Heavy Industries

10, 9, 8, 7, …if you know what’s good for you, you will go tonight to PSU to hear/meet the duo behind YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES’ cuttingly smart, text-based net art pieces for this week’s installment of the PSU MFA Monday Night Lecture Series at 7:30 PM at PSU 5th Avenue Cinema (510 SW Hall St. at SW 5th Ave).

The text in its distinctive YHC font (extra points for naming it) is delivered with a short-list of visual tools that create visual pyrotechnics keyed to the music in dynamic, sometimes tracked and sometimes oppositional ways. The YHC cast of characters endure the mundane and outrageous in equal measure in black and white on your computer screen. Check it.

The Significance of No-Significance

Yes, can we please have idea-based adornment?

Squint your eyes and enamel pins from the Space Needle, the Girl Scouts, the Rotary Club, and the Daughters of the American Revolution all blur into color and form on the nearest lapel. Like a bumper sticker for your clothes, they signify identification, status, history (where been, what seen).

A-Z Collection play with the significance of no-significance by stripping the enamel from found pins leaving shape, speculation, and the melancholy of the 25-cent table at the estate sale. Available at Stand Up Comedy (811 E Burnside) in various shapes, you can combine them on your own lapel to bolster your own imaginary personal narrative.

Self Projections at Milepost 5

image, such as it is, via PORT

We mourn the loss of Portland Art Center’s Light & Sound Gallery, one of few (the only?) spaces dedicated to video/sound installation in Portland. So we’re looking forward to tonight’s opening of Self Projections at Milepost 5 with what promises to be a good dose of video, film, sound and installation work. Granted it’s our nominee for most fleeting exhibition of 2008, up only from April 18-27 with viewing hours from 1-6 PM daily AND it’s not the most muscular armature on which to hang a group show: “24 artists presenting their interpretation of Self Projection,” (“Soggy and hard to light,” as my dear daddy used to say.) That said, there are some interesting artists on board that will make a little trip out to 800 NE 81st worth your while.

We’ll be looking out for work by Maggie Casey, whose fiber pieces are sublime, for ultra’s favorite Portland arts group, The M.O.S.T., doing a performance tonight for the opening party (8-12), for work by Mammalian Diving Reflex (the folks who recruited children to cut your hair during last year’s TBA Festival) and brilliant installation artist Alicia Eggert, and filmmaker Marc Moscato, whose film, “the more things stay the same” will screen during the closing party April 26, 8-11 PM.

Where Spark, Fire

Let’s talk. Do we have to enumerate for you the ten-thousand reasons that you—artist, gallerist, critic, performer, collector—should be at Art Spark this Thursday? Bracing conversation, reconnecting with wayward compatriots, access/introductions to gatekeepers and/or smashing talent, news of opportunities. AND, Art Spark guest host last time ’round, Commissioner Sam Adams, reminded the assembled that we all play a role in ensuring the vitality of PDX arts/culture so we ought to get to know one another, non? Find collaborative possibilities? A little advocacy, anyone?

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect….”

Oh, and speaking of more perfect things, good news keeps coming for PNCA. This week’s Art Spark guest host is PNCA’s Tom Manley who will get 6 minutes at 6 PM to modestly boast (oxymoron alert!) about the school’s program, the million dollar gifts, the purchase of the current building, the new building, and more that are making this PNCA’s Moment.

Art Spark is RACC’s baby and goes down every third from 5-7 PM at Living Room Theaters’ Lounge (SW 10th and Stark).

Egg Press Spring Sample Sale

Egg Press, with their modern, whimsical letterpress cards and related goods, is clearing the decks, lucky you. Get to the Egg Press studio (939 SE Alder, Unit 1. 503-234-4233.) this week for their Spring Sample Sale Thursday and Friday, April 17-18 from 10-7 and Saturday, April 19 from 10-2.

You’ll find letterpress cards—$1 each for single cards, $5 each for bundled cards, plus this cool little deal: “Tees while you wait! Bring your own t-shirt, tea-towel, bag, or pillow covering and choose one of our four designs for our master screenprinter to apply ($5 per design). Note that we will have a limited number of tees and small muslin gift bags available for purchase if you forget to bring your own.”