Like all good summer weekends, this week’s show is full of devil-may-care side trips, soul-searching conversations, and moments of wonder. We’re bound for for a residency in Lincoln County’s Coast Range, Bend’s premier printmaking space, Vancouver’s spoken word scene, and more. Grab your sunscreen — wheels up!
Central Oregon’s fine art printmaking studio is renaming and re-branding.
Sitka is this gorgeous place tucked between the hills in Lincoln County, Oregon — not too far from Otis, if you’re out that way. It’s a residency where artists can go, think, work, and find themselves transformed in an idyllic landscape. This week, the center announced it has acquired Grass Mountain. The new property acquisition will allow the Center to expand the ecology side of their Mission, notes Director Ben Shockey.
The band, Hurray For The Riff Raff is a living embodiment of Americana. They’ve hopped between hotbeds like New Orleans, Nashville and New York, playing everything from folk to rockabilly. Their latest album, “The Navigator,” is an exciting turn for front woman Alynda Lee Segarra — featuring a superhero alter-ego by the name of Navita Milagros Negron — she’s laying it down like a second coming of Lou Reed.
Teva Harrison had a pretty sweet childhood growing up in rural Josephine County. Harrison lives in Toronto now. She’s an artist, writer, and cartoonist. And she’s living with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. Her new graphic memoir, “In Between Days,” is a brave and amazing window into her experience living with the disease. Our segment came from her recent appearance on "Think Out Loud."
For more than five decades, Ural Thomas’s voice has been shining like a beacon of soul. He made hot records during the ‘50s, but then hit a lull. He struck up a friendship in 2013 with DJ and musician Scotty McGee. The band they formed, Ural Thomas and the Pain, is one of Portland’s hottest tickets. In 2014, we had the great pleasure of sitting down with Thomas, to hear a little more about his growing up years, and his musical orientation. Ural Thomas and the Pain will be headlining the Cathedral Park Jazz Fest Saturday July 15.
Over the last few months, swastikas have been found in parts of Portland and Eugene. And the Mittlemen Jewish Community center in Southwest Portland had to be evacuated after receiving a bomb threat. Against this volatile backdrop, Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education moved into a new home in the Pearl District. Executive Director Judy Margles tells us what the last few months have been like at the museum. Find the full interview here.
With modest beginnings in an ice cream parlor, Ghost Town Poetry is a poetry reading series welcoming to poets of all ages and stages. Now held at Angst Gallery, it’s become a Vancouver institution. Christopher Luna started the series and now hosts it with his wife, Toni Partington. Luna has since been appointed as the Clark County poet laureate and is the mastermind behind everything from a poetry in the schools program to Poetry Moves — a contest that posts poems in Vancouver busses. This week we meet Luna, Partington and Ghost Town regulars Eileen Elliott, April Bullard, and Erin Iwata. The next Ghost Town open mic is July 13 at Angst Gallery.
Erika Bartlett, the artist on view right now at Angst Gallery in downtown Vancouver, believes that humans naturally respond to art that draws from nature. Her artistic process begins with tight photos of nature, mostly of sky, that are later manipulated in Photoshop or a mobile phone app. The end results are lovely, abstract visions of stratospheric light that virtually glow. And Bartlett is that rare artist with a business plan. She prints most of her work onto clear acrylic, and mounts it on wood panels, though she also prints on cell phone cases, curtains and building materials. Bartlett’s show is on display at Angst Gallery in Vancouver through July 29.
Courtesy of Erika Bartlett
/"You Must Do The Thing You Think You Cannot", Erika Bartlett
Courtesy of Teva Harrison
/A panel from "In Between Days"
Aaron Scott
/Toni Partington (left) and Christopher Luna (right), the husband-and-wife team that organizers Vancouver's Ghost Town poetry open mic.
Rachel Bracker
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April Baer
/A maquette of Lee Kelly's iconic "Bend Gate", on view at the Bend Art Center.
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