Sunday, September 18, 2011

TBA (Time Based Art) festival in Portland

My friend and I swung by  The Works for PICA's TBA festival in Portland on Saturday primarily to check out this ridiculous children's art show called Whoop Dee Doo, (which defies description, but I'll never forget the smell of that room) and to see everything else happening at that location with the festival.   They had a ton of installations, video and performance, both happening and evidence of things that had or would be happening, this is "time based art" after all.

When people say Portland has a great art scene, it's things like the TBA festival, or the Portland Biennial that Disjecta puts on that they are talking about, I think, more so than the gallery/museum scene. 

Any who, I have a headache here, as I write this, so I'm going to zone out and watch football (yes I know, an artist who likes football too?) but here's some picks from some of the installations, and sorry I don't have a heck of a lot of info on the individual artists (titles, names, etc) but it was a really interesting show - today is the last day for the festival this year, but it's in its 9th year, so if you are into the arts I highly suggest checking it out next year!

 Jesse Sugarman's video of inflating air mattresses lifting mini-vans, rather comically.  Jesse also shows
at Season Gallery in Seattle
.

 This piece is called Collateral Damage  by Joshua Berger.  It's an ongoing performance - he apparently did one or part of a page at the beginning of the festival and had done 46 pages so far.   It's made up of tiny tiny "x"s, each on represents a dead civilian from the Iraq war and the total dead are over 300,000, tallied by him so far, of the 655,000 reported in the NY Times in 2006.  So he has a lot more marks to make.  Needless-to-say, it wasn't all light fun and games at TBA this year.





 installation in the bathroom
 file it under optical illusion

 photo cred to LH

Saturday, September 10, 2011

NEPO 5K Walk don't run

Molorazzi did a 5K today.  Okay okay, truthfully I did drive part of the way, but still, I feel like I accomplished something, checking out this AMAZING EVENT put on by NEPO House.  The work that the organizers put into planning and funding this even and the work that all the artists did, should be applauded!  It's rare that such a fun, engaging, and community based art even ever takes place in Seattle and I am amazed at how well it was pulled off. 

Hats off to team NEPO:  Klara Glosova, Bond Huberman, Amanda Manitach, Leanne Grimes, Rumi Kushino, Todd Jannausch, Erin Shafkind, Susanna Bluhm Callahan, and Seth Damm, and all the other people who pulled it together.  

If you missed it, here's a sampling of images from the day, more-or-less in order of the events!



 Vis-a-Vis Society signing folks in

 Start


 Artists Cable Griffith and Curtis Erlinger represent NEPO

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Bumbershoot 2011 - Music


 Astronautalis played a great set  with a full band on the fountain lawn stage


 Shabazz Palaces sounded way better than they did at the block party last year, I'm sure this had everything
to do with acoustics and the set-up.

Vetiver was lovely, but started to lull me to sleep...

Bumbershoot 2011 - Visual Arts




 Scott Trimble's impossible-to-skate skate park


Bumber by Number:









 Curators Marlow and Jo David




The Magic Show:



 Jason Puccinelli 


poster designer/illustrator Jon Horn at flatstock


September Art Walk - a brief glimpse


 Paintings by Chris Sheridan and Kate Protage, and sculpture by John Belli at 619 Western's final artwalk (outdoor version)

 Etsuko Ichikawa at Davidson Gallery, a very handsome show.

 Bond H, Cable Griffith + Susanna Bluhm at Cable and Susanna's show Islands at SOIL.

 Cable Griffith

 Susanna Bluhm


 Prole Drift gallery

Dirk Park of Prole Drift at the opening reception