- Carson Ellis
- FOLLOW THIS BUSINESSMAN’S GREAT EXAMPLE and go see some art.
The print version of Mercury‘s Spring Arts & Culture Guide is out now—you’ll know it by Carson Ellis’ cover art—and you might want to pick up a copy, or else you’ll miss out on a full page of upcoming arts events to have on your radar, from Kevin Kadar’s hellfire-scapes to Amy Schumer at the Schnitz. Our arts guide is profile-heavy, featuring local artists and performers you’ll need to know this spring—and beyond! A sampling:
CARLA ROSSI: Jenna Lechner sat down with Portland’s premiere drag clown, who’s hosting a queer storytelling event tonight. A preview:
One of the best things about the Carla Rossi persona is her brazen absurdity; Hudson is quick to acknowledge the importance of comedy in his work. “I’ll show up at a regular drag show, and there [are] these beautiful, female-presenting performers,” he says. Conversely, Carla Rossi wears intense clown makeup, garish costumes, and wild curly hair. “You can kind of hear a pin drop, like someone throws up in their mouth a little bit.
KAREN GOMYO: She’s a world-renowned concert violinist set to play a very old piece of music with the Oregon Symphony this April. When Robert Ham asked how she makes that not boring, here’s what she said:
“You have to not be so indulgent in the emotions of the piece,” she says. “It’s so pure in the sense that the emotions in it are not great sadness or great happiness. It’s really about the emotional experience of every human being. And it has to come from a completely sincere place. You have to tap into those emotions in a way that’s not heavy and not indulgent, but just right.”
SARAH MARSHALL: You might know Portland writer Sarah Marshall from her scholarship on Oregon figure skater Tonya Harding, but DID YOU KNOW she also writes about murder? If you’re prone to morbid curiosity-induced Wikipedia rabbit holes, read no further:
If we take evil off the table as an explanation for why people do bad things, says Marshall, the conversation gets more complicated, but maybe more productive. “My dream is that we can actually talk about… meaningful treatments for sociopathic behavior,” she says. “You know, to have Ted Bundy alive so we could have studied his brain—that would have been amazing. But, you know, it’s gone now; we burned it.”
PLUS: How a dance company survives without a floor, what a curator does that your iPhone does not, and saving vintage videogames from death by red tape. It’s all here!