VizArts Monthly: Summer buzz
Raylee Heiden
May 31, 2024
June brings new beginnings with warmer weather and an array of art opportunities. Raylee Heiden rounds up both indoor and “plein air” options.
June brings new beginnings with warmer weather and an array of art opportunities. Raylee Heiden rounds up both indoor and “plein air” options.
“Improbable Springs” at Elizabeth Leach Gallery features large-scale paintings that juxtapose the exuberance of nature with human-made discards.
Other June events include two appearances by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, a memoir workshop led by Leanne Grabel, and readings by Oregon author Victor Lodato in Bend, Hood River and Sunriver.
As summer approaches, Oregon’s dance scene brings a broad array of statements and styles to the party.
The Beaverton arts center is throwing a free party. Plus: Grants make the cultural world go ’round; new leadership in the Oregon Legislature’s Arts and Culture Caucus.
More than 70 glass Japanese fishing floats collected by the late James L. Watson will be sold to benefit the North Lincoln County Historical Museum.
The choral ensemble workshopped and performed five student compositions in a semester-long mentorship residency culminating in this month’s showcase concert on May 8.
Plus: Don Hertzfeldt’s “Me,” “In a Violent Nature,” and the 2024 Portland Horror Film Festival.
Photographer K.B. Dixon continues his series of cultural profiles with portraits of visual artist Chris Chandler, Miller Foundation leader Carrie Hoops, Caldera leader Kimberly Howard Wade, and writers Evan Morgan Williams and Steven L. Moore.
Lava Alapai’s new comedy “Middletown Mall” features karaoke in the food court. Plus the folk-musical “The Spitfire Grill” and the story of Florence Ballard and The Supremes.
Blake Andrews interviews Prudence Roberts about the photographer and curator’s work, approach, and legacy. Toedtemeier’s photographs are featured in shows at JSMA in Eugene and PDX Contemporary Art in Portland.
The four-gallery show opens June 1 and includes photography, videography, installation, painting, and basketry.
Fourthful concert showed the eclectic breadth of the local composer organization.
A heady program of dances and dance films created by women is a vibrant and successful beginning for what should become an annual event.
An exhilarating, if unconventional, look at the rise and fall of empires – historical, contemporary, urban, political, and even our own personal domains – through dance theater.
The refreshing English-language student production of Franz Lehár’s playful opera moved the action to 1960s Paris and added a few fresh feminist twists.
Anya Taylor-Joy hits the road to revenge in the latest installment in George Miller’s “Mad Max” saga.
Peaceable Kingdoms, Beethoven’s Ninth (again), 15th and 30th anniversaries, and so much more.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s just-announced 2025 season sounds like old times, with contemporary twists. In Portland, Third Rail hangs out at the mall; “She Persists” a bit longer.
Casey Campbell, a licensed professional counselor, opened Elemental Studios after discovering the therapeutic relationship between craft arts and mental health and well-being.
Review: Philip Gefter’s book about Edward Albee’s culture-shattering play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” tells the tale of how its movie version rocked the cinematic world, too.
Lundgren talks with Marc Mohan about his new film, creative independence, and Krzysztof Kieślowski ahead of a Wednesday night appearance at the Hollywood Theatre.
The elite youth orchestra celebrates spring with four world premieres and a lyrically flowing performance by flutist Macy Gong, its concerto winner.
Two longtime stalwarts of the Northwest theater world have died: Oregon actor Cronin, in Eugene; and Portland-born director Dillon, in Seattle.
Three Oregon artists were selected for the 2024 Annual Smithsonian Craft Show, the country’s most prestigious juried show and sale of contemporary American craft.
The three Indigenous artists say family, tradition, and education are currents running throughout their work.
From the “Moonlight Sonata” to the “Hebrides Overture,” test your knowledge of the most famous nicknames in classical music.
Fuse’s 14th OUTwright Theatre Festival opens with Mikki Gillette’s backstage comedy. Also: Boom Arts’ “History of Empires,” a spot of Sondheim, a waggish “Go, Dog. Go!”
Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine star in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s surreal and nostalgic second feature.
The two choirs, longstanding pillars of Oregon’s vital choral scene, wrap up their 50th and 55th anniversary seasons with premieres and music by Pacific Northwest composers.
The ninth annual festival remembers the flood that wiped out the city of Vanport on Memorial Day 1948 and carries the vanished city’s history and vital cultural significance into the present.
The artist-operated downtown institution’s closure after 16 years deprives Oregon of an important visual arts hub.
With great music and visuals and a fantastic performance, a warehouse concert creates an artistic evocation of vast geological disruptions and troubling environmental times.
Admission is free to the May 17 and 18 event, which honors one of America’s most influential short-story writers in his hometown.
The married pianists have enriched Portland’s jazz landscape since relocating here in 2011. Both have album-release shows at the 1905 in May, and their Driveway Jazz Series is coming up.
More than 90,000 votes helped the nonprofit gain funds to restore the long-neglected building, where the majestic ballroom now hosts classes ranging from ballet to Zumba.
Greater Portland’s homegrown chamber music festival winds up its spring season with delightful samples of familiar and contemporary classical music in a variety of churches.
A new four-day showcase of talented and innovative women choreographers from Oregon and Washington features both live dance performances and films.
The university’s revised design proposal for a Keller Auditorium replacement offers two venues in one: a Keller-sized 3,000-seat hall and a versatile 1,200-seat companion space.
The chamber musicians wind up their movable feast of a spring season with a pair of concerts featuring a bass quartet, flute, steel pan drums, and composers from Haydn to Andy Akiho.
A pair of “sister shows” at Elbow Room and ILY2 showcase a talented group of artists and the ingenuity of the close-knit community of the Portland art scene. The artists all work out of Elbow Room’s SE Portland studio and gallery.
The tribal museum, closed since December for upgrades, reopens May 14. Plus: Indigenous artists at High Desert Museum, “Matrilineal Memory” & Cherokee art in Portland.
Speaking on his new book “Founding Partisans” and the long history of a sharply divided American politics, the historian gives a spirited wrapup to this year’s Hatfield series.
Choreographers Marissa Rae Niederhauser and Ashley A. Friend premiere pieces in which movement intuition and nuance guide the work.
Also this week: Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft,” Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak,” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”
Joining the sassy orphan and her dancing billionaire on this week’s stages are a medieval “Everyman” update, several worthy mid-run shows, and a pair of catch-’em-quicks-before-they-close.
Dmae Lo Roberts talks in her new podcast with the author of Milagro Theatre’s world-premiere “Borderline” about ghost stories, living on the border, cultural trauma and more.
The Portland author’s fourth novel, about a young woman seeking to solve the mystery of her lost brother, is surprising, immersive, and authentic.
Buildings by Portland’s two greatest midcentury-modern architects – Belluschi’s Central Lutheran Church and Yeon’s wooded Jorgensen House – face uncertain futures.
Witte will read May 9 from her collection “A Rupture in the Interiors” during the McMinnville Public Library’s monthly Poetry Night.
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