STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER IN THE STAUNCHLY CONSERVATIVE, predominantly Catholic German village of my childhood, we children eagerly anticipated three occasions each year. Carnival came around in February, an affair that allowed the entire population to break the social rules
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL On a clear warm Saturday evening at The Round in Beaverton, the joint was jumpin’. The propulsive sounds of drums and dancing feet were rising to the sky, and a big crowd was milling about the curved concrete
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY K.B. DIXON The photographic portrait is a complex thing—an image gathered at the center of four corners. It is what the camera sees, what the photographer sees, what the viewer sees, and what the subject hides or reveals.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL When the extraordinary young guitarist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram waded into the crowd at the Waterfront Blues Festival on Sunday and started picking the strings with his teeth, you knew the whole darned party was gettin’ down. Musicians, fans,
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL A lot of Louisiana took the stage on Saturday in Day Three of the Waterfront Blues Festival – groups as redolent of New Orleans and bayou country as Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble, Lil’ Pookie & the Zydeco
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL Day Two of the Waterfront Blues Festival dug deep into the spirit of music and life with an extraordinary set by the Spiritual Brothers and their sounds of Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso. Unlike the four-day festival’s first
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL It was a bang-up day on the Fourth of July in Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park, where this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival got off to a high-flying start and, come night time, a rainbow of fireworks lit up
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER “The bees build in the crevicesOf loosening masonry, and thereThe mother birds bring grubs and flies.My wall is loosening; honey-bees,Come build in the empty house of the stare.” W.B. Yeats wrote these words in the sixth section of
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER How does an artist decide which questions to raise and which, if any, answers to provide? How does an educator reach an audience and communicate innovative ideas hoping to stir up responses that foster curiosity and
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER HOW DO YOU TELL A STORY that is not necessarily your own? How do you draw a landscape that did not always belong to you? How do you document reality without appropriating someone else’s history? These
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRIDERIKE HEUER I have on previous occasions written on this or that aspect of Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington, which I like to visit as often as I can. An eclectic collection of paintings, fashion, artifacts of some Eastern
By DAVID MACLAINE Photos by Joe Cantrell Southeast Portland’s Mt. Scott Presbyterian Church was filling up pretty quickly when I got there for the April 24 performance in the Classical Up Close program. Now in its seventh season, the annual spring series
According to German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, it was in the European coffeehouses of the 17th and 18th centuries that the foundations of the Enlightenment were laid. In providing a new sort of social space, one that was neither wholly public nor wholly
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the second of two visual essays from northern New Mexico, photographer and artist Friderike Heuer visits Georgia O’Keefe’s home territory and revises her thinking about the artist. She also responds to O’Keeffe’s views of the land and sky with
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the first of two stories from her recent visit to northern New Mexico, Portland photographer and artist Friderike Heuer discovers layers of history, art in abundance, and a cornucopia of vivid images from the streets, museums, and galleries of
Photographs by JOE CANTRELL Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 18 years old when his opera La Finta Giardiniera (The Pretend, or Fake, Gardener) debuted at the Salvatortheater in Munich in 1775. When it opens Friday evening at Lincoln Performance Hall in Portland it’ll
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.
Story and photographs by K.B. Dixon The Portland Roadster Show is one of the oldest and largest roadster shows in the country. Begun in 1956, it has evolved slowly over the years from its rebel roots in horsepower and chutzpah to its
About 2,000 people gathered Sunday on the Portland State University campus for the Portland Womxn’s March & Rally for Action, a combination of political rally, social dissent, feminist activism, assertion of racial and gender rights, call to environmental action, and street theater.
Story and photographs by FRIDERIKE HEUER We have this thing in our household about language. Well, someone has a thing in our house about my language – more specifically, my usage of the verb to love as applied to something other than a human being. Don’t devalue such
Photo Essay by FRIDERIKE HEUER Kalabharati School of Dance I could have kicked myself. Here I am friends with one of the most formidable dance critics around, ArtsWatch’s own Martha Ullman West, and yet it did not occur to me to drag
Photographs by JOE CANTRELL First came the audience, filling downtown Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Then the musicians, and the tuning, and the program, which was fitting for a celebration: some selections from Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s sprightly and creative Nutcracker Suite;
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
Story and photographs by FRIDERIKE HEUER Cappella Romana opened its 2018/19 season announcement with the words, “Prepare to be engaged, moved, and inspired.” Consider it done. You could add “an occasional “made breathless” by the sheer beauty of the singing. One of the main
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
Story and photographs by Friderike Heuer There are limits, but also advantages, to being a moderately educated music lover – like yours truly – rather than a professionally trained music critic. Good music critics bring an ear, lots of analytic skill, attention
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
Essay and Photographs by K.B. Dixon The Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum (which has branded itself with the stuttering acronym WAAAM) sits right next door to the Hood River Airport. It is one of the Columbia Gorge’s newer treasures. Housed in
“I used to voice a tentative I’d like; now it is a firm I want.” This statement, told to me by Anne-Marie Plass during a conversation about the challenges of living with developmental or intellectual disabilities, registered deeply. The difference in wording
TRIESTE, Italy – Scores of people come to this ancient seaport town each year to pay homage to James Joyce, who wrote his Ulysses here. The city accommodates them by putting up plaques at about every corner, bridge, staircase, churchyard ever touched by his
Most people who travel to Holland and are interested in art congregate in one or more of Amsterdam’s major museums. Outside of the city you can find some small jewels off the beaten path, though, that warrant a closer look. They provide
Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell How to characterize the last day of this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival? Traditionally the festival has ended with the fireworks, late night on the 4th of July, but this year we began with Wednesday, the 4th. Thursday sustained, Friday found
Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell Friday, July 6, at the Waterfront Blues Festival. This year’s third day of music reminding us how much there is to celebrate in and about the USA, dance lessons naming the African countries, the steps came
Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell The 4th of July with fireworks draws crowds big enough for the fire marshal to shut down the entrances, and that has traditionally been the last of the Waterfront Blues Festival. But this year it was
Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell Nothing defines the best of Portland’s funk art scene like the Waterfront Blues Festival, currently in its 31st year. Aside from the mission to raise money and canned food for the Oregon Food Bank, other than
PHOTOGRAPHS AND ESSAY by JOE CANTRELL (EDITOR’S NOTE: Portland photographer Joe Cantrell will give a free art talk from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, May 16-17, in the lobby of the Ellyn Bye Studio of Portland Center Stage at The
This Saturday night, May 12, is the last performance at Southeast Portland’s Echo Theatre of STAND UP, SIT DOWN, ROLL OVER by Touretteshero, a.k.a. Jess Thom – a wickedly smart, scathingly funny comedian from Great Britain. Presented by Boom Arts in a series of
Soutine It’s all about education. I could not get these words out of my head at the end of an extraordinary day spent first at The Barnes Foundation and later in the streets of North Philadelphia. The photographs you see here are paired,
I had never been to the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston before. It has been in existence since 1876, steadily growing. Its most recent home, designed by Guy Lowell in 1909, is an imposing art palace paying homage to the
Something is in the air – and I am not just referring to mobiles, although every museum I set foot in during a short trip to the East Coast last week seemed to have something floating about. Harvard Art Museum Philadelphia Museum
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL One of the happier open secrets in the Oregon cultural world is the high-quality incubator of talent that is ACMA, the Arts & Communication Magnet Academy. Part of the Beaverton School District, it’s a rigorous public school for
In 2016 I was commissioned by the North Coast Chorale to create piece-specific art to be projected in the concert hall during their performance of Karl Jenkin’s The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace – 13 montages in total, one for each movement.
Essay and Photographs By K.B. DIXON The images of Portland included in my latest book of photographs were excerpted from a larger ongoing project—from what is basically a photographic journal, a personalized and idiosyncratic survey of the world around me, an archive that
Essay and photos by FRIDERIKE HEUER In times of political change and upheaval the arts often undergo a paradigm shift. New ways of representing the world or challenging the status quo rise out of despair or are driven by hope. This is
By FRIDERIKE HEUER What’s wrong with this picture? “Nothing?” the astute observer might reply. “I see some pretty glass in beautiful surroundings. Say, don’t you like Chihuly?” Let’s try again: What’s wrong with this picture? “A version of ‘Is that art, or
Essay and photographs by K.B. DIXON A good picture tells a story, and nothing tells a story better—more eloquently, more efficiently—than the human face. The story these eleven faces tell, in part, is Portland’s. These are talented and dedicated people who have
Give to our GROW FUND.
