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BY KATE BONANSINGA The past year has been one of landmark visual-arts events in Portland. Pacific Northwest College of Art celebrated the opening of a new facility, and TriMet prepared for an opening of its own, that of the West Side Light Rail, with art receiving top billing as an integral part of station design. Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) hosted another world-class exhibition, this time an installation by artist Valeska Soares. Art in America reviewed Fay Jones' exhibition at Laura Russo Gallery, amongst other Portland shows. Ding Le's photographic tapestries of oppression in Southeast Asia were well received at Elizabeth Leach, so much so that the gallery sold several of the big-ticket works. Artists, galleries, critics and public institutions bask in this attention, and the strengths and perspectives of each group have a healthy effect on the others. The economic boom creates a rosy picture for the Portland gallery scene, with the implications of recent corrections in the stock market yet to be felt. Institutions once dependent on dwindling federal funding survive because sympathetic and enlightened private individuals and institutions have stepped in with financial support for the arts. The influx of artists to Portland continues; they come either to attend one of the many art schools or artist-in-residence programs or to enjoy a livable and still somewhat affordable city. (It remains to be seen if this steady flow of new residents abates as housing costs continue to increase.) Equally as important is the much larger influx of non-artists who provide galleries with a potentially broader client base. Growth, in other words, though it may be detrimental and undesirable in many respects, has become a golden egg for the Portland art world. Amid the tsunami of positivism there are a few casualties and controversies. Untitled, the offbeat monthly handwritten by its editor and publisher, Mike Roberts, folded. Tank, a small alternative gallery devoted to Portland artists, closed. Although the Portland Art Museum prospers under the charismatic leadership of John Buchanan, who confidently launched a $30 million capital campaign and attracted record numbers of visitors to such high-profile exhibits as the Splendors of Ancient Egypt, the community pays a non-economic price: a lack of in-depth studies of historical and contemporary art with limited popular appeal. The museum's carefully curated exhibitions that grapple with difficult issues and ideas, such as the Diana Thater solo show and From Object to Image, are far too intermittent. Art appreciation (and acquisition) begins with education, which is typically one of the most important roles of the museum. Both PICA and Portland's strong gallery network have proven capable of picking up where the museum leaves off by supporting enigmatic and issue-based work, both of which seem to be selling with increased regularity. Quartersaw Gallery found buyers for several pieces in David Taylor's recent exhibition of mixed-media photo collages of the Rocky Mountain arsenal, a toxic site slated to become a nature park. David Eckard's sculpture, inspired by farm tools and suggestive of devices for constricting or stimulating the human body, sells better in Portland than it does in Seattle: His May exhibition at Seattle's William Traver Gallery sold only two pieces, and those were to Portland clients. In July, Froelick Adelhart Gallery sold one of Mia Lor Houlberg's ephemeral "moldariums," composed primarily of growing and ever-changing mold. If Portland galleries can continue to nurture buyers of this type of avant-garde art, they'll infuse the Portland art scene with energy, validating artists that buck the status quo, giving critics something to sink their teeth into and providing the public with food for thought.
originally published September 9, 1998 |
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