In a Nutshell: 16 Fertile Ground Festival Acts in Audio

Pieter Breugel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565), on which the performance, Sisters in the Snow, is based. All text written by Kathleen Dolan. Listen to the artists talk about their work at Fertile Ground 2017. The Fertile Ground Festival is back for its 7th year, presenting new works that run the theatre gamut: circus arts, staged …

Sixth Annual Quiet Music Festival, A Photo Journal

Only one music festival turns off the loudness button for a weekend. Stephanie Leet and I split coverage of the QMF, she attended on Friday and I went on Saturday. It was Steph’s first time and reading through her notes on the evening, it was an imaginative experience for me — she was in The Jungle Book …

The Instruction of Evil

Hannah Arendt and the cold behavior of ideology. Today opens the Portland Jewish Film Festival, presented by Northwest Film Center. Over the next two weeks, 15 films will screen from directors across the globe, strung together in the telling of Jewish history and culture. I first watched Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, which screens on …

Improvisation Summit of Portland Photo Journal

New worlds of improvised form were showcased at Creative Music Guild’s fifth annual ISP. In the spirit of this festival, the following was developed in an improvisational manner. As the event progressed, I posted photos and thoughts that were gradually edited, revised, and distilled — when I was able to rouse myself back up. Two nights and one full …

The People of Vanport and the City Lost

No Longer a Lost History: The City of Vanport is Revived in the Inaugural Vanport Mosaic Festival. Sixty-eight years ago yesterday on May 30th, 1948, the Columbia River spilled over a dike and flooded the City of Vanport, which rested where Delta Park and the Portland International Raceway is today. The town was built between Vancouver, …

Experience Is King

A Virtual Reality Panel Demonstrates the Power and Imminent Reign Of A New Medium Last month at Design Week Portland, Connective DX, a digital experience design company, hosted a panel on Virtual Reality. If virtual reality is still a phrase that you’ve yet to define, I don’t think you’re alone exactly. But, according to Connective …

NW Animation Fest: Just the right amount of weird

With multiple entry points, the annual festival brings something for everyone. In many ways, the animated short is a thankless medium. With few mainstream distribution channels, the joys of this usually bizarre medium are often known only to the most adventurous of YouTube explorers. As a kid, some of the darker shorts peppered between installments …

Going Big on the Central Eastside

A Design Week PDX Panel takes on a big question: How does the city keep the Central Eastside industrially fertile? Hanging at the front of the room where Bora Architects hosted the Design Week Portland panel discussion, “Central Eastside: Beyond Taking Sides” on Tuesday night, were proposed development plans for the industrial district. Digital images …

Tsilli Pines Explains Design Week Portland

Design Week Co-Founder and Director, Tsilli Pines Explains the Scattered Development of a Burgeoning Festival. The story of Design Week Portland is not one of consistency. It has changed months, almost skipped years, and never really had a central organization in the beginning. That way of working is something I really appreciate. The innocence of …