. Upon my visit they had wonderful 50s-era jazz emitting from the backroom, and having a space open on a Sunday is a dream of wishful thinking that’s come true. Traditionally, Sunday is something of a slow moving day, and seeing art in this context, with the hint of horn really gives this space an immediate air of jumping from the here into the now via the past. This collective will be worth watching (Through February 28, 1216 SE Division, Thursday-Sunday 12-6PM).

2/3/06
UNIVERSALIST EXTACY

In a world where there is only black sky - through the invisible layers of night - they came.

It was an evening of sounds in three movements. Upon last eve, The Old Church was something of a religious experience, indeed. The emotional synergies were locked as I truly laughed (Blixa Bargeld) and cried/released (Soriah) and opened my soul for a bit (Jarboe). They each definitively held their own court.

Soriah

The intimate evening was first cast in incense, candlelight and contemplative atmospherics you wouldn’t find at any other area venue. There was a medeival hue to the opening of regionally acclaimed throat singer Soriah. He donned a white layered, creped gown with veils that obsured his porcelain visage. Sang (er chanted) from the deepest of gutteral spaces and filled the room with an alluring, yet haunting vibration. As he sat upon the church’s organ and played with his back to the audience, aided by a mirror scrawled in yellow caligraphy with texts, poetries - he delivered a sense of ambience for the soul. It was as my friend Kevin said “chilling”. No real other way to describe it. Even when the microphone failed, he continued, only “getting out of character” (as he said) for a moment, it barely broke the awe. A stunning, daunting range, of warble and mystery. His bearing was primal, if slightly disconcerting. But the effect was pure hallucination. [Note: Last night he released a cd on local avant-label Beta-lactam Ring Records of a concert he performed three years ago on the same stage.]

Blixa

The shift made by razor-haired Blixa Bargeld (of the infamous percussive noise performance act Einstürzende Neubauten) was his decentering sense of wit. Immediately identifying with the space, he warmed the audience acknowledging his stop in Portland was like no other on the Bay Area’s Mobilization Records’ Destroy the Universe Tour. He noted the many dark rock clubs and usual environments that present such challenging work. Joking about opening for U2 and the various hells associated with such arena faire, the inverse, in such an intimate setting for about a couple of hundred folks probably seemed immediately among, and for, the people. And those people were so varied and lovely in many shades of black, gothic to a degree, and everyone, in some way, smartly dressed for the occasion. If I were a fashion writer I would provide verbiage to describe the range of artistry the audience adorned, but let me suffice to say that it was genuinely a state of the timeless ornate. Bargeld, in a fitting black multitiered suit stimulated the microphone as a fine orator in his hard-edge spoken German accent that ranged from buzzing like a bee to his transformation into shades of horrified schoolgirl to the narrator of a challenging prize fight between doubt and astonishment, and there was no doubt, without the help from the audience who won that round! His overarching presentation questioned linear dialogue, both in the way voice processing was used to repeat, split and distort his singing and text - but also in the way he was powerfully authoritative in his presentation without, in any way being, in your face or dictorial. For an encore he returned to the stage to take this wave of thinking to the nth degree - narrating a piece of encoded SPAM porn he had received, pronouncing its subliminal message staccato-style, proving his ability to weave something artful from the most mundane of communication forms. Oh, and he built his own solar system on stage, give or take a few planets, by only retaining the vestiges of 16th century skies and forgiving the conventions of modern day astronomy.

Jarboe

The Swans’ Jarboe offered a tight trio as The Living Jarboe, vocals, piano and guitar. The stripped down set was anything but bare as she bore her soul brightly. A luminescent artist, I felt redeemed after having seen her perform years back in a moreso rock-identified format. Here, at The Old Church, she radiated themes of dark bluegrass and twilight vaudeville. These were sensual songs with a voice of harmony dug from a deeply heliocentric center. She levitated between an oiled Nico and an aloofly (er) smoother sister of Diamanda Galas, with a slightly funky edge. She took to the stage in a totally un-diva-like guise, warming up a lil’ in full stage light, her coal black, long Morticia-meets-Cher locks streamed over her body obscuring and revealing her darkness and light. Wailing murmers met rhythmic melodies in songs devoted to her holy guidance of the elements. As the hourglass slowly dripped towards midnight, Jarboe continued on, and with much needed rest ahead I quietly slipped from the back door. [Note: When I was staring at the goodies at the merch table, I didn't even bat an eye when the proprietress mentioned that the original prints on view were made with Jarboe's blood. It was oddly fitting, though from where and how it came, can remain a mystery to me].

In the house last night were friends Erin and Gary (from Providence days) who were sitting with the extraordinary Daniel Menche, with whom they will travel to NY later this year for a noisefest of sorts. Word is his colaboration with Zbigniew Karkowski called RAM will be featured. [Note: I may be due another east coast excursion....]

And off into the dense air I swiftly disappeared….

> photos by Vadim Avakyan <

2/2/06
…& the BEAVER

Library (inside)

Beaverton, that is. The City of Trees is the sister city suburban seed that’s all grown up. For the year 2005 I proudly served the city paying homage to the critter that builds, what Native Americans called the sacred center of the land because of its penchant to create rich wildlife habitats for other creatures, like those still protected within the city’s boundaries. This sentiment seems to flow into the ways and means of the city’s artists as well.

Showcase

I mention Beaverton for a few reasons. First because it is a thriving community of nearly 80,000 people, and I guess if you broke that down you might have at least a few thousand artists. But more importantly, beyond its strip malls and green spaces its home to the Beaverton Arts Commission who is quite active in bringing the arts to the community (and on which I served). They are in the final leg planning their 24th Annual Visual Arts Showcase which opens this Sunday, February 5 through February 19 at the Beaverton City Library.

Norris/Drake

Last week Mayor Rob Drake and City Council Member Betty Bode (who gave a great speech about the growing ethnic diversity of the city, and its inherent disparities) honored those who served the city during the Annual Boards & Commissions Awards Dinner at the Embassy Suites Hotel. I was flattered, and though “my close-up” looks like an old family photo from a dusty shoebox it was humbling. After speaking with City Councillor Dennis Doyle he assured me that the cultural growth in the city that has no real center (quite dada/subversive if you asked me) will only continue to inch into neighborhoods where a potential art center may be on the nearby horizon. Support those who support the arts.

1/31/06
H3Oh!!!

My
interview
with
Andrew McKenzie
(The Hafler Trio)
courtesy
of
Repellent

1/31/06
NAM JUN PAIK: In Peace

(( whispers of white noise fill the air ))

We have lost one of the true contemporary greats this week. Nam Jun Paik, who had been been paralyzed after a stroke ten years ago, has passed. A Fluxus artist of futuristic vision, walking his own path with many followers in his steps. Bringing us a way to “Kill Your Television” with a sculptural bent that transcended the medium and bluntly crossed genres. Daring, and way ahead of his time, the internationally renown Korean-born artist made his home in emerging arts mecca Miami. One of the most notable video artists of all time, Paik transformed the CRT into what he would term and then pave the “electronic super highway” - he truly developed his own unique form. Never quite ready for primetime, in his honor, think Paik when you click that remote this week! We bid adieu to one of our true innovators.

OFFICIAL SITE

1/30/06
FALL OF QING DYNASTY

—–

Now You See It..

“Whooops?”
Holy Wardrobe Malfunction, Batman!

As purportedly not an act of dadist performance art this accident on the grande scale does instantly objectify, and deem fallible, the museum object, as something in the human realm. Off it’s pedestal, so to speak.

Fitzwilliam, UK

The University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum may never be the same. Oh, how art imitates life, etc. In the 70s there was Tony Shafrazi’s Guernica anti-war statement (now representing Picasso!!!)…then in 1990 we were treated to the intrigue (and sad loss of thirteen masterpieces by Rembrandt, Degas, Goya and Vermeer) in an episode of the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist (now cable TV crime fodder), and now destruction on a string….Talk about Humpty Dumpty stories! While I would never advocate anarchy upon the art object, this is somehow oddly humanizing.

1/30/06
EMERGING ART CENTER

Shettler

Arts impresario Gavin Shettler has spent nearly all of his spare time in the past five+ years finding a way, a place, or other opportunities for regional artists. With the impending launch of the Portland Art Center, Shettler almost single-handedly, attempts a revisioning of the burgeoning Old Town/Chinatown area as something of an arts district. I took some time with Gavin to discuss some grande new year’s resolutions and he shot right from the hip.

—————

TJ Norris: Hey there Gavin. Any new year’s resolutions?

Gavin Shettler: Accomplish what the organization set out to do back in 2002, identify and provide needs in the arts community that aren’t being met. Do this by opening Portland Art Center….and take a tropical vacation with my beautiful wife (we are ready for our honey moon).

TJN: Totally, you probably have earned it and then some. I wasn’t aware that you were married, maybe I have only seen you as “busy”. Isn’t that odd. Looking back to circa 2002, I remember meeting you for the first time. I looked up galleries on the net and up popped your space. You know, in many ways, you were responsible for getting me into the Everett Street Lofts, and subsequently opening my former gallery?

GS: I’m not exactly sure how I did that. It makes me happy to be able to be a positive influence. I really perceive myself as an arts facilitator. I am no expert, well, maybe an expert fan.

TJN: How has your vision changed since you ran your eponymous space?

GS: Well, then it was selling art. Now it’s much more about being a public servant. I am more open. I feel like I know less and less the more I do. I’ve been very focused on being an administrator. I’m excited to get the new space open and get back to discovering how to be a good curator.

TJN: Well, that’s sort of the best news I have heard all week, someone with a penchant for curating good shows! We have too few real curators in Portland, people who honestly take risks. What do you think?

GS: Well, I hesitate to comment. I am no critic. I like what I like….I am a layman in a lot of ways. I love to curate shows. I work strictly from instinct and passion. Maybe since I have no formal training I tend to take risks. But that is coming from naivete. Maybe it doesn’t matter where it comes from. I look at work, I ask myself if I like it, do I think it’s good. Is it relevant? What is the artist like? I consult with close friends who have the expertise I lack, then I make a choice and go with it. So I don’t know if I am a real curator or not? Personally, I love to curate for its own sake - the interaction with the artist and the work, the presentation. The art center’s focus is not on me as a curator. I am here to provide a forum to the community. My curation will not dominate the space.

TJN: Your set-up on SE Belmont seemed quite ideal, maybe somewhat off the beaten track, but still within good proximity to downtown. Can you mention any pros and cons about having been located outside of a specified arts-centric area?

Construction

GS: The space was a perfect non-profit art space…it just felt like you could be in New York, Chicago, LA. This city is not ready for something on that scale. The response I have gotten about the Oldtown space verses the Belmont space is incredible. The city needs the art center on the scale of the Oldtown space. If we are successful, we will create an environment of support and interest in which smaller, more specialized endeavors, like the Belmont space, will be sustainable in the future. We are a long way from that when it comes to alternative visual arts spaces funded with the non-profit model.

TJN: Your humble foreshadowing is honorable. I think Portland is hungry for it, however, as a far cry larger than your past efforts, is this, in essence, fulfilling what PICA attempted as well as its predecessor organization? Since PICA closed down their visual arts programming a few years back leaving a viable vacancy to fill in Portland, do you think PAC will fill this void? Will you pull this whole thing off and why? I mean, will its means meet its expectations and to what degree?

GS: Well, I think it is filling a much needed void. Our programming is very different from PICA’s visual arts. We are responding to the community’s needs, not reacting to other organizations. We have always had great communication and support from PICA. We want to add energy to the community.

You bet we will be successful. The support we are generating, from our grassroots foundation, an incredible board, a huge volunteer base, a business model that is sustainable and makes sense, to foundation support (we just received a $50,000 grant from Meyer Memorial Trust, no small feat), to growing support by the traditional, old guard art supporters. One thing to remember though, this is a long game. It will take us another five years to reach optimum stability.

TJN: Big congrats on that! In the past, much of your physical presentations have been what some critics may call “safe” (i.e.: 2D work). Though your new plan seems much more daring and may rely more heavily on grantsmanship. Can you say some about your next steps into the field of installation art and what other, if any, organizations you may have considered as a model for your new space to accommodate this?

GS: Curatorially, I have always seen the Portland Art Center being a reflection of what is going on. So the work presented will be driven more by the artists than by curatorial ambition. In other words, the art center is here. It’s ready. What are you going to do Portland? We are creating a space designed to push boundaries. We are here to answer the call. I’m excited to see what happens.

TJN: So, in essence your formation will sprout from creative ingenuity, you provide the shell. I see. Do you envision Portland Art Center as similar to a like model out there, say COCA (WA), or dare I say MOCA (MA). Sounds like I am ordering at Coffee People.

GS: There is no one single model for PAC. We have drawn from a myriad of organizations across the country–Diverse Works in Houston, The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, Artistspace in NYC. We are working at creating a center that serves our local community, while providing interesting, flexible exhibition space that has the capacity to take chances unlike any other venue in the area.

TJN: I really want to talk about the new space. Seeing it was one thing, hearing your vision for growth is a whole other enchilada. It all seems quite impressive, like a gift to the community on some level, a whole lotta hard work, and fundraising to come. Can you flesh out some of your basic launch plans?

GS: Well the first gift really comes directly from the owners. Having your landlord working directly with you to make something like this happen is an incredibly rare thing. It creates an environment where a scrappy non-profit can really go to the next level.

Really, we have laid all of the groundwork. It is now up to us to fundraise, have strong programming and fundraise, fundraise, fundraise.

TJN: Ca-ching! Say something about arts philanthropy in 2006. How does it balance in the climate of the economy? And how did things unfold with the Meyer Memorial Trust?

GS: The Meyer was a long process. One thing that is difficult for grantors is that we have been moving very fast…we were barely in the Belmont space for a year. But we are a business in the end. That means being flexible and taking chances when they are presented, i.e. The Goldsmith Buildings and our new home. In the 21st century, a non-profit must use more of a high bred business model to be successful. What I believe is that an organization should create revenue streams through its programming to provide a strong base to build the rest of your funding around. For us this is rental gallery space and the sale of art work. The real trick is never letting any one funding source dominate your budget. So, its keeping all of these things, grants, membership, board support, donations, programming, never letting one go over 40% of your annual budget.

….on a side note, it been interesting watching myself slowly turn into an arts administrator.

Bizon/Shettler

TJN: Well, so far it looks like things are off to a good start. But your board has changed over the past few years. Marcia Bizon is a jewel and David Mosher has been a great guiding light for you, and many artists in Portland. What is the makeup of these folks and what is their role in the larger scheme of the PAC’s future?

GS: The board has been the financial and emotional backbone of this organization. Without them it wouldn’t exist. I know of no other board that is active and dedicated…we meet weekly. The board is changing though; we are bringing on some more people. Its focus is changing from a working board into a fundraising board.

TJN: What are the elements that makes a successful non-profit arts board?

GS: I’m not sure…we ourselves are still working towards success. One thing that is surprising to me is to hear how other boards function…in fighting, factions forming. I think we have worked because of honest, open communication. Being transparent, everybody’s opinion matters and everyone is flexible, going with the majority. There are no secrets or factions. We work as an organism. The board meetings are open to staff and volunteers. We have talked extensively and openly about all aspects of the organization and its programming. I have been really lucky with a board that is incredibly active and passionate about the art center.

TJN: Your recent 18 Independent Artists fundraising exhibition. How did this come together? Did you have a call for submissions and did you curate the show?

GS: The show was curated by a long-time close friend of the art center Rhoda London. She has been co-curating the center for the past year. She selected the artists. She was looking for a wide range of independent and emerging artists….more of a showcase.

TJN: Oh, Rhoda! I am pleased to say I have one of her small works on my wall and here’s looking forward to her installation at the Portland Building! Speaking of curatorial focus…Is this a focal concern for your upcoming gallery space? Will there be a focus on themes, guest curators, Northwest art-specific, etc.?

Installation

GS: We have lots of space. We will be the largest contemporary visual arts space next to the museum. We will always have space dedicated to local, independent and emerging artists, also installation art space. We will stay pretty focused on local and regional art for the first year or so. Now we do have the opportunity for guest curators and to eventually expand to national and international work as well. In the end though, we are here for this community, both established and independent.

TJN: As sort of something along the lines of a museum annex can you describe the Portland art scene? What has emerged in the last few years? What describes and defines some of the energy of artists and styles in the region?

GS: Well, it’s huge, and continues to be. I have seen artists interested in being more professional, and a new focus on the craft of art presentation, skill and ability. For example, I know a bunch of abstract painters who are going back and studying figure painting and combining classical traditions into their work.

TJN: One thing Portland seems to need is something of a visual artists union. The purpose of such would be to host a permanent, available slide registry (and a corresponding web library), something to showcase most area artists work for viewing by curators, collectors, artists and teachers, etc. Also, there is a need for more affordable artist studios, lecture opportunities, studio visit programs, and residencies. I realize you envision a Resource Room and I am sure you are well aware of the community needs that exist. Though no organization can be everything to everyone, how might you address some of these areas?

GS: We are working hard on the artist database. We have run into serious problems in the development of our website…how do you build a $30,000 website on a $2000 budget? We have finally put together a crack team of developers and we are closer than ever to having it completed. We will have space for lectures….but for the rest, I believe that a lot of the other things other people are working on or already doing. It’s the art center’s job to connect the people who need resources with those who are providing them.

TJN: In the past, much of the bulk of your work has fallen to the philanthropy of volunteers, which is quite commendable. Do you have a plan to increase your paid creative or other administrative staff?

GS: We plan to add one more full time staff position and one half time this year. Our goal is to have a paid staff of four and two part time staff by 2008.

TJN: Paid staff. People take that seriously, as a former non-profit guy (13 years!) I know I do. You are working with some developers on your build out and design for your eventual location, right alongside the gates of Chinatown. Can your talk about these folks who are behind you in this effort?

GS: David Wark and his firm Henneberry-Eddy are doing our design pro-bono. The landlords are doing the storefront improvement and taking care of most of the fire-life-safty issues for our space and the building.

TJN: Given that any great city’s Chinatown (LA, NY, San Fran) have amazing links to represent and serve diverse cultures have you started building relationships with your new neighbors and with the overall rehab of the entire core district? How might the ethnic auspices affect the design if at all?

GS: We are not planning on it affecting our design too much. We are already very active in the community meetings and design of the neighborhood. We want to bring the arts to Oldtown and have a positive effect upon the neighborhood.

TJN: So as you move back to the place where you started cultural exchanges ’round here how have might you directly involve or engage your neighbors? And as a cultural change agent can you say something about the area and how you would like to see things shift - or - are things fine as they are?

GS: We are bringing more of the arts community into Oldtown. With it, we draw more businesses…like restaurants and retail. We hope to connect The Pearl district with the Downtown galleries. So the arts are crossing Broadway and cross Burnside. We are adding another level of culture to Oldtown and the impact will be far reaching.

TJN: In a way, that is a bit like the Modern Zoo approach, isn’t it? And now that the dust has long settled, are there any special memoirs or learnings you care to mention during that period?

The Zoo

GS: It was magnificent and awful in its anarchy. It was doing something you knew was crazy and that after it was done you would still say that couldn’t be done, that’s nuts. I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it again, but wow. Crash course in how to do impossible things.

TJN: You know, as far as I am concerned your honesty and enthusiasm is part of the drive here. On a more personal note…you have a background in music. Do you still sing?

GS: It has been the longest period in my life without music…basically when I started my arts career. I performed for the first time when I was four. I miss it. I am starting to look for a way to get music back in my life. It’s strange to have something you have always done to suddenly be gone. Hopefully I’ll get the time in the next year or two.

TJN: Hmmm. What are the exhibition plans for the coming months?

GS: We have Portland Modern in February. Then a show called Multiplicity, curated by Kate Bonasinga for NCEACE in March and April. After that things are up in the air. We know that the art center will open this summer…May? July? September? Probably sooner than later. The first show in our new home will be Barry Johnson. He was in the ‘88 biennial, showed at Liz Leach….hey we are a place for all levels of artists.

TJN: Sounds inspiring. How about Portland Modern? Can you say something about its overall impact inside and out of the region? What has it been like working with Mark Brandau and what do you look forward to happening with the exhibition?

GS: I think Portland Modern is great. It is another innovative way to expose and exhibit work. I have a lot of respect for Mark and his accomplishments. I think, just like most endeavors, it will take a while for its impact to be felt on a larger scale than Portland. Hopefully PAC can help speed that impact up.

Working with Mark is terrific. He is professional, honest and straight forward, and is very knowledgeable about what he does. I think it’s a perfect match for Mark and PAC to be working together. Portland Art Center’s experience with artists has been a real joy. Artists have come, worked hard with us, and really become part of the PAC team. Its been truly rewarding for both us and the artists.

TJN: Well, I wish you well in this ongoing venture. Any final notes, quotes?

GS: I think 2006 is going to be a very good year for Portland.

—————

* Portland Art Center presents Portland Modern, opening First Thursday, February 2, 6-10PM.

* Mark Brandau is curating a show for Tilt which is seeking entries for Horizon Line.

1/25/06
2% (is that still low-fat?)

***

Three thumbs up!!!

Of the limited reporting on the increase to the Percent for Art Program (under the watchful wing of RACC, which, btw, has lost its first spot on ye olde Google search) I think Scott Moore’s piece got to the point in a mostly unbiased and true reporting style approach that frames the ongoing controversial program quite well, indeed.

Hey, with as many new cranes that dot the skyline, you can’t look at Mt. Hood the same way these days. It’s a big Etch-a-Sketch in the sky, Portland’s Big Dig, a renaissance of sorts (but a lot less sordid than that crane-wreck). Though, keep in mind that this temporary blockage could only mean an increase of bucks per capita of artists. As long as the money’s are effectively accounted for (which seems to be where they are attempting to unprecedentally align), and the new dollars aren’t exclusively used to buy Windex to clean the frames. And with all those spacious, light drenched condo lobbies to fill maybe RACC should also focus on getting some public art into the private sector, in a definitive, curatorally-sound way.

I appreciate Moore’s illustrating the use of those dollars too, for which I also highly recommend visiting Portland Public Art - AND - Portland Public Art to get the latest dibs on how brass tacks become brass plaques (and a gander at some of the more obscure things you may miss, even when they are smack dab in the middle of some far off park, public building, etc.)!

For the free “lil’ paper that could”, the Portland Mercury sometimes slowly outpaces the rest, and though ad-ridden, it’s available to all and aside from packing material, its packing more these days. Nods to Chas Bowie and John Motley too.

PS: Don’t miss Bowie’s Horizon down at Chambers (207 SW Pine) where he is currently showing alongside LeAnn Hitchcock.

PPS: Just an extra something.

1/24/06
12X16: The Interview

Speaking with Cary Doucette of the new 12×16 Gallery

——————-

TJN: Hey Cary, just stopped over at your new gallery 12×16. Cool name. And by the looks of it, aside from the actual address, the name fits its compactness. Does size really matter?

12×16 Artists

CD: Not at all, we’ve been looking for a small space for a gallery for several years now. I think people expect too much from a large space, this space fits us - we’re very comfortable here.

TJN: It’s seems so…just, so! I found your inaugural to be a tight, cohesive showcase, especially the collage. While speaking with photographer Lee Ann Slawson about her interesting street images shot in both Barcelona and the region here, I noted that from artist to artist, if you took down the labels some may easily cross over for work created by the same artist. Is that improv, curation…just how did that come together?

CD: We just compliment each other, we know and respect each others work because most of us work in various mediums we focused on our individual strengths for the inaugural show you’ll see more varied work in subsequent shows.

TJN: I was particularly drawn to the similarities in works by both Luke Dolkas (whose piece Tiresome was my favorite in the show, and sold - otherwise I would have scooped it right up!) and Israel Hughes whose delicate works are so uniformly pieced together expertly from simple small elements, intimate details. I understand your next show will smartly feature them in a 2-person show?

CD: Yes, and we’re going to mix them up to keep it interesting they are both so good at what they do - Luke is so young and daring and Israel’s work has the refined, patient quality that only experience can produce.

TJN: Good combo. So, why a new gallery? Any outright concept or philosophy behind what you plan to do with the space? And your plan is to have a roster of artists who you represent as a collective..is that it? I mean, how did you gather together the artists for 12×16? Are you neighbors?

CD: We are all veterans of Portland’s “alternative spaces”- showing in coffee shops, bars and restaurants, such as Cassidy’s where we all met when I was organizing shows there and since then we have helped to promote and show each other’s work, so when we found this space we decided to pool our resources and just go for it - it’s an experiment in self-promotion, we wanted to pull ourselves up to the next level, but with the gallery scene being what it is in this town, we decided the only way to do that was to create a venue for ourselves there are seven of us now but we will expand and invite others into the fold, starting in May when we invite someone to show with me.

TJN: I liked the feel of the space, the jazz playing, the way it sort of rides time. After I left the gallery I dashed down the street to capture images of what seemed to be what I call unconscious grafitti clearly noted in the driveby there. A find! It all seemed to come together like some master composition that will make sense at a later time. Is there a transparent theme?

CD: I wish we could take credit for that but it’s just the neighbourhood it’s so disparate, so reluctant to change, but obviously enjoying the ride.

TJN: What has the response to the gallery so far?

CD: We’re really happy with the response. The turnout for our opening far exceeded our expectations - our friends and supporters really came out for us - everyone comments on the space, they really like it and the fact that several artists we don’t know have asked about joining us means we must be doing something right.

TJN: I have to say your price points are very attractive, especially since the works are very nicely framed and presented. Does the gallery take the traditional 50% or do you break it down otherwise? The realization of cost vs. overhead is always something I am interested in when a gallery sets its business plan, especially when it aspires to do great things.

CD: I think we are unique in that we all made an initial investment to cover rent and expenses so that we could concentrate on running a gallery and not have to worry about selling enough to keep the lights on we all have a decent record of selling enough work to cover our own expenses, so as this arrangement may end up costing us money, it affords us a secure venue our current arrangement is 80/20, in the artists’ favor - it’s more about promoting the artists as individuals than the gallery as a whole.

TJN: That is commendable, to say the least. I can only well-wish your recipe’s proportions to be more than the sum of its parts in the end. And you have a heavy hitter in the world of collage showing with you. Eunice Parsons. Hmmm, there’s no stopping this lady. At 89 she is cranking out work and not slowing. With the inaugural show at Chambers last year, this and I hear another show in the works. Can you say more about working with her?

CD: I have learned so much from Eunice the past six years, since becoming her “agent” do you know that she works on the floor, on her knees - it’s amazing she knows everyone who is anyone, and all the others as well - the whole of Portland’s art history since 1940 is in her head. I dare say she is the most prolific artist of her generation- a show of new work opens at PCC Rock Creek next week featuring nearly two dozen pieces created since September we travelled together to New York last October where she treated me to a personal tour of the Frick, dragging me from room to room, knowing just where her favorite works were hung - and she hadn’t been there in 23 years! I cherish every moment I spend with her- I always leave knowing more than when I arrived she’s an incomparable artist, teacher and friend.

TJN: Pretty astonishing, her memory for the museum! I remember pieces I saw at the Phillips Collection (the Cezanne’s especially), but that was the mid 80’s I think (I guess there’s been a few decades in between!). I always have a fondness for that type of recall.

Can you say some about collage. I was thrilled to see Dolkas bounding into the space while I was visiting with an armful of books on Rauschenberg. It was like he discovered something. The energy was great. I realize that collage/assemblage seems timesless and ageless depending on materials and application, but is there some new wave going on?

Jarman

CD: I discovered collage as an art form when i saw the work of Richard Hamilton at the Monumental Pop Art show at the Royal Academy of London in ‘92. I had never seen anything like it - I loved the use of popular culture images and the inherent sarcasm - social criticism and great art created from magazines - it spoke to me at the time. I was flirting with assemblage/mixed media as a response to my exposure to the work of my friend Derek Jarman but, as I am not a pack rat by nature and hate clutter, I quickly found that working with magazines and found paper to be more conducive to my limited work space (the dining table in our small flat). I educated myself through the whole history of collage over the following years up to the point when we moved to Portland and I enrolled in the book arts program at OCAC (but never attended) shortly thereafter I met Eunice and the rest is history…collage allows me to work spontaneously, quickly - without commitment (I am impatient to a fault) and my use of the computer and scanner makes it that much easier collage is art formed from chaos - making relationships from disparate elements- I love that. And yes, it’s a Eunice wave - she inspires us so much we believe her to be the greatest living collagist and we’re just riding in her wake.

TJN: Pretty good to have a living mentor in your midst. And one in your past with Jarman. I have been a longtime follower, and still have his obit somewhere among my archives. I made a work dedicated to him, an installation piece all in white. It was a white sheet hung in the corner of a space with a small fan oscillating back and forth making it move. On the sheet I projected a simple image I shot in New York of a small bed I once slept in with white sheets. It was very stark, quiet. I just watched Sebastianne the other night with my friend Vadim. It was one of his first. I would like to speak with you more about Mr. Jarman sometime, if you will, but in the meantime….what can you say about the development, from your perspective, of the Central Eastside Arts District?

CD: I think NAAU and Newspace are doing a great job of anchoring their respective corners of southeast and setting the standard for the rest of us - it’s a good scene, we’re glad to be a part of it.

TJN: It’s a great ever-emerging scene that will benefit from some of the cool area businesses as well, no doubt. So, before I start my outro I have to say that one of my other favorite works at the gallery was your own small fleshy-colored collage piece in the backroom which was rightfully sold, though your works in the gallery are digital images, collages? They remind me of the utility poles scattered around town, but were a bit illusory. Can you talk about them?

12×16

CD: I started working on the computer a couple years ago after realizing my work was too derivative of Eunice’s I was so involved with every aspect of her work that it couldn’t be avoided- I had to find something of my own i usually work late at night in our apartment in Eugene- just my laptop, scanner and a pile of magazines - I like the spontaneity, the immediacy of it if a composition works I save a digital image and the pieces are crumpled and tossed aside- to assure I’m not tempted to paste them and take them to a different level these works were born of those scraps- as with many things I do, they are a result of experimentation glad you like them.

TJN: Any parting words about what to look forward to in 2006?

CD: We have a shortlist of artists we are inviting to show, mostly
unknowns but look for a few surprises.

——————-

12×16 Gallery is located at 1216 SE Division Street in Portland.

1/22/06
CARD CARRYING MEMBER?

NAAU

On Saturday night the New American Art Union put on The Distribution, their annual membership art giveaway. It’s also a party, a way to celebrate a roster of the artists they show and offers exchanges between artists, collectors and curious supporters. In the extended spirit of the holiday season, this was a great follow-up, and from 7PM the evening had a steady flow of folks who came to first see the show itself, strategically select from the tiny white sealed envelopes (each containing a slide of a work shown on the walls) and generally drink and be merry. Included in this year’s event were stand-out works by Ty Ennis (who elongated the title of his Koolaid/Keds piece), Felice Koenig, Joe Macca, Rose McCormick and (yum) le Happy’s John Brodie (which I won!).

Dalbow

There were also a few notable works by Lacy Lowry, Tim Dalbow and Jim Lommasson. The Distribution is partly a way to thank those who have taken interest in the purposeful growth of NAAU, but at the same time build a nice young collector base who are looking to start their collection somewhere that offers a lil’ something for everyone.

Ennis

Ruth Ann Brown presided over last night’s events in her wonderful space, and for a mere $25 of support (which will, no doubt, rise in the future, given the ROI) each lucky Joe and Jane bobbled home with a new piece of art. When asked about how he felt about the evening NAAU Member David Onley noted “Ruth Ann’s warmth, intelligence and generosity set the tone for the evening. Like it’s members, the art varied in style and form but remained minimalist and modern. Distributed through an egalitarian lottery which quickly grew into a semblance of the UN game. Many members traded and schmoozed to achieve a desired piece. Few of us walked out with the piece originally drawn. I am definitely looking forward to next year’s event.”

McCormick

While people traded amongst themselves, which was encouraged, I selected a print which seemed just a bit soft in comparison with my small art collection, but would have been perfectly pleased going home with it. After muttering this to one guest, a quiet wildfire began, and suddenly the word was out, albeit without loudspeaker or pomp/circumstance. Next thing I knew I was being asked if I would be interested in trading for the John Brodie piece (a painting and collage ala Rauschenberg combine) with another member who was happy to trade for mine. I guess membership has its privileges! Guests included curator Jeff Jahn (who was standing in for a member who couldn’t make it), who noted “It’s a good way to start a collection if you are a new collector or on a very tight budget. A lot of the very best collectors in art history weren’t rich, they simply supported artists very early on in their careers. The Vogel and Ganz collections were started this way.”

Brodie

Also in attendance were Portland Art Center Director Gavin Shettler who was in great spirits after the PAC was just granted the big bucks from the Meyer Trust, collector and writer Duane Snider with whom I discussed the depth of collecting and the hardships of presentation cost, framer extraordinaire Eric Gard with whom I further carried on conversations about the art of quality craftsmanship in what he does, artists Ty Ennis, Gabriel Liston and Austin Bales (who generously gave me one of his gun prints!). Gallery artist Cecilia Cannon, who will show at NAAU once again this April, called the space a haven and its director a treasure. Those are meaningful words when coming from an artist and bear weight, as many are normally more concerned about making cost on their efforts after the traditional 50/50 split, presentation, materials, etc. These relationships are only deepened by the obvious connections and cooperative nature in the works behind the scenes here.

Lommasson

Oh, what a night! Do yourself a favor, become a member and support the thriving SE cultural district. The history of the NAAU is interesting, as Onley further noted “It feels revolutionary to be at the rebirth of such a great idea. Art owned by the people and membership dues used to promote it’s artists? Simply re-revolutionary…and as the adjunct home of both SpareRoom and Cinema Project, I concur that the future seems even brighter.

1/20/06
THE ART OF BLOGS

A nod to the Oregonian’s D.K. Row (his Hot Sheet) for acknowledging that there is cultural life when the ink runs out of your fountain pen and Office Depot is closed (Today’s A&E, Pg 22, far left). And also for pointing out that 1% is now 2 (though it may also be in good balance to scan the backissue with Ryan Frank’s in depth report again)!

I like writing this column (but don’t really consider it a true blog as it only currently provides one-way communication - people can respond directly via email with comments/criticisms). Outside of this base, my main realm is in music journalism, with a daily shot of cultural adrenaline racing in my veins. You don’t need to be a writer’s writer to share and dialogue, it’s not always about the academe, nor the paid advertise-based same-old - it’s more about the spirit of the moment and the muse. True (for me). One of the main reasons I dig the form is that I see it as a live real-time document (instant gratification for our mall-based speed culture), no real major layout, and plenty of room for error (HTML Hell: “drat, I forgot to save and lost all those changes!”). Great blogs are usually incredibly biased and opinionated, sometimes dynamically critical, packed with information and alternate takes on the subject, and not too heavy on the “rah-rah” marketing bandwagon - the mass media can handle that. I’m an artist, who just happens to have a point of view and once in a while simply appreciate reading anything other than plain old black and white. There will always be spillover, but make sure it doesn’t get anywhere near my CPU!

1/20/06
FEBRUARY FORECAST

Repetitive as the 6 O’Clock News, the cultural forecast calls for showers of fundraisers and daring contemporary art and performance all month long! But as they say, when it rains…. Here are my upcoming predictions that will help the light-deprived seek cultural asylum (and without shooting the messenger, eat your heart out Matt and Bruce!):

Blixa

1.) How to Destroy the Universe Tour!
Muzak on steroids with a shot of Absinthe for good measure? Partly put on by our friends over at 2 Gyrlz this will be a few nights of “extreme performance art + music” that will include a true innovator - Blixa Bargeld (Einstuzende Neubaten). After seeing the conceptual performance DVD (1993’s Liebeslieder) Portland is surely in for something mind-numbing for certain. The evening will also include experimental underground favorite, vocalist The Living Jarboe (the Swans) and others. Holy Hell: leave your iPod on the bus and come hum along. Forcepts, scalpel, VOLUME!

Thursday, 02/02, 8PM-12AM @ the Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave ($16 in advance; intimate seating for 300)

Craig Payne

2.) Portland Modern
Curated by Pat Boas, six emerging, independent artists take PDX by storm (literally)! Four at the Portland Art Center’s Annex (503-236-3322) and two at Ogle Gallery (503-227-4333). This show will blow the binding off of the namesake collector’s magazine (which you can find at local galleries for Free). Let’s hope it encourages collectors or galleries who need something fresh to double-take the thriving talent growing in the incubator. Be prepared for something just a little bit different. Several of these artists use concepts over construct, though the process may or may not be apparent. Don’t adjust your picture, or your rear view mirror. Don’t look either behind the curtain or the scenes for answers. Make up your own story, morning glory. DJ and more…As a side note: the super-influx of non-native Oregonian artists has begun its take over henceforth as this show attests, each and every one from different corners of America (and beyond).

Thursday, 02/02 (thru 02/25), 5:30PM-late, Free and open to the public

Minkkinen

3.) Newspace Center for Photography always seems heartily active, and February proves the same for the non-profit dedicated to all things picturesque as they pull out all f-stops (sorry) and present a Silent Auction fundraising expansion campaign. This event will surely include amazing prints by house fave Arno Rafael Minkkinen alongside works by Portland’s strongest pack of picturetakers: Terry Toedtemeier, Christopher Rauschenberg, Jim Lommasson, Mariana Tres, Chas Bowie, Holly Andres and Stu Levy as well as limited edition signed books and other surprises! This will be a great night for all who love the still image, and it’s only $20 - and that will give you a great opportunity to not only support a growing Portland art space and educational facility, but also give you the opportunity to bid on fine art photoworks.

Saturday, 02/04, 7-9PM (show thru the 26th), 1632 SE 10th Ave
Preview: Friday February 3rd 7-10pm, Gallery Hours are Tuesday-Sunday 11am - 8pm

Art Eats

4.) The Artful Palate
Young Audiences’ Fundraiser to Support Arts in the Schools

These people certainly know how to throw a party as guests will gather at the Pinnacle Pavilion (NW 10th at Northrup), to enjoy champagne and decadent hors d’oeuvres, with entertainment provided by Big World Beat and a Silent Auction and more…..dine, at 5 artful locations:
- Body Vox Dance Studios vs. Salvador Molly’s
- Bullseye Connection Gallery vs. Catering At Its Best w/Will Hornyak
- Elements Glass vs. Food In Bloom w/Vagabond Opera
- Lawrence Gallery vs. Chef du Jour w/Gideon Freudmann
- Janice Griffin Gallery vs. Capers w/Groupo Condor

Saturday, 02/25 Tickets are $125 ($60 is tax deductible, patron tables available). Info: 503-225-5900.

PMU

5.) Roxy Paine’s PMU @ Portland Art Museum

Thirty-something NY artist explores the great divide between the Factory and the superimposition of the post-artist aesthetic. A prototype clash of the titans so to speak, as REM meets RAM dead on. Now that he’s got a home of his own at the Jubitz time will attest that curator Bruce Guenther uses a breed of oils (not spelled crude) that drive the new machine that is PAM. Paine’s robotic works are a test(ament) to technology’s virtual rape of the hand in the process of the creative mind. Call it a questioning lapse in the use of fine motor skills. Pay attention: This is the edgy sh*t the Museum promised and are making good on!

02/25-05/28 @ PAM’s Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art
Tue, Wed + Sat, 10AM-5PM; Thur + Fri, 10AM-8PM; and Sun 12-5PM. $6-15

It’s raining art…go out and get absolutely soaking wet!

1/19/06
LIVE: FROM NY….

Un-sea Verily

NOCTURNAL(1800 E Burnside)
Friday, January 20 @ 8 PM ($5, food & objects provided by artists)

New works by Bethany Wright (last seen at the Mitzpah in 01/05 and Soundvision way back in 2002) with work by Ashley Edwards

Returning to Portland Bethany Wright is a poet/performance-installation artist currently living and working in rural Valley Falls, NY. This is a welcome return of this accomplished author (Indeed, Insist (a mystery) [Ugly Duckling Presse, 2005] and more). Recently her work has appeared in periodicals such as Swerve and The Brooklyn Rail. Wright has presented solo performance pieces at The Brooklyn Museum of Art and PS122, and has collaborated extensively with sound artist Seth Nehil. Locally, she helped initiate AREA, a multi-lalia collective, appearing publicly and privately in parks, graveyards, schoolyards, galleries, and at Pendleton Discovery Days [2002]. She co-founded and continues to edit FO (A) RM Magazine, a forum for interdisciplinary arts & research.

Ashley Edwards is a poet and independent scholar, as well as a native Arkansan who fled to Portland five years ago to attend Reed College, where she received her B.A. in English. She enjoys animal behavior, Utopian literature, phallic flowers, Russian film, the poems of Anne Carson, and secret societies.

1/17/06
?S FOR SLEEPING GIANT

After seeing Daniel Duford’s most recent Sleeping Giant exhibition I was left with twenty questions, but we settled on four….

I noticed some of the characters (fallen superheroes) in your Sleeping Giant show are missing limbs, can you talk about that?

There are several simultaneous layers in reading my work, but one of the main questions I explore is the difference between strength and power. What does it mean to have strength and no power? To that end, the lack of a limb suggests a missing function. The reason the superhero’s sleeve is pinned up is that it brings into focus the absence of an arm. The superhero is a figure of power and force; taken out of the context of the comic book, he becomes either outsized or miniscule. The histrionics of the comic book don’t work in this world. The lack of limbs also references ancient broken statues, wounded soldiers and my deep fear of losing the source of my own talent - my hand.

Is there a way to read the floor grid of twenty “houses”?

The houses comprise a piece called Townie. They do tell a story. I conceive of the houses as a 3D comic book in that you read images sequentially allowing your mind to fill in the gaps. In this case, it is three-dimensional so the relationship between image and narrative becomes much more complex forcing you to physically navigate the space. The narrative of Townie has a couple of threads. One is the “origin” story of the two characters - the superhero and the sleeping giant. They are born to a bear father and a human mother. This is a pan-north native American myth. It is also a reference to Romulus and Remus. One brother dies, one lives and the town named after him goes on to become the Roman empire. Similarly, the brothers are raised in an archetypal American town a la Smallville or Winesburg, Ohio. Townie loosely tracks the rise from wilderness to town to suburban empire. The two-page comic in the flier is actually one of the pieces for the show and links the Townie narrative with the wall drawings. Townie meditates on the myth of “small town values” in American discourse. Towns are seen to be repositories of morality, but they are also xenophobic and superstitious.

I really enjoyed the super graphic scale of the work in this forum. It just popped off the walls. Do you see your work becoming animated?

I love the mechanics of the comic-the use of simultaneous stillness and action. The relationship of image to image. But after working with Julia Stoops on my website and animating one of my drawings, I think I want to explore it in some way. I saw the Raymond Pettibon show at the Whitney this fall where he had an animation and it piqued my interest.

Your characters, both large and small, have something of an uber masculinity. Do you find some of the small models you are working with to be homoerotic? Is there a hidden pun?

I think they are accidentally homoerotic. Much of my work deals with masculinity and its relationship to violence. So their testosterone is amplified in these little colorful. toy-like “collectables”. One of the main inspirations for them is Goya’s “Two Men with Cudgels”. The pieces are about arbitrary warfare and militarism. The masks became a visual link to things like the KKK, superheroes, Abu Grhaib (these were started before those photos appeared) and wrestlers.

* * * * * * * *

See Sleeping Giant through February 18 at the Art Gym (Marylhurst University). Gallery Hours are Tuesday-Sunday 12-4PM (Gallery Talk, 1/26 @ Noon).

1/16/06
MLK :: RIP

Remember Segregation: In homage to the movement of people through communication.

1/15/06
CULTURE VULTURE

Taste the Rainbow

As Mary J. Blige once said, What’s the 411(?) this week in the arts ’round these parts? And while this column is not about the unfortunate meeting of hi-n-lo culture, we do, from time to time ask the pivotal Is It Art?. And this week there seems to be more of it than usual. Art, that is….In particularly the last few days the city has come alive, bursting with fun fruity flavors. (What is this, a Skittles commercial?) - OK, it MUST be a long weekend…but I digress….this is gonna sound more like a gossip column (more than ever) today - but if you bare with me you may just play along.

Guestroom, Marilyn Murdoch’s new brainchild exhibition space in the Wonder Ballroom complex opened with a big bold crowd on a very wet night. No one at all seemed to notice the windows were completely steamy as the explosion of work attested to the interesting complexities of two galleries in one. Yes, this new space shares, in a unique way, the square footage with Mark Woolley’s Annex space which is currently showing a super large salon-style group show that is overwhelming. As we spoke, he mentioned that this show was pretty much pulled together when another artist, who is showing in Sunny California didn’t have his work ready for exhibition and pulled the plug unexpectedly. So, what you get is a very colorful montage show, that actually looks quite fantastic. Most of his gallery favorites are included: Tom Cramer, Ann Marie Nafziger, Joe Biel, Brigitte Dortmund and many others. But standouts were the small pieces by Angelina Woolley and the always unexpected work by Dan Ness. I have to say with the lil’ time Woolley had to pull this together it’s an expert job. And for its sense of collected chaos (an aesthetic he’s used a lot), it is one of the better group shows hung this way seen here in a long while, it is overwhelming, but not overbearing. A little comical, but not a joke.

Complementing the complete wall cover that is Small Wonders are the Sketchbooks of Ted Katz presented by Guestroom. The space is somewhat randomly divided in this exhibition, but the segregation comes by way of wall color (a creamy burnt marigold), and with the expert hanging, Katz’s works get the museum quality treatment in spades. Taken from many sketchbooks over several years these 50+ drawings and sketches make for a stunning mini-retrospective of what might otherwise be very personal pieces. Though, quite elegant and journalistic to some degree, his play with simple subjects, like portraits of friends, nature and pets are fanciful and at times just hint of subjects in other works he’s done in oils. I do not find his work in this show at all to be some simple outlines on paper, they seem more realized than that. Represented by Butters, Katz has had a lengthy career, that here looks so cohesive as it reminices with some of the greats (Warhol’s early fashion illustrations, and maybe even a touch of Toulouse). There’s more than a bit of what some may call “old school” and surely nothing breaks new ground here, but does everything always infinitely have to be edgy? There’s a pure romance in these more casual works, a flair that’s simple and matter of fact. And while they are sketches, open a door to his studio, the process, a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on before and in the middle. But as one guest mentioned, these are “just sketches” I saw a majority of them as truly completed works, right down to the authenticating signature (which, in many cases is a small bone of contention, not just here, anywhere, really - but the artist signature is a discussion topic for an