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High Low Art Space (936 SE 34th Ave., highlowartspace.com), like any good studio, is crafty and inviting with a touch of chaos. Every rickety lectern, folding table and paint-splattered shelf is covered with art. Sculptures, paintings and drawings line the room salon style. Look closely and you might begin to notice recurring characters.
Many of the faces and bodies on the walls belong to life models who pose for High Low’s weekly drop-in life-drawing sessions. For the low price of $10 in cash, plus tips for your hardworking model, you too could draw them.
High Low’s drop-in sessions happen every Thursday. The afternoon (2–5 pm) is reserved for long-pose figure drawing, in which the same model holds the same pose at sessions for four weeks in a row, giving attendees a chance to work on slower or more detailed projects. The evening (6–9 pm) is for short-pose figure drawing, where one model holds a myriad of poses that range from two to 20 minutes. Artists are invited to work in any wet or dry media they’d like, from charcoal to gouache, so long as they clean up after themselves.
The late Portland sculptor Jim Gion turned the former gallery into a community hub in 2015. Gion died in 2018, but in keeping with his vision, High Low has since become a co-op owned by its artist-teachers.
“We know the arts can be expensive, especially for students,” says Chaitanya Varma, who’s been involved with High Low since 2016. “So we want to ensure there are as few barriers to entry as possible.”
A cast of actors, dancers and artists serves as models. “I do my best to book models that look different from week to week,” Varma says. “An arm or a leg may look very different on someone who is young or old, tall or short, slender or stocky, and so on.”
During the Thursday drop-in sessions, the instructors are off the clock. These aren’t classes (though the studio offers lots of those), just an opportunity to draw in community, have a cup of tea, and admire how your neighbor’s work develops over a session, a month or a year.
See the rest of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2026 here!
