Heidi Schwegler Puts Everyday Ruin on the Gallery Wall

Raw and/or reimagined, a Portland Artist and Educator shows us what we’ve tossed out. Heidi Schwegler came by the gallery the other day to install Satisfactual, July’s art exhibit. She pulls out a bunny, a ceramic trinket you’d find in a free box or local thrift shop, looking like it’s been touched up, but not …

Forest Bathing with Christina Sullivan

Featured Image by the artist’s sister, Carolyn Sullivan. Ottawa Painter Christina Sullivan is having her first art show ever in Portland. When Christina Sullivan was studying ecosystem reforestation in Ottawa, she was encouraged to touch everything in nature — tree branches to the soil. She got in the habit of “feeling nature,” continuously finding new …

Take Me to the…  Library!

Featured image of Keller Auditorium at night. Portland Opera visits the Cenral Library for free previews all season long. Think of a movie where an operatic voice lifts and moves you through a scene; a death scene, love consummated, a plot-revealing monologue, a car pile-up. Heart palpitating on the waves of the aria, heightening the seriousness, inflaming …

The First Weirdo I Met in Oregon

Getting to know a friend through her art: A look at Mary Aday a.k.a Mefore Aday, THRU Gallery’s Debut Art Exhibit When Mary Aday first moved to Portland from the South in 2005, a few of her new classmates at Oregon College of Art and Craft would ask her to repeat: Bright. White. Light. In …

The Body Can Get You Out of Your Head

I dropped in for the “sneak peek” preview night for Interlude, “Unleashed and Unexpected.” Tonight and tomorrow afternoon, PDX Contemporary Ballet is presenting the work of six choreographers at Coho theatre in Northwest Portland.  I’ve been out of the arts review circuit for a few months. But on Thursday night, some personal stuff had me winding …

What I See in Thawed City Streets

Written as an account of an actual walk through the streets of Portland this January 9, after a single day of non-freezing snow-melting weather — one of Portland’s iciest weeks on record. Portland is back to usual tonight. The rain is steady and the smell of donuts moves like an invisible steam through the streets. …

How To Capture a Hemisphere

World Wide Wall tells the story of the Portland Mercado Mural. In the fall of 2014, two artists were chosen by Hacienda CDC to collaborate and represent Southeast Portland’s brand new mercado as a haven for Latin American culture in Portland. This original THRU documentary tells how the mural at Portland Mercado was created by artists Pablo Solares and Rachel Oleson. Nobody …

Bolero + the Rising Tide

NW Dance Project opens its 13th season on a high note with Bolero + Three world premieres opened NW Dance Project’s 13th season last night at Lincoln Hall and the stage transformed with each, holding what felt like three completely different worlds. The range of everything and everyone involved was far reaching: dance, lighting, costumes, …

Froelich’s Ladder is a Promising Debut

Jamie Duclos-Yourdon’s character-driven novel offers a new frontier. Froelich arrives in Oregon in the fall of 1851 after a long journey from Germany. During the trek, I imagine him distracted with visions of a life so full of wonder, of newness — the opposite of what he saw as an inevitably unfulfilling future back home …