Just in time for sweater season, Portland TextileX Month (PTXM) returns this October to support the local fiber community through exhibitions and knowledge-sharing. Events include Youkyung Woo’s tufted installation The Blooming Feast, Limei Lai’s interactive embroidery show Making Me Available to Me, Emily Pacheco’s Youth Booth, Maren Jensen’s Concrete Was Once Wet, and more.

Read on for information on Exquisite Gorge, Francesca Capone’s exhibition Material Memory, Charlie Wilcox’s Muybridge Studies in Stop Motion Embroidery, and Jeanne Medina Le’s lecture; they’re all part of PTXM programming, too. If you’re staunchly anti-fabric, don’t worry—I’ll share the deets on fresh exhibitions at lumber room and Adams and Ollman, as well as spooky flicks screened by Church of Film.

Francesca Capone: Material Memory
October 7 – November 10
Nationale
15 SE 22nd Ave, Portland (Mon and Thurs–Sat 11 am – 6 pm, Sun 12-5 pm)

With an eye toward a zero-waste practice, artist Francesca Capone returns again to Nationale with Material Memory, which compiles textile works formed from fabric scraps and discarded cloth. Capone’s multigenerational family of Sicilian American fashion industry workers help inspire the tactile pieces, which also hint at embedded material histories and spiritual significance.

Sa’rah Melinda Sabino: Dream Girl
September 9 – October 22
One Grand Gallery
1000 E Burnside St, Portland (by appointment)

Blending aesthetic elements of sneaker and sports culture with thoughtful reflections on her grandmothers, Sa’rah Melinda Sabino’s Dream Girl includes multimedia paintings, sculptures, and installations. The surprising mix of bright blues and oranges hints at recognizable branding while offering a nuanced view of “the feminine power of dreaming and the tenderness embedded in that action.”

Charlie Wilcox: Muybridge Studies in Stop Motion Embroidery
October 6-26
PLACE
735 NW 18th Ave, Portland (Mon-Fri 10 am – 6 pm)

Sponsor

You may never have heard of him, but photo pioneer Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th-century studies of animals in motion paved the way for early advancements in filmmaking and animation. Embroiderist and animator Charlie Wilcox expands on Muybridge’s groundbreaking work in this exhibition and encourages viewers to focus on individual frames of movement in stop-motion embroideries and practice seeing through fabric and embroidery floss.

Church of Film: Poison for the Fairies and Viy
October 12 and 26, 8 pm
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St, Portland

Church of Film will present several deliciously Gothic horror screenings at Clinton Street Theater this month. Creator/programmer Muriel Lucas’s weird-and-dreamy gathering for cinephiles is perfect for those who want to celebrate Halloween arthouse style. On October 12, Mexican auteur Carlos Enrique Taboada’s ’86 freakout Poison for the Fairies will screen: The film follows two young girls whose obsession with the “dark arts” amplifies into total bedlam. Then, on October 26, viewers can catch Viy, a witchy ’67 film (the first horror flick ever made in the Soviet Union) that was inspired by a Ukrainian folk tale.

Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies Lecture Series: Gabrielle Civil and Jeanne Medina Le
October 5 and 21, 6:30 pm
Pacific Northwest College of Art
511 NW Broadway, Portland (in Shipley-Collins Mediatheque and livestreamed on Zoom)

This month, PNCA will welcome Black feminist performance artist Gabrielle Civil and LA-based textile research artist Jeanne Medina Le for two lectures as part of the school’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Critical Studies programs. On October 5, alongside Korean American writer and shamanic healer Janice Lee, Civil will discuss her writing practice and share from her recently published performance prose work the déjà vu. On October 21, Le will present her textile-based work, which she views as “a continuous process which attempts to learn and decolonize the fixed and fluid spaces of her filipina-american identity.”

Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen: sandwiches for every meal
October 5-29
PDX CONTEMPORARY ART
1825 NW Vaughn St Ste B, Portland (Tues-Sat 10 am – 5 pm)

Artistic duo Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen, who have co-created imaginative projects and research-based works for the last eleven years, present sandwiches for every meal, which focuses on possibilities for silence, remembrance, and quietude. Through subtle-yet-playful sculptures and drawings, Gray and Paulsen look closely at the shifts in attention that can take place in speechless moments.

Sponsor

Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe and Ivan McClellan: Inheritance
October 8, 2022 – January 14, 2023
lumber room
419 NW 9th Ave, Portland (Fri 12-6 pm and by appointment)

Photographer Ivan McClellan and painter Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe’s thoughtful new exhibition, Inheritance, reflects on the sociopolitical dynamics of farm labor and land among Black agricultural communities in the Southern United States and Northern Ghana. The show prominently features portraiture, calling attention to each sitter’s individuality and familial lineage, with subjects ranging from Ghanaian shea butter farmers to Black Southern ranchers and cowboys.

Fay Jones: New Work
October 6-29
Russo Lee Gallery
805 NW 21st Ave, Portland (Tues-Fri 11 am – 5:30 pm, Sat 11 am – 5 pm)

Prolific Seattle-based artist Fay Jones’s drawings and paintings are reminiscent of Henry Darger’s strange narrative worlds, containing hints of mysticism that make the works feel like dreams. Come to your own conclusions in this exhibition of fresh pieces that the artist made while in isolation. Fans of Jones can find more of her work permanently installed at a few different locations in Seattle—look for her pensive figures at McCaw Hall and in Seattle Transit Tunnel’s Westlake Station the next time you’re in the Emerald City.

Learn but the letters forme(d) by heart, Then soon you’l gain this noble art
September 17 – October 15
Adams and Ollman
418 NW 8th Ave, Portland (Weds-Sat 11 am – 4 pm)

Inspired by the bygone Pennsylvania Dutch practice of fraktur, a decorative method of record-keeping used to commemorate special events throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, this exhibition features over a dozen contemporary artists whose work is conceptually or formally related to the traditional art form. Learn but the letters forme(d) by heart, Then soon you’l gain this noble art also includes select pieces of fraktur folk art, displayed alongside buzzy artists and local favorites like Jeffry Mitchell, Ryan McLaughlin, Polly Apfelbaum, and Katherine Bernhardt.

Exquisite Gorge
September 29 – December 15
Hoffman Art Gallery, Lewis & Clark College
615 SW Palatine Hill Rd, Portland (Open daily 11 am – 4 pm)

Sponsor

A playful reinterpretation of the Surrealist “exquisite corpse” game, this art project sponsored by the Maryhill Museum of Art has developed over the last five years, with community teams working over time to reflect on the Gorge by interpreting sections of the Columbia River through six-foot-long artworks. This exhibition centers work created by Lewis & Clark students, including a woodblock print and a fiber sculpture, as well as archival materials documenting their creative process.

Kate Speranza and Bill Atwood: Coastal Oregon Artist Residency Exhibit
October 8-16
Anita Building
1312 Commercial St, Astoria (October 8 12-5 pm, Oct 9-16 11 am – 4 pm)

Resourceful artists Kate Speranza, a metalsmith graduate of OCAC, and Bill Atwood, an interactive electromechanical sculptor, gleaned materials from the Astoria Transfer Station to create brand-new art as part of the Coastal Oregon Artist Residency. The residency encourages creatives to use recycled and repurposed materials to create thoughtful works. Check it out at the Anita Building in scenic downtown Astoria, walking distance from the Columbia River.

Also: Elizabeth Leach Gallery will celebrate its 40th anniversary this month with a commemorative publication and a conversation between Elizabeth Leach and Bruce Guenther, former chief curator at the Portland Art Museum. Head to PNCA on October 16 at 11 am for the talk.