The next time you find yourself hate-reading a fawning profile of a photogenic young Brooklyn potter whose hot-pink-rimmed wares are transforming the “stuffy world of ceramics into a cool new craft” (or something to that effect), navigate yourself away from there, and instead visit the website of the Museum of Contemporary Craft.
Portland
Posted inArt
Objectifying Our Digital Lives
PORTLAND, Ore. — For the first time the New York art nonprofit Eyebeam has brought an exhibition to the West Coast and, unironically, chose Portland.
Posted inArt
When the Art Just Can’t Compete with the Architecture
PORTLAND, Oregon — Entering Disjecta Contemporary Art Center’s main space feels more like visiting a dance hall than a gallery, with its vaulted timber ceiling and 15-foot-high walls.
Posted inPerformance
When Drag Queens Crowd Surf
PORTLAND, Oregon — Pepper Pepper went crowd surfing at her recent drag ball. Declaring to the crowd that it was all about collectivism, she dove out into the sea of hands with a large set of balloons attached to her back.
Posted inArt
A Visit to Portland’s Graffiti Haven
PORTLAND, Ore. — When I asked artist Rx Skulls where to shoot graffiti and street art when I came to town this past April, his most emphatic suggestion was Taylor Electric.
Posted inArt
Seeing Past Portland’s Whiteness
LOS ANGELES — I didn’t mean for my trip to Portland to have such a focus on race.
Posted inArt
Kara Walker Lands in Oregon
EUGENE, Oregon — The Black Portlanders, a project initiated by Intisar Abioto that focuses on the black people of Portland documenting one another, recently posted an open letter asking for help raising $15,000 to keep alive their project.
Posted inArt
Reading the Rituals of Performance
PORTLAND, Oregon — On a trip to Portland last month, I encountered a number of artists who use writing’s structures and processes to order performance behaviors. But for Lisa Radon, it’s reading, not writing, that serves as the moment of performance.
Posted inArt
How Writing Is Like Performance
PORTLAND, Oregon —Portland’s literary prowess is well known. Home to the truly amazing Powell’s bookstore, a number of high caliber small presses, and host to many readings, the city is a great place for people who love words. I traveled there early this month to check out another kink in this phenomenon: the intersection of text and performance.
Posted inArt
The Day Portland Stood Still
CHICAGO — Kirk Crippens’s photographic series Portraitlandia is a visual manifestation of that surreal moment when quotidian life, a hit television show, and a curious photographer converge.
Posted inNews
Portland’s New $35 Arts Tax Begins
Though the National Endowment for the Arts seems under constant threat of being gutted, one city initiative is putting arts funding at the forefront of civic responsibility rather than last on the list. In November of last year, Portland, Oregon, passed a new annual income tax of a flat $35 fee that goes directly to supporting local arts organizations.
Posted inNews
Postmodernist Architecture Becomes History
Oh, postmodernism. You are history now. This fall, architect Michael Graves classic 1982 Portland building was added to the US National Register of Historic Places.
