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Visual Art
Posted inVisual Art

Fall 2023 Visual Art Picks: Converge 45 and Other Portland Art Shows That Look Good

Avatar photo Ashley Gifford

With the perceived hiatus of summer—and all its art fairs and group shows—it falls to galleries, museums, and unconventional art spaces to keep our cultural blood pumping. This year’s biggest art party is likely the Converge 45 Contemporary Arts Biennial, which takes place throughout the city at multiple venues. Even as you check out those […]

Posted inVisual Art

How Is It Possible That “Black Artists of Oregon” Is the First of Its Kind?

Avatar photo Jenni Moore

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 […]

Posted inComics

An LA Comics Fest Comes to Create Permanent Damage in Portland

Floating World hosts the grimy indie comics fair in Lloyd Center’s old Ulta Beauty salon.
Avatar photo Ben Coleman

If you like your comics filled with indie grime, you’ll want to get over to the former Ulta Beauty Salon in the Lloyd Center this weekend for Permanent Damage PDX. If you like your cartoons the same, Clinton Street screens such shorts the night before.

Floating World’s Jason Leivian partnered up with festival organizer Keenan Keller to bring LA’s Permanent Damage show to Portland’s vaporwave home base. Comic books? In the mall?

Posted inVisual Art

Crafting Pinocchio Spotlights the Stop-Motion Animation That Made the Movie Come Alive

Portland Art Museum presents an up-close view of Guillermo del Toro’s unique vision and ShadowMachine’s masterful craft.
Avatar photo Cameron Hawkey

Who hasn’t shared the frustrations of poor Pinocchio: He’s self aware, with a will to live, left on his own to decide what’s right and wrong? The story reminds us of what French poet Rimbaud said of being an artist: “Too bad for the wood that finds itself a violin.”  Those who have seen Guillermo […]

Posted inTheater & Performance

Q&A With PICA’s Outgoing and Incoming Executive Directors

After 20 years, Victoria Frey passes the torch to Reuben Roqueñi —who has been involved with PICA for over a decade.
Avatar photo Suzette Smith

PICA announced last week that it has hired a new executive director to replace the outgoing Victoria Frey. Only the third executive in the experimental arts organization’s 28 years, Reuben Roqueñi possesses an impressive background in arts admin and has worked with PICA since 2012. Mercury culture editor Suzette Smith spoke with both Frey and Roqueñi about the upcoming transition, what drew Roqueñi to PICA in the first place, and why it’s such a special arts institution.

Mercury Culture Editor Suzette Smith spoke with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s outgoing and incoming executive directors about the transition and what makes PICA is such a special arts institution.

Posted inVisual Art

Meet the Mercury’s Cover Artist of the Week: Femke Hiemstra

Flora, fauna, surrealist fables… and other examples of Hiemstra’s Neo Fabulism.
Avatar photo Corianton Hale

Femke Hiemstra is a Netherlands-based “Neo Fabulist” visual artist who uses acrylic paint and graphite pencil to tell surrealist fables that draw you in with their imagination and meticulous skill. In our interview, we talk about the influence of location, exploring new mediums, and her favorite podcasts. You build such complex, compelling narratives into your […]

Posted inVisual Art

Making Earth Cool: Partying to Save the Planet

On First Thursday, the art collective kicks off a two-month residency at Parallax Art Center.
Avatar photo Martha Daghlian

Climate change is a terrifying subject, but when you bring art and fun into the reflection instead of only doom and gloom, more people want to engage.

Making Earth Cool advocates for the environment with art and fun: For the next two months the Portland art collective are the artists in residence at Parallax Art Center and are planning community projects for Youth Climate Strike and Earth Day.

Posted inVisual Art

This Week’s Mercury Cover Artist: Sam Geballe’s Beautiful Darkness

Body dysphoria is only part of this remarkable photography exhibit running through this Saturday, April 1, at Blue Sky Gallery.
Avatar photo Corianton Hale

Sam Geballe (they/them) is this week’s Mercury cover artist of the week, and a San Francisco Bay Area trans/genderqueer artist who has been developing a series of self portraits since 2013. The series began as a self-portraiture concept, but developed into something more as the artist underwent gastric bypass surgery and documented their experience. In […]

Posted inVisual Art

Mercury Cover Artist of the Week: Justin “Scrappers” Morrison’s Sincere Celebrations

Making earnest art about how strange and beautiful it is to be alive right now.
Avatar photo Corianton Hale

Justin Morrison (Scrappers if you’re nasty) is a fascinating fellow who is hard to categorize. He’s a Portland-based visual artist who carves and paints brilliant little “monuments” in a primitive, outsider style that are both figural and conceptual, as well as silly, sexy, and tremendously charming. He’s also got a hefty pedigree as a designer […]

Posted inVisual Art

Hot Take at Portland State: Looms Are Computers

At Weaving Data, nine artists explore the shared history of textiles and tech.
Avatar photo Martha Daghlian

Computers are alchemical in the way that they use tiny assemblages of conductive squiggles and crystal wafers to generate images, solve complex mathematical problems, and connect people miles apart in real time. How does this transformation from material to information to image occur? Weaving Data, a group exhibition in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art […]

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