Gary Norman Duffy Epstein, Shawna Nordman, and Jacob Orr in Theatre Vertigo’s I Want to Destroy You. 1. Theatre Vertigo’s entry into this year’s Fertile Ground festival is the world premiere of Rob Handel’s I Want to Destroy You, which is basically about performance artist Chris Burden, who famously had a friend shoot him in […]
Artsy
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This Week’s Style Event: Fashion for Your Walls
Well there’s only one style event this week, and while it might not be fashion for your body, at least it’s some fashion for your walls. Don’t fret though—February is right around the corner and there are a SHIT-TON of things happening. In the meantime… Portland Art Museum is holding their third annual Portland Fine […]
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Fertile Ground Review: Sex, Jazz, and Monsters in Frankenstein: A Cabaret
Jordan Johnson Laura Dunn in Frankenstein: A Cabaret. Maggie Mascal’s and Laura Christina Dunn’s contribution to Fertile Ground, Frankenstein: A Cabaret, sounds like everything I want from a play: It’s creepy, it’s weird, it explores themes of gender and sexuality by adapting a well-known piece of literature with an almost exclusively female cast. Plus musical […]
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Natalie Anne Howard’s Art Is Psychedelia by Southwest
Lowell is a stunning shop with a tight Instagram game: For the unacquainted, the shop/gallery specializes in vintage merchandise, as well as work by contemporary artists and makers. As a friend put it, they’re a “treasure shop,” with a well-curated collection of curiosities, covering everything from zines to rugs to clothing to the tiniest, quarter-inch-tall […]
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Fertile Ground Preview: In Noise in the Waters, BoomArts Takes on the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis
BoomArts GO BEYOND THE HEADLINES: That’s BoomArts producer Ruth Wikler-Luker’s hope for Noise. At Fertile Ground, Boom Arts’ Noise in the Waters is an “opportunity for Portlanders who are both concerned about international issues and passionate about the arts to go beyond the headlines and delve deeper into a crucial current issue,” says producer Ruth […]
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Fertile Ground Preview: Faith Helma’s Trial By Failure
Courtesy Faith Helma THE JUMPSUIT IN QUESTION And performance artist Faith Helma. Longtime Hand2Mouth Theatre performer Faith Helma’s ode to personal failure, I HATE POSITIVE THINKING, was an unexpected delight at last summer’s Risk/Reward festival of new performance. Helma’s infectious, tongue-in-cheek effervescence is best embodied by what she calls the show’s “icon,” a turquoise jumpsuit […]
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Doomed Sailors and Gold Lamé in PETE’s Riff on Melville
Owen Carey The most enviable gold lamé outfit I have ever seen. Also, a play about Moby-Dick. “Only drowned men drown. Everything else floats,” says one character in Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s (PETE) latest, the cumbersomely-titled [Or, The Whale]. Though ostensibly a riff on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, there are no actual whales. Instead, Juli […]
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In Art News: Viva’s Holiday Lives, Summer Theater Improves, and Money for Artists
Cult of Orpheus See you next year! Did you see Viva’s Holiday? You know, the holiday opera based on the memoirs of Portland stripper/author/all-around BAMF lady-about-town Viva Las Vegas, which busted open our usually bland holiday theater season and was an oddly heartwarming delight? Well, it’s coming back next year, says Christopher Corbell of producing […]
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New Arts Space Alert! HQ Objective’s FORTUNE Gallery is Here.
Physical Education Physical Education, above, will have a show at FORTUNE Gallery this year. Great news! There’s a new gallery in town: FORTUNE Gallery and Press, brought to you by the folks at contemporary art group HQ Objective, who have returned after a months-long hiatus with a shiny new space and freshly minted 501(c)(3) nonprofit […]
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Portland Painter Annie McLaughlin Takes on West Coast Pastoral
Annie McLaughlin “What things in American history do we long to get back to?” asks Annie McLaughlin. This was a question she mined extensively while constructing the images in her solo show at Open Gallery, The Good the Bad and the Ugly. Inspired by the resurgence of craft culture (“urbanites who are suddenly interested in […]
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At the Pony Club Gallery, You Better Watch Out for Krampus the Christmas Demon!
Sylvia Mann KRAMPUS! Is coming! To town! Everywhere you go in December, there are Christmas decorations, pop-up shops, and gift guides, but walk into the Pony Club Gallery and you’re greeted by walls decked with evil. This is what a Krampus-themed art show looks like: a life-size faux fireplace shaped like the holiday demon’s face […]
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Portland Writers, Publishers, and Booksellers On The Best Things They Read in 2015
BE STILL MY HEART. Vacation reading starts NOW. Because I am nosy and curious to a fault, one of the best parts of my job is asking Portland writers about their favorite books. This is especially true at the end of the year, when we look back on the contents of our backpacks and bedside […]