Fall Arts 2024

For the past few years, the Mercury‘s Fall Arts Preview has dealt with the pandemic, bouncing back from the pandemic, if things could be normal now after the pandemic, and if the pandemic is over.  Is the pandemic over? Yes and no, dear readers. The World Health Organization says COVID-19 is no longer a public […]

Hi everybody, and welcome to this Very Special Trash Report! For the uninitiated, the Trash Report is my weekly column where I make jokes about silly things that happen in the news and gossip. I’m going to do that for this print issue, but about ~ART~ which I’m highly qualified to do, in that I […]

For nearly three decades, the city of Portland ran its grant program for artists and arts organizations exclusively through a well known non-profit, the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC). Last summer, however, the city decided to change course.  Commissioner Dan Ryan’s office—which oversaw arts programs at the time—announced that the city would not renew […]

Keller Auditorium, the grand old dame of Portland’s formal concert scene, is long overdue for renovations, both technical and cosmetic. However, revelations from the past 10-15 years, about an increasingly likely major earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone, mean that such a project will need to dig deeper than the upholstery. The venerable venue—which was […]

The Fountain Gallery was a major hub of Portland’s downtown arts scene for much of the mid-20th century. In 1961, Arlene Schnitzer (yes, the same Arlene Schnitzer that the theater is named after) opened the venue, which hosted art shows, lectures, poetry readings, and performances. It wasn’t Portland’s first art gallery, but Arlene and her […]

When I was in preschool, my mom took a writing class at the local community college. Then she took it again. And again. The whole time I was growing up, she was taking some iteration of the class. Her writing crew was an eclectic bunch, very different from the goody two-shoes that she hung out […]

If you’ve been to Japan—or watched any Japanese film or television show that features schoolchildren—you’ve seen a randoseru backpack. There’s no way you haven’t. The rounded-yet-blocky leather shape is on the back of pretty much every child in Japan. It’s so common that there are anime shows about “randoseru girls.” There are even randoserus for […]

In keeping with its perma-tentative title, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)’s annual experimental performance fete has regularly seen major shifts with each year’s iteration. But one thing we can always count on is the Time Based Art (TBA) festival’s massive lineup of cutting edge work. Which makes planning your TBA itinerary an art form […]

Newsflash: Election years are not fun. Now more than ever, big election cycles—like the one we’re currently enduring—are stressful, anxiety-inducing, and for some, soul crushing. Worse still, we as a nation don’t seem to have a constructive way of processing our feelings or even productively discussing it. However, one way of coming to terms with […]

Portland Opera’s 60th season finds the eminent arts institution at a fulcrum. In recent months, it sold the Hampton Opera Center, the organization’s home base for over two decades, and now it’s deeply embroiled in ongoing discussions about the future of the Keller Auditorium. It’s little wonder then that the company has kept its impressive […]

Shoegaze is having a moment. It’s not the first moment for the cult-fave genre—a hypnotic amalgam of gossamer vocals and distorted guitars played, often loudly, through an army of nifty effects pedals. Not long after Shoegaze emerged from the British Isles in the late 1980s, its first wave crested on the backs of fuzzed-out bands […]