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Visual Art
Posted inCulture

Portland’s Next Top (Architectural) Model

New installation City of Possibility offers a big picture of the city’s urban planning history via tiny buildings.
Avatar photo Joe Streckert

In the early 1970s, Portland design reviewers used a miniature (yet massive) model of downtown to consider proposed construction projects. City of Possibility gives Portlanders the rare opportunity to see the 18-foot by 22-foot city in all its glory—along with a bunch of other fascinating models, both literal and conceptual.

Posted inVisual Art

Beatlemania Through the Eyes of a Beatle

Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm provides the ultimate insider’s view of a singular cultural event.
Avatar photo John Rudoff

Imagine you’re a Beatle. After years of small, grinding successes in the Liverpool-London music scene, you’re riding a wave of international Beatlemania: screaming girls, luxe hotels, entourages, motorcades, and hundreds of photojournalists. You’re in the eye of a storm—willingly, but a storm nonetheless. A new gorgeously-produced and hung photography exhibit Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes […]

Posted inFall Arts 2024

You Can’t Capture Arlene
Schnitzer’s Vast Art Legacy

Fountain of Creativity tries to show how a growing city
and artistic scene developed and evolved.
Avatar photo Joe Streckert

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 […]

Posted inTBA

TBA Review: If You Want Solitude, Stay Far Away From Club Alive

Kye Grant’s monthly, genre-fluid event blends participatory art and dance parties.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

“The apparel is quite special,” my friend Rose mused. She was right. While awaiting entry into Club Alive, my field of vision swam with humans sporting face gems, organza, velvet bell bottoms, pink pleats, and patent leather. The monthly, genre-fluid performance party helmed by artist-experimenter Kye Grant [who—full disclosure—has written for this publication -eds] has […]

Posted inVisual Art

Carson Ellis Draws a Snapshot of Old Portland in Her New Diary Memoir, One Week in January

Avatar photo Taylor Griggs

While looking through some old boxes a few years ago, Carson Ellis found several pages of diary entries from 2001, documenting her first week living in Portland. The journals detailed the 25-year-old Ellis new life in the city, as she moved into a “scrappy but cheap and fabulous” Southeast Portland warehouse, smoked a lot of […]

Posted inVisual Art

The Mercury’s Time-Based Art Festival Picks

Don’t miss the dance parties, itty bitty music collages, and complete cacophonies—planning your TBA 2024 itinerary is an art form in itself.
Avatar photo Martha Daghlian

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 […]

Posted inTBA

Portland’s Favorite Experimental, Time Based Art Festival Bounces Back

On the TBA 2024 schedule: weird music, Black horror, and an opera about the prime meridian.
Avatar photo Martha Daghlian

The schedule for Portland’s favorite experimental art festival, TBA, dropped this week. After last year’s slow roll out, the fest returns with three weekends of weird music, Black horror, and an opera about the prime meridian.

Is the schedule for PICA’s Time Based Art festival part of the fest? (*°ω°) And other mental gymnastics associated with Portland’s favorite experimental art fete.

Posted inTheater & Performance

Portland Drag Clown Carla Rossi Climbed Jeffery Gibson’s Installation at the 2024 Venice Biennale

Artist Jeffery Gibson invited Carla Rossi to climb his installation on the US pavilion.
Avatar photo Suzette Smith

The Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious art exhibitions in the world. So we were pleased as punch to see Portland drag clown Carla Rossi climbing the US pavilion.

https://www.portlandmercury.com/queer-guide-2024/2024/06/13/47253765/a-portland-drag-clown-in-residence-at-the-venice-biennale

Posted inVisual Art

Future Now at Portland Art Museum Unboxes the Future of Sneakers

Avatar photo Corbin Smith

On March 30th, the Portland Art Museum will raise the curtain on Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks, a new exhibit about the various futures imaginable for the world’s most versatile sporting footwear. Our city is the touring exhibition’s first stop following its premiere at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. This feels appropriate […]

Posted inVisual Art

Father Fannie’s Funhouse Is Constantly Changing

The latest ILY2 Too Lloyd Mall resident curates artworks and workshops focused on community and Black joy.
Avatar photo Kye Grant

If you’ve been paying attention, you already know that Portland’s Lloyd Center Mall has become, in the past few years, a haven for local arts, culture, and civic initiatives. Inside the convalescing shopping center, a patchwork of trademark mall culture standbys like Hot Topic and Cinnabon coexist alongside Secret Roller Discos in the former Marshalls, […]

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