The year that was: Looking back on ’22
Bob Hicks
January 1, 2023
The opening of the Reser Center in Beaverton and the cautious return to post-pandemic “normal” top a vigorous year of arts events in Oregon.
The opening of the Reser Center in Beaverton and the cautious return to post-pandemic “normal” top a vigorous year of arts events in Oregon.
Must be something in the water, or the creative talent pool: We talk with five of this year’s seven Oregon winners of Eisner Awards, the Oscars of the comics industry.
Anthony Davis’s shattering work at Portland Opera opens deep and disturbing questions about race and policing in the United States.
On the move: Memoirs by Mark Morris and Carol Rich, Victoria Fortuna’s exploration of dance and violence in Buenos Aires, the legacy of a Russian master.
Celebrating artists in Oregon whose visions stood out and helped define and rethink a precarious year.
Christmas concerts, drag shows, música latina, doom metal, and everything in between
Generations meet and play when the Keylock company’s young dancers take on the witty choreography of Oregon legend Bielemeier, 71.
The bellwether: In Maryhill Museum’s second collaborative art project along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River – this one by fiber artists – sheep and their wool lead the way.
ArtsWatch Weekly: As Covid ebbs and flows, arts & culture find fresh form – and Oregon stories arrive in a rush.
ArtsWatch Weekly: Portland Oscar nod; Dawson Carr’s big day; dance dive; laureate speaks; big BRAVO.
Pat Rose profiles three of Portland’s most creative photographers. Part 1: Grace Weston.
“… Maddy called me up a year ago, and she was like, let’s start this thing. I have an idea, it’s called Renegade Opera.”
ArtsWatch Weekly: Remembering Beverly Cleary, Larry McMurtry, and composer Stephen Scott; revolutions & the way things change.
ArtsWatch Weekly: A year into shutdown, signs of revival: Stimulus aid for the arts, museums reopening, a theater with an audience of 1 to 5.
Shining a light on rose gardens Oregon musicians are tending; listening to Kenji Bunch on behalf of the City of Roses.
Forced to quickly shift from live to virtual performances, the festival finds surprising intimacy and success.
Sebastian Zinn explores the multifaceted work of the artist and musician Chaz Bear.
A look back at the ups and downs and curious side trips of the year in Oregon culture.
An invitation to be a part of ArtsWatch, plus what’s new with centenarians Lenny and Merce.
Some thoughts on theater etiquette, on ideas about race and cultural preference, and on what shows to see this week in Portland.
From Eastern Oregon to a paint-out on the coast to queer opera and TBA in Portland to the New York streets, art is where you look.
This year’s Time-Based Art Festival is loaded with dance events. The rest of September’s leaping with dance, too.
“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you,” the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us. But you — by which I mean we humans — are under an obligation, or at least a compulsion, to make sense of the
The idea of art as a pristine thing, separated from the hurly-burly of the everyday world and somehow above it all, is a popular notion. But a much stronger case exists for the idea of art as the expression of the roil
“Rubble Bodies brings up the possibilities for me of something after a collapse, where we don’t actually know how it’s organized yet,” Portland choreographer Tahni Holt told me over coffee last week as we talked about her new dance. This idea she
There are surely stretches over the year when not much is going on in Yamhill County, artistically speaking. Those lazy weeks will afford opportunities for deep dives into our scene, with in-depth interviews and profiles of individual artists. But July is not
On the last Saturday morning in January, as Portland was alight with the Fertile Ground Festival of New Plays and dozens of other significant cultural events, I gave a talk to a good-sized crowd at Terwilliger Plaza, titled “Portland Arts: Covering More
I’ve seen March arrive in Portland more than a dozen times, and yet still some part of me thinks “Ok, it’s spring now, right?” It’s not spring, and it won’t be spring for a while. It’s still winter, still time left in
My first encounter with the music of Philip Glass was, appropriately, in the theater. The community college I attended after high school put on a selection of one-act plays from David Ives’ recently published All In The Timing. Between acts there would
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