Support Smart, Local Journalism
Make a Small Monthly Donation

Give now
Avatar photo

Lindsay Costello

Lindsay is the Portland Mercury's staff writer, covering all things arts and culture. Send arts tips and pictures of birds to lindsay@portlandmercury.com.
Posted inVisual Art

What Lies Beneath Sean Christensen’s Mount Saint Helens?

And other reasons to sink into his Never Coffee show, Memory Foam.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

Consider the sensation of memory foam beneath your hand, and the way a handprint slowly fades as the material returns to its original shape. On view at Never Coffee, Portland artist Sean Christensen’s new exhibition Memory Foam makes that feeling visual, thinking about the impressions left by memory.  The exhibition pulls inspiration from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for April 13-19

Woodwind sounds, emotional support animals, and florals for spring.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

How’s your spring shaking out? This week, Do This, Do That unfurls with events like sooo many cherry blossoms, tulips, and daffodils. John Waters cruises into town to celebrate eight decades of debauchery, Making Earth Cool screens a verdant array of 16mm nature films, and did you know you can learn Latin dance for free […]

Posted inTransportation Issue 2026

Do This, Do That: April 2026

The city’s coolest art and cultural events this spring.
Avatar photoAvatar photo by Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

Satpreet Kahlon: an imagined place (here and now) THROUGH MAY 23 (VISUAL ART) I’ve been following Satpreet Kahlon’s career since 2023, when the Panjabi-born artist’s Bellevue Art Museum exhibition the inscrutable shape of longing explored displacement and colonization’s aftermath through a web-like installation of folk ritual and splintered, mirrored acrylic. An imagined place (here and […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for April 6-12

Twenty good reasons to leave the house this week.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

This past weekend at Cooper Mountain Nature Park, I watched a smattering of wild iris and pond lily sway against a backing scene of scraggly oaks, jays and juncos flitting in between. I sat on a log with my partner for two hours, staring at the pond, chatting about nothing and everything. Two ducks floated […]

Posted inSecond Run Portland

Second Run Portland: Iranian Docufiction, Soviet Sci-Fi, and Catherine O’Hara’s Impact

This month’s rep screening schedule is stacked.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

Hello, reader. I am once again requesting you go to the movies, and here’s why: This month, we’ve got Soviet sci-fi, eerie animation, and some of the 20th century’s directorial greats represented (Robert Altman, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, and the list goes onnnn). Also, have you read Suzette Smith’s picks for the upcoming Portland Panorama […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for March 30-April 5

Spring-approved activities unfurl, from tulip time to rowdy documentaries.
Avatar photoAvatar photo by Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

Did you get a dose of Vitamin D in the eyeballs this weekend? Portland spring is a fickle and fleeting thing, but when it feels good, it feels reeeeally good. Let’s keep that boat afloat this week. Here are some helpers: The Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival is a no-brainer, but if you can swing it […]

Posted inBooks

Keep Your Frenemy’s Brain Closer

In Ling Ling Huang’s Immaculate Conception, a new technology brings darker meaning to competition.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

“For me… the main thing is just how deep a love can be, and how much everything else can complicate it,” explained violinist and author Ling Ling Huang. She was excavating the layered themes in her novel Immaculate Conception, a nominee for the 2026 Oregon Book Award’s Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. The book circles […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for March 23-29

Thrifting, zines, and comedy geniuses abound this week.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

You’ve heard of comedians, but did you know there are, like, comedy geniuses? A whole roster of ’em will post up at Revolution Hall to prove it this week at the Mercury’s Undisputable Geniuses of Comedy 2026. Plus, zinesters will show off their DIY wares at Reed College, Parker Posey defines chic in Party Girl, and […]

Posted inVisual Art

Your New Favorite Cat Painting Is Joseph Jones’ “Pink T-shirt”

On view at Adams and Ollman, Jones’ paintings and Carolee Schneeman’s video channel interspecies love.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Images of cats tend to serve as landing pads for emotional projection. How you interpret them says something interesting about your inner landscape. In a new exhibition at Adams and Ollman, London-born artist Joseph Jones studies the curious humanity embedded in the feline image. Building composites from his extensive archive of cat photos—the artist estimates […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for March 16-22

Espresso martinis, experimental ceramics, and Elliott Smith’s impact.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

The spring equinox falls on March 20! Let’s lean into the new light, shall we? This week, rock mother Toody Cole scorches Star Theater, Jacqueline Novak turns comedy a little more esoteric, and, in the words of Mercury writer Melissa Locker, Jessie Rose Vala’s ceramics show is “really fucking cool.” March is also Espresso Martini […]

Posted inSpring Arts 2026

David Hockney’s Restless Eye Is Revealed

The Portland Art Museum’s new exhibition shows the artist’s evolving style across 60 years and 200 artworks. 
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

“David sees the world backward,” says Doug Roberts, a Los Angeles art dealer and longtime friend of David Hockney. Roberts was appearing on a panel about the artist, as part of Portland Art Museum’s (PAM) new exhibition tracing 60 years of Hockney’s work. He meant it as praise. Hockney, whose sunny California scenes somehow simmer […]

Posted inSpring Arts 2026

Reading the Room at Cooley Gallery’s IF

The new exhibition unites three artists, including a former nun. 
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

What does it mean to write in space? At Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, new director and curator Derek Franklin thinks about it, bringing together three eloquent artists who take language into form. IF pairs serigraphs by Sister Corita Kent, a Roman Catholic nun who eventually left the order to devote herself fully to anti-war, pro-love […]

Gift this article