Something like 600 designers worldwide have submitted their work to the Design Within Reach 2005 Champagne Chair Contest. The challenge: transform one champagne cork into a tiny chair. Here are a few of the designs for your viewing pleasure. Have a ball second guessing the judges’ choices. We did. See more here.
Richard Jones has one foot in the design world, and one in the world of fine art…oh wait, and another foot in the skateboarding world. Well, the metaphorically tri-legged Jones is helped launch Compound Gallery at Just Be Complex and has curated shows at New American Casuals, Bishop’s and more.
Now Tony and Kelly at OFFICE (2204 NE Alberta) are presenting a show of new work by Jones on skate decks. Yes, that’s Coltrane on the left. The caption reads, “All a musician can do is get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.” The reception is this Thursday, January 26 from 7-9 PM at OFFICE.
Part one of a two-part exhibit culled from the Ovitz Family Collection, NEW TRAJECTORIES 1: relocations, opens at the Cooley Gallery at Reed College…thanks to Gallery Director, Stephanie Snyder
Julie Mehretu, Untitled (Dervish), 2005, Acrylic and ink on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Private collections, especially those that are collecting emerging artists, can be one measure of the art of our time that Matters (or will Matter, a glimpse at how history will see the artists of our time).
Here’s a chance to see work from the Ovitz Family Collection (you know, Michael Ovitz…superagent, Disney honcho, and now supercollector) thanks to Reed College’s Cooley Gallery Director, Stephanie Snyder. From BENT to Red76’s Blowback to Mona Hatoum, Snyder has been up to all kinds of good for contemporary art in Portland. She’s bringing work from the Ovitz Collection to the Cooley in a two part show, the first of which is NEW TRAJECTORIES 1: relocations, recent painting, drawing, and sculpture from the Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles. The show features work by Richard Prince, Stefan Thiel, Cosima Von Bonin, James Siena, Eric Schmidt, Aya Uekawa, Idris Khan, Julie Mehretu, Graham Little, David Thorpe, Tommy White, Francesca Gabbiani Nigel Cooke, and Marc Handelman.
The show runs through March 11, but the opening reception is Thursday, January 26 from 6:30-9:30 at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College. Part 2 promises multi-media work. Stay tuned.
updated Wednesday January 25 2006 14:24
Two things we love:
1. When fashion can get its pretty head around art (or art around fashion…we’re ambivalently Reese’s-Peanut-Butter-Cups about it). Corollary: intersection/collision of art and fashion.
2. The lovely layered confection that results when conceptual art is pulled, folded in on itself and pulled again like a giant taffy pull.
What on earth are we talking about?
We’ve mentioned Ghosttown previously. It’s a project by arts group Red76. One of the components has been the Ghosttown Clothing Exchange wherein one can exchange one’s cast-offs for those in the store. Every donated item has a tag that has no price, but does have the name of the person who donated the item and a story about it.
We hear rumors that this Friday, January 27, artist Khris Soden (Red76, the M.O.S.T., “City of Roses”) is producing a fashion show featuring some of the donated garments.
Now fashion shows are always as much about the show as the clothes. And as this is part of an art piece rather than a marketing venture, it’s definitely about the show. But the currency of this project is the stories behind the clothing and the paths these garments follow from person to person…so it’s more about the clothes again, right? And what about the stories? Of Liz’s mother’s melon-hued bed jacket or that yellow prom dress? Saltwater taffy. Fun, see?
Incidentally, we’ll try to confirm or deny and get a time for the show shortly.
Tonight, Tahni Holt’s Monster Squad performs her latest collaborative dance piece, Island Desk at 338 NW 6th Ghosttown Clothing Exchange space. Holt and sculptor Marty Schnapf have created a dance piece in a sculpted environment for five dancers with a score by Brent Knopf (Menomena) and costumes by Jayme Hansen of Birds of Prey. Performance at 8 PM today through Sunday.
Read more here
And before you see Monster Squad, you must stop in at Chambers Gallery (207 SW Pine) for the opening reception, from 5:30 to 8:30 of a new show featuring a sometimes loose interpretation of landscape photography by the Mercury’s arts critic, Chas Bowie, and LeAnne Hitchcock. What we’re especially excited about, besides Chas Bowie’s visual pilgrimage to Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty,” is the idea that Hitchcock’s using highly abstracted photo in a way that bridges Modernism and Minimalism…Rothko, Newman to Judd.
Yes.