Penguin Random House Literary badass Joy Williams’ latest is a book that horrifies and amuses. Joy Williams is one of America’s greatest fiction writers. Full stop. “Her greatest gift is her ability to simultaneously horrify and amuse, to fully embrace such opposing forces,” writes Joshua James Amberson in his review of The Visiting Privilege, the […]
Artsy
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A Call for the Art of Gentrification, from Newspace Center for Photography
Newspace Center For Photography This just in from our own Newspace Center for Photography! They’re “currently soliciting proposals for image-based projects on the subject of gentrification, displacement and land-use in Portland.” Given Portland’s rental state of emergency—and given gentrification’s unpleasant tendency to send creative communities scrambling to find affordable studio spaces—this seems like a good […]
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Confronting the Audience in Keyon Gaskin’s Its Not a Thing at BodyVox
<img src="https://www.portlandmercury.com/images/blogimages/2015/09/13/1442186746-keyongaskin_02.jpg" alt="Keyon Gaskin performs Its Not a Thing.” title=”Keyon Gaskin performs Its Not a Thing.” width=”500″ height=”281″ /> Alex Riedlinger via TBA Keyon Gaskin performs Its Not a Thing. Keyon Gaskin’s long-running piece, It’s Not a Thing, appearing as part of TBA Friday and Saturday at BodyVox, began subverting performance tropes as soon as […]
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At TBA, Reckoning with Tyondai Braxton’s Restless Synths
By Nomo michael hoefner via Wikimedia Commons As Tyondai Braxton stood onstage at PSU’s Lincoln Hall Sunday night, conjuring long strings of squeaks, blurbles, and rough-hewn beats out of a box of Eurorack synths, a nonstop stream of dry ice smoke billowed and drifted behind him. It was as if the 36-year-old composer and musician […]
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TBA 2015 is Here! Stephen Malkmus Invades the Works, Keyon Gaskin Performs Tonight
Keyon Gaskin/PICA Keyon Gaskin performs tonight. You should go see him. PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival launched last night, with nighttime programming the Works bringing Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks to the Redd in inner Southeast for a free show, and the opening reception for TBA’s visual art component, Pictures of the moon with teeth, at […]
Posted inCrafty
Grrrl in Motion: Alien She’s Riot Grrrl Capture
To begin Alien She properly, you have to go back to school. Specifically, the sparkling Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design building’s 511 Gallery, part of the new PNCA campus. There you’ll find enough music, zines, and ephemera documenting the formative early ’90s era of the Riot Grrrl movement to immerse yourself […]
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The Week in Art: Shelley McLendon’s New Theater, Hate-Reading Jonathan Franzen, Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ Uncute Crafts, and Jason Overby’s Emotional Comics
Jason Overby/Floating World Comics JASON OVERBY: Overby’s comics are exceptional from a standpoint of sequential art theory and form, but inner monologues about perception and experience also dominate. If you’ve spent any time in the Portland comedy or theater communities, you know there’s a shortage of local medium-sized, affordable performance spaces. And if you know […]
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With Confessions, Artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins Upends Portland’s Cutesy Crafting
Jessica Jackson Hutchins When you look at Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ work, you might catch your breath: it’s raw, a little gross, and never precious. She traffics in ideas of domesticity and gender with an honesty and lack of pretense, using ceramics and found objects—think ceramic vessels and papier-mâché piled on top of a couch—almost to […]
Posted inBooks
Did You Hear? We Made You a Fall Arts Guide, and It’s Full of Comedy, Visual Art, and… Dental Anomalies!
Jenna Lechner DID YOU KNOW …there’s a museum of dental anomalies at OHSU? There is! You may have heard we made you an entire fall arts guide: It’s online here, but I also heartily endorse picking up the hard copy at your friendly neighborhood stack of Mercurys, to get a closer look at some of […]
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Everything as Fuck: The Greatest Art Exhibit EVER
Illustration: Ryan Alexander-Tanner LOOK, I SHOULDN’T even be showing you this column, because I’m pretty sure I’m breaking hella frigging non-disclosure agreements, but you’re special to me and I like that you’re out there living your own life and taking chances on shoes you wouldn’t normally buy—but look at you, pulling them off. I shouldn’t […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Today’s Transitions in Portland Art: Ty and Cassandra Boice Announce Departure from Post5 Theatre; HQHQ Project Space to Close Temporarily
Post5 Theatre Post5 Theatre Artistic Director Ty Boice Here are just two recent shifts to be felt throughout the arts community over the next few months: Post5 Theatre’s Ty and Cassandra Boice are decamping for Seattle. In a press release, Post5 Theatre‘s Founding Artistic Director Ty Boice and Associate Artistic Director Cassandra Boice announced their […]
Posted inFashion
Wildcraft, Reif, & Content: The Day’s News in Fashion, Design, & Retail
• If you’re starting to feel those back-to-school fall feels, take a look at the schedule of upcoming textile workshops being offered at the Wildcaft Studio School, including a two-day focus on a Pacific Northwest Native American technique for cedar hat-weaving, raw wool rug-making, loom weaving, and basic leather crafting with Sara Barner. Wildcraft Studio […]