CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

LiveWire! 100th Live Show

The centennial performance promises a heady lineup including Susan Orlean, Thomas Lauderdale, and Ron Funches

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 15, 2012 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

It’s hard to believe our little variety radio show that could is hitting the hundred-show mark. Seems like it was just yesterday that they were teaching us for the first time to chant along with “It’s… It’s… LiveWire!” Now we chant it with the conditioned ease of Pavlov’s salivating dogs (though I wouldn’t put it past them to also be pumping meat powder through the forced air system).

And what a celebratory lineup they have in store for us! There’s author and New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, KEEN CEO James Curleigh, the Portland Cello Project, the Long Winters frontman John Roderick, and pianist-about-town Thomas Lauderdale, who’s partnering up with friend and civic activist Kathleen Saadat for “a unique musical adventure.”

But we’re particularly excited to see Portland comedian Ron Funches, who recently sat down with PM contributing writer Rebecca Waits for a Long Story Short interview. It comes out in the April issue, but in celebration of LiveWire!, we’re putting it up early for you.

Also, watch him kill it on Conan.

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Book Review: DIY Magic

Anthony Alvorado’s DIY Magic offers pragmatists a path to the sublime surreal. Take it or leave it.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Mar 15, 2012 at 06:00AM 0 Comments

What’s the best way to “magic up” your daily life? If, like Anthony Alvorado, you’ve already found “The Secret” simplistic and Paganism arcane, (and if you secretly chafe at copious homework a la The Artist’s Way’) you might try DIY Magic, the newest title from fledgling publisher Floating World and a writer who claims to have tried it all, retaining only the most practical strategies.

A first edition for Floating World, this surprisingly non-comicbook sheaf of philosophical prose (with just a few illustrations) comes in a limited-edition, highly gift-able silver foiled cover whose branchy filigree conjures the mythic experience of cracking a book of spells. And Alvorado breaks down his findings in a credibly offhanded style that could as easily come from a knowledgeable and unpretentious older bro: How to experiment with lucid dreaming, legal drugs, and French philosophy. How having a conversation with a “crazy” person can be a catalyst for exploding your petty paradigms.* And how, ultimately, your intuition is the most potent element of the potion. “[Modern magic] demands an eccentric and confident personality who doesn’t give a fig what others think,” he writes. “Keep what works.”

As the book draws to an admittedly inconclusive close, Alvorado throws one last suggestion over his shoulder: “Have fun.” And then, like a vulpine spirit guide, he lopes off over the next rise, whether we follow or no.

*Having worked as a Social Worker, the author makes this case with many careful disclaimers.

The DIY Magic release party will be held at Floating World Comics (400 NW Couch St) Wednesday, Mar 21 from 6–8pm.

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NPR’s World Cafe Is Trollin’ around the Portland Music Scene

NPR Music rivals the New York Times in its love of Portland

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 14, 2012 at 04:00PM 0 Comments

World Cafe, a fantastic music program on NPR that OPB sadly doesn’t carry (hello, OPB, do we really need Terry Gross twice a day?), is currently pointing its microphone Portland’s way. For the second installment in their new quarterly series, Sense of Place (the first stop was Dublin), host David Dye and company visited town last September to put together a week long series that’s airing this week. Yesterday they kicked off with an interview with Colin Meloy about The Decemberists and how Portland’s music scene has changed in the last 10 years. Today they talked with Music Millennium owner Terry Currier about the history of local record stores and bands, many of whom he played on the show, from Paul Revere & The Raiders to Laura Veirs. Still to come: an interview with producer Tucker Martine and more. Also, there’s a Portland playlist and interactive map containing songs and locations you undoubtedly already know, because you live here.

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Video Preview: Kidd Pivot

Posted by: Anne Adams on Mar 13, 2012 at 08:00AM 0 Comments

Mar 15–17 What would you get if you crossed the puppetry of Being John Malkovich and Broadway’s The Lion King, with the eerie feel of fantasy dance webseries The LXD? Probably something like Kidd Pivot’s Dark Matters, which comes to the Newmark tomorrow courtesy of White Bird. The ominous title probes the more troubling corners of the human psyche, also describing a characteristic of the piece: areas of the stage that seem to simply be bathed in darkness, are actually peopled by shadowy puppetmasters. As any physicist or little kid will tell you, darkness isn’t empty; there are things in it.

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Review: Shakespeare’s R&J

A gripping adaptation that makes Romeo and Juliet fresh again. Through March 18

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 10, 2012 at 11:30AM 2 Comments

Sean Powell gives a stirring performance as the lovestruck…Mercutio? Photo by Casey Campbell

I’m not a big fan of Romeo and Juliet. Like most, I read it in high school and have seen more traditional productions and adaptations than I care to remember: Romeo and Juliet: The Musical; Romeo and Juliet Take Miami, starring Leo and Claire; Romeo and Juliet: Inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Breasts; although thankfully not Gnomeo and Juliet—at least, not yet. For me, it comes down to the fact that it’s near impossible for the greatest love story ever told to rise far enough above its own overdone cliché to strike contemporary audiences with the power it no doubt once possessed.

So I don’t say this lightly: Google map Hillsboro’s Venetian Theatre, get in your car, and go see Bag&Baggage’s production of Shakespeare’s R&J before it’s over next weekend. Like no adaptation I’ve seen, it re-instills the raw, dangerous, thrilling, and emotional poignancy that the story lost somewhere between Gounod’s opera and Dire Straits’ “A lovestruck Romeo…”

The premise seems simple: four Catholic schoolboys discover a banned copy of R&J and proceed to act it out, each playing a number of roles. But playwright Joe Calarco, despite adding almost no new dialogue (the boys’ daily routine is established through simple choreographed pantomime), creates a nuanced and heart-wrenching story beneath the story.

At first, the boys attack the roles with the overacting zeal of, well, schoolboys, tossing their one copy back and forth, prancing their way through the female roles, and showing off for each other’s amusement. But quickly the story intrudes into their unexamined identities and relationships and begins to sweep them away. As Romeo and Juliet fall in love in the play, the boys playing their parts (Samuel Benedict and Phillip Berns) seem to fall, too, kissing for the first time with all the trepidation of two star-crossed young virgins at the start of their sexual awakening, lingering on each other’s lips well into the scene change, despite the shouts of “thou shalt not!” from the other two boys, who reel from the taboo.

Although an all male cast could simply be a return to the way theater was performed during Shakespeare’s time, Calarco’s play within a play introduces a homoerotic tension that creates a new subtext to everything said. In effect, two plays unfold at once, and yet the duality paradoxically seems closer to the beating heart of Shakespeare’s original than a straightforward contemporary production. Homosexuality, particularly in a religious all boy setting, creates a forbidden love that resonates with modern audiences in a way that forbidden love between warring families does not. Same sex couples today come far closer to the threat Romeo and Juliet faced of being rejected and even exiled by their families than any opposite sex couple.

Calarco doesn’t stop there, though. From the start, the boy playing both Mercutio and the Friar expresses a latent attraction to the boy playing Romeo, but then is forced to stand by and watch Romeo fall for Juliet (complex, silent drama unfolds between the boys even as they watch the scenes they’re not in). Performed with elastic, electric charisma by Sean Powell, he grows increasingly lovelorn and unhinged, and almost every line he says takes on an uncannily perfect double meaning that adds new charge. When Mercutio talks about how quickly Romeo deserted his first love, Rosaline, it’s like he’s talking about his own abandonment. And in his gripping death scene, as he casts a plague on the houses Montague and Capulet, he condemns too the boys playing Romeo and Juliet.

Meanwhile, the fourth boy, played by Ian Kane, is the sole homophobic holdout. He stands in for much of society then and now, watching with disgust as passions unfold.

Ultimately, none of the boys have the ability to deal with the dangerous intensity of the feelings the play awakens—lust, sensuality, disgust, love, hate. The play becomes so real by the end that it leaves them disheveled, sweating, and deeply changed, and the audience along with it. It’s the simple idea that a play can change a life, like Romeo and Juliet should do.

The stage is spare, but the actors fill it with such energy and zest, particularly during the grandly choreographed fight scenes, that it doesn’t for a minute feel empty. Though young, they all feel like seasoned Shakespearean actors capable of inhabiting his verse with all the added nuance Calarco’s adaptation instills, and they move with finely tuned harmony under the direction of visiting Glaswegian artist Jennifer Dick.

I understand: Hillsboro is a haul. Perhaps make an outing of it with dinner and drinks at the Venetian’s vaulted restaurant. But if you want to understand what it’s like to watch Romeo and Juliet for the first time again, untainted by all the predecessors, make the trip.

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Tags: Theater, Review, Shakespeare

Mike Daisey Spreads Agony/Ecstasy in Free Download

Posted by: Anne Adams on Mar 10, 2012 at 08:00AM 0 Comments

Performance monologist Mike Daisey finds more ways to disperse his crisis of conscience over Mac manufacturing throughout the world.

Monologist Mike Daisey is a well-known personality among Portland arts audiences, and especially fans of Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s annual Time-Based Art Festival (or TBA), who marvelled at his 2011 effort, a 24-hour monologue called All The Hours in the Day . But prior to this exhaustive oration, Daisey had picked up a lot of steam as a Mac Products whistle-blower, attempting to hold the company to task for its inhumane treatment of Chinese factory workers. Having visited the factories in person and seen the conditions for himself, Daisey crafted and staged a powerful 2-hour speech, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs . Now, after a nearly two-year run, he’s ready to—not so much retire the production, as disseminate it.

“We have now given away the transcript of AGONY/ECSTASY under an open performance license, so that it can be performed royalty-free, anywhere, anytime, by anyone,” announced a recent press release from Daisey and his wife and producer Jean-Michele Gregory. “Want to read it? Perform it? Adapt it?”

Go for it!

In the first week it was made available, the Daisey camp reports that the work was downloaded over 60,000 times, “more than any new American play has sold over the last decade,” apparently spawning over twenty productions all over the world, from Chicago to Kurdistan.

For more information about Daisey’s work and the conundrums of conscience posed by Mac products, visit Daisey’s website or catch him on NPR’s This American Life with Ira Glass.

For more about Portland arts events, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Meet Beyoncé’s Badass Bandleader

Preparing to share her weekend with Girls Inc, PDX-based lead guitarist Bibi McGill talks about music, empowerment, and her plans for an “eco-empire.”

Posted by: Anne Adams on Mar 08, 2012 at 12:00PM 3 Comments

If you think this weekend’s event roster looks…especially “woman-y,” you’re not wrong, and there’s a simple explanation: Today is International Women’s Day , conveniently coinciding with local women’s film festival POWFest and tomorrow’s Girls Inc. fundraiser The Power of the Purse , a charity auction of celebrity-designed purses. As it happens, one of the event’s high-profile contributors is Bibi McGill, lead guitarist and bandleader of Suga Mama, Beyoncé’s ten-member, all-female live backing band.

While we normally leave news about wearables to our sister-blogger Eden Dawn at Shop Talk , Culturephile couldn’t pass up an excuse to pepper a locally-based, globally known musician like Bibi with a few questions. (And it’s just as well, since she refuses to dish about the bag she’s designed, insisting it should be “a surprise.”) No mere musician, Bibi bills herself as a renaissance woman, practicing health and wellness (and yoga) with the same vigor that she brings to her guitar. While Beyoncé enjoys a well-earned maternity leave, Bibi shares plans to feed, teach, and inspire the people of Portland.

How much of your time is spent in Portland, versus on the road? When you’re in town, do you perform/go out, or do you prefer to relax and lay low?
I still lived in LA when I first signed up with Beyonce. My first tour with her, “The Beyonce Experience Tour” lasted about 1 1/2 years and as soon as it was done I moved to Portland, where I had about 10 months off to set up my home and decompress from the hectic tour schedule. It was almost like I didn’t get a break, but I was so happy to be in Portland, the city I had dreams of living in for 15 years prior to ever visiting here. I’ve been here for 5 years now, but I still feel like I’m just getting to know the city. So far, I’ve toured to support three Beyonce albums and normally a tour last about 1–1 1/2 years, and then I have about 8-10 months to recover.

[Between tours] I don’t pick up my guitar really, but I love to do DJ Electronic Music. Down time is my time to take care of myself and do other things that I also love or miss out on while touring. I love being outside in nature, with my animals, in my garden, on the water kayaking and going to lots of meetup groups interested in raw food, spiritual growth and development, and other things I’m interested in. Yes, I relax and lay low.

Where are the other bandmates in Suga Mama based, and where do you all rehearse?
Well, when I began with Beyonce, I was the only band member in LA. But I’ve been in Portland for about five years now. Two band members are still in LA, and others are in New York, Atlanta, New Jersey, Boston and Houston. When it’s time to rehearse, we’re usually in New York for about two or three months straight.

Besides great musicianship, what other qualities do the members of Suga Mama share?
Hmm…I dunno. When we’re working I don’t get to see too many qualities in anyone, outside of a fast-paced work schedule. We obviously have art, music and creativity in common, and we all have the desire to encourage and empower young girls, women, and everyone all over the world. What what we do, you can do. Follow your dreams and believe in yourself and all things are possible! I know that all the band shares that belief, and we know it from experience.

Is the music business finally getting better for women?
The music industry has been getting better for a very long time. I’ve never had a major problem being embraced by this industry, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. As with anything…I had to work very hard for many years. Certainly more doors are opening for more women in this industry and we are walking thru them. What I really see happening is women, young and old, are seeing other girls/women in a positions of power, playing drums, guitar, trumpets etc. Girls in music grow up thinking that they have to play the flute, piano or clarinet. When they see us do what we’re doing they get inspired and realize that they can do whatever they want to do. I’ve also seen a huge spawn of women musicians surge and come out of the woodwork. They are so incredibly talented and evolved in their craft, and they are better than the males because they do what they do with a more feminine energy and less aggressive approach—less testosterone. That energy is recognized as being different, and it’s being received as a breath of fresh air.

What’s your message for this generation of girls?
My message for this generation of Girls? Girls, we are the message. We hold the message. Women are carrying the message now. It is time for every woman and girl to step into our power and lead. Follow your ideas, dreams and passions. Don’t underestimate or second-guess how you feel, and what is in harmony with you. Male and female energy has been out of balance for eons. No more! It’s time for men to embrace the divine strength in women, and humble themselves with an open heart and let us lead. We run the world now!

We know Beyoncé just had a baby; how much R&R does that buy you before you get back out on the road?
Who knows? Beyoncé isn’t obligated to hire any of us back; you got a job for me? [Laugh.]

Tell us your vision for the “eco-empire,” and so far what places/businesses in Portland have you annexed?
I intend to replace the potato chip by the year 2015! I have an organic, vegan, raw, gluten-free snack called Bibi KALE Chips, which have been a hot item over the past year in Portland. I have also frequently shipped them to Croatia, Venezuela, London, Australia and Ireland. I get requests for them all over the world, and it’s wonderful to be able to offer and high-vibrational, nutrient-dense snack as an alternative to all the junk that’s out there making and keeping people sick, in dis-ease and imbalance. I’m diversifying my business and have plans to offer at least 4-6 new flavors of kale chips, in addition to some other healthy and delicious snack and food products.

My long-term plan is to have my own farm, processing and shipping facility on the same land—much like a mini “Edgefield.” I’ll have a wellness center/spa that offers yoga, massage, and healing with essential oils and plant medicines, as well as other natural healing modalities. I will have a vegan/vegetarian restaurant, as well as food cart dining strategically placed on the land. There will be music, art, and animals—a place for children and the community to gather and celebrate life and good health, all while incorporating green and sustainable building practices. But, one thing at a time.

I’m currently selling my Bibi KALE Chips at People’s Co op, Food Fight, Alberta Co op, Lilian’s Natural Marketplace, The Alberta Rose Theater, Spoke Coffee, Root Whole Body and The Warehouse Cafe. My next stop is New Season’s Market and eventually Whole Foods. I’m going to need the support of the amazing people of Portland to make this happen. It’s very hard and expensive to start a business in Portland but I can’t think of any other place I’d rather do it! I’m at a place where I need to grow and expand to the next level in order to supply the demand of all my orders. I have an amazing business plan where I’m offering a 29% return to investors. I’m also doing an Indie Gogo campaign to help raise money for a couple $15,000 dehydrators that will allow me to make 12 times the amount of kale chips I’m making now.

Do you ever teach or practice yoga locally? If so, where can one find you?
I love to teach when I’m not touring. On and off tour, I have a daily yoga practice. I teach at various wonderful yoga studios in Portland, but my favorite place to practice yoga is actually where I also teach: Root Whole Body, in Northeast Portland. They’re a community of healers offering acupuncture, massage, organic skin care, chiropractic and naturopathic care as well as sauna and more. I’ll be teaching on the schedule full-time in April, so please come by and join me for a class.

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Hear New Music from The Shins and The Decemberists

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 08, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Two of our biggest local music darlings are bracing to release new albums, and you can currently get sneak previews. The Shins first new album in five years, Port Of Morrow, featuring frontman James Mercer with an entirely new backing band, drops on March 20th. The band played highlights along with some old favorites at a concert last night at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge that you can watch at NPR Music.

And then The Decemberists first-ever live album, We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (Live Songs 04.11-08.11), featuring songs from The King Is Dead as well as singalong classics, will be in stores and online March 13th. But why wait when you can listen to the first disc at Rolling Stone and the second at Paste. Oh, those Decemberists—never say all those songs about chimney sweeps and tragic sailors of yore mean they’re not savvy web marketers.

Currently listening to a deliciously poppy version of the “Soldiering Life.”

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Tags: music

Review: Red

Portland Center Stage’s bold but monochromatic production runs through March 18

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 08, 2012 at 10:00AM 1 Comments

Photo by Patrick Weishampel

We’re reaching the vibrant red peak of what the mayor may as well declare Mark Rothko Appreciation Month. Portland Art Museum’s 45-piece retrospective of the revolutionary abstract expressionist has garnered raves; Third Angle Ensemble will perform Morton Feldman’s meditative homage “Rothko Chapel” this Saturday, March 10; and Portland Center Stage’s production of Red is half way through it’s run. It’s a grand assemblage of the art, the musicality, and the personality of one of the century’s most important artists, who also happened to call Portland home during his formative teenage years in the 1910s (read Portland Monthly’s profile).

But fast forward to the late 1950s, the setting for the Tony Award-winning play Red. Rothko labors on a series of commissions for New York’s Four Seasons restaurant in his sepulchral studio on the Bowery, when he takes on a naïve but earnest young assistant, Ken (a fabrication of the playwright, John Logan). Spanning two years in one act, the play delves into the meaning of art, the role of the artist, the Oedipal changing of the artistic guard, and, to a lesser extent, the relationship between these two men in a beautifully staged production, aptly directed by Rose Riordan, that brushes between exhilarating, provocative conversation and pompous, art history-seminar pontification.

Opening with Rothko asking his assistant “What do you see?” as he stares at a painting on the fourth wall between him and the audience, Logan’s script is a combative Socratic dialogue bordering on monologue. Rothko lectures, questions, and rants on the meaning of color, the history of Western painting, and the importance of Nietzsche, Freud, and Shakespeare. But mostly he talks about himself and the purpose of his art. “Just like that, I’m a noun,” he says during one tirade against the commercialization of art bought to match a sofa. “A Rothko….It’s cheaper than a Pollack.”

Ken’s responses, at least in the beginning, function merely as commas between Rothko’s paragraphs, thin stripes between his color blocks. But as time passes, Ken learns from his disdainful master and begins to fight back, accusing Rothko of being “the high priest of art…decorating a temple of consumption,” until finally he trades places and forces Rothko to question himself instead of others.

At times, this intimate portrait of a brilliant painter feels like a sacred glimpse into the complicated relationship between a master and his work. Golden Globe-nominated actor Daniel Benzali, playing Rothko with a bombastic misanthropy that paints a thick coat of narcissism over a desperate need to be understood, captures the troubled nature of a man whose only true relationships are with his paintings—a man to whom selling a painting is like “sending a blind child into a room full of razor blades.” But after a while, his monologues sag under their own weight until it feels like you’re stuck in an art history seminar that simply won’t end.

Unfortunately, the character of Ken, played by San Franciscan actor Patrick Alperone, does little to introduce the human drama that might be the glue to Rothko’s monologues, serving mostly as a sounding board and mirror with little but a tragically absurd childhood story to flesh him out. Alparone shouts his lines with such emphasis that it feels like he’s shooting his syllables out with the staple gun he uses to stretch canvasses. When he finally does get angry, it lacks real strength since he’s been shouting all along.

The sad result for me is a play that feels ironically monochromatic, lacking the tonal and emotional variations and shifting nuance of the paintings that made Rothko famous.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t worth seeing, particularly if you’re a fan of the artist and enjoy lengthy artistic rumination. The set, designed by Daniel Meeker with lights by Diane Ferry Williams, is a layered character unto itself, where you can see the light of the day shift in the high windows, and where Rothko’s commissioned paintings progress and multiply through the play. The interstitial moments between scenes, when Ken is clearing the studio or prepping a canvas, serve as deep breathes between bombasts. One particular scene change, when all the paintings rise and shift like some giant, blood red, Abstract Expressionist, inside-out rubrics cube, is a moment of such beauty it’s almost worth the ticket price alone. And the most powerful, emotional moment in the play is a scene in which the two men prime a large white canvas with red paint in a frenzied duet of sorts set to Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 that leaves both covered in sweat and paint. Although there are no words, it seems one of the few moments where they’re truly engaging each other in dialogue. Which makes one wonder if this play, for all of its heady bluster about art, might have done better to follow the old, clichéd adage: show, don’t tell.

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Tags: Theater, Review, Portland Center Stage

Wicked Opens March 14

Runs through April 8

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 07, 2012 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Joan Marcus/Broadway Across America

“It’s not about aptitude; it’s the way you’re viewed,” sings the Good Witch Glinda to Elphaba, the nascent Wicked Witch of the West. “So it’s very shrewd to be very very popular.” Glinda may as well be singing about her Tony Award–winning, box-office-smashing musical as it flies into town for the third time—although it’s shrewd with aptitude—and very very popular with Portland audiences, which means its also shrewd to get tickets soon.

Wicked recounts the formative days of Elphaba, an ostracized girl from Munchkinland with emerald-green skin, and her frenemy, the popular, blonde Glinda. The story sets the stage for Dorothy’s arrival from Kansas, and includes nods to well-known scenes and dialogue from The Wizard of Oz. Turns out the story as Dorothy learns it was all spin and misunderstanding.

Tue–Sat at 7:30; Sat at 2; Sun at 1 & 6:30. Starting at $51.25. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St. 503-248-4335. pcpa.com

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Tags: broadway

Dan Savage’s Fierce Tweets

The founding fathers wore wigs…and other harsh truths.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Mar 07, 2012 at 06:00AM 2 Comments

Outspoken liberal sex columnist and radio persona Dan Savage, who famously brought us the “It Gets Better” campaign and the R-rated second definition of “Santorum,” will be in town this weekend, as the celebrity guest at an ACLU Dinner . Culturephile snoops on a few of his Tweets to see where his mind is lately.

On Santorum…

Amused that a friend of a friend defended Rick Santorum on Facebook: “It’s not his fault that he’s named that!”

Santorum didn’t get CATHOLIC vote in MI or AZ, @aravosis? Maybe that’s because 98% of Catholic women (and men!) use birth control?

Santorum is losing MI—and I’m sitting down to dinner with big gay husband and our son. (Pork loin with apples.) All is well in the world.

On politics as usual…

Snobs who went to college—snobs with GEDs—can tell you that no women signed the Declaration. Men in wigs & silk capri pants? Yes. Women? No.

NPR reveals Romney’s GOP nom strategy: win as many delegates as possible. Romney in trouble if Santorum hears report, adopts same strategy.

Palin votes for Gingrich, or: Quitter Picks Loser.

I fell asleep in front of the teevee last night watching @maddow and missed Rachel calling me a “genius” on teevee.

On sexual politics in particular…

Rush: If “we” pay for your birth control, you must release sex tapes. American people paid for Callista’s BC when she was cheating w Newt.
Release your sex tapes, Callista!

For the record: men use contraception too. #obvious

On new rhetorical hobby-horse, the #gaydictator hash tag, Inspired by Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s “Better a dictator than gay” comment…

If I was gay dictator… I would require the NBA to bring back ’60s and ’70s uniforms. Short-shorts & tight tanks!

Travel musings…

Waiting in D gates at St. Louis’s airport. The aesthetics offend. #gaydictator would have it torn down, have earth under it salted.

Hm… there are bath salts in this hotel room. You’re supposed to smoke those, right?

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Interview: Portland2012 Biennial Curator Prudence Roberts

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Mar 06, 2012 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Opening reception at The Art Gym exhibition.
Photo courtesy of Disjecta.

Disjecta’s Portland2012: A Biennial of Contemporary Art is kicking into high gear. Exhibitions have already opened at The Art Gym, PDX Across the Hall, and Helzer Art Gallery at PCC Rock Creek, and the opening reception for the biggest show is this Saturday at Disjecta from 6–10pm.

To wrap our head around one of the biggest art events of the year (or two year, as the case may be), we caught up with the biennial’s curator, Prudence Roberts. Now a professor at PCC Rock Creek, Roberts was curator of American art at the Portland Art Museum from 1987-2000 and part of the team that resuscitated the Oregon Biennial at the museum in 1992 after a long dormancy. Now, she’s returning to the curatorial hot seat to steer Disjecta’s second go at surveying Portland’s rich arts landscape.

Take us through the curatorial process for Portland2012.
There were close to 300 submissions. I did about 50 studio visits and narrowed it down to 24 artists and artist groups. I didn’t go in with a thematic agenda at all. I’ve been here 25 years, and Portland has changed a lot, and a lot faster in the last 10 years. I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of years, because my husband died three years ago and I stopped going out. I felt like I was not necessarily an outsider, but there were so many artists who I was unaware of, and I wasn’t part of a hip scene. I think it gave me a certain objectivity that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

What were you looking for in the artists you selected?
I’m always looking for work that has the potential to stand the test of time—that isn’t following an art world trend of now. I’m not looking for the wow factor, but a sense of integrity. But also, work that is responding to now and isn’t backward looking.

Ultimately, when I was making the final selection, I was looking for a range. I didn’t want an all video show or all painting. I was trying to represent the range of things happening in Portland.

There’re five different exhibitions, ranging in size from one artist to nine artists and groups. What was your thinking behind how you curated the individual exhibitions, and can you give us a preview of the Disjecta show?
I think each show is a discreet exhibition with a certain scene and works that speak to one another. At The Art Gym, I think there is definite a sense of narrative, but interrupted narrative—stories that are told obliquely, incompletely, and not necessarily personal narratives. The Future Death Toll piece is kind of about mortality, and Chris Knight’s paintings have all these symbols and references so you start to read and are taken off on a sidetrack.

Then at Disjecta, let me start with Mack McFarland, because he sets stage for me. He’s done two videos that are mounted inside a small box. The viewer gets on a stool and wheels into the box. The video monitors are mounted on either side, so you look straight ahead and see both out of peripheral vision. It’s this notion of what peripheral vision is and the implications of the periphery, for me, that ties a lot of that work together at Disjecta. The images in the videos are pretty abstract colors and profiles. He’s drawing on a chart of colors developed by a eugenics theoretician about skin tones and things. The thesis is race is always in the periphery of our conversations. And also the notion of peripheral vision being necessary for survival.

Arnold Kemp is showing photographs of tin foil masks that he makes with abstract openings for the eyes and mouths. The photos themselves are fairly large, and each is framed in a different color of grey. Again there’s that notion of color—and I think he’s referencing skin tones—and the notion of looking and of periphery. Then Matt McCormick’s piece is a video project, but the LCD projector is mounted into a corner, so part of the moving image is seen as a square projection on one wall, and then as it moves onto the other wall, it progresses as though it’s disappearing because of the angle of projection. It’s distorted into a triangular projection and seems to flow down into a disappearing hole. And there’s an enormous, enormous inflatable piece by Brian Gillis. It’s stretching up to the ceiling. Its theme is a float that celebrates failures that turned into successes.

The Biennial’s mission is to present “a major survey of visual artists who are defining and advancing the contemporary arts landscape.” After looking at the work of nearly 300 Portland artists, how would you describe that landscape?
For one thing, I was really impressed with how much connection there is with other places—how many artists are working here and elsewhere. Ariana Jacob has done a tour for her American Society of Questioning Questions, Matt McCormick just had a film screened at MOMA, Future Death Toll has done performances in New York. All of this dialogue is happening outside of Portland, and I think that changes the scene here. Portland is just a much more connected place than it was in the past. And all of the uses of new media, which I’m still wrapping my head around. The things Future Death Toll does online are really fascinating.

Portlandia likes to reduce our arts scene to putting a bird on it. Certainly there’s more to it than that, but did you nonetheless see any noticeable themes or trends among the city’s artists.
I didn’t. Which I think is a good thing, frankly.

How has the landscape changed since when you were at the museum working on the Oregon Biennial?
When I was at the museum years ago, it was a much more vanilla arts scene than it is now. I would not have seen the work of Sang-ah Choi, who’s doing these extraordinary paintings about cultural experiences. I certainly wouldn’t have seen the work of artists like Future Death Toll, which is mixing it up and doing performance. I don’t think I would’ve seen the work of Mack McFarland and Ariana Jacob. There was this regional sense about art. Things have really changed.

If there’s one thing that’s Portland-y or Portlandia right now, it’s our emphasis on social practice. I’m not sure if it’s going on the same elsewhere, but since Harrell Fletcher [head of PSU’s Social Practice Program] got here, that’s a force to be reckoned with.

Roberts and a number of artists will give a gallery talk at The Art Gym on Thursday, March 15 at noon. The remaining opening reception takes place on March 31 at the White Box in the University of Oregon in Portland.

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Tags: Art, Galleries, Marylhurst Art Gym, Interview, social practice art, Disjecta