Your Next Bag Is Hanging On A Lamppost Downtown

Interesting banners, but what’s it all about? you may ask. What’s this Urban Forest Project? Well, you may be digging around for your mobile or a stick of Juicyfruit in the bottom of a bag made from one of those banners some time soon.

For the Urban Forest project, the AIGA hung 150 banners by Portland-based designers, artists, photographers, and illustrators in downtown and the Pearl which overtly or obliquely visually reference tree as metaphor for sustainability in a run up to Earth Day. Printed with water-based inks and partially biodegradable materials, the banners are destined to have second lives—like the wildly popular Swiss Freitag messenger bags made from used truck tarpaulins and Vy & Elle bags made from recycled billboard vinyl—fashioned into bags by Queen Bee Creations. The bags will be sold at auction to benefit Friends of Trees. Read the rest of this entry »

National Launch for REAL FUN @ OFFICE

We’re a big fan of the Polaroid camera and not just for its quality of instant gratification, there is something about the way the Polaroid treats color, the way that it introduces texture into an image that makes them very through-the-looking glass in a decidedly low-fi way. Immediate, tossed off even, the Polaroid is instant yesterday.

So if you’re going to chronicle, we suggest you do as Ashod Simonian did and drag along the Polaroid 600 One Step and its obscenely expensive film. Simonian did just that on the composite road trip(s) captured in REAL FUN: Photographs from the Independent Music Landscape. Pretty interesting that the visual qualities of the Polaroid mean that REAL FUN in some ways puts an era in a bottle while it’s still being played out. Read the rest of this entry »

No One Belongs Here More Than Miranda

If only you had considered at the beginning that every photo ever taken of you would add up to be the visual story of you then you would have spent a little more time art directing each shot. Performer, director, writer Miranda July, more thoughtful in this regard than the average girl, has artfully amassed a technicolor photo trail that’s only enhanced by her appearance in front of a pile of vintage teal luggage in Vogue this month for her new book, No One Belongs Here More Than You.

For fun, see the website July made for the new book. She’ll be in town May 18 to read from her book at the First Congregational Church (1126 SW Park Ave) at 7 PM, sponsored by PICA.

PDX Film Fest 2007

This week marks the sixth annual PDX Fest, The Portland Documentary and Experimental (PDX) Film Festival put on by Peripheral Produce primarily at the Hollywood Theater. Every year PDX Fest compiles a schedule of short and full-length documentary, animation, experimentation, and this year you’ll find programs of film/poem intersection, “experimental portraiture,” and wisely, a show at Audio Cinema, Retinal Reverb, that bridges the gap between the theater and film/video in the visual art realm. And don’t forget The Peripheral Produce Invitational, the World Championship of Experimental Cinema!

Top of our required viewing list is “Helvetica,” Gary Hustwit’s documentary about the little font that could. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the ubiquitous Helvetica’s import. It’s one of those cultural nodes that ends up being defining–faces that followed its 1957 debut are either influenced by or made in open rebellion against its widespread use. It will be at the Hollywood Theatre (4122 NE Sandy) Sunday, April 29 at 8 PM. You probably already know about this interview-based film that uses Helvetica as a launch point to talk about design with a capital-D with a cast of characters including David Carson, Experimental Jetset, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Erik Spiekermann.

2007 PDXFF TRAILER

Y’all Come

Is it that time already? Yes, and we couldn’t be more on-edge-of-seat as The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) rolls out its lineupof artists for the 2007 Time-Based Art Festival with a public (and free) reception at PICA (224 NW 13th)  next Wednesday, April 25, at 5:30 PM hosted by Artistic Director Mark Russell and PICA’s Erin Boberg and Kristan Kennedy.

TBA:07 happens September 6-16. And if previous years are any indication, you’ll have a week+ to gorge yourself on compelling, surprising performance from international, national, and regional artists. Edouard Locke, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Yubiwa Hotel, Tahni Holt’s Monster Squad, Lone Twin(!)…there’s always been more than you can possibly take in and performance that you’re still talking about years later.

At the reception, TBA:07 Festival passes will be on sale a special early bird price. Members too, get pass discounts and get this, if you sign up as a member (or increase your donation), your membership is matched on a one-to-one basis by a donation from the Collins Foundation…it’s like giving twice without having to dig twice into your pocket. Easy.

If you can’t wait ’til next Wednesday to gather and discuss, we’ll see you at PICA’s TADA Underground gala where the lineup will be announced this Saturday eve.