Chas Bowie

The Grotto NE 85th & Sandy The Cult of Catholicism thing pretty much escaped me my whole life. I always feel out of the loop when people pin anything on their Roman Catholic upbringing–whether it’s their aesthetics or their neuroses. When the church decided this month to select an ex-Hitler Youth (however reluctant) to be […]

Brad Adkins is best known as half of the art duo Charmbracelet and as a sort of lo-fi post-Baldessari conceptual artist (although some recent sculptures of perforated bottles suggest that he’s expanding his repertoire and vision). Nobody had him pegged as a musician or a sound artist, and yet Marriage Records just released Big Red, […]

www.nikelab.com Although I can’t prove it, I’m reasonably certain that Nikelab.com made me type faster. Of course, it could have been all the coffee and fast techno music coming out of my computer speakers. I do know one thing–the beautifully designed website that fetishizes speed the same way recovering meth addicts do, brought my pre-9/11 […]

Raymond Pettibon and Hans Weigand lecture at Wieden + Kennedy, 224 NW 13th, 242-1419, Thursday April 7, 7 pm, $12 One of the most common responses I get from non-gallery-going friends and family is that they don’t “get” art, as if they don’t possess the decoder ring that will suddenly pop abstract paintings into focus […]

DIO: Portland’s New Art World Reality Show “ARTSTAR is the first-ever unscripted television series set in the New York art world. Selected from [an] open call, eight artists will have the opportunity to participate in a group exhibition at Deitch Projects, and may have a chance to land their own solo exhibition with Deitch Projects. […]

Walter Hopps 1933-2005 In his later years, Walter Hopps was evidently not a big fan of the Rolodex. When he needed the phone number for the Dia Center, or Joe Goode’s studio, for instance, he would simply call the art gallery where I worked and ask for the number. Some days he called three or […]

Flickr Sux www.flickr.com After winding down this hyper-geeky and über-uncool (yet embarrassingly satisfying) “Month of Photography” that crested with Photolucida and the Society for Photographic Education national conference, I thought it was time to flee the images of the trained and calculated photographers for something fresher and more immediate. I was somewhat familiar with Flickr.com–the […]

What Next– a Candlelight Vigil for Ansel Adams? www.photolucida.org www.spenational.org The photography festival known as Photolucida going on this month is nobody’s full-time job. The young biennial is a labor of love from a few dedicated enthusiasts. But still…. The successful photography festivals across the world revolve around portfolio reviews that bring both income and […]

Photolucida and Portland’s Month of Photography www.photolucida.org Several years I ago I read a magazine article about an annual Little People Convention, where midgets and dwarves flocked to party, discuss the relevant issues, and foremost–meet that special “little” someone. The essay described a common but unexpected side effect many of the conference attendees suffered after […]

Diane Arbus: Family Albums Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park, through April 24 Pros: *Arbus is far more relevant to the contemporary state of photography than, say, Edward Weston, whom the museum recently showed. Photographers who are drawn to the grotesque and offbeat, such as Roger Ballen, Nan Goldin, and Rineke Dijkstra, all owe debts […]