Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland

Granville Redmond (1871 - 1935), Flowers Under the Oaks, Oil on canvas, Private Collection, Courtesy of The Irvine Museum

Here are some of Portland’s visual arts highlights for July and August (see theater and music highlights):

Summer Exhibitions - closing dates vary
Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

The Portland Art Museum’s summer shows have a mostly modernist to post-modernist feel (painter Gerhard Richter, an installation by Bruce Nauman, various work by the late L.A. artist Mike Kelley, a major exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly’s abstract geometries), but they also have some Impressionist crowd-pleasers.

For starters, a tasty little collection of five Claude Monet paintings has been assembled, and a 60-painting show of the best of the California Impressionists (Franz Bischoff, Emil Kosa, Phil Dike, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Guy Rose and Granville Redmond) can take up most of an afternoon all by itself. Finally, 70 important photographs from the museum’s photography collection (which has existed formally for 70 years) shouldn’t be missed.

Sarah Horowitz, “Effigies” - through Sept. 7
Oregon Jewish Museum, 1953 N.W. Kearney St.

Horowitz’s exquisite drawings and prints based on botanical subjects, often vines and brambles, are usually on display at the Froelick Gallery. This show is taken from her artist’s book, which illustrates a poem by Paul Auster.

Saul Steinberg - through Aug. 10
YU, 800 S.E. 10th Ave.

The late New Yorker illustrator and cartoonist is represented by 200 of his weird and wonderful drawings for the magazine, dating back to 1945. Deft and Dada, his work is immediately transporting.

First Thursday
Pearl District

Portland has two great art walks, and the one closest to downtown is First Thursday (meaning it’s held the first Thursday of every month), centered in the Pearl District and featuring some of the city’s most established and most innovative galleries. The other, Last Thursday, is more of a street festival. Both art walks are as much about the scene as the art, especially in the summer, when the galleries often go for multi-artist shows.

First Friday
Central Eastside

This gallery walk is First Thursday’s cheekier sibling, mostly because the galleries and the art tend to be rougher and tougher. It also puts you in one of the city’s centers of alternative culture.

This weekend is one of my favorite events of early spring — the SE Portland Artwalk. For two days, you can walk through inner Southeast Portland and enjoy the work of more than 80 artists in their homes, studios and hosted business locations!

I have been a participating artist for this event for 5+ years, and I love meeting people as they walk through the doors of local studios and get to talk about art, the creative process, that new coffee shop that opened down the street … just about anything!

The event is free, and you can download a map of artists and locations from their website.

Go out, take a walk, see some art. You just might discover something new!

MaryAnn Puls at Bite Studio.

Headed out with Bert earlier this month to Bite Studio to see some new work by our friend MaryAnn Puls. The show was part of First Friday, the Central Eastside’s loose-limbed answer to Portland’s First Thursday and Last Thursday art walks.

Bite, a cooperative printmaking studio, is emblematic of the Portland art scene: polished yet unpretentious. For a larger sampling of the city’s visual-arts offerings, check out the Portland Art Focus website.