Lloyd Reynolds A Life of Forms in Art

A calligrapher’s life beyond letters.

Visual Arts “Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed….    More

 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 BRETT CAMPBELL

Tom Cramer Oregon Landmarks

Tom Cramer casts a quirky gaze on his native state.

Visual Arts We spoke with Tom Cramer, an Oregon native and veritable Portland institution, about the sources of inspiration for his show Oregon Landmarks. WW: What drew you to the Northwest landscape this time?    More

 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Dante Marioni Variations

Sculptor Dante Marioni takes a risk and scores a hit.

Visual Arts Varied, virtuosic and sumptuous beyond imagination, the work of Seattle-based sculptor Dante Marioni seems to come from another time—perhaps the Renaissance, when craftsmanship and invention were    More

 

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Sean Healy Upstate

An artist learns you can never go home again.

Visual Arts In Upstate, artist Sean Healy looks back at his childhood in the once-bustling upstate New York town of Brasher Falls. The town fell on hard times in the 1980s and ’90s, when its three main manuf   More

 

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Stage Sets

Three local shows ask where art ends and architecture begins.

Visual Arts This month, three different shows tackle the same essential theme: the relationships between visual art and architecture. This is addressed most explicitly at the Art Institute of Portland’s Centr   More

 

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Christine Clark/Jay Steensma @ Nine Gallery/Pulliam Gallery

Two Portlanders confront impermanence.

Visual Arts When you look at the bric-a-brac collecting dust at your pad—those tacky souvenirs from your trip to Mexico, family photos you inherited when Aunt Betty died, books you bought years ago but never    More

 

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Contemporary Northwest Art Award Finalists

Visual Arts What would you do with $10,000? That’s a question 29 artists are asking themselves after being named finalists in the Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards. This will be the s   More

 

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Bruce Conkle at Worksound

Of beauty and bedevilments.

Visual Arts Worksound is a cavernous gallery that normally shows two or three artists at a time, so for a single artist to take on the entire space is a tall order. Happily, conceptual artist Bruce Conkle is up t ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 13, 2010 RICHARD SPEER

Sherrie Wolf At Laura Russo

Zooming in on painting’s most famous faces.

Visual Arts The great faces of historical portrait painting are embedded in our collective unconscious like ghosts in a psychic family album: Titian’s Man With a Glove, Thomas Gainsborough’s dewy The ...   More

 

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 RICHARD SPEER

Kelly Rauer At New American Art Union

The body electric, unplugged.

Visual Arts It may have been the quietest First Friday opening ever: hushed gallery-goers huddled in a darkened room, watching Kelly Rauer’s high-definition video installation, Shaping Sequence. The piece h ...   More

 

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 RICHARD SPEER