Arts

Best Paint-by-Number Gallery

The cultural trove that is the Heinz Records record label (728 SW 1st Ave., 249-0808) holds a secret art treasure. Besides being the HQ of Portland's favorite samba-meets-symphonic band Pink Martini, Heinz's other claim to fame is housing the best (and perhaps only) paint-by-numbers gallery. Who else other than Portland native and Pink Martini ringleader Thomas Lauderdale would be behind this bazaar of numerical ebullience? Lauderdale not only curates the "gallery," but also happens to own each paint-by-number in it. "I've always been an accumulator," admits Lauderdale, who owns over 200 paint-by-numbers and has been collecting for over four years. Next undertaking for Lauderdale besides possibly running for mayor? It might just be a paint-by-number set for the City of Portland and Pink Martini.

Best Petunia Protector

Gnomes in Ireland are called goblins. In Sweden, tomtenisse. In Malta, nanu. But locally, our pointy-capped creatures are named, naturally, "Gnome Chomsky" and "the Green Man." At Springbox Gallery (2376 NW Thurman St., 228-1600), sculptor Steve Herrington's hand-cast cement gnomes protect the store just as they would your land. Gnome Chomsky lends just the right amount of furrowed intelligence to your outdoors, but the Green Man will just creep the hell out of you—in a good way. His "leaves" are actually faces, which range from freaky-looking to deific. And Om Gnome, a golden-hued Buddha, will calm you down about the weeds. Besides being easy on the karma, Om Gnomes are also easy on the wallet, at about $48 (unpainted) to $110.

Best Greek Chorus

Greece may have given us designer John Varvatos, the Olympics, opera legend Maria Callas and kalamata olives, but it has also bestowed upon us a mind-blowing repertoire of choral music, mostly of the sacred stripe. Instead of watching me extol the glories of Byzantium-era chant and the transporting nature of choral music from the Greek Orthodox tradition, do this instead: Get your ass to a concert by Portland's own globetrotting choral all-stars, Cappella Romana. Founded and conducted by Greek guru Alexander Lingas, CR is a seven- to 25-member vocal ensemble made up of local singing royalty who manage to make 500-year-old music sound remarkably new. When they're not busy on ambitious world tours or recording CDs of otherworldly ethereal beauty ("The Fall of Constantinople" is an exquisite gem), they're strutting their stuff in a local series at St. Mary's Cathedral, with tickets starting at 15 bucks (call 236-8202 for more information). It's infinitely cheaper than hopping on an Aegean Airlines trip to Athens. And just as idyllic.

Best Room With a (3-D) View

The View-Master exhibit may be over, but the Claymation models of Cinderella are still standing. Aside from the figurines used to make the fantastical toy slides—Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh included—the 3D Center of Art & Photography (1928 NW Lovejoy St., 222-6667, 3dcenter.us) houses Ike-era 3-D movie propaganda and books of trippy landscape photography, and encourages the manhandling of hand-cranked projectors and Civil War-era 3-D equipment. The 3-year-old museum, the only one in the nation dedicated to 3-D art (yes, another geeky monument Portland can be proud of), is run by volunteers from the Cascade Stereoscopic Club, a society of Oregonians and Southern Washingtonians who prefer clunky stereo cameras and seeing the world through two separate lenses (i.e., red- and blue-tinted glasses) to pocket-sized digitals and flat, one-dimensional portraits. "We get visitors from around the world—sometimes 60 in a day and more than two dozen at a time squeezed in our little gallery," says CSC board member J. Ward O'Brien. Exhibits and short films rotate every few months (The History of 3D Comics just opened), but those interested in mastering their real life into "reel life" should mark their calendars for Sept. 19—the start of the center's four-week custom View-Master reel-making class.

Best Gold Mine

A dollar a square foot... for rent? WTF?? At this bargain-basement price, the visual and performing artists—photographers, clothing and Web designers, and theater groups like Hand2Mouth and Liminal—who occupy the ramshackle studios and performance spaces at the Goldsmith Building (20 NW 5th Ave.) may have some of the sweetest spots in town. With 68,000 square feet spread over four interconnected buildings dating from the turn of the 20th century, this quasi-abandoned former furniture-sales building is the downtown mega arts-maze Portlanders have always dreamed of: spacious artist studios and gritty performance spaces, with the Portland Art Center and Floating World Comics holding things down at street level. Sadly, this art party won't last forever. Purchased by David Gold and Howard Davis in 2005, the building will eventually be redeveloped, so in just a few years' time these artists might be on the hunt (again) for new creative homes. "It would be in our vision to include creative spaces in the redevelopment," Davis says, "but it all depends on market conditions." As PDX artists are getting priced out of every other corner of town, let's hope the "market conditions" are right for continued cheap creative spaces on the Goldsmith Blocks.

Best Minor in Possession (of a Guitar)

It's no secret that the Portland music scene is a tough place for the underage set. Even 17-year-old Charlie Stanford, whose wondrous atmospheric-jazz guitar riffage would find a perfect home in any smoky den, would never make it past the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. Says Stanford: "It's close to impossible to book shows at the high-profile jazz clubs around town, but I have torn up the pizza-place and Chinese-food circuit." Even with high-profile parents like Portland Tribune columnist Phil Stanford ("[I] could tell from the very beginning," he says of Charlie's talent) and local freelance food writer Angela Allen, the rules do not bend. No matter: The Cleveland High student's future already includes two big recording projects this summer and more time at Port Townsend, Wash.'s, hot-shit Centrum jazz center. It'll be worth the wait.

Best Junior Rockers

For the past year, the Artist Mentorship Program has helped instill confidence in homeless and at-risk Portland youth in the loudest way possible—through the power of rock. The nonprofit, funded by donations, meets every Thursday from 6 to 8 pm at the Sexual Minorities Youth Resource Center (2100 SE Belmont St., 872-9664). AMP provides both queer and non-queer kids with the tools to learn to play instruments—including on-site equipment and an army of musical mentors. It's a safe place for the youth to kick back, eat pizza, jam out and learn to play more than just air guitar. AMP also provides its protégés with opportunities to record their music in professional studios and perform live. "It's amazing to watch these kids get up onstage," says AMP founder and youth advocate William Kendall. "People go, 'Holy shit, I can't believe these kids are coming out of your program.' They're soaking it up." Rock on. For more info, visit artistmentorshipprogram.com.

Best Place to Belt One Out

We all adore musical muck-ups nearly as much as true talent—witness Sanjaya Malakar, William Hung and Britney Spears. But what to do when you're craving a veritable feast of operatic nosedives? Head to the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions concert. Held every fall at Portland State University (Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave., nwauditions.com. This year's auditions will be held Oct. 14), this is where opera's next idols either blow off the roof or crash and burn in a six-hour meta-concert that won't set you back a nickel. Warbling your way to the Met is every young diva's wet dream—it's the major leagues of the opera world, and only the most golden of throats get there. At Portland's competition (Seattle has one, too) you can sometimes catch a rising star: Last year's winner, soprano Angela Meade, went on to grab a trophy at the National Finals on the MetOpera stage. You heard her here first.

Best Porch Rocker

Rob and Emily Weston's home, located on Northeast Alberta Street between 28th and 29th avenues, looks unassuming enough, but the red-and-white bungalow is gaining notoriety. Musically, that is. Every Last Thursday for the past two summers, the Westons have added some fartsy to counteract Alberta's artsy walk. Dubbed "the Porch," the Westons' lawn draws hundreds of gawkers and beer drinkers with performances from bands like Party Country, Carl Weathers for Governor and the Headliners, who play loud and furious on the small front porch. With each month the crowds have gotten larger, making the Porch a bona fide party destination. "I revel in the fact that we can be loud as hell," says Rob, a music producer of sorts (governmentproductions.com). "I just want loud music to come out of my porch. It's cool that there's a scene around it, but if there wasn't I'd still be doing it."

Best Ménage à Chrises

They're talented. They're powerful. They have great haircuts. And all they are some of the biggest fish in Portland's arts pond. The troika that is Chris Coleman (artistic director at Portland Center Stage), Chris Mattaliano (general director at Portland Opera) and Christopher Stowell (artistic director at Oregon Ballet Theatre) may not engage in cultural three-ways, but Mattaliano and Stowell are bosom buddies, known to talk shop over pasta and pinot grigio. So, what about that long-rumored collaboration between the opera and ballet companies? According to Stowell, don't hold your breath. "The question is, who hires whom? So far, Mattaliano says he can't afford us," Stowell says. Fair enough. Why's Coleman left out of the mix? Stowell says it's not intentional, and that they sometimes cross paths at the très gay Pearl 24-Hour Fitness. Oh yeah: Coleman and Stowell are gay; Mattaliano is straight. And all three are currently unattached. Act quickly.

Most Humane Head Honcho

Who says businessmen are only in it for the big bucks? Dan O'Neill, founder of Mercy Corps, is one head honcho with a big heart. O'Neill, 57, began his mission to help others after volunteering for the Youth With a Mission Foundation. After witnessing the Killing Fields in Cambodia, where 2 million people were executed in an "ethnic cleansing," O'Neill started the Save the Refugees Fund to help Cambodian refugees find food, health care and shelter. Just two years later, in 1981, O'Neill's baby became Mercy Corps. Based in Portland, Mercy Corps (mercycorps.org) has exploded into a global charity and been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The organization that started with O'Neill and his dream has raised over $1 billion in 100 nations—including relief for those hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Nigerian food crisis and America's own disaster: Hurricane Katrina. "Sometimes you see too much in this business, resulting in horror fatigue," says O'Neill, who currently resides in Sammamish, Wash., with his wife, Cherry, and five children. "But you use the nightmare for fuel...to keep making a difference." He is proof that just one little Portlander can improve the world.

Best Music-Making Multi-Tasker

Pianist Darrell Grant shows his love of the keys every time he steps onto a stage in Portland or in front of a class to teach music at Portland State University. But the part you can't hear is his love for community—first for New York (where he was a bit of a golden boy on the scene, working up to shows with legends Betty Carter and Junior Cook), and, for the past decade, for our fair city. It's a town into which Grant has thrown himself, passing up a high-profile gig at the Berklee College of Music to stay here and found the Leroy Vinnegar Jazz Institute at Portland State University (Vinnegar was a local jazz keystone). Grant's latest disc, Truth and Reconciliation, is all about the greater good, literally: Five bucks from every sale goes to a local charity. Community love aside, Grant has an appeal and mastery on the keys few in his field can touch, bringing together forms from pop to old bop to Latin. He can be heard anywhere from NPR to your local jazz club to the festival circuit, including Seattle's indie-rock orgy Bumbershoot this Labor Day.

Best "Safe House" For Creative Types

The one place in Old Town to see some eyes bulge without having to call the cops is Floating World Comics (20 NW 5th Ave., Suite 101, 241-0227, floatingworldcomics.com). At this small shop lurking just at the fringe of the "zone," find everything from Dirty Found to epilepsy-inducing Paper Rad animation screenings to standard-issue DC and Marvel comic-geek fodder—and possibly some twisted combination of all of it. Founder and owner Jason Leivian sums it up: "[It] looks like a comic store, but I like to think of [Floating World] as a front for subversive acts of love and creativity."

Best Band Marching to the Beat of Its Own Drums

So the marching-band whiz kids (ages 15 to 21) in the 70-strong Oregon Crusaders (oregoncrusaders.org) may not be as cutthroat as the drumstick-snatching thugs in the 2002 movie Drumline, but that's because they're too busy picking up their own national awards for color-guard antics. The Crusaders's new executive director, 39-year-old Phil Marshall, M.D., calls his group "the best music ensemble in Oregon you probably haven't heard." He should know. Before becoming a doc (he was one of the first five hires, and is currently a vice president, for the highly successful health information site WebMD.com) Marshall spent his formative years performing and choreographing for some of the best bands in the country. Next week you can head south and check out the goods for yourself at a "home show" at Willamette University's McCulloch Stadium (900 State St., Salem, 7 pm Monday, July 30). This big band of precision percussion, dance and brass musicians, some from as far away as Japan, will perform bad-ass contemporary classical music by Philip Glass and Ney Rosauro in a new program called Gates as part of yet one more national competition tour.

Best Way to Stay Alert at an Opera

Admit it. You wish you could drink before the fat lady sings. And when Carmen's getting her throat slashed or Gretel's getting molested by that wicked witch, a Maker's on the rocks would really help things along. Never fear: Opera Theater Oregon (operatheateroregon.com) to the rescue. This newish opera-misfits collective, led by sassy stage directress Katie Taylor and hip-chick impresario Amy Russell Cathey, offers a badass opera series at the Someday Lounge (125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030). The inventive shows range from Five Minute Faust (Gounod's opera in abbreviated form), to the outlandish popera-cabaret Will Kill for Vaudeville, and a new film series with live opera singers (next up: "DADA Night," Aug. 4). We guarantee it's the only place you'll see a Handel aria performed as a bump-'n'-grind Gypsy Rose Lee striptease. And your Screwdriver is at arm's length. Now that's worth singing about.

Best Little Piece of Hollywood

That's what projectionist Larry Hunt called the Screening Room (925 NW 19th Ave., 936-0676, screeningrm.com) back when he worked there in the 1940s and '50s. Since it was built, in the 1920s, the building has served as a private screening room for everyone from Jimmy Stewart to Gus Van Sant. In the late '80s owner Vernon Vinciguerra, a.k.a. "V.," began renting it out for private parties. When event planner John Ellison and real-estate pal Adam Bowdish bought the business this April, they decided it needed some work. "The whole thing was red and then had carpet coming up the walls," remembers Bowdish. So they hired local designer Amy Vail to restore the historic space to its 1930s glory. Now, instead of desk lamps hanging from the ceiling, there are classy chandeliers, with art deco chairs and a digital projector so that local filmmakers and newlyweds alike can pretend they're Spielberg or DeMille. Drop by for the open house on Aug. 1—the Screening Room is ready for its close-up.

Best Actor with an Ironclad Stomach

Portland is full to bursting with talented actors who deserve recognition, but in the past year, none has made so large an impression as Todd Van Voris, a blond 35-year-old with a sonorous baritone and eyebrows that could easily forge a successful career of their own. Van Voris, who has been acting in Portland since moving here from New York on Sept. 10, 2001 ("We woke up in the hotel and turned on the news," he says, "and thought, my God, I'm glad I'm not there."), managed to fit four outstanding performances into the 2006-'07 season; in Betrayal (for which he won a Drammy), Inspecting Carol, Arcadia and most recently as an uncannily real Orson Welles in Artists Repertory Theatre's Orson's Shadow, a role that required him to plow through most of two steaks, a baked potato, a scone and an entire bologna sandwich every evening. If you haven't yet heard Van Voris' velvet voice, you can catch him answering phones at the Portland Opera box office, or see him onstage this September in House and Garden at ART.

Best Words To Live By

Alternative therapies are big business, to be sure: think naturopathy, faith healing, power yoga. Who doesn't want to feel good, whatever the price? Thankfully, the Well Arts Institute (2710 NE 14th Ave., 459-4500, wellarts.org), Portland's own artful answer to healing, doesn't smack of spiritual dogma or herbal cure-alls and won't run you a couple hundred bucks. By bringing together clients from Oregon Health & Science University, the Portland Veterans Center and other healing services with Portland-based writers and actors to stage their chronicles of cancer battles and war trauma, Well Arts offers the best kind of communal healing possible, according to board president Michael Teufel: "We change lives and improve the wellness of our community by telling our stories." The Institute's recent sold-out show on drug and alcohol addiction at the Interstate Firehouse Center is testament to the power of its work.

Best Lab for Boy Scientists

Ray Di Carlo, David Daniels and Chel White are complete opposites, but, as White says, that makes them the ideal trio to run Bent Image Lab (2729 SE Division St., 228-6206, bentimagelab.com), the animation studio they founded in 2002. These guys do have one thing in common, though: They're all award-winning pros. Di Carlo started out doing effects for James Cameron's The Abyss; Daniels is a veteran of Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Portland's own Vinton Studios; and White just directed a film for Al Gore's Live Earth event. The family that animates together stays together, and when White got stranded in a Mount Hood snowstorm, it was the Bent gang who organized a search party. "I promised myself I'd make a movie about the experience if I lived through it," says White, and now he's keeping his promise. Striving to keep things local, this "clubhouse for filmmakers" recently produced a spectacular effects scene for Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, the fourth film by the Portland director to feature Bent's magic.

WWeek 2015