Portland
Zombie spangers sitting on Rosa Parks. Image by Todd Cooper
Did you read the Public art story last week? If you read it in print, you may have noticed I wrote about a woman named "Eloise Barney."
Who's that? wondered the committee, the consultants and anyone else associated with public art in Eugene or Portland.
Well, that was Eloise Damrosch, only the executive director of Portland's Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Do I have any idea where the mistake came from, other than my brain? No, I do not, nor why it happened (fuzzy time period there, that cover story writing experience), and my deep apologies to Ms. Damrosch. It's correct online, and will be corrected in this week's paper as well. Meanwhile, mea culpa.
And by the way, isn't this Public Art Searchable Database just the coolest??? WANT.
THE BLOG IS BACK!!!
Excuse me. It went down for almost four days,* It was being moved to a new server, and I couldn't access it for a couple of days; when it came back up (on the new server) this morning, I was scribbling this week's cover story like a crazed raccoon, so I couldn't blog.
Two things (I am *so* going to post my interview with Chris McVay tomorrow morning):
1. There's a PICASSO up at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. And although the PR folk assured me it wasn't just any old Picasso, allow me to tell you that no web photo, even one on a big screen, is anything like the big, beautiful thing itself.
Bust D'Homme, Pablo Picasso, courtesy Sotheby's. (c) 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
See, this is not even right. Look away from the screen, pull up your calendar and make plans to go to the J-Schnitz and see this work. I happened by J-Schnitz director Jill Hartz' office yesterday just after it went up, and she took me up to see it. The painting is HUMONGOUS and completely dominates its little (very secure) room. The colors, the brushstrokes, the confidence (and arrogance!) of the man who painted this ... I was bowled over. Hartz said, "Isn't it wonderful to be part of a museum that can have this painting!" She seemed truly appreciative to the anonymous lender and impressed by the work, which she hadn't seen yet either. So, you know, GET OVER THERE. You can see the "Amazonia" exhibit while you're there.
Read about an exciting theater-fest in Portland after the jump!
Li-Ning at the Portland Art Museum © 2009 Chris Ryan
This review will appear in the 12/3 issue of the Eugene Weekly
A Red Hot Mess
“China Design Now†at the Portland Art Museum mostly fails to charm
Take the streetcar to the Portland Art Museum, and you’ll see the best thing about its “China Design Now†exhibit before you even walk in the door. Two hunded red lanterns hang over the sculpture courtyard, playing whimsically with the air above Deborah Butterfield’s Dance Horse, connecting the museum’s awkwardly distant buildings.
More delightful packaging awaits inside the museum: In neon, simplified Mandarin characters spell out the title of the exhibition, and red-wrapped glass makes everything glow an eerie, vampire-friendly light (one expects legions of Twihards to search for the Sparkly One here, honestly). But step into the exhibit — up the stairs and through a welter of rooms; no one ever called PAM’s exhibit space easy to get to — and the whimsy, delight and enjoyment smash together in a welter of candy-colored sights, noise and confusion.
(Read more after the jump!)
While Portland and other cities are putting forward innovative bike and transit friendly transportation projects for a $1.5-billion pot of flexible, green-oriented federal stimulus funds, Eugene only wants yet more roads.
Portland's Metro planning agency selected $76 million in active, bike, walking and transit projects to apply for federal TIGER funding, according to the bikeportland.org blog.
One $38-million project would saturate the city with bike lanes and separated trails to serve as a national model of green transportation to fight global warming and increase livability. Here's a draft map:
Another $17 million grant application would build a bike trail from Portland to the foothills of Mt. Hood, allowing city-dwellers non-motorized access to the scenic area. The rest of the money would fund improved pedestrian and bike access to light rail stations.
Other cities have also put together innovative green transportation proposals for the rare pot of non-freeway centered federal transportation money. For example, Kansas City wants a trolley and Washington, D.C. a bike sharing program.
But in Eugene/Springfield the focus is on more road construction, according to a memo from the local LCOG planning agency. The city of Eugene wants to reconstruct Highway 99 with another turn lane at Roosevelt and added driveways and resurface 5th Avenue and add a roundabout to accommodate industrial truck traffic in west Eugene. Springfield wants to widen Franklin into a boulevard concept that will include EmX transit lanes but not lined bike lanes.
Portland Metro spent the summer soliciting ideas in a public process to come up with its green list. But LCOG's dirtier, non-innovative transportation stimulus ideas apparently came solely from secret meetings within the undemocratic agency's unelected bureaucracy.
Long dreamed local green transportation projects that didn't make LCOG's dirty list include:
- A river bike path and bridge all the way to Mt. Pisgah.
- A trolley down Willamette Street.
- Bike lanes, wide sidewalks, trees and pedestrian crossings on south Willamette Street.
- Extending the riverfront bike path through Glenwood.
- A bike bridge over Beltline to Chad Drive.
- A separated cycletrack (bike path) down High Street connecting the Amazon trail to the riverfront trail.
- A dramatic expansion of Eugene's bike lane system.
- Funding to accelerate the buildout of the EmX system into west and north Eugene.
The 12-lane freeway bridge urban sprawl proponents are pushing in Portland isn't in Eugene, but the $4-billion project threatens to suck all the transportation funding out of the entire state and local Congressman Peter DeFazio could play a key role in killing it.
Columbia River Crossing (CRC) opponents have produced a series of clear, quick videos on the freeway project. Here's an overview:
Columbia River Crossing : Introduction from Nick Falbo on Vimeo.
Here's an explanation of how the $4-billion expenditure will just create more sprawl, traffic, unlivable neighborhoods and global warming pollution:
Columbia River Crossing : Induced Demand from Nick Falbo on Vimeo.
Here's a look at greener, cheaper alternatives:
Columbia River Crossing : Alternatives from Nick Falbo on Vimeo.
So how does DeFazio fit in to all this? DeFazio chairs a powerful House transportation subcommittee that may be key to funding the huge freeway bridge. A careful politician, DeFazio hasn't explicitly opposed a project that the state's powerful development and construction industries (and their unions) are backing. But DeFazio told Willamette Week this spring:
"I have said from Day One, they should think small. And they have been thinking really big and really expensive. And I am not sure how that project moves forward and how they will fund it. I have raised concerns throughout the process—keep the price down. You can't solve all your problems with one project."
The folks in Portland have less pull with DeFazio than his constituents here who can tell their representative what they think online.
Courtesy TBA
For several years now, I've been trying to figure out how to have a job, a garden, cats, a relationship and STILL go to Portland for as much as possible of the Time-Based Art festival at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (that's PICA, and for some reason I adore the acronym, as if a cute little typeface term mated with a kitten ... oh, never mind. Too much soda near the end of the day).
A couple of years ago, we didn't make any performances but did hit a couple of art exhibits whose gentle impact lingers. One, and I can't find our photo/video of it, was a humungous rotating mobile in a factory somewhere on NW Johnson (maybe one reason I liked it so much was that the space reminded me of the lovely Dia: Beacon, which I hope to see again SOON).
Last year (the cat died in August & the relationship wanted to see as much of TBA as I did), we tried to get to performances, but let's just say that the handling of media passes was less intelligent than it should have been. We did go on this extremely cool if bizarre walk with artist Khris Soden called The Portland Tour of Tilberg. (Here's his description of it.) That is to say, in Portland, Soden acted as our tour guide to Tilberg, Netherlands; and in Tilberg, he gave a guided tour of Portland. Fun, funky and while occasionally disconcerting also entirely charming. We also saw some seriously crap art (y'all, come on; I LOVE conceptual art, but it needs to be, I don't know, GOOD) and the most incredible thing, a music/dance/fountain performance — Third Angle New Music Ensemble / The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. That was unexpectedly tremendous, and I think most of Portland eventually came out to see most of it. Also, it was free and didn't require an early sign-up something blah blah blah. Also, again, it was TRE. MEN. DOUS. Come to think of it, other than the crap visual art, what I saw of last year's TBA was pretty great.
Today, I got an email from the new media guy at TBA (Sept. 3-13), and I *think* there might have been some ... feedback ... last year about how it went down. One paragraph begins, "Our box office has changed our press ticketing for this year ... " which, I *hope*, means that I can blog more about TBA for the Eugene audience. (As usual, our intrepid Brett Campbell will be previewing TBA for the print version of the paper, and I'll do a little more on the blog, I hope, when I'm inspired.)
Aaaaaanyway, point is, the big thing this year is Pink Martini's Oregon 150 celebration thingy. Which is described here and was moved to the Oregon Zoo for some reason (size?). Here is what the TBA website says, and it's a tad bit fulsome, but whatever (also, here is NPR's Scott Simon talking with Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale about the whole thing from our Actual Sesquicentennial Date back in February):
In 1959, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Oregon, the Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company commissioned the Grammy Award-winning radio personality Stan Freberg to write a 21-minute-long musical comedy about the beaver state. The result was a hilarious tale of two explorers in 1859 named Harry and David, their encounter with a witch, and the subsequent birth of a state which must go back into the bottle after 100 years … that is, if the citizens of 1959 can’t break the spell. Sound confusing?
Well hold on to your myrtlewood, because a team of Oregonians, including Metro President David Bragdon, Chariots of Fire conductor Harry Rabinowitz, Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini, PICA Flash Choir’s Sarah Dougher & Pat Janowski, and the writers of Livewire! have teamed up to write a new Act IV, complete with brand new songs and rollicking plot!
With sets by Scrappers and an all-star Oregonian cast backed by the 234th Army Band - Oregon National Guard and Pink Martini, Oregon! Oregon! 2009 will debut at the Oregon State Fair, followed by performances in Bend and Jacksonville. The final performance—in Portland—will be co-presented by PICA at The Oregon Zoo for one night only!
You probably know Pink Martini, ubiquitous as they are, but just in case, a slightly blurry video:
Below is a video of the 234th Army Band's "Hymn to the Fallen." So ... that mashup will be interesting. I guess I'll be looking for tix to this (as will you, if you know what's good for you and you claim to love Oregon!).
Last Thursday, I went to Portland because of Twitter.
Ok, that's not quite true. I went to Portland because of Amanda Palmer, the singer-songwriter-force-of-nature who some folks may know as half of the Dresden Dolls. Palmer's solo album is one of my absolute favorite records of last year, and I've long been complaining that of course I only fell in love with it two days after she played Portland in December. Of course.
Palmer is a savvy Twitterer, engaging blogger and generally the sort of musician you can follow closely (but not creepily) online. She's been playing what she calls ninja ukelele gigs in various places this summer, notably in L.A. — the pictures are fantastic (and not all safe for work). Her travels, last week, landed her in Portland, where she called her Twitter followers to meet her first at Mary's Club, late on a Wednesday, and then in the park blocks on Thursday afternoon. We were to bring flowers, ponies and fruit, among other things. (The fruit, she explained later, was because in L.A. she'd requested cookies and cake, thinking it would be wonderful, and it turned out to be kind of gross. My paraphrasing, not her words, that.)
I couldn't resist. I made a day of it — lunch at Broder, with its rich, delicious Swedish meatballs; a cherry beer at Deschutes while I waited for 6 pm to roll around, a pink bouquet of hastily purchased flowers wilting in my car; dinner at Pok Pok, where I ate what were possibly the best chicken wings I've ever tasted — but let's just talk about the mini concert for now, shall we?
When do we get those high-speed trains? 'Cause I need a faster, easier way to get back and forth from PDX these days. Today, I'm missing a press screening of Harry Potter Laughs All the Way to the Bank Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (thanks, Shawn Levy, for inspiring that strikethrough). I'll go see it Wednesday and review it on this here blog the same day. I PROMISE. My fingers aren't even crossed or anything. EDIT: I take it back. I'm going to go at midnight Tuesday and write like a ... fast writer thing so there will be a review in this week's paper. Because big Wednesday movie openings mean I can do absurd things like that.
Next Monday, I'm missing a screening of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, which shows as a benefit for the Portland Women's Film Festival. Bigelow's new film is supposed to be a good'un. Here's hoping it gets here eventually.
And tonight, do-it-all-and-do-it-yourself woman of awesomeness Jessica Hopper reads at Powell's on Hawthorne. On the Portland Mercury's blog, "everyone's best pal*" Joan Hiller-Depper interviews Hopper about her new book, The Girls' Guide to Rocking.
I actually went to Portland on a whim on Thursday, but that's a story for its very own blog post.
* This may sound like a snarky way to refer to someone, but I think Ezra Caraeff is being totally sincere: Joan is possibly the friendliest person I have ever met. No joke. Most of us could take lessons in niceness from Joan and lessons in doing stuff from Jessica. Which is just one more reason it'd be nifty to be in Portland tonight.
