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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 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 ofย Marie Watt Through December 6 (VISUAL ART) Marie Wattโ€™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 Chaโ€™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 Chaโ€™s opera Inebria me, an apparition in white emerged: Esperanza (Kyle Kidd), angelic and blood-smeared, clutching a red rose. Dolores (San Cha, the showโ€™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 […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercuryโ€™s Do This, Do That: September 8-14

Scope fancy puppets, eat fancy tomatoes, and swap clothes with a stranger—in that order.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Hiiii, your schedule for the week is here! The cityโ€™s events are delightfully chaotic this week, with everything from exhibitions exploring trans care and textiles to performances by several legends: Jinkx Monsoon, Karen Slack, and handmade puppets. Plus, a sustainable feast flips off food waste, and the world’s sexist film festival is back in town. […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Second Run Portland: Gakuryลซ Ishiiโ€™s August in the Water is Unstreamable Late-Summer Magic

The folkloric Japanese film screens alongside Hungarian psychedelia and Edward Yang’s Yi Yi this month. 
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

This month, Portland venues will close out summer with a psychedelic swirl of films merging myth and magical adolescence. Teen girls time-travel and chat with dolphins; cosmic heroes emerge from horse goddesses. Meanwhile, here on earth, a sex worker undertakes her own journey from a donut shop to a laundromat in Los Angeles.ย  Screenings are […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercuryโ€™s Do This, Do That: September 1โ€“7

This week: ambient drone, lowriders, and a gay carnival. Plus garlic. Lots of garlic.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

Summer’s winding to a close, but don’t evenย think about hibernating. This week, the city will keep your cup full and the loneliness (and vampires) at bay with a fresh hop beer fest serving whiffs of harvest heaven and festivals of the garlic-loving, rich-people-hating, and poetry-celebrating varieties. The Time-Based Art Festival gets going, too, and comedian […]

Posted inTBA

At the 2025 Time-Based Art Festival, West Coast Is Best Coast

After losing federal grant funding, TBA pushes forward with queer opera, Native storytelling, and radical soundscapes.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) turned 30 this year, making it both a millennial and the creator of the cityโ€™s shiniest experimental performance jewel, the Time-Based Art Festival (TBA). Returning September 4-14, this yearโ€™s fest brings a full-force two-weekend lineup packed with multimodal poetry, queer opera, and shape-shifting dance. Youโ€™ll find programming at four […]

Posted inAlbum Review

Album Review: The OO-Rayโ€™s Marginals Is a Sonic Vigil

Portland experimenter Ted Laderas meditates on forgotten disasters through distorted cello and droning electronics.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

In the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japanโ€™s Tลhoku region, a resident of the small town of ลŒtsuchi opened a public telephone booth in his garden. Inside, a disconnected phone invited visitors to speak their grief aloud, carrying on the wind painful stories that would be near-impossible to let rest anywhere […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercuryโ€™s Do This, Do That: August 25โ€“31

This week: Lodestars of Portland’s grunge-pop and soul history, plus a tropical sundae.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

Good news for those who deserve a little treat. This week serves layered sundaes, State Fair elephant ears, and a lilting farewell set by consummate indie-poppers Tennis. For something heartier, catch cool jazz at wine and cheese bar Nรฉgociant or a performance by Ural Thomas, the King of Portland Soul. Indulge accordingly. Monday, August 25 […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercuryโ€™s Do This, Do That: August 18โ€“24

This week: Ethereal indie, cinema with snacks, and more art at Lloyd Center.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

In the words of contemplative poet Mary Oliver, “August of another summer, and once again/I am drinking the sun.” Are you drinking the sun yet? There are a number of methods with which to achieve this, but all of them require going outside. Luckily for you, there are many reasons to leave home this week, […]

Posted inDo This, Do That

The Mercuryโ€™s Do This, Do That: August 11โ€“17

Four comedians and an Afrobeat legend take the stage this week, as do burgers.
Avatar photoAvatar photo Lindsay Costello and Mercury Staff

If your dream is to eat a burger every day this week, we say go for it. But there are some pretty chill cultural supplements to this week’s noshing, too. Femi Kuti will bring Afrobeat grooves to Revolution Hall with his Positive Force crew, and the PDX Adult Soapbox Derby puts art on wheels, then […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Second Run Portland: Shinji Sลmaiโ€™s Moving Is the Luminous Coming-Of-Age Film Youโ€™ve Never Seen

Plus, Gakuryลซ Ishii’s punk-inflected vision and two cinema vérité documentaries head to the screen this month.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Portlandโ€™s late-summer screenings feel especially thoughtful, turbulent, and aliiiive! This month, weโ€™ve got fresh restorations and poetic takes on youth, class, and artistic longing on the docket. A coming-of-age sparkler by Japanese director Shinji Sลmai gets its due, and two vรฉritรฉ documentaries paint radically human portraits of small-town America. Plus, Ethan Hawke has a well-deserved […]

Posted inAlbum Review

Album Review: Charlie Hiltonโ€™s River of Valentines Is Ghost-Pop On the Breeze

The Blouse vocalist crafts 28 minutes of lo-fi hush with sunlit mystique, flashes of harpsichord.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

In Peter Weirโ€™s 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock, a group of boarding school girls in Victorian-era Australia don white lace, twirl parasols, and craft elaborate valentines before some of them vanish behind a boulder on a searing summer day, never to be seen again. Charlie Hilton, best known as the vocalist for the woozy […]

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