John Sisley & Jesse Durost At Fourteen30 Contemporary

Think Lincoln Logs in outer space.

Visual Arts Contemporary art goes through periods when artists frantically search for new ideas, hoping to be proclaimed the aesthetic innovators du jour. Arguably, we are just now coming out of such a period and ...   More

 

Wednesday, February 11, 2009 RICHARD SPEER

Breedlove The Beautiful Boy

It’s an affair, but is it art?

Visual Arts Read a much longer version of this story here. In the wake of Sam Adams’ star-crossed affair with hunky Beau Breedlove, a group of arts leaders, including PICA’s Victoria Frey and RACC&rs ...   More

 

Wednesday, February 4, 2009 RICHARD SPEER

Evident Laura Fritz At Naau

She always leaves us wanting more—bugs and pretty lights.

Visual Arts Laura Fritz is a mistress of the arcane. With her creepily clinical work, the Portland artist leaves you disoriented, curious, perhaps even repulsed, and above all scratching your head, saying, &ldquo ...   More

 

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 RICHARD SPEER

Visual Arts Best of 2008

Bright spots in a challenging year for the arts.

Dark Corners: Dan Gilsdorf/Horia Boboia

Two installations explore the spooky corridors of the creative mind.

Visual Arts Dan Gilsdorf’s Interiotrope is a cross between Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and T.C. Boyle’s The Road to Wellville, with a smidgeon of Edgar Allan Poe thrown in. When you walk around each ...   More

 

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

The Nines

Don’t just look at local art—sleep with it.

Visual Arts What’s the artiest hotel in Portland? Competition just got stiffer thanks to the newly opened, fancy-schmancy Nines hotel, which occupies the top nine floors of the historic Meier & Frank Buildi ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Brenden Clenaghen at Pulliam Deffenbaugh

Portrait of an artist—in search of a new style.

Visual Arts Sometimes an artist needs to step back before moving forward. This is the mode Brenden Clenaghen is in with his new show We Became. For many years, Clenaghen has been one of the Northwest’s most ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Juri Morioka At Butters

The New York painter transcends the prosaic.

Visual Arts Juri Morioka’s paintings are hard to describe in prose. Try as we would to dissect the Zen influences that color this Japanese artist’s semi-abstract tableaux—strive though we ought ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Gate Closing

Why is Jennifer Gately leaving the Portland Art Museum?

Visual Arts On Sept. 16, Jennifer Gately, the Portland Art Museum’s curator for Northwest art, announced she was resigning after only two years and nine months on the job. An outpouring of disappointment fr ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Bruce Conkle at Rocksbox

Visual Arts Bruce Conkle has been in all kinds of group shows around town, and solo shows as far away as New York City and Iceland, but this is his first local solo show since 2004. As Portland’s preeminent ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 RICHARD SPEER