Perhaps with a flair for timing, law professor and erstwhile blogger Jack “Bojack” Bogdanski has made good on his promise to keep on battling Portland’s arts tax. City Attorney James Van Dyke, during this afternoon’s work session on fixing the tax, announced that Bogdanski is appealing an Oregon Tax Court ruling that said it lacked […]
Artsy
Posted inFashion
Sun/Set
One of my most consistent summer pleasures, for years now, has been tromping up and down East Burnside every First Friday of the warmer months. There are a ton of pride-inducing local businesses clustered on that once godforsaken stretch, and many of them are throwing little soirees in conjunction with local art shows and sales […]
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Four Arts Tax Options on Table: From No Change to Making It Progressive
Portland city commissioners will be presented with four options for changing the city’s embattled—and yet popularly approved—arts tax during a work session planned for next week, the Mercury has learned, ranging from doing nothing to the $35-an-income-earner tax up to making it far more progressive. The work session is planned for 2 pm Wednesday. It […]
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Erika Moen Talks Sex Ed and Oh Joy Sex Toy
For the arts section this week, I profiled cartoonist Erika Moen about her new sex ed/sex toy review site Oh Joy Sex Toy, which is both totally delightful and very NSFW. We talked for about an hour, and I ended up with a ton of great material that I didn’t have room to put in […]
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Win Tickets to Back Fence PDX’s Russian Roulette!
This image makes more sense if you know Steve Almond wrote a book called Candyfreak. Have you ever seen Steve Almond live? Steve Almond is one of those people who seems incapable of opening his mouth without being funny and incisive, which makes him a perfect candidate for Russian Roulette, Back Fence PDX‘s off-the-cuff storytelling […]
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This Week’s Cover
Martin Ontiveros is famous for a lot of things: Illustrator for Ricky Ricotta Mighty Robot, painting a label for Gigantic Brewing, making heavy metal posters, designing collectible toys, and making the cover of the Mercury look awesome. Hours after sending us this week’s Mummy Issue cover art, he took a bike ride and got hit […]
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Portrait Photog Sets Out to Debunk Portlandia—Debunks Himself
Wired brings us this story of yet another out-of-towner who wants to suckle and cash in on the Portlandia teat (oh, hello Lauren Weedman)—meet San Francisco portrait photographer Kirk Crippens who came to town to shoot a series of photo portraits that originally were supposed to debunk the stereotypical claims made by Portlandia… or so […]
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Mad Science PDX: An Art Show To Remember
Last Saturday, I met Brandon Thornton and Justin Morris, two of the producers for the art show Mad Science PDX, opening tomorrow night at Gallery 135. I am no stranger to these two gentlemen; I know them as Wieden +Kennedy employees, tastemakers around town (they’ve both been featured on my blog), and art show producers […]
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Mad Science PDX
Fitting to its role as a fundraiser for the Children’s Healing Art Project (CHAP), a group art show opening this Friday sent its participants into the imagined year of 2045 to solve our planetary problems for future generations. “Mad Science PDX” asked its artists (whose collective credentials include work with Wieden + Kennedy and Nike) […]
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Anything Sounds Better When Alan Cumming Says It
New York magazine gave the actor a bunch of things to read on camera, including tweets by Ryan Lochte, a list of porn titles, and some lines of James Franco’s from Spring Breakers.
Posted inArtsy
Union/Pine Jumps Back into First Fridays with Red Clouds Collective
After a wintertime hiatus, Union/Pine has announced that they’re re-joining the neighborhood shenans that happen on First Fridays of the month, beginning with this Friday’s July edition. And far from a low-impact, quiet show with cheese and crackers, they’re planning a group art show featuring the extended family of artists and makers behind Red Clouds […]
Posted inBooks
Sword + Fern’s Discovere’verer: Valentine Freeman
Sword + Fern has started this new thing, curiously called “Discovere’verer.” I do not know what that means, I know that they’ve tapped a ton of interesting people to participate (Anna Korte and Jason Rens, Claudia Meza). Basically it’s a guest curating program, where one of these interesting people are tasked with presenting a selection […]