Brad Carlile/Rio Wrenn

Confronting the myth of the great American road.

Visual Arts This month, two local artists wrestle with divergent but equally mythic conceptions of the great American road. In Tempus Incognitus, photographer Brad Carlile’s striking exhibition at Eva Lake’s   More

 

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

ANKA Gallery Closes

Arts & Books ANKA Gallery, a staple of the Everett Station Lofts, will be dark this First Thursday, closed indefinitely due to financial hardships.According to gallery co-owners Anna Solcaniova-King and Graylan King, the gallery is in a restructuring phase with no more shows to be mounted in the Lofts.  The ga...   More

 

Thursday, July 7, 2011 by RICHARD SPEER

Seattle sculptor John Grade wins Contemporary Northwest Art Awards

Arts & Books Seattle-based sculptor and conceptual artist John Grade took home the $10,000 Arlene Schnitzer Prize at the culmination of the opening ceremonies for Portland Art Museum’s second    More

 

Monday, June 20, 2011 by RICHARD SPEER

Contemporary Northwest Art Awards

Portland Art Museum scores a hit with this showcase of thought-provoking Northwest art.

Visual Arts The Contemporary Northwest Art Awards live in the shadow of the Oregon Biennial, which, in a sense, it replaced. Like the Biennial, the Art Awards select a small pool of artists from hundreds of no   More

 

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

Storm Tharp

Storm Tharp’s prints highlight a sexy group show at PDX Contemporary.

Visual Arts There has always been an air of the arch epicene in Storm Tharp’s work: the perspective of a refined but warped dandy looking out at a beautiful world through dark-tinted spectacles   More

 

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 RICHARD SPEER

The Big Timers

Tony Bennett and Usher take vastly different approaches to wooing you.

Music Stories Crooners—legitimate heavyweights who can elicit shrieks, tears and piles of ladies’ undergarments from their audiences—are few and far between these days.  But this week, two of the big   More

 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 RICHARD SPEER, CASEY JARMAN

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