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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 inDo This, Do That

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

New performance art pairs well with Portland Fermentation Festival’s kimchi and kombucha.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

Sure, a certain someone claims you live in a war-torn hellscape pockmarked by domestic terrorists, fire, and whatever brimstone is. But it’s a gorgeous day, right?! You’ve got many reasons to wear your little fall outfit this week, as the leaves gently turn and the National Guard is less gently told they can’t come to brunch. […]

Posted inComedy

In Heart Throb, a Vampire Looks for Love

The Kickstand Comedy improv show pokes fun at your dating options with group chat humor and a DIY spirit.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Dating isn’t typically a team sport, but Heart Throb: The Dream Date Show plays by its own chaotic rules. Ten minutes before the show’s September edition began, audience members submitted their relationship “green flags” and “red flags” via a QR code. This edition of the monthly Kickstand Comedy performance featured a twist: The flags had […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for September 29-October 5

This week: Bijoux Cone’s benzo-pop, cruelty-free fragrance, and a Portland Poetry Confluence.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

If you’re wondering whether the city is, indeed, “war ravaged,” the answer is no, as evidenced by this colossal autumn leaf pile of EVENTS. It’s almost October, which is soOoOo crazy if you think about it. Stave off the chill with a hot pile of wings this week, then check out Paul Thomas Anderson’s shift […]

Posted inAlbum Review

Album Review: Helen’s The Original Faces in the Rearview Mirror

From visionary Portland musicians Liz Harris, Jed Bindeman, and Scott Simmons, their 2015 LP is a mysterious road trip into the setting sun.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

The experimental composer Liz Harris—best known as Grouper—is Western Oregon’s resident ghost, conjuring delicate whispers and heavy drones that have haunted the bioregion for two decades. Her work drifts between the otherworldly and the intimate, from acclaimed atmospheres on Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008) and Shade (2021) to her electronic collage piece […]

Posted inTBA

The Time-Based Art Festival Is Still Alive

With virtual landscapes, textile talismans, and sonic architecture, TBA 2025 centered artists who reshape space.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

If this year’s Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) had a goal, it might’ve been to twist our perceptions of the everyday. Angelo Scott’s Omni Rail turned the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) into an echoing instrument; Freddie Robins’ Apotropaic elevated cardboard and wool into high-concept reflections on folk ritual. San Cha’s Inebria me made religious […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for September 22-28

The autumn equinox brings fuzzy textiles, Spike Lee joints, and Portland Playhouse’s season opener.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

Warmish days be damned, because Christian Girl Autumn has officially begun. This week offers many reasons to head indoors, like Spike Lee’s Kurosawa-inspired film Highest 2 Lowest, Amanda Lepore’s club kid glamour, and ’70s art rockers Sparks. Plus, Freddie Robins installs knitted horses at Cooley Gallery, and the storytelling show Be Gay, Do Crime centers […]

Posted inTheater & Performance

Performance Works Northwest Turns 25

Dancer-choreographer Linda Austin reflects on a quarter-century in Portland’s experimental scene.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

One upcoming workshop in early October is partly about the value of friendship and meant to be taken with your bestie.

Performance Works Northwest turns 25 this year, and we interviewed founder Linda Austin about the origins and current direction of the beloved Foster-Powell arts space. Look for a workshop in early October from Maya Dalinsky and claire barrera, which is partly about the value of friendship and meant to be taken with your bestie.

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for September 15-21

Your end-of-summer plans include healing jazz, slime sculptures, and a trippy Hungarian film.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

I don’t want to alarm you, but autumn is almost here, people. September 15-21 is the last week before the equinox, and fortunately for us, Portland has plenty of creative and apparently candlelit events planned. On the docket are astral jazz, Sasha Fishman’s slime sculptures, and vampire baseball set to a live orchestra. Plus, you’ll […]

Posted inTBA

In Horizon, Nothing Stays Still For Long

Tahni Holt and Emma Lutz-Higgins delivered a relational dance of boulders, breath, and light.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Toward the end of Tahni Holt and Emma Lutz-Higgins’ Time-Based Art Festival performance Horizon, something clicked. Eurythmics’ “Love is a Stranger” swelled from the warehouse speakers at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art as Holt scooted across the stage, hidden beneath a hollow sculpture of a boulder. (Imagine a rock crawling across the ground in slow-motion.) […]

Posted inFall Arts 2025

Do This, Do That: Fall Arts 2025

Portland’s grandest, thinkiest, most-engaging displays of art and culture! 
Avatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello, Wm. Steven Humphrey, Nolan Parker, and Suzette Smith

Find a copy of the print issue! Subscribe to print issues! Support us! Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt Through December 6 (VISUAL ART) Marie Watt’s balance of technical precision and expansive vision melds in larger-than-life textile processes and multimedia explorations. Storywork centers stories from her Seneca Nation ancestry, pairing them with references to everything from […]

Posted inTBA

San Cha’s Inebria Me Reimagines Religious Ecstasy

The queer opera draws from mystic saints and ’90s telenovelas to tell a rare and radical love story.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

At the pinnacle of San Cha’s opera Inebria me, an apparition in white emerged: Esperanza (Kyle Kidd), angelic and blood-smeared, clutching a red rose. Dolores (San Cha, the show’s librettist and composer) gazed at the spirit, her expression a blend of awe and longing, the unraveling newlywed finally alight with something beyond grief. Her encounter […]

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