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For stories published before 2018, visit our archive site.

NEA: $1.2 million in Oregon grants

The National Endowment for the Arts today announced its latest round of grants, more than $80 million across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. jurisdictions. Oregon’s share is $1,219,200 among 17 groups and agencies – more

It’s over. OCAC is sold.

Oregon College of Art and Craft is history – or will be at the end of May. The beleaguered craft school’s board of directors announced on Monday in a notification to the school community that it has completed its sale agreement to

Breaking: Tuski leaves PNCA

Don Tuski, president of Pacific Northwest College of Art, has quit to become president of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. His announcement Thursday morning took PNCA faculty, staff, and students by surprise. Tuski had come to Portland in 2016from the

Theater news: Artists Rep prepares for another leap

Artists Repertory Theatre hired J.S. May to be its executive director less than six months ago, and he and his board are already about to make a big move—a $10 million-plus capital campaign that will redesign and renovate its building on Southwest

Students from six Oregon high school orchestras will participate in the third annual Oregon Coast Youth Symphony Festival, April 25-28 in Newport.

An ocean of musical opportunities

More than 100 students and their teachers will arrive in Newport next week for four days of workshops and performances, a visit to the Oregon Coast Aquarium – and of course, ample time on the beach. They’ll stay in oceanfront hotels and

Playing chicken at the book bash

I don’t eat chickens, much less cook them. That didn’t stop me from enjoying the delectable chicken-themed keynote speech by Colson Whitehead that officially kicked off the 2019 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference the last week in March

Remembering Jim Mesi

Portlanders will have the chance to say goodbye on Sunday to one of the towering talents of the local blues scene, guitarist Jim Mesi, who died on March 4 from complications of emphysema. He was 69. He was also stone brilliant, an

In the Frame 4: Culture now

Text and Photographs by K.B. DIXON “The portrait,” said legendary photographer Arnold Newman, “is a form of biography. Its purpose is to inform now and to record for history.” It is hard to imagine a better, more succinct summation of the genre.

Actor Russ Fast, 1947-2019

Russ Fast, who died Feb. 20 at age 71 after a fight with cancer, left a lot of memories for a lot of people across a lot of areas when he moved on. He was a sometime musician – a drummer and

Ashland picks new artistic leader

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced a new artistic director in a Tuesday morning release. Nataki Garett will be the Ashland festival’s sixth artistic leader, replacing Bill Rauch, who is completing his final season before taking over as the first artistic director of

Jiang Tiefeng's "Blue Lady" (deluxe edition serigraph print on rice paper)

Chehalem center hosts rare exhibit of Yunnan School art

The Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg rarely devotes more than one of its half-dozen galleries to a single artist or exhibition, so when curators decide to allocate three galleries to one show, one is obliged to pay attention. Last week, the center

In an attention economy, the critic’s most powerful tool is silence

Humans are wired to crave attention. We want validation and recognition that our lives matter to other people. But our desire for attention has become bottomless, stretched, and grotesque. I keep reading reports of social media darlings meeting their ends—falling off cliffs

Movies Without Borders: The 42nd Portland International Film Festival

The tagline for this year’s Portland International Film Festival is “Empathy has no ethnicity.” While clearly intended as a response to the xenophobia and intolerance currently plaguing our nation, it’s also a timeless reminder of the value of global cinema. It harks

Barbara LaMorticella: a woman of her words

On a recent Monday night a familiar voice returned to the airwaves of Talking Earth, KBOO community radio’s long-running interview show about poets and other writers and reading aloud. The voice was soft and conversational, confiding, helpful, gently guiding the talk into

Commentary: How dead is OCAC?

What happens when you try to close the debate before the debate ever gets started? At this point the Oregon College of Art and Craft board is starting to find that out. During the week since my last commentary on the OCAC

Commentary: Democracy and the arts

Let’s say someone said, “Tell me, Mr Bones, what should happen next, now that Oregon College of Art and Craft has decided to close the college and sell the campus?” I’d probably sputter, make a few false starts, and then I’d say

Watching (and talking) movies in McMinnville

The 8th Annual McMinnville Short Film Festival was too big a meal to consume entirely last weekend, but I did get to a screening in the largest auditorium at Coming Attractions’ multiplex, which was pretty full Sunday afternoon. Between that and watching

Oregon College of Art and Craft terminates its degree program

The Oregon College of Art and Craft board of trustees has announced it will “terminate all degree programs” at the college at the end of this academic term. “May 19, 2019, will mark the commencement ceremony for the final graduating at OCAC,”

PNCA: Sticking to the path

Two big questions remain from the failed merger talks between Pacific Northwest College of Art and Oregon College of Art and Craft back in the fall. The first: What are the details of the financial condition at OCAC that led it to

Portland State will not acquire Oregon College of Art and Craft

After a week of thinking about it—or in the business parlance of our times, after conducting a “feasibility study” or “due diligence”—Portland State University officials informed Oregon College of Art and Craft officials on Thursday (January 24) that the university had decided

DramaWatch: a new place to play

Stepan Simek is a professor of theater at Lewis & Clark College, a director, and an accomplished theatrical adapter and translator. Now he’s also a real estate developer. Well, in a manner of speaking. Simek recently opened a small studio space for

‘Amazing landscape’ inspires Sitka Center resident artists

Artists Isabelle Hayeur and Felix Prater, who began residencies at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology this week, both journeyed from afar to practice their craft at the retreat dedicated to fostering creativity, curiosity, and education. They are among five new

DramaWatch: Planning for a bountiful harvest from Fertile Ground

“Conceived and organized by the Portland Area Theater Alliance, Fertile Ground is a new, 10-day, city-wide festival dedicated to the creation and promotion of original works for the theater. Home-grown and wide-ranging, it both reflects and nurtures the creativity, aesthetic diversity and

Oregon College of Art and Craft finds another potential partner

While the Oregon College of Art and Craft was seeking to join forces with Pacific Northwest College of Art this fall, it was also talking to Portland State University about a possible deal. Those talks are heating up. The statement yesterday from

Art in Oregon turns its bridge-building to Lincoln County

A healthy community needs a healthy cultural side, and that includes the arts, says Tammy Jo Wilson, cofounder of Art in Oregon (AiO). After a first year that included setting up a database of Oregon artists and offering micro-grants to Clackamas County

Music Notes: new year, new directions

Portland’s classical music scene is experiencing a leadership transformation. This season, Third Angle New Music selected Sarah Tiedemann as its artistic director, replacing Ron Blessinger, who had moved over to 45th Parallel Universe as interim artistic director of the now collectively run

The power to move people

A recent change in leadership at Linfield College is significant not only for the 160-year-old liberal arts institution, but also for the community at large. It is not hyperbole to say that the private college plays a major — even an essential

Jimmy Mak’s: Ace of clubs prepares to play a new hand

For many years, J.D. Stubenberg and Lisa Boyle were mainstays of the great Portland music club Jimmy Mak’s, in their own ways as vital to the place as the hotspot’s founder/owner Jimmy Makarounis and the musicians who lit up the stage there.

Art gallery reopens at Salishan Resort

After decades of decline, the Salishan Resort in Gleneden Beach may be looking at a brighter future. New owners, Alpha Wave Investors, took over the property a little more than a year ago and are promising to restore the resort to its

2018: A roller-coaster arts ride

Well, that was the year that was, wasn’t it? Old Man 2018 limps out of the limelight with a thousand scars, a thousand accomplishments, and a whole lot of who-knows-what. The new kid on the block, Baby 2019, arrives fit and sassy,

Ill wind blows good wood for Newport museum

The Lincoln County Historical Society scored big time in 2004 when it bought a historic, French chateau overlooking the Newport bayfront. The 30,000-square-foot building with gabled roof needed work — one of the reasons the Newport nonprofit was able to buy it

Stage sense: the year in theater

“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

Oregon Cultural Trust: Giving once is giving twice

When I visited the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in July this year, the temperatures were on the hot side, but unlike a few previous years, the air was clean and at night, quite pleasant and fresh. Given the vast conflagrations in California earlier

In the Frame 3: Lens on artists

Text and Photographs by K.B. Dixon Photography essentially began as the art of portraiture. With the daguerreotype the portrait—previously painted and available only to an aristocratic few—became relatively inexpensive and available to everyone. John Szarkowski, the legendary director, curator, and poohbah-emeritus at New

Now see this: a year in pictures

By SARAH KREMEN-HICKS Writers do tend to go on a bit, don’t we? Maybe we ought to step back now and then, put the pens down, and let the pictures tell the story. In the following photo essays from 2018, ArtsWatch’s photographers

Social engagement: politics, resistance, and art

The world is indisputably in a precarious position — not just politically and socially, but economically and even ecologically. It is a moment of crisis. Artists play a crucial role in moments like these, helping the rest of us arrive at a

People & Conversations 2018

By Sarah Kremen-Hicks Theaters have their curtains. Paintings have their frames. Books have their covers. The act of presentation, of framing, of giving things edges, shifts the subject to the work itself and hides the artist away, if only a little bit.

State of the art, art of the state

In 2018 ArtsWatch writers spent a lot of time out and about the state, putting the “Oregon” into “Oregon ArtsWatch.” Theater in Ashland and Salem. Green spaces and Maori clay artists in Astoria. A carousel in Albany. Aztec dancing in Newberg. Music

ArtsWatch’s hit parade 2018

When we say “hit parade,” that’s what we mean. In the first of a series of stories looking back on the highlights of 2018, these 25 tales were ArtsWatch’s most popular of the year, by the numbers: the most read, or the

Rick Bartow’s spirit inhabits play premiering in Newport

Fourteen years ago, I was reporting a news story when I encountered a man weed-whacking. His back was turned and he wore a headset meant to protect his hearing. Few things are more awkward — and possibly risky — than approaching a

Photo First: Tuba Christmas

Text and Photographs by K.B. Dixon Improbable as it sounds (pun intended), Tuba Christmas is a real thing. An inspired creation, it is a mix of Santa Claus and Surrealism. An annual event in Portland since 1991, it features some 300 or

The strangest epic poem you’ve never heard of

Nothing was foreseen. All was imminent. — “The Fire’s Journey, Part I: The Integration of the Parents” With offices tucked away in Union Station, Portland-based Tavern Books is in the home stretch of an ambitious project that began more than five years

DramaWatch: Holiday Edition!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! If you’re into that sort of thing. Tradition holds that the next few weeks will be dominated by Christmas cheer — and likely by Christmas hype, Christmas stress, and when it comes to the

Cranberries and the art of thanks

It’s Thanksgiving, and I hope, if you’re reading this, you’re giving yourself a little break in your day: waiting while the sweet potatoes are baking, maybe, or pausing before you pack hot dishes in the car and head out to break bread

‘Miss Julie’ still challenges the chains of convention

The Verona Studio in Salem will do some heavy lifting in the Willamette Valley’s theater scene this month. The company, based in the Reed Opera House Mall, is mounting a production of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, where the Darwinian theory of “survival

Short takes: Broadway to Reed

Here, there, and everywhere: * BROOKS ASHMANSKAS, the busy Broadway actor who grew up in Beaverton, has a new show in previews, and the New York Times has taken note. The four-hander musical comedy The Prom, which opens Thursday in the Longacre

An Introvert’s Guide to Portland Book Festival 2018

By KATIE TAYLOR As a typical book-loving wallflower, I find festivals overstimulating and at times overwhelming, but when it comes to books, they’re important. In America, things loved by quiet people have a way of being ignored, shouted over, trampled on and

Vizarts Monthly: Realism, off-kilter ceramics, and a massage chair

Unexpected, sad news rocked Portland’s art world last month with the tragic passing of the Yale Union’s executive director, Yoko Ott. A tireless supporter of the arts, Ott made lasting contributions at many institutions including the Frye Art Museum, Seattle University, and

Have an old-fashioned Dia de Muertos — with Aztec dancing

When Jose Carlos came to Oregon in the mid-1990s, he didn’t see much of his own Mexican culture in the community. Other Latinos attended his Woodburn high school, but public displays of culture from south of the border? No. “I didn’t see

Portland Playhouse Passing Strange Portland Oregon
Literary Arts Oregon Book Awards Portland Center Stage at the Armory Portland Oregon
Imago Theatre Carol Triffle Mission Gibbons Portland Oregon
Bonnie Bronson 2024 Fellow Wendy Red Star Reed College Reception Kaul Auditorium Foyer Portland Oregon
Kalakendra Indian Classical Instrumental Music First Congregational Church Portland Oregon
Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
City of Hillsboro Walters Cultural Arts Center Tony Furtado Hillsboro Oregon
Maryhill Museum of Art Goldendale Washington
Portland State University College of the Arts
Golden Road Arts Grey Raven Gallery Near the Reser Beaverton Oregon
Pacific Maritime Heritage Center Prosperity of the Sea Lincoln County Historical Society Newport Oregon Coast
PassinArt Theatre and Portland Playhouse present Yohen Brunish Theatre Portland Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Sarah Slipper Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
Newport Performance and Visual Arts Centers Newport Oregon Coast
Portland Art Museum Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks Portland Oregon
High Desert Museum Sasquatch Central Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust donate
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