Grain and groove: ‘WOODCORE’ at Lake Oswego’s Artspace

June 24, 2025Hannah Krafcik

The Pacific Northwest has an abundance of wood. The work in the show at the Arts Council of Lake Oswego's Artspace confirms area artists know how to coax the best out the material.

NW Dance Project’s playful, slyly defiant ‘Piaf’ and ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’

June 11, 2025Hannah Krafcik

In the face of a federal war on the arts and queer expression, the Portland company closes its season with a pair of shows that range from robust parody to pandemonium to Pride.

Unpacking the Fairview Training Center

June 4, 2025Hannah Krafcik

The multi-pronged project "Our Fairview..." is spearheaded by Bruce Burris, Jill Baker, and Paul Meuse. Art-making, workshops, research, and conversation all figure into the amorphous but ambitious undertaking.

Andrea Parson’s ‘You Can’t Be Serious’

June 3, 2025Hannah Krafcik

In her hometown of Hillsboro, the dancer and choreographer's evolving one-woman show about her younger sister's death from cancer goes through grief and pain and "the mess of loving."

Peter Gallo: Divine sense and madness

May 2, 2025Hannah Krafcik

The artist's West Coast debut, "Peter Gallo: Gods, Sluts & Martyrs" on view at Adams and Ollman, incorporates found materials, thickly painted impasto, and juxtaposed text to explore creativity and art's social framing.

Review: Rakesh Sukesh’s dance of diversity

April 20, 2025Hannah Krafcik

The Indian dancer's Portland performances, sponsored by PICA and Boom Arts, give a contemporary twist to questions of race and class in India and the West.

Tiffany Mills steps up at Lewis & Clark

April 11, 2025Hannah Krafcik

The longtime New York contemporary choreographer, now director of dance at L&C, brings her company to campus for an invigorating performance and workshops.

Nate Orton’s magnetic neighborhood

January 22, 2025Hannah Krafcik

The works in the artist's current show at after/time gallery in downtown Portland celebrate the Northwest and the magical allure of everyday landscapes.

Meaningful play: Emily Counts at Oregon Contemporary

December 20, 2024Hannah Krafcik

Counts' installation with its humanoid and animal sculptures is unabashedly feminine and whimsical. It equally defies easy categorization.

Remembering Sahomi Tachibana

December 5, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The brilliant Japanese American dancer and teacher, who died in October at age 100, left a deep and lasting imprint on the world of dance both nationally and in Oregon.

Collaboration and community at Living Studios in Corvallis

November 21, 2024Hannah Krafcik

Progressive art studios offer space and support for artists to create and thrive. Navigating the art world's power dynamics requires attention and care.

‘Mana Wahine’ (Powerful Women)

November 20, 2024Hannah Krafcik

Review: New Zealand's Õkāreka Dance Company, presented by White Bird, delves deeply and movingly into Māori culture and tradition within a contemporary dance context.

‘Toadstools’ at Helen’s Costume

October 31, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The Halloween group show is a gallery tradition. It fits given that the gallery takes its name from a now-closed neighborhood costume shop. The fourth annual exhibition features suspended gloves, helmets, and witches.

TBA continues in Reed College offerings

October 25, 2024Hannah Krafcik

PICA's TBA Festival wrapped in September but an exhibition in the Cooley Memorial Art Gallery and a vitrine installation in the library are on view through December. Hannah Krafcik considers the work of Sarah Gilbert, and Pato Hebert, and Jess Perlitz.

The something of ‘Nothing #15: a bed’

October 19, 2024Hannah Krafcik

From roller skates to fish in an aquarium to a hole in the bed, Autumn Knight's dance at PICA suggests a sweeping eventfulness in loss and “the sweetness of doing nothing.”

Open Space serves a tasty ‘Summer Soup’

August 24, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The Portland dance company and its sister troupe LED Boise stir up a kettle of contemporary dance, spicing the broth with a fog machine, a splash of milk, street dance, gender play and more.

Nia Musiba’s spirals of expression

August 22, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The artist's second solo show at One Grand Gallery, "Unseasonably Warm," features an identifiable lexicon of shapes. The story that unfolds in the works manages to be both intensely personal and universal.

Alyson Provax’s islands of perception

June 19, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The artist's letterpress works lean into language's incomplete capacity to describe feelings. Hannah Krafcik reviews "To know what we say we know," on view through June at Well Well Projects.

Creating magic at North Pole Studio

June 6, 2024Hannah Krafcik

North Pole Studio's mission is to "increase opportunities for artists with autism and intellectual / developmental disabilities to thrive as active members of the art community." Hannah Krafcik explores what makes North Pole Studio tick.

Dance Review: “The History of Empires”

May 23, 2024Hannah Krafcik

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.

Elbow Room takes on the contemporary art scene

May 10, 2024Hannah Krafcik

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.

Dance Review: Jefferson Dancers Annual Spring Concert

April 25, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The acclaimed high school dance company surprises and delights with a packed program of original choreography performed with energy, versatility, and joy.

In the trees at Lewis and Clark: Ecosexuality and sonic experiments

April 24, 2024Hannah Krafcik

Famed performance artist Annie Sprinkle and her collaborator Beth Stephens were in residence at the college in early April. Their work, 'The Forest as Lover,' is in the college's EAR (Experimental Art Research) Forest through the end of June.

Dance Review: Alembic Artists in performance

April 14, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The 10th cohort of Alembic Resident Artists presented their new experimental dance pieces to a sold out crowd of fans, friends, and family at Performance Works NW.

Dance Review: NW Dance Project’s ‘Secret Stories’

April 8, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The contemporary dance company presented the world premiere of works by three internationally recognized guest choreographers, each of whom explored the theme of secrets in distinctly different ways.

‘Policing Justice’ at PICA

March 28, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The group exhibition, curated by Cleo Davis and Nina Amstutz, brings together works by artists and organizations that highlight histories of oppression and resistance. Recounting and engaging with the past allows for the imagining of a more equitable future.

ParuParo: A space for QTBIPOC artists takes wing

March 14, 2024Hannah Krafcik

The new center, whose name means "butterfly," seeks to create a "microscopic utopia" for artists who are often dispossessed.

Process and destiny at the Cooley Gallery

March 12, 2024Hannah Krafcik

"Las Vegas Ikebana" celebrates five decades of friendship between Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi. On view are individual works, collaborations, and ephemera that reveal the richness of their creative intertwining.

Dance Review: Music From The Sole

March 5, 2024Hannah Krafcik

In its enrapturing show, ‘I Didn’t Come to Stay,’ this acclaimed tap and live music company celebrated the depth and virtuosity of tap’s Afro-diasporic roots.

Dance Review: ‘Rejigged, desperately seeking Dorinda’

March 4, 2024Hannah Krafcik

Seven of Portland’s local dancers come together for an evening of solos, duets, trios, quartets, and quintets that reflect love and camaraderie.