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Thirty One

July 30, 2008 10:42 pm

by Mike Burnett

I recently received an email from local artist Anna Todaro about her participation in Thirty One!, a gallery exhibit in which 31 artists will each display 31 paintings. The paintings will be sold for $31, and a group of 31 larger paintings (20″ x 20″) will be silently auctioned at the starting bid of $31.

This event is the follow-up to last year’s Thirty!. Here’s a summary of that event from http://thirtyshows.blogspot.com/:

In November, 2007, thirty Portland artists were challenged to create thirty paintings each in thirty days. On December 7th, the resulting “900 piece extravaganza of affordable art” was revealed. A line of excited art lovers wrapped it’s way around the blocks of E. Burnside and NE 10th Ave. anticipating the hundreds of $30 paintings awaiting inside. There was a buzz of excitement in the air and many smiling faces to be seen. Seven hundred paintings were sold in four hours that night, and a new tradition was born.

Here are two of Todaro’s 31 in progress:

Thirty One! will occur on Friday August 1st 2008 at OM Tradition Arts, which is located at 14 NE 10th Ave (10th and E. Burnside). There will be a preview show at 3pm. I’m not sure exactly when bidding begins, but the show ends at 10pm. There will be a “hidden gems” show for pieces not purchased during the event on August 3rd from 6-8pm.

Anna Todaro on Myspace
http://www.annatodaro.com/
http://www.thirtyshows.blogspot.com/

Pickathon This Weekend

July 28, 2008 12:42 pm

by Lauren Hudgins

I’m covering Pickathon for MelodyTrip this weekend, so I will hie myself to the hills southeast of Portland from August 1st to August 3rd to enjoy the “Indie-Roots” revelry.

That’s right, Pickathon, describes itself as an “Indie-Roots” festival, a mind-meltingly nebulous term. I found an old Stranger article which does a pretty good job at tackling the definition.

“‘Indie roots’ is what we came up with to brand this world of musicians with punk-rock sensibilities who are influenced by all kinds of music,” Schoenborn says. “They’re not neat and clean, so they don’t fit into any other category.” Pickathon, he says, is in its ninth year as the standard- bearer for the sound.
It seems that a genre that includes bluegrass, rock, zydeco, jazz, and country bands loses its meaning as it expands, which is perhaps why Schoenborn admits the characteristics of indie roots are subjective. “Indie roots describes bands like the Avett Brothers and the Handsome Family who are throwing all these influences at you at once,” he says. There are common elements: willingness to experiment, sincerity instead of polish, openness to influence, and a healthy disregard for boundaries. In addition, most of these bands evince affection for Appalachia, the open road, acoustic instruments, vintage cowboy shirts, and liquor.

Pickathon will be this weekend at the Pendarvis Farm, 20 minutes outside of Portland. Festival organizers are promoting ecological responsibility by encouraging people to use public transportation, bikes, and carpools. If you look at the transportation section of the website you can find biking directions, festival shuttle information, and instructions for carpool networking. Camping is encouraged.

You can see Pickathon’s lineup, here. I’m extremely excited about Jolie Holland and Langhorne Slim.

Will call tickets are available through this Thursday, July 31st. Afterwards, they will be available at the gate for a higher price. At the gate, Weekend Tickets will be $125, Friday will be $75, Saturday will be $85, and Sunday will be $75.

An Interview With Artist Jordan Domont

July 20, 2008 3:04 pm

by Mike Burnett

Jordan Domont is a Portland artist who paints stunning and colorful portraits which seem to melt off the canvas, if “canvas” is even applicable. I’ve yet to see one his paintings in person, but even as digitized, shrunken heads his portraits of friends and celebrities are compelling. He was kind enough to answer a few questions.

. . .

First things first. How did you come to paint a picture of former Congressman and current Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr?

It was commissioned by Atlanta Magazine.

I first saw your paintings on Myspace. They appeared among a small network of Portland friends as their default photos. How often do you get to paint pictures of your friends and acquaintances?

Not at all anymore. Last year I was given a solo show at Local 35 on Hawthorne, with only a couple months to prepare and no real body of work. Justin the owner and curator saw a couple of portraits I had done in school and wanted a body of work in that particular style. So that is when a painter’s friends have to step up to the plate and pose. I did something like 12 busts of all of my interesting looking friends.

I’ve searched around the web seeing if I could find what media you use in your paintings and it’s been a little confusing. I’ve seen reports of glass, Dacron, drawing ink, acrylic. Care to explain?

I use water-based drawing ink on mylar.

Did your aesthetic evolve slowly or did you arrive at this method suddenly?

I think everyone’s particular “style” or technique constantly evolves with each new piece. I have been using this medium for a couple of years now and am always trying new things with it as my confidence grows. But it is a very unpredictable medium and that’s what is so exciting about it.

Your style is incredibly singular, yet when I first saw the paintings I felt an anxious suspicion that they might have been generated by software processing digitized photographs. I was excited to find out they weren’t when someone on Myspace wrote me back. Do you use a computer at all in your work?

I have to use a computer to find reference material. The illustrations themselves are done entirely by hand, but I do have to scan them when finished. Then I use photoshop to clean the image up and resize it in order to send it off to the art director.

Do you reside and work in Portland?

I live and work out of my apartment that is basically a studio, in South East Portland. I work twice a week at the Aalto Lounge on Belmont, in order to pay for my 8 alimony checks that I write every month.

Do you feel you are part of a community of artists?

I really don’t feel part of any kind of club or community as an artist in Portland. I just feel normal. It is a beautiful thing to be completely surrounded by creatives at all hours of the day. I feel like it is the only place in the country I could possibly live. It is at least the only place I could afford to live.

Are you showing your work anywhere right now in Portland or abroad?

Not showing work at all, I have just been focusing on freelance illustration work.

Any exciting new projects you’d care to hype?

Right now I have the awesome opportunity to do two different portraits of Stan Lee, for the cover and interview in Virgin/Atlantic’s magazine “Roger” in London. It is going to be a blast painting a man who’s work pretty much got me interested in art itself. Comic book characters were the first things I remember drawing as a kid.

. . .

See more of Domont’s work at Jordandomont.com

Disjecta reprise (again)

July 18, 2008 3:30 pm

by Lauren Hudgins

Photo by  Carolyn's

Disjecta, a nonprofit arts organization, has been around in Portland since 2000. Its goal has been to offer a venue for artists to create and exhibit their work. In just eight years, Disjecta has established and lost multiple venues. Disjecta 3 will open its new space on N. Interstate on July 19th with the exhibition Immaterialized.

But not everyone is feeling optimistic about Disjecta’s future.

PORT reporter Megan Driscoll describes the tumultuous history of Disjecta and outlines the problems with its current plans and leadership.

“Disjecta founder and leader Bryan Suereth has become notorious for a rash of personality conflicts with artists, curators, and the press. In 2005, visual arts coordinator Paul Middendorf left the organization the same week that they opened in the Templeton building….

What’s more, Suereth gets defensive and has been known to frequently resort to insults and vague allusions to litigation in response to critical press. Suereth’s surly personality even attracted the attention of the OLCC, leading them to deny him a liquor license in 2003 (it’s worth noting that Disjecta was later able to successfully obtain a liquor license). Suereth is a highly vocal and active spokesman, and his temperamental reputation has become linked with Disjecta itself. An instance where Disjecta’s relationship with artists soured significantly occurred after a 2006 auction in which Suereth ignored minimum bids at the end of the night, underselling a lot of work and leaving many artists feeling angry and betrayed.”

Link to article

Project Runway: Now With PDX

July 16, 2008 1:12 am

by Mike Burnett

The 5th season of the good apple reality show Project Runway will feature Portland designer Leann Marshall. Thanks to Discoverportlandshopping.com for the heads up.

Common Ties

July 15, 2008 10:05 am

by Lauren Hudgins

Common Ties has 20 Questions to ask you, such as “What is your most obsessive thought?” or “What were the strangest circumstances under which you have been intimate?” If you feel like answering one of them, do it in 50 words and less and send off your submission by email. Elizabeth Armstrong Moore is the editor of Common Ties and a Portland resident. If she and her staff like your response, she’ll post it on the website and send you $50. Pretty awesome.

Often those 50 word responses are paired with artwork. Sometimes this artwork is submitted by the author along with the text response. Or it is submitted by artists looking through a section called Orphans, a list of text answers that Elizabeth would like to see matched with art. If you’d like to submit artwork inspired by one of the offered text responses, Common Ties will pay you $50-$125 to publish that, too. Even better.

Common Ties has recently gone from posting answers to 20 Questions once a week to updating every weekday. And they’ve added some text-only answers among the pool of art and answer pairs.

“Illustrations can make something more powerful, but they don’t necessarily make it more powerful.” Elizabeth described one recently published a text-only post that involved a man playing Russian Roulette. The imagery elicited by the words alone was powerful enough to leave it as it was, without accompanying artwork.

Common Ties has been compared to Post Secret, both by bloggers and by its own marketing department. A past internet ad for Common Ties read, “Post Post Secret?”

“Knowing other people’s secrets makes us feel more normal,” says Moore. When we read about personal experiences on Post Secret or on Common Ties, we realize that we’re on the same level as other people. There’s an emotional response.

There are two different reactions that readers might have, but both are reassuring. If we read about an experience far more extreme than ours, we might feel relieved that at least we aren’t as weird as some people out there. Yet, if we see an experience that is common to our own lives we realize that there are people out there who are just as weird as we are.

Similarly, Elizabeth explains, the submissions to Common Ties might be divided into two categories: Things that everyone has experienced and things that are really out there.

Some people share their “singular most prophetic or hurtful moments” like a girl raped by her uncle, while others want to write about “ordinary moments on beautiful days.” These rather ordinary stories are specific to the individual but they are things that anyone might experience and everyone can relate to it, like the train passenger looking out at the Chicago spring.

fixed belt

Common Ties has just launched a new campaign focused on Portland. “Common Ties is an international website but it feels like it’s rooted here,” says Elizabeth. The Common Ties team is leaving postcards with the stories and images from the website at popular businesses, bars, and cafes in Portland. “Portland is a young, creative, artistic town that would react well to this project.” The postcards are Common Ties’s first attempt to publish on paper. It’s tangible and portable, a different experience than viewing the website. Eventually the goal is to produce books and create a variety of modes for witnessing other people’s stories.

Filmmakers Showcase, PDX Needs You

July 9, 2008 11:25 pm

by Mike Burnett

Filmmakers Showcase PDX is a local filmmakers showcase that meets at Kelly’s Olympian (426 SW Washington) every 3rd Tuesday. I’ve been meaning to go check it out, but haven’t yet had the chance (actually I went on the wrong Tuesday once and had a long conversation with a man who was planning on starting a crab fishing career in Alaska). Anyhow, I received this in my inbox today:

Hello Everyone,

Filmmakers Showcase PDX is every 3rd Tues, which falls a little earlier this month. Unfortunately i was out of state where the technology is at an etch’n'sketch level, so i wasn’t able to connect with anybody.

LONG STORY SHORT… We need your short films, music videos, etc to show next tues. the turnout has been great for the last few months so if you have anything to show, cough it up!

THERE IS NO COVER CHARGE FOR THIS EVENT!
(so even if you spent your last $ on your project you have no reason not to attend!)

Whether you’re an actor, writer, sound designer, director or total auteur, let everyone see how genius you are by submitting a film so that everyone will be dying to work with you. all of the new networks popping up to connect the local filmmakers are a great resource but there is nothing like actual face to face networking.

If you submit a film please send it to me or drop it off at my house. call me for the address. also please specify length, title, and aspect ratio(4:3 or 16:9). It must be submitted on DVD, we cannot play everything from beta to 70mm.

…and if you did spend your last $ on your project please remember that if you submit a film, you get 2 free drink tickets that can aid in the nervousness of seeing your baby on the big screen.

one more thing, we accept demo reels, music videos, documentaries, experimental, narrative shorts, webisodes, short and possibly full length narratives, and anything else. whether your short is very amateur or it already won a pile of awards at all the big name festivals, we’ll play it. and no of us are making anything so don’t worry about copyright crap.

I’ll see you there

clint ganczak

P.S. Also note: my gpu fried so i’m borrowing a pre-pentium dinosaur that takes 25+ seconds to open an email, so if you need to contact me, just call 503 819 1328

PDX to SEA BFI

July 1, 2008 4:19 am

by Mike Burnett

The Oregonian reports that there’s a new option for flights between Portland and Seattle:

Then they found their answer: the Pilatus PC-12, a Swiss-built pressurized turbine aircraft that cruises at 322 mph and would be able to reach Seattle in 35 minutes.

From there, the two men and Tom Corrolow formed SeaPort Air Group, which begins Portland-to-Seattle service Monday. The company will offer eight round trips Monday through Friday and five on weekends. They also bought a commuter airline in Juneau, Alaska.

Nowhere in the article does it say how much this flight from Portland International Airport (PDX) to Boeing Field International Airport (BFI) is going to cost. It looks like there’s currently a “half-off special” on SeaPort Air Group’s site, which would allow you to book a round trip flight to Seattle and back over this 4th of July weekend for $156 including taxes. That means the flights might eventually cost over a few hundred dollars round trip. The Oregonian did take the time to point out that the flight’s fuel efficiency is one gallon / passenger better than a solo driver’s making the same trip.

In comparison, Amtrak takes about 3.5 hours and costs as little as $56 dollars for the same trip. Greyhound is almost exactly the same as Amtrak, except they offer a refundable ticket for another $8, and they have a few less options when it comes to departure times.

Link to article