Fall Arts 2023

The Mercury’s Fall Arts & Culture Preview doesn’t need a theme, but this year’s was obvious: Portland is building. Portland is rebuilding. Its arts and culture worlds have rolled up their sleeves and are breaking ground. Here are some great examples: If you loved this summer’s immensely popular Comedy in the Park series, you’ll want […]

The first two years of Kickstand’s Comedy in the Park summer series were impressive, but 2023 blew them both away, with Portland Parks & Recreation staff counting approximately 4,700 people on a recent Friday in August. That’s people-protesting-against-Donald-Trump numbers. But while anger frequently provides the motivation of our moment, Kickstand brought all those people out […]

The pandemic? We hated it. But it brought about some inspired developments, such as Poison Waters (AKA Kevin Cook) learning to use Zoom. The Darcelle XV Showplace co-host really took to the medium, and now on the rare day in Portland where Poison Waters isn’t hosting an event, it might be because she’s leading a […]

Owning a food cart in the year of our lord 2023 requires more footwork and power moves than a breakdancer.  Chef Richard Văn Lê should know: Until recently, he was behind the iconic Matta food cart, which he opened to immediate success in 2019. Critics, myself included, fawned over Lê’s interpretations of family dishes he […]

It’s incredible to think John Williams’ music is still finding its way into moviegoer ears, here in 2023. The legendary composer-conductor scored The Fablemans for his longtime film partner Stephen Spielberg in 2022. This year, Williams returned to the franchise that sealed his place in history as the greatest modern film composer: Indiana Jones. No […]

Long before Portland-based multidisciplinary-artist Intisar Abioto took on guest curation of Black Artists of Oregon—a massive exhibit at the Portland Art Museum (PAM) that opens this fall—she was just looking to connect with older Black artists in her community. “I wasn’t initially approaching this as a curator at all,” Abioto told the Mercury. “I was […]

Andrew Neerman had just moved his Beacon Sound record store and label HQ from one space to another when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and significantly complicated running a retail operation. Almost immediately, Neerman shuttered the shop, even before the state of Oregon mandated the closure of many retail businesses. When he talks about it now, […]

Lament, if you must, the many local arts spaces that have come and gone in our fair city. There’s a long list of names and places to choose from. But the better move might be to celebrate the number of local galleries, clubs, and theaters that are still here—survivors of a global pandemic that shuttered […]

While I do not believe astrology is real, I believe that astrology is usually right. Holding these two ideas in constant tension is how I get through any given Portland dinner party. And I know that there are at least 12 zodiac signs, which pairs well with the dozen or so local film festivals scattered […]

It can be easy to take public libraries for granted. The free (tax-funded) service allows anyone with a library card to skim through books, access resources like computers and public archives, or just chill out in a climate-controlled space.  “It’s a real anti-capitalist move to utilize the library,” said Katie O’Dell, a Multnomah County Library […]

How much does the profession of basketball intersect with the art of dressing? According to gritty NBA forward and notable fashion plate PJ Tucker, only so much. “They don’t even correlate to me,” says Tucker in an interview that appears in Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, a new coffee table-style book by Portland-born […]

The more things change, the more they stay the same—especially for a contemporary arts festival founded to highlight the most cutting-edge innovations in art. The Time-Based Art Festival—PICA’s flagship event for the past 20 years, known to most of us as TBA—is going through some changes this year.  As an experiment, Portland Institute for Contemporary […]