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NW PORTLAND

Megan Murphy

Sandwiched between two glass plates, Megan Murphy’s grayscale paintings look fashioned from highly reflective metal. They exude glamor but are not quite glamorous. They are, according to the artist, imbued with sociopolitical undertones, yet they betray no such inklings to the lay viewer. In short, they project nothing they would presume to project but nevertheless rivet the eye with studious panache. RICHARD SPEER. PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063. Closes Jan. 30. Map

Mel George

During the 10 years she lived in Portland, Australian artist Mel George was always homesick for the Land Down Under. Now that she’s recently returned to her native country, she’s nostalgic for Portland. Isn’t that the way it always is? George explores her grass-is-always-greener conundrum in her affectionate remembrance of Portland, titled Reminders. She has a gift for creating intimately scaled sculptures out of kiln-formed glass. Many of the works can be held in the palm of the hand, like souvenirs, which are memories made tangible. This show promises a tender look back at a place the artist never considered home until she left it. RICHARD SPEER. Bullseye Gallery, 300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222., 227-0222. Closes Jan. 23. Map

Rachel Davis

Rachel Davis’ recent trip to China influenced the watercolors in her current show. Perhaps the most compelling work on display is Family Tree, in which a flowering botanical motif branches and grows diagonally across the composition, terminating in a crowded cityscape in the work’s upper right-hand corner. Formally, the elegant interaction between positive and negative space complements the work’s thematic gist, illustrating how the poetic expansiveness of Chinese philosophy and aesthetics has compacted over time into modern China’s cacophonous density. RICHARD SPEER. Chambers @ 916, 916 NW Flanders St., 227-9398. Closes Dec. 30. Map

Christopher Rauschenberg

Christopher Rauschenberg’s photographic souvenirs from a Paris flea market document quirky sprawls of ceramic bric-a-brac, knockoff Chippendale mirrors and furniture in dire need of reupholstering. The market’s claustrophobic clutter is nicely counterbalanced by its austere hang in Leach’s front gallery. In the back gallery, sculptor Lee Kelly’s recent sculptures in welded steel juxtapose calligraphic-looking characters against flat backgrounds. These are jaunty, vibrant compositions, although the gold-leaf accents are overkill. RICHARD SPEER. Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521. Jan. 7-30. Map

Lee M. Hale

In Mind if I Smoke, Lee M. Hale offers an affectionately morbid tribute to her mother, who died of lung cancer. Seven intricate mobiles hang from the ceiling, each created from myriad cigarette filters, floating overhead like smoke rings: beautiful and delicate, but toxic. Adorning the walls are gorgeous prints of cigarette butts stained with her mother’s pink lipstick, the butts gathered from her mother’s home a few days after her death. A grimly clever sculpture presents several cigarette butts reimagined as insects on wire feet. One of them is on its back, dead. This is a tender, knowing show, full of heartbreak and the humor that tries to balm it. RICHARD SPEER. Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 227-7114. Show runs Jan. 7-31. Map

Drawings: Group Show

Who would ever think a rectangle of blue fabric with white stitching could be so lyrical? Yet Palmarin Merges’ Krakatoa Before the Eruption manages to turn humdrum media into an insinuating song about fashion and fine art. If an American Apparel shirt had magic powers and could discourse about postmodern art and craft, this is what it would look—er, sound—like. OK, trust me, the piece works better than this metaphor. It’s by far the wittiest thing in this otherwise uneven group show. RICHARD SPEER. Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th Ave., 234-2634. Closes Jan. 30. Map

Re:PORT

It’s hard to believe the indispensable and occasionally maddening arts blog PORT (portlandartnet.net) has been around five years now. To celebrate, PORT’s publisher Jeff Jahn curated the group show Re:PORT, which features work by artists and writers who have contributed to the site. Highlights include Nicky Kriara’s Jay De Feo-esque monstrosity of an acrylic painting, which in spots protrudes a good 3 inches from the picture plane; Megan Driscoll’s moody beachscape; and Gary Wiseman’s Fear of Getting Caught. Wiseman’s installation mocks up a taxidermic deer wearing jeans and a checkered shirt, ostensibly caught by Mother Bambi in the act of masturbating. The piece is primal, disturbing and hard to forget. RICHARD SPEER. Gallery 114, 1100 NW Glisan St., 243-3356. Closes Jan. 30. Map

SW PORTLAND

China Design Now

There is extraordinary design work being done in China, but it gets lost in the claustrophobic mess that is Portland Art Museum’s China Design Now. In its rush to overwhelm the viewer in a multimedia mishmash of more than 100 designers, the exhibition propagates the worst stereotypes of Chinese Communism: authoritarian rule, overpopulation and the marginalization of the individual. The exhibition space is jam-packed with posters hung too close together, Unme dolls, jackets and dresses and tennis shoes, architectural maquettes, and computers with Chinese websites on the browsers. There’s a horrifically garish bar-and-bar stool ensemble by a trio of Shanghai designers and an entire stairwell wallpapered with magazine covers. Hell, there’s everything except the torch from the Beijing Olympics. Oh, sorry, there’s that, too. What is lost in this horrific melee is the truism that design is predicated on one individual’s response to one product. A designer who understands that is Lin Jin, whose immaculate tea set—all biomorphic forms and swanlike cream pitcher—is nearly lost in all the fuss. RICHARD SPEER. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-0973. Closes Jan. 17. Map

Becca Bernstein & Gwenn Seemel

It’s an intriguing concept: Becca Bernstein paints a portrait of one of her friends or family members. Then Gwenn Seemel paints the same person—except she doesn’t know them from Adam. Next, it’s Seemel’s turn to paint her kinfolk, who are unknown to Becca. Switching off like this, they’re left with a series in which two portraits hang side by side, each painting of the same individual, one created by an intimate, the other by a stranger. Would you be able to tell which was painted by which artist? RICHARD SPEER. North View Gallery at Portland Community College Sylvania Campus, 12000 SW 49th Ave., 997-4264. Show runs Jan. 7-Feb. 5. Map

NORTH PDX PORTLAND

NE PORTLAND

SE PORTLAND

Already Dead

Move over, Twilight. Take five, True Blood. Ann Ploeger, a photographer perhaps best known for her dispassionate domestic portraits, goes for the goth in her new series, the deliciously sanguine Already Dead. Ploeger photographs subjects in front of white backdrops, their milky skin stained with garish fake blood. It’s as if the late Richard Avedon has been summoned back from the dead to art-direct the latest Saw flick. We really can’t describe the subject matter any better than the photographer herself does in her artist statement: “blood, plain and simple; blood and artificial pain, leaking orifices, leaking heads—the visceral redness of it.” This is an exhibition not to miss, although you might be wise to wear a cross and a garlic clove or two to the opening. RICHARD SPEER. Pushdot, 1021 SE Caruthers St., 224-5925. Show runs Dec. 4-Jan. 29. Map

Corey Davis & Blue Mitchell

Gimmick, schmimick! Corey Davis photographs coffee grounds in the bottom of Japanese teacups. Blue Mitchell burns his photo negatives, then transfers the images to wood panels. Who cares if the works are gimmicky—they’re beautiful! Davis’ compositions exude minimalist elegance, while Mitchell’s come alive with drama and hyper-real intensity. This promises to be a satisfying and well-paired double bill. RICHARD SPEER. Newspace Center for Photography, 1632 SE 10th Ave., 963-1935. Show runs Jan. 8-31. Map

Color Explosion

Focus on Youth presents an exhibit of digital photography by local at-risk teenagers. NATALIE BAKER. City of Gresham Visual Arts Gallery, 1333 NW Eastman Parkway, Gresham., . Closes March 4. Map

Little Gems

Many of the diminutive works in Little Gems pack disproportionate visual panache. Peter Opheim’s paintings are pregnant with sensual brushstrokes and biomorphic forms, while Monroe Hodder’s horizontal stripes crackle with luscious texture. Howard Hersh’s milky encaustic panels are as blatant as Dorothy Goode’s egg tempera and sumi-e ink studies are subtle. All in all, Little Gems suggests that size matters, but technique matters more. RICHARD SPEER. Butters, 520 NW Davis St., 2nd floor., 248-9378. Closes Jan. 30. Map

Céline Clanet

From 2005 to 2009, French photographer Céline Clanet spent time in the Norwegian village of Máze, population 350, north of the Arctic Circle in the barren reaches of the Lapland. Half the residents there are reindeer herders, and in Clanet’s photo essay, she documents their lives, which have changed little over the centuries. Yet, with the progression of global warming, changes are on the way. Reindeer, if they survive, will migrate differently, and ice will melt. In photos such as the sublime Morning Sun Over Tundra, the artist displays a brilliant eye for landscape, while in Watching the Fire, she channels her inner portraitist, showing us a man tired from the day’s work, sitting before a wood-burning stove, clutching a beer, vacant-eyed. There’s a pit-of-your-gut Scandinavian melancholy in this piece, and in the show as a whole, that stays with you. RICHARD SPEER. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Closes Jan. 31. Map

John Mann

In Folded in Place, John Mann shows what a photographer can do working within limited parameters. Which is to say, he basically photographs pieces of maps. But oh, how he photographs them, varying depth of field, blurring backgrounds, altering the maps by creasing and propping them up, slicing and dicing, and mounting them on sticks. The cleverest of his untitled prints shows an irregularly cut map piece set next to a chunk of plaster whose contours are its mirror image. It’s a Zen, one-hand-clapping moment that makes you wonder whether this is conceptual art of a high order or stoner art of a High Times order. Whichever it is, we like it. RICHARD SPEER. PDX Across the Hall, 929 NW Flanders St., . Closes Jan. 30. Map

Royal Nebeker

While many of Royal Nebeker’s monotypes are inspired (Contrapposto), others are middling (Waitin’ for a Factory Girl), and some—namely, his collages of museum tickets, lotto cards and postage stamps—are hackneyed beyond the lowest nadirs of bad taste and with any luck will wind up exhibited on a dedicated rung of hell. RICHARD SPEER. Augen (DeSoto Bldg), 716 NW Davis St., 224-8182. Closes Jan. 30. Map

Scott Wolniak

Patterning is about pattern, yes, but it’s also about Chicago artist Scott Wolniak’s relationship to the Windy City’s miserable winters. He drolly presents a suite of “Simulated Sunprints” made in the dead of winter, not with sunlight but with bleach. The sprawling lawn that makes up his sculptural installation is not actual, verdant, inviting grass but a hodgepodge of trash from his studio, held together with wires. Even his sunny tie-dyed patterns, though meticulously drawn, are leached of all color. Only his trippy video animation, Musical Notes in Harmony With the Attuned Healing Colors, with its soundtrack by Jim Dorling, lets the sun shine in. RICHARD SPEER. Chambers @ 916, 916 NW Flanders St., 227-9398. Closes Feb. 27. Map

Winter Kills

Portland loves microbrews, so why wouldn’t a local gallery mount a beer-themed group show? Like beer itself, Winter Kills, sponsored by Ninkasi Brewing Co., is a frothy and silly-making affair featuring agreeably ridiculous works like Azad Sadjadi’s Here Again, with its heavy-lidded Neanderthals hoisting pints to their mouths, and Kellie West’s Beach Fire channeling bad Michael Brophy—or is it good Michael Brophy? RICHARD SPEER. Anka Gallery, 325 NW 6th Ave., 224-5721. Closes Jan. 27. Map