Diego Rivera, Landscape with Cacti PHOTO BY GERARDO SUTER, COURTESY OF THE PORTLAND ART MUSEUM Standing in front of Landscape with Cacti, a massive landscape oil painting that muralist Diego Rivera painted in 1931, feels like standing with friends in happy company—if your friends happen to be five-feet-tall cacti on canvas. They meander over a […]
Visual Art
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City Considers New Placement for Cleaned and Buffed Downtown Elk Statue
Suzette Smith This week, City Commissioner Carmen Rubio’s office announced that the bronze Thompson Elk statue—which formerly stood on a stone pedestal on SW Main—will return downtown. It isn’t a given that the statue will return to its old post, between the Chapman Square and Lownsdale Square parks, as the granite base and octagonal basin […]
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Brett and Moon Westfall See Hope for Humanity in Signs of Life Art & Fashion Exhibition
photo by Andrew Jankowski The strawberries in visual artist and menswear designer Brett Westfall’s signature “Fresh” produce motif are inspired by ten days in 2007 he and a colleague spent stranded in Patterson, California, a rural farming town known for its apricots. Westfall, a friend and collaborator of Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo, studied […]
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Portland Winter Is Coming. Brighten Your Days With These Vibrant Visual Art Experiences
A piece from random [8] by artist Noah Matteucci. Courtesy of Agenda The sun is setting earlier, you’re back to taking a vitamin D supplement, and the Portland Oregon White Stag Sign is donning its festive red nose. The clean slate of the New Year is around the corner. This season, many noteworthy visual art […]
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Arts Festival TBA Ends This Sunday—Don’t Miss These Two Stand-Out Experiences
The Drift is a virtual reality experience and publication is described as “a visual archive of the future.” GARRICK IMATANI WITH TRAVIS STEWART AND THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF GRAND RONDE. This year’s Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) featured numerous virtual offerings—from video performances to artists’ talks and panels, most of which are available to stream online […]
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Our Favorite Virtual Events at the Time-Based Art Festival, Happening Now
Artist Holland Andrews’ piece for TBA, There You Are, will take place via phone call and text message. Ariel Crocker Opening night of this year’s Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) felt cautiously optimistic. I have seen art shows during the pandemic, but not a live performance yet. I arrived at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art […]
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St. Johns Camera Shop Blue Moon Keeps Analog Photography Alive in Portland
Courtesy of blue moon Since 2001, Blue Moon Camera & Machine has operated out of a quaint storefront on North Lombard Street in St. John’s. Gilded lettering accents the windows of the sky-colored building, where old cameras from decades past stand atop tripods, a functional museum. I recently had the chance to learn more about […]
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PAM’s Ansel Adams Exhibit Honors, and Challenges, Photographer’s Legacy Through a Contemporary Lens
A display of Adams’ photographs originally published as a 16-print portfolio in 1927—one of the first collections ever to be released in this manner. Sean Bascom Ansel Adams might be the most famous photographer of all time. Even if you don’t know his name, you have likely seen his arresting black and white images of […]
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Portland Photographer Showcases Black Cowboys in the Rodeo Capital of the World
Ivan McClellan Photographer Ivan McClellan grew up watching Western movies and Bonanza reruns, and going to rodeos with his family in Kansas City. But as a kid, he never saw earnest depictions of cowboys that looked like him. “I didn’t know a thing about Black cowboys,” says McClellan in a recent interview with the Mercury. […]
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Portland Art Museum Reopens With Upcoming Ansel Adams Exhibit, Kahlo and Rivera in 2022, and More
Frida Kahlo, Diego on my Mind, 1943. After a rocky pandemic year, the Portland Art Museum (PAM) is reopening with a vengeance. The museum reopened to limited-capacity visitors last week—and today, PAM shared new details on a stacked lineup of programs and exhibits from now through the the first half of 2022. On May 5, […]
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Q&A: After 18 Years, Matt Bors Is Retiring His Weekly Political Cartoons
A Matt Bors comic strip from an old print edition of the Mercury. Blair Stenvick Cartoonist Matt Bors announced last week that he’ll no longer be creating and publishing weekly political cartoons—18 years and over 1,600 cartoons after the former Portlander and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist first started making them. Bors is very much staying […]