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Pearl District gallery Parallax Art Center will close June 30, “with great sadness,” executive director Chandra Glaeseman announced late last week.
“Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to secure the necessary funding to sustain our operations,” Glaeseman wrote. “As I am writing this, I’ve had to navigate the ever-present piles of human feces that show up over the weekend on our block.”
Other challenges of running the nonprofit arts organization in the Pearl District include two costly break-ins this year and having its garbage and recycling bins stolen five times. Parallax is around the corner from the car-free blocks and outdoor dining plazas of Northwest Hoyt Street. Across 14th Avenue, a “For Lease” sign hangs in nearly every window of empty street-level commercial real estate.
Glaeseman criticized the “measly” bill that was passed in the short session of the Oregon Legislature earlier this month, which gave a combined $6 million to anchor arts organizations, such as the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but stiffed smaller organizations throughout the state that are still struggling post-COVID.
“Nothing was allocated for organizations like us and others who struggle to change the status quo of the art world,” Glaeseman wrote. “Maybe people have given up and quit caring. Maybe wooden trolls are more important to the people of Portland.”
(Glaeseman is referring to Ole Bolle, the giant wooden troll installed at Nordic Northwest on Southwest Oleson Road by Danish environmental artist Thomas Dambo as part of his exhibition NWTrolls: Way of the Bird King.)
On March 18, Parallax was busy with artists up on ladders and walking around the airy 2,500-square-foot space installing their work for t4t Art Collective’s show Symbiosis, which will run March 20-29. With more than 40 artworks, including paintings, prints, collages, sculptures and two quilts, Symbiosis will be one of the biggest exhibitions by trans and gender-nonconforming artists ever presented in the U.S., according to curator Pablo V. Cazares.
t4t Art Collective has been hosting its monthly trans figure drawing classes at Parallax and will need to find a new space upon the closure.
“It’s sad,” Cazares says. “It’s a cornerstone of our community.”
Supporting artists like Cazares and t4t was part of Parallax’s mission to highlight intersectionality and introduce Portlanders to artists they wouldn’t typically encounter in the region. Symbiosis features participants who have never hung art on a gallery wall before all the way up to artists with multiple master’s degrees, Cazares says.
“Our intention was to win the hearts of the community,” Glaeseman wrote.
Symbiosis runs at Parallax Art Center, 516 NW 14th Ave., parallaxartcenter.org. 10 am-5 pm Monday-Saturday, March 20-29. Opening reception 5-8 pm Friday, March 22. Free.