The Best Of 2005

Glass totems, blood transfusions and PAM's new wing make 2005 a hit.

By RICHARD SPEER

BEST PAINTING SHOW:

Scott Wayne Indiana's virtuoso gestural abstractions at Residence Gallery.

BEST SCULPTURE SHOW: Harry Hillman Jr.'s glass totems at Elizabeth Leach.

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW: It's a three-way tie between Anthony Georgis' cool yet sexy work at Motel, Jim Riswold's Hitler figurines at Augen, and Elizabeth Hickok's Jell-O cityscapes at Alysia Duckler.

BEST GROUP SHOW: A tie between Jeff Jahn's sprawling Fresh Trouble and Pacific Northwest College of Art's ambitious Toca Brasil.

BEST CONCEPTUAL SHOW: Matthew Picton's riffs on decay at Mark Woolley.

BEST MIXED MEDIA: I'm torn between Jacqueline Ehlis' elegant variations at Savage and Tom Cramer's gilded reveries at Mark Woolley.

BEST EVENT: The Affair @ Jupiter Hotel—end of story.

BEST INSTALLATION: A tie between John Mace's hospital nightmare at Portland Art Center and Dan and Bean Gilsdorf's abstracted blood transfusion at The Affair @ Jupiter Hotel (Gallery 500 room).

BEST NEW GALLERY: Chambers.

BEST WINE AND CHEESE: Broderick Gallery.

BEST LOCAL VISUAL-ARTS WEBSITE: Port (www.PortlandArt.net), with its savvy daily updates on Stumptown art happ'nin's.

BEST VIS-ARTS BLOG: It's a tie between Eva Lake's juicy yet thought-provoking Lovelake.org/diary and TJ Norris' spirited, incisive OregonLive.com/weblogs/isitart/.

BEST STYLISTIC EVOLUTION: A tie for Joe Thurston's infusion of Renaissance landscapes into his flay-faced portraits at Mark Woolley and Eugenia Pardue's new foray into chromatic minimalism at The Affair @ Jupiter Hotel (Gallery 500 room).

BEST LOCAL ARTISTS WHO ARE NOT REPRESENTED BY A PORTLAND GALLERY BUT SHOULD BE: Scott Wayne Indiana, Chandra Bocci, Marne Lucas, Katherine Treffinger and Corey Smith.

BIGGEST STORY OF THE YEAR: Portland Art Museum's new Mark Building opened to a generally positive critical and popular reception. While some museum-goers groused that too many pieces hang in narrow corridors, making it hard to view them from a proper distance, we disagreed and hailed the building, collection, curation, and hanging and lighting as an unqualified hit.

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