Arts

Domicile by Corbett/Kathryn
Arts, Events October 21, 2014

New work by Corbett/Kathryn tackles our digital age’s ‘obsessive present’

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Travel down a path, ensconced by a geodesic dome and lit by projections of the celestial sky, to explore the sprawling sculpture at its center. A floating topographical representation of the Portland metro area is seen through the obsessive compilation of hundreds of digital satellite images. Allow the eye to roll over the exhibit’s mountains and valleys and wind through the rivers. Give into the perspective of the creation only to be brought back to reality by the mechanisms of the installation—the lighting, special effects, and structural components which draw you to the dome, and its safety and subjectivity. The experience is part of the new full-sensory exhibit, Domicile, orchestrated by local artists Tyler Corbett and Erinn Kathryn. The duo create art under the moniker Corbett/Kathryn (“Subjective Cartogrpahy,” Issue No. 8). The geodesic dome is a shell created from a network of great intersecting circles. The structure, Corbett explains, is a symbol of the encompassing environment that restricts or embellishes our understanding of a subject, in this case the topographical sculpture at the center of the installation. Corbett/Kathryn characterized their centerpiece as the earthly embodiment of the “obsessive present.” A concept described by Corbett as not only the global culturalization of…

Dial M for Murder by Bag & Baggage Productions
Arts, Events October 16, 2014

Dim the lights: Portland’s mid-October theater opening highlights

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Television houses a surplus crop of zombie apocalypse and vampire romance. Break free from the parade of the undead with a string of mid-October Portland theater openings guaranteed to add a little mortality to this fall’s entertainment. After all, autumn is both a celebration of life and death. Milagro Theatre (525 SE Stark) has set the stage for the debut of Olga Sanchez’s ¡O Romeo!. Running from Oct. 17 through Nov. 9, ¡O Romeo! summons the victims of Shakespeare’s tragedies to appear to the dramatist in his dying days as he creates his final masterpiece. Inspired by Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the play is a bilingual performance that focuses on the culturally influenced concept of death. Director Sanchez credits her team of actors, designers, and crew for proving that the legendary playwright transcends cultural boundaries. Ticket prices range from $16 to $24. From Oct. 16 through Nov. 2, enjoy the songs and choreography given life in Portland’5 Center for the Arts’ 110 in the Shade at Brunish Theatre (1111 SW Broadway). The musical, which emerged from N. Richard Nash’s play The Rainmaker, tells a tale of small town America when a draught bares an opportunity for…

Jennifer Faylor
Arts, Events October 11, 2014

Chasing Ghosts: Excerpt of Jennifer Faylor’s ‘Edison’s Ghost Machine’

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New York City-based poet Jennifer Faylor lands in Portland this week, reading poetry from her latest collection of work Edison’s Ghost Machine. The compilation of poems details the process of one man’s grief over the loss of his lover, Alice. As part of the process he concocts a machine that speaks to ghosts, much like the invention Thomas Edison was rumored to have attempted. With a storyline that moves beyond the here and now to the afterlife, Faylor’s poetry tackles spirituality and science in equal measure. Faylor, who has her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, has two upcoming reading events in Portland. The poet participates in the Show and Tell Gallery hosted by Three Friends Coffeehouse (201 SE 12th Ave.) on Monday, Oct. 13 at 7 p.m., and reads at the Independent Publishing Resource Center (1001 SE Division St.) the following day, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m. Edison’s Ghost Machine is published by Aldrich Press. An excerpt of Edison’s Ghost Machine: Hindu Milk Miracle The worshippers arrived in masses, stretched from the temple for miles, and blistered in September’s thick heat. Their hands clutched the cheap metal spoons that they would fill with milk, and hold up to the…

Heaven Adores You still
Arts October 10, 2014

Director, producers recount making of Elliott Smith documentary ‘Heaven Adores You’

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I’ve listened to the music of Elliott Smith, the prolific Portland-based singer-songwriter who rose to prominence in the late 1990s, for several, several years. Recently, during a closing shift at my night job, I used the restaurant’s premium speaker system to blast his 1998 release, XO. As his gentle guitar strumming emanated from the speakers, I realized that I now heard his music, understood his music in a more profound way than ever before. The catalyst for this was my having viewed the new documentary on Smith by director Nickolas Dylan Rossi, Heaven Adores You, and my subsequent interviews with those involved in the project. Listening to the hushed voice of Smith suddenly had greater poignancy. In Heaven Adores You, Smith’s friend and former publicist, Dorien Gay, reveals that friends and colleagues of Smith’s came together to host an intervention after the musician sent Gay an email that said to not be mad at him if he ever did something to himself. After that intervention, Smith wrote XO as a response to those friends who tried to help him. What started as a documentary about musicians who were inspired by Smith’s music grew into a film focused solely on Smith’s music. The…

Arts October 9, 2014

‘You Just Don’t Know Yet’: Excerpts from Derrick C. Brown’s ‘Our Poison Horse’

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“At first, moving to the countryside from Austin felt like an incredible peace,” says Texas-based poet Derrick C. Brown in a recent interview with PDX Magazine. “And then you begin to notice scorpions, and massive spiders, snakes, vultures and striped hornets.” The prolific poet relocated from his adopted city of Austin to the small country town of Elgin, Texas to write his most recent book, Our Poison Horse, a collection of poetry. His work oscillates from inspiringly personal to unexpectedly humorous. “It is all horror at first,” continues Brown about the critters in his new pastoral setting, “and then you change and you begin to love watching them move. All that slither and nasty becomes fascinating. The book managed to find a lot of humor in it.” Our Poison Horse, Brown’s fifth book, is widely considered to be a compilation of more intimate and autobiographical poems than his previously published collections. Such revelations were spurred by Brown’s retreat into the countryside, which allowed for singular focus from which subtle details emerged, and unlikely connections were forged. “Every morning, I would quiet down, stare out into the field where we were watching our neighbor’s horse, a horse that was poisoned with…

Arts October 5, 2014

Paul Revere, Raiders band leader, dies at 76

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Rock n roll band leader Paul Revere died peacefully on Saturday at his home in Idaho. He was 76. Born in Idaho in 1938, he began his music career there as a teenager in the 1950s. Real success followed after his band’s move to Portland, Ore., where they transitioned from The Downbeats to the highly successful, nationally recognized Paul Revere and the Raiders. In 1963, Revere met Portland-based DJ Roger Hart, who was then hired as the band’s manager. Appearances on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is followed, as did great fame. “It was network television that introduced five faces to the nation, all of whom contributed to an image of hard rock humor that endeared them to fans everywhere,” says Hart. “Daily, teens across America tuned in to the Dick Clark (television series) … It was then that the hits began.” Paul Revere and the Raiders were celebrated as teen idols, spending 12 years at Columbia Records, participating in two Dick Clark-produced television series, and performing several times on programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show and Batman. After their teen idol status began to fade by the end of the 1960s, Revere restructured the band into “a well…

Arts, Events September 30, 2014

Dim the lights, please: Plays opening now in Portland

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Autumn may mark the end of day trips, beach-basking, and camping, but Portlanders must not lament its arrival. The fall brings with it a line-up of theatrical productions that demonstrate escapism at its best. A variety of plays, from existential to thrilling to comedic, are ready to take audiences on an expedition of the mind. Third Rail’s production of Middletown lightens the weight of the abstruse quest to uncover the purpose of life. Written by Will Eno, Middletown is a story marked by life and death but the subject matter is what occurs between. Utilizing the play medium allows the story to emphasize a familiar cast of characters seen in life—the cop, the doctor, the mechanic—in a setting that could be any town. Under the direction of Marcella Crowson, Eno’s quip-filled, yet poignant dialogue is metered with fast-paced execution to keep the audience from getting lost in its meta musings. Middletown plays now through Oct. 19 at the Winningstad Theater, 1111 SW Broadway. Performances occur Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $33 to $47. Audiences seeking a more plot-driven story can be carried away to a sea of unfortunate circumstances and character conflict in Exiles. The third play…

Arts August 28, 2014

Artist Susan Sage provides insight into her inspiration, process, and work

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I met with Susan Sage last month to talk about her work and get a feel for her experience as an artist in Portland. We arranged to meet at her home in Northeast Portland, a cozy place where animal drawings hang from the wall and coffee always seems to be brewing. In Issue No. 8 of PDX Magazine, a write-up of local band Minden was accompanied by a lively painting of the group’s lead singer and songwriter, Casey Burge, painted by Sage. My conversation with Sage started with my curiosity about these animal pieces. “I did them all in a two-week period, while I was visiting my family on the Cayman Islands. That year I brought a big pad of paper and ended up completing eight or nine animals, using lots of ink, a little watercolor and oil pastels. I was trying to think of animals that weren’t too cute, so I looked through tons of images and pieced together body parts that I liked. Each image is kind of a collage.” “Kangaroos were the coolest…they look very sexual. They rest a lot in the heat and seem kind of human. I found all these images of them laying on the…

Arts, Events August 25, 2014

‘Lessons Learned’: Puppets, Portland, and a Q&A with Art Director Scott Foster

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“From small beginnings come great things!” It’s this phrase, breathlessly recited by a character known only as “the boy,” that gets right to the heart of Toby Froud’s live action puppet film, Lessons Learned. In fact, the same could be said of Froud himself, who was only an infant when he appeared alongside David Bowie in Jim Henson’s 1986 film, Labyrinth. Froud’s parents, Wendy and Brian, created costumes and puppets for Labyrinth, as well as for The Dark Crystal, and their artistic influence can be seen in the creatures of Lessons Learned. The fifteen-minute short begins on the boy’s birthday as he arrives at his grandfather’s door, where he is promptly greeted with the flick of a feather duster by the ever-harried housekeeper, Digby. After receiving a special birthday gift from his grandfather, the boy embarks on a journey that leads him through a hallway jammed floor to ceiling with boxes of “collected wisdom,” to an immense, cloudy dreamworld where he encounters beings such as the towering “granny”—a Moirai-inspired spider who furiously knits away at an impossibly long, undulating red scarf. The film features a magical, lush soundtrack by Lillian Todd Jones and Gordon Mills (Jones’ father, William Todd Jones,…

Arts August 19, 2014

Artist Bre Gipson blends mediums to capture natural elements and cosmic landscapes

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“Overall, I am a maker and whatever the medium, I want my work to be open-ended enough for viewers to insert their own story while still exuding a sense of the otherworldly,” says artist Bre Gipson, whose mediums include watercolor, collage, sculpture, and digital art, among others. The Oakland-based artist is spending this summer—and the next two—in Portland to participate in Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies program. Back home, she’s a member of an all-female artist collective whose work, Till Death Do Us Part, is currently on exhibit at Solespace Gallery and Somar Art Bar in Oakland. In Portland, her art continues to progress and advance. “My work is constantly evolving and I continuously experiment with new materials and mediums,” notes Gipson. “Currently, I am working on animating my collages and creating larger site-specific paintings and installations.” While the artist does not work in just one primary medium, or give a preference to one over another, Gipson does note that her approach to her art and how she produces it is a collage in its most basic sense. “Whether it’s layered paper imagery, or my line work over paint, or more tactile in my sculptures…