Portland Mercury's 2024 Fall Arts Issue by Noisy Creek

The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts Guide: Your Rx for Art

Art shows, projects, and happenings to get you through election season.

BY SUZETTE SMITH

The Trash Report: But Art

Arts Funding Upheavals Explained

Keller Auditorium: Renovate or Replace?

For the past few years, the Mercury’s Fall Arts Preview has dealt with the pandemic, bouncing back from the pan demic, if things could be nor mal now after the pandemic, and if the pandemic is over.

In Other Arts News

Arlene Schnitzer's Vast Art Legacy

What Art Should You Do?

Japan’s Favorite Backpack

Our Time-Based Art Festival Picks

Is the pandemic over? Yes and no, dear readers. The World Health Organization says COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency, but no one’s ready to say it’s not a pandemic. We’re just going to have to live with complicated truths. And art will help you do that.

Furthermore, we’re actually about to deal with something noisy enough to take our minds o the pandemic. We are descending into the 2024 election cycle crevasse. It’s icy, cavernous, and everyone keeps acting like we can’t understand ranked choice voting. You’d better believe you’ll need some crampons. Art will be your crampons.

The US stands a ﬂying chance at electing its first woman president. And if she doesn’t win we’re getting four more years of former president Donald Trump who someone actually tried to assassinate in July. [ Trump seemed in favor of political assassinations when it came to his former vice president. -eds ] So people are, quite rightfully, in their feelings about this one. And art is going to help you with that, too.

Am I starting a cult? It kind of

that left an impression on me . “I don’t have any sort of art practice,” she said, “but I need a lot of art.”

Without even realizing it, you probably use certain songs to exercise, to relax, or to fall asleep. You might have a poster or portrait that you look at for strength; it could even be on your phone screen. There’s an outﬁt you wear for luck or power, and shows you saw that made you feel closer to your friends.

Art slides in and pushes all the joy buttons that make us feel seen. It changes our mind, opens our perspectives, or just reminds us we aren’t alone.

This guide contains the lowdown on art made locally, art ﬂown in from far away, art collected throughout a long life of loving art, and much more. There’s advice on art to go with your job, recipes to go with group living, and exciting shows to check out this fall.

To get through this mess we’ll need a lot of art, but Portland has more than enough to ﬁll your prescription.

Suzette Smith

Risk/Reward Saves Your Sanity

Portland Opera Makes History Come Alive

A Shoegaze Revival in St. Johns

Summer Festivals: Reviewed

Carson Ellis: Snapshot of Old Portland

Memoir of a Group-Living Guru

Appreciating Comedy in the Park

EverOut’s Fall Calendar

Savage Love

Pop Quiz PDX: Whose Butt Is This?

Editorial

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Wm. Steven Humphrey

NEWS EDITOR

Courtney Vaughn

ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR

Suzette Smith

NEWS REPORTER

Taylor Griggs

EverOut

MANAGING EDITOR

Janey Wong

FOOD & DRINK EDITOR

Julianne Bell

MUSIC CALENDAR EDITOR

Audrey Vann

ARTS CALENDAR EDITOR

Lindsay Costello

DATA MANAGER

Shannon Lubetich

Advertising

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

James Deeley

ADVERTISING COORDINATOR

Evanne Hall

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Anna Nelson

Katie Peifer

Business

COMPTROLLER

Katie Lake

Art & Production

ART DIRECTOR

Corianton Hale

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

Anthony Keo

PRODUCTION

David Caplan, Feedback Graphics

COVER ARTWORK

Illustration by Carson Ellis carsonellis.com

Design by Corianton Hale

Marketing & Promotions

MARKETING DIRECTOR

Caroline Dodge

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Christian Parroco

EMAIL MARKETING SPECIALIST

Tonya Ray

VIDEO PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Shane Wahlund

Technology & Development

HEAD OF PRODUCT

Anthony Hecht

SENIOR DEVELOPER

Nick Nelson

SENIOR DEVELOPER

Michael Crowl

IT MANAGER

Grant Lewicki-Hendrix

Bold Type Tickets

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS MANAGER

Kevin Shurtlu

CLIENT SOLUTIONS MANAGER

Diana Schwartz

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

CLIENT & CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS REPRESENTATIVE

Campy Draper

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS REPRESENTATIVE

Katya Schexnaydre

Circulation

distribution@portlandmercury.com

Administrative

COO/CFO

Rob Crocker

CHIEF OF STAFF

Toby Crittenden

CHAIRMAN AND PUBLISHER

Brady Walkinshaw

THE TRASH REPORT

BY ELINOR JONES TRASH, BUT MAKE IT ART

Hi everybody, and welcome to this Very Special Trash Report! For the uninitiated, the Trash Report is my weekly column where I make jokes about silly things that happen in the news and gossip. I’m going to do that for this print issue, but about ~ ART ~ which I’m highly qualified to do, in that I was offered the space, and I said yes. Let’s get this art-y started, shall we?

Airports, but Make Them Art

People are losing their damn minds over the new roof at PDX. This is a dramatic vibe shift for an airport that has for years been known for its beloved (but let’s be real, tacky) carpet. I, for one, like that going forward we will have a choice of whether to post our braggy travel selfie with the carpet or the ceiling. Face bloated from a flight? Shoe time. Nailed the eyeliner on your way to devastate an ex? Give us the face. (I’m also glad that we might move away from the foot pics because I’m sad knowing how many of you freaks will walk into an airplane bathroom in open-toed shoes. You’re worth more than that!) Portland International Airport’s glow-up will also serve as a great flex at the haters who think our town is a flaming garbage pile. You want to come out here and talk shit? Good luck doing that under all that architectural majesty.

Art, but Make It Financially Sustainable

Beloved Portland drag bar Darcelle’s is facing some pretty dire circumstances due to

increasing costs and decreasing patronage. The situation has gone so far as to attract the attention of RuPaul’s Drag Race stars, who told the crowd at a recent show to get thine asses down there. And who are we to make any of RuPaul’s Drag Race stars upset? If any single one of them were to suggest that I must sashay away, I’d sashay straight into the sea. Let’s make the mothers proud and support queer spaces!

Destruction of Public Property, but Make It Art

The state of Oregon recently spent $20 million on cleaning gra ti and trash o I-84, leaving behind a gorgeously blank canvas

that was immediately tagged again. Not really sure what they were expecting. And isn’t there other stu to clean? If someone has a pressure washer and too much time on their hands, I’ve got a patio that could use some attention. Meanwhile in London, elu sive street artist Banksy has been running a rapid-ﬁre release of new murals across the city. And you know, maybe our problem is that we’re not appreciating gra ti as the public art that it is. After all, who is Banksy if not some guy with spray paint and a vision? He paints elephants on windows, alluding to the strug gle for survival and erasure of wild spaces in the modern industrialized city; there’s someone in Portland who writes “PenisGirl” on stop signs. Art is subjective by nature.

Keep P-art-land Weird

September at Oaks Park will boast the ﬁrst (annual?) Portland Weird Fest. Though details on the press release are vague, I’m getting a strong vibe of masks and bubbles. I’m envisioning taking my child and then steampunk becomes her entire personality and she’ll beg me to let her abandon her prestigious gymnastics classes to learn like, tarot, or stilts or some shit. To be clear: this is not criticism! I welcome our weird overloads.

Then in October, legendary rapper Killer Mike is coming to town to perform with none other than the freakin’ Oregon Symphony and I. Love. It. The Symphony has done a lot of cool mash-ups over the years – I watched Jurassic Park with their live accompaniment a while back and believe me when I tell you that watching a guy getting bit in half on the toilet has never felt classier.

Olympics, but Make It Art

Now that the Paris Olympics games have wrapped (*tear*) we can turn our focus to the next summer games which will be held just down the street in Los Angeles. Did you

know that the mascot of the Paris Games was a weird blob that looked like a beret fucked a triangle and their baby was drunk?

mous hats (not berets) worn by lutionaries. I

component of hosting the Olympics and now my every waking moment will be spent thinking of what LA’s should be. What if it’s a palm tree but his rent just went up 400% so he drives for Uber Eats between auditions? What if they anthropomorphize all the letters of the Hollywood sign and they’re all in a polyamorous relationship? What if it’s one of the old mastodons from the La Brea tar pits, but yassified? A surfboard wearing sunglasses carrying an iced co ee and a screenplay and we get the sense that it’s stuck in tra c? [Elinor wrote approximately 40 other ideas here but we had to cut them for brevity and because they were… not great. -eds.]

Taxes, but Make Them for Art

Now that we’ve spent all these words together and my arts bona fides have been firmly established, I need to make a confession: I have not been consistently paying my Portland Arts Tax. This is not on purpose! I’m a big government leftist—I love taxes! I value this city’s art scene! I’m a writer, which means I literally am an artist! But I’m also a millennial, and everything I do is on autopay, and sending me a bill in the mail is about as useful as whispering it to me in a dream. But the city just sent me another notice—could be the second, could be the 20th—that I’m about to be in some deep shit if I don’t find my checkbook and make things right. This is a public service announcement to anyone else who has received those pesky notices, and thought “$35 is not very much, I can pay that, but really, would they miss it if I don’t?” The answer is yes, they will find you, and also it’s the right thing to do.

Many thanks to all of you for reading and for doing all that you do to support Portland’s art and artists. And remember, that trash can be art (case in point!) but no art is trash.

Mwah,

Portland International Airport

PenisGirl Tag

Killer Mike -

JANEY WONG

SUZETTE SMITH

SHANE SMITH

Paris Games

Mascots

Follow the Fun (ding)

Taking a look at Portland’s confusing art grant upheavals.

BY ABE ASHER

For nearly three decades, the city of Portland ran its grant program for artists and arts organizations exclusively through a well known non-proﬁt, the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC). Last summer, however, the city decided to change course.

Commissioner Dan Ryan’s o ce—which oversaw arts programs at the time—announced that the city would not renew its contract with RACC and would instead seek out proposals from multiple organizations to oversee grant awards and funding disbursement.

In an email to the Mercury, Darion Jones, the deputy director of the O ce of Arts and Culture, said the city’s model of delivering its arts services exclusively through RACC “needed to evolve.”

RACC disbursed its ﬁnal grant under its now-former contract this past June. However, it will still be involved in distributing the city’s small grants of less than $5,000 to artists and organizations moving forward, and will be joined by two other nonproﬁts, as part of the city’s broader push to implement a new vision for its arts and culture.

That push will be overseen by the new O ce of Arts and Culture, which has been established to replace what was formerly called the City Arts Program. In the meantime, artists and arts organizations are waiting to see whether the changes will lead to improved access to resources at a time when many are struggling to support their work.

Greg Netzer, the interim executive director of RACC, said he believes conversations about the future of the city’s grant program date back to the results of a 2018 audit of the nonprofit, requested by Mayor Ted Wheeler and then-Commissioner Nick Fish.

The audit returned ﬁve recommendations for the city, including suggestions that the city “develop clear goals, vision, and strategy for arts and culture” and update its contract with RACC in accordance with those goals.

Part of that process—of deﬁning a clear vision for the future of arts and culture in Portland and across the metro area—began two years ago, when a variety of leaders from across Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties began a process of developing a region-wide ten-year arts and culture plan, dubbed Our Creative Future.

As part of that plan, which was finalized earlier this year after a number of community input sessions, the region will aim to provide funding and support to communities historically underrepresented in the local arts scene, create a regional resource hub for local artists and arts or-

ganizations, expand arts funding in public schools, and more.

At the same time, Portland is shaking up its approach, Jones wrote, “to focus coordination of the city’s many arts and culture initiatives with a goal of increasing the percentage of taxpayer funds that go to working artists and arts organizations.”

Allie Hankins, a choreographer and performer, said the reliability and consistency of the city grant in particular, small as it is,

has been critical for many Portland artists.

“It’s not a sure bet that you’re going to get that funding, but it comes up frequently enough that you’re able to be persistent and occasionally get some support for your projects,” Hankins said.

For now, it appears that the grant process will remain largely unchanged for artists. The cap on the amount of money artists can receive through city-funded grants will remain at $5,000 for the foreseeable future, and RACC will still be involved in distributing grants.

Netzer said RACC is still doing 50 to 60 percent of the work it previously did for the city with a grant of $1.2 million, while MusicOregon and Friends of Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, the other two organizations that will distribute grants of $80,000 and $100,000 respectively.

The most serious impact of the change in the grant process may be on RACC itself, which has seen its sta reduced by roughly half. It needs to replace a sizable part of its budget, which used to total around $10 million, in the coming months, Netzer said. “We’ve had a number of different people, from arts organizations to individual artists to some of the leaders of di erent cities in the metro area,” he continued, “who have told us point blank, ‘We can’t imagine the arts community here without RACC.’”

Netzer, whose six month term as interim executive director of the organization began in April,

said RACC will be leaning on its longtime relationships with local foundations and fellow nonproﬁts for support. The goal, he said, is to raise enough money to continue doing its community and advocacy work—while getting money to artists with little fuss.

“I believe everyone’s intention is for it to be as simple and straightforward for the artists and arts organizations as possible,” he said. “Hopefully, this change doesn’t impact their part of this process.”

Behind the scenes, much remains in ﬂux. Come next year, Portland will have a new city council, a new mayor, and a new government structure that could introduce new priorities for the O ce of Arts & Culture. Other sources of funding could open up as well: the Miller Foundation, for instance, is o ering a new grant program for select city artists starting this year.

In the meantime, the o ce is looking to develop a city-speciﬁc plan to complement Our Creative Future.

“Over the next year, the O ce of Arts & Culture will develop a Portland Action Plan, detailing the specific strategies that the City of Portland will implement in pursuit of the overall vision,” Jones wrote. “The ofﬁce will also launch a website so that Portlanders can monitor progress and provide additional input.”

For artists, however, the success or failure of all the planning and operational moves will come down to how e ectively they are supported.

“When it comes down to it, be it money, be it space, be it putting you in touch with potential donors… it always just comes down to money and access to resources,” Hankins said. ■

Alex Ramirez de Cruz brings the drama in ‘Middletown Mall,’ a play partially funded by RACC.

A scene from ‘Middletown Mall,’ a play by Lava Alapai that was partially funded by RACC.

JOHN RUDOFF

Ghostly Vision

Curtain Calling

After a punt from City Hall, the fate of Portland’s historic Keller Auditorium is still up in the air.

BY SUZETTE SMITH

Keller Auditorium, the grand old dame of Portland’s formal con cert scene, is long overdue for renovations, both technical and cosmetic. However, revelations from the past 10-15 years, about an in creasingly likely major earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone, mean that such a project will need to dig deeper than the upholstery.

The venerable venue—which was last updated in the late ‘60s—is still structur ally dependent on brick masonry walls from the original construction in 1917. And so, like many of the city’s approximately 1,600 unreinforced masonry buildings, the Keller is expected to crumble whenever the much-awaited “Big One” hits.

But while some structures can get by with a visible plaque that nobody reads about the dangers therein, the Keller could take with it over 3,000 theater-lovers and thespians if they happen to be inside. That’s bad business for the home of any ballet-loving family’s annual Nutcracker sojourn, or the increasingly satisfying touring Broadway productions, like this season’s Wicked

Beyond its seismically-unstable founda tion, the Keller is showing its age—with a sound system and acoustic design that isn’t on par with its contemporary institutions in other cities, as well as space limitations backstage and even the no-longer-to-code loading docks.

To solve that problem, city leaders have been funding research and proposals to ren ovate the building from the bones out—or replace the structure entirely, likely in a new location.

That might seem like an opportunity in the making—and it is!—but because this is Portland, the fate of the Keller has become mired in indecision and fears of a major disruption to the region’s still-recovering performing arts scene.

The Keller—with its double mezza nine, wood-paneled walls, and semicircle red-velvet seating arrangement—remains the crown jewel of Portland’s art scene. In fact, it’s the only venue in the metro area capable of hosting the aforementioned traveling Broadway shows and other largescale performances, including those by the Portland Opera and Oregon Ballet Theatre.

Located at 222 SW Clay, the Keller is situated across the street from the cascading waters of its namesake fountain, and serves as one of the logical endpoints of what I’m legally required to refer to as the Portland Open Space Sequence. (Normal denizens know it as the sadly little-used mid-block pedestrian pathway linking a bunch of empty office buildings a few blocks off the waterfront.)

Those who are fans of keeping and ren -

ovating the Keller, point to the fountain and walking path as reasons to renovate. And detractors point out that closing the Keller for a prolonged retrofitting would lead to a major disruption, as well as hundreds of lost jobs.

Enter Portland State University, who had hoped city leaders would pick their squat and uncharming University Place Hotel, located next to a little-used MAX stop at 310 SW Lincoln, as the site of a brand new performing arts center with all the bells and whistles.

Most of the major questions about the

Keller’s replacement rest on which metaphorical forest road City Council chooses to take.

When we planned this issue, we thought there would be a more solid direction in place; City Council had scheduled a vote for mid-August on the last two proposals standing. However, City Hall kicked the can down the road instead, telling the two top proposals they were looking for a “cohesive” compromise, despite their visions appearing diametrically opposed.

“The unforced error of blindly moving forward as two separate projects is over,”

Commissioner Dan Ryan said at the August 14 Portland City Council meeting. The rival proposal groups were given 56 days—until October 9—to now “explore the potential of a joint project to replace or renovate the Keller Auditorium.”

Granted, at that time, all that’s really demanded of them is to update the Council on attempts at merging their proposals. One can’t help but notice the Council is burning daylight, perhaps running out the clock until a greatly-expanded council is seated next year and decides to start over from scratch.

Two design renderings: one proposes a renovated Keller Auditorium (top) and the other (below) imagines a new location on SW Lincoln

COURTESY OFHALPRIN LANDSCAPE CONSERVANCY

COURTESY OF PORTLAND

In Other Arts News

BY SUZETTE SMITH

BEN HARKINS CROWNED

On Sunday August 25, Helium Comedy Club crowned Ben Harkins as Portland’s Funniest Person, winner of the chain’s city wide competition for 2024. In past years, Harkins had come so close to victory that many may have thought he’d already won the enduring honor. He estimates that he’s competed nine times, placing in the ﬁnals three or four of those.

Although winning the title of Portland’s Funniest Person can lead to opportunities to work at Helium, it turns out that Harkins has already been doing that. (Helium does not participate in any of the judging.)

“It’s an odd com petition because you can get knocked out in the first round by not bringing enough people, stu like that,” he told the Mercury , referring to a stand-up’s need to strate gize early on in the contest when the audience is ma jority friends and family. “If you’ve been around a long time, people don’t come to as many of your shows.”

HONORS FOR DARCELLE

ly-named-but-actually awesome Portland Book Festival—is in the midst of moving into a new headquarters at 716 SE Grand, transforming the vacant storefront into a paradise for lovers of the written word.

Darcelle XV will be getting another round of much-deserved recognition as the dearly-departed drag maven joins the Oregon Music Hall of Fame next month.

“I started working there a year ago, when

Harkins is an established local comedian; he hosts a “straight forward, no gim micks” Thursday comedy showcase at the Chill N Fill in North Portland and has been directing lic access web series named Intrigue

vealed. “’l open for guys who are maybe considered lefty inﬂuencers, and their fans

But about the crown. Last year, the noticed an absence of tiara for the winner. This year, Harkins was awarded a full crown. “It’s real metal—not like precious metal—but it is heavy,” he

When the organization announced this news in April, it estimated a fall opening, and that’s still on track. A Literary Arts representative estimated the new HQ will open near the end of October, just ahead of Portland Book Festival on November 2.

“It’s big, it slumped on my head, and I love the feeling

ary organization looking after the interests of

Whether every plan in the initial design will be ready to go remains to be seen—it was quite a powerhouse plan that included a cafe, event space, writing nooks, and permanent o ces for the organization’s sta , as well as a recording studio for its popular podcast and radio show, the Archive Project. But we’re additionally excited to see the construction revitalize the historic 1904 Strowbridge Building (which “real” Portlanders will remember was the longtime home of Khanate Furniture), nearly doubling Literary Arts’ physical footprint in the process to 14,000 square feet.

Known o -stage as Walter Cole, the Portland-born and world-famous performer headlined the eponymous Old Town club Darcelle XV Showplace for a half century— often performing six nights a week, drawing raucous cheers from crowds of queers and straights alike.

Cole, 92, passed away in the spring of 2023, leaving behind a legacy not only of stage-camp, but also as an activist who took crucial steps to raise awareness for HIV/ AIDS in decades past. Portland leaders have already leapt to honor Darcelle by renaming a downtown park in her honor, though it sadly remains fenced o and under construction at present.

smiths has found a

tral Eastside—and brating their new digs with a trio of talks by star-studded names.

And what better way to salute the belle of Portland’s arts et lettres than the 40th anniversary of Literary Arts’ lecture series? The main-stage season is already sold out, but the organization just announced three marquee shows where tickets are still available.

He credits this year’s win, not to strategy but to focusing in and working on his jokes. “I’m just better than I was those years,” he said. “I’ve been working really hard, and doing tons of shows.”

Literary Arts—the nonprofit behind the Oregon Book Awards and generical -

Up first, famed anchor and glass-ceiling-shattering journalist Connie Chung will discuss her upcoming memoir (aptly-named Connie) on September 25. Aerial bombing enthusiast and pop science guy Malcolm Gladwell is on deck next to promote his new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, on October 15. Then the incomparable Ta-Nehisi Coates brings his nonﬁction fans the book they’ve been waiting a decade for, The Message, on October 22.

Darcelle isn’t the only inductee receiving honors at this year’s ceremony—on October 12 at Aladdin Theater. Other stand-outs include Tony Lash, the Oregon-born drummer for Elliot Smith’s first band, Heatmiser; Jenny Conlee, the multi-talented instrumentalist and a founding member of indie rock quintet the Decemberists; and “youhad-to-be-there” punk outﬁt the Obituaries, who will perform live alongside another inductee who couldn’t sound more di erent, folky singer-songwriter Laura Veirs.

Rounding out the award-winners is hummy-strummy folk rocker Blitzen Trapper (who knew Eric Early is from Salem?); bluesman Robbie Laws; bassist Gary Fountaine of the R&B group Nu Shooz, who died earlier this year; impresario Steve Reischman, an early backer of Oregon Zoo and Edgeﬁeld concert series; jazz historian and Portland record store owner Bob Dietsche; and classical pianist John Nilsen. ■

Renderings of the new Literary Arts HQ include plans for a mezzanine, event space, and cafe.

BORA ARCHITECTURE & INTERIORS

You Can’t Capture Arlene Schnitzer’s Vast Art Legacy

Fountain of Creativity tries to show how a growing city and artistic scene developed and evolved.

BY JOE STRECKERT

The Fountain Gallery was a major hub of Portland’s downtown arts scene for much of the mid-20th century. In 1961, Arlene Schnitzer (yes, the same Arlene Schnitzer that the theater is named after) opened the venue, which hosted art shows, lectures, poetry readings, and performances. It wasn’t Portland’s ﬁrst art gallery, but Arlene and her husband Harold Schnitzer were instrumental in putting substantial funding and institutional support behind artists in Portland. “She helped the banks, the law ﬁrms, and the businesses to realize that they needed to support local artists,” says her son Jordan Schnitzer. “That was true of music, dance, and theater, too, but her role was visual arts.”

According to Jordan Schnitzer, Portland’s art community was quite di erent in his parents’ era. “The art community relative to the greater metropolitan area was nothing like it is today,” he says. “It was much more insular and smaller. Not elitist in any way. These people were down-to-earth. But there wasn’t a lot of art consciousness on the part of the citizens, as there is today.” Schnitzer says that his mother used her resources, social skills, and connections to get eyes on art and money into artists’ pockets.

Century Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer provides a window into the Portland art scene during the beginning and middle of the 20th century. The exhibit features work from Paciﬁc Northwest artists like Carl Morris, William Givler, Hilda Morris, and others, all of whom were supported by Schnitzer during their careers.

Even if you don’t recognize their names, you’ve probably seen their work on the walls of the Portland Art Museum, in the lobby of

The exhibit also paints a picture of the growing artistic movements in Oregon from the early 1900s up until 1961. Walking through, you can witness an artistic evolution that gradually bends toward more contemporary notions. It starts with early 20th century landscapes and social realism ( e.g. , art that depicts everyday people and real-life situations in a way that does not romanticize its subject matter) and early modernism. It’s not too long until you’re looking at non-representational works from the 1940s that could have been painted yesterday. The view takes on an ambitious scope, and even if Portland’s art scene used to be smaller, as Jordan Schnitzer says, it was still obviously extant and thriving.

is all well and good, but the Fountain was never the whole of the Portland or Oregon arts scene. Even if Portland’s artistic life was smaller in the twentieth century than it is now, parties and exhibitions at galleries like the Fountain were only part of it. It would have been even more informative to see what was happening here in decades past.

That context wouldn’t have just been interesting in its own right, it would also have provided important context for understanding the Fountain Gallery and Arlene Schnitzer’s legacy. Brief biographies of artists and dates of major historical events are fine, but a deeper dive on the role of galleries and arts patrons in a larger ecosystem of commerce and culture would have been welcome.

A Fountain of Creativity: Oregon’s 20th

the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, or anywhere else that prominently displays established local artists. A Fountain of Creativity is an “oh, that guy!” of Paciﬁc Northwest Art, and it’s good to see the artists contextualized.

The subject matter in A Fountain of Creativity is fascinating: It shows how a growing city and artistic scene developed and evolved. But the subject matter is too big for a single room at the OHS, and the exhibit seems to be sticking an entire museum’s (or multiple museums) worth of content and ideas into a single chamber. The artists featured could each have their gallery (and they did, at the Fountain), and it’s frustrating to see whole oeuvres or artistic movements reduced to fewer than half a dozen paintings. The exhibit is also notable for what it leaves out. Focusing on a single major gallery

But, this is ultimately saying that a museum exhibit is a bit too museum-y. Compression and editing is what these institutions do. Fortunately, A Fountain of Creativity will eventually be much bigger than what’s on display now, as in October a second part of the exhibit is scheduled to open, which will focus on the 1960s and onward.

A Fountain of Creativity: Oregon’s 20th Century Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer is currently on view at the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park, through January 2, 2025, tickets and info at ohs.org. A second part of the exhibit opens on October 25, and continues through May 4, 2025. ■

“Breakfast at the Wentz Cottage, Neahkahnie (#1)” by William Huburt Givler

“Portrait of Jordan,” Sally Haley

CREDIT COLLECTION OF JORDAN SCHNITZER FAMILY FOUNDATION CREDIT COLLECTION OF JORDAN SCHNITZER FAMILY FOUNDATION

JORDAN SCHNITZER FAMILY FOUNDATION

“Shore & River Series,” Carl Morris

What Art Goes With Your Job?

Make art, truth, and beauty work for you for a change.

BY HR SMITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAMANTHA BUTTRICK

When I was in preschool, my mom took a writing class at the local community college. Then she took it again. And again. The whole time I was growing up, she was taking some iteration of the class. Her writing crew was an eclectic bunch, very different from the goody two-shoes that she hung out with during her regular social life. She was proud of the fact that they were banned from the local Dennys for being too rowdy. The instructor—an extremely prolific freelance writer with a butterfly tattooed on her face—was less about driving people to generate publishable material (although that certainly happened) and more about throwing out writing prompts like: “Kill someone, and dispose of the body” just to see what happened.

Witnessing this was a valuable education in art as a counterpoint to the grind of day-to-day life, both the paid kind (my mom’s jobs usually had “analyst” somewhere in the title and involved a lot of spreadsheets and o ce politics) and the unpaid kind (everything to do with family). Writers’ group was a bulwark against the scope creep of day-to-day existence. Making a living o of art is demonstrably hard. Making art once you’ve ﬁgured out how to make a living do ing something else is, if not always easy, a hell of a lot more sustainable. Community colleges like PCC and Mt. Hood are good places to start since they’re often the most affordable option, especially for studio classes like pottery, but Portland is full of arts organizations that may be more convenient to where you live and when you’re available.

So what do you actually feel like doing? Not sure? Here are a few suggestions.

WRITING

Pros: No fancy equipment required. Writing is an inherently revealing act, and you will learn truly wild things about how people see the world that you would probably never learn about otherwise.

Cons : The window into how other people perceive the world, that writing classes can provide, has a bad side as well as a good one. There’s a particular kind of person who shows up at writing groups or classes looking for a captive audience—like the edgelord who responds to every assignment with porny descriptions of murder. Sourcing an instructor is key, since a good one will serve as both aesthetic and emotional bouncer.

Goes well with: Any job that doesn’t already involve writing or spending time with people’s feelings. One exception: If you do write for a living, you may get something out of studying a form that is di erent from what you do.

A few places to take classes IPRC, 318 SE Main, iprc.org; Literary Arts, 925 SW Washington, literary-arts.org; Corporeal Writing, 510 SW 3rd, corporealwriting.com

If you’re making art to help build a career, you’ve got to think about what you’re good at, what’s going to impress people, and how to fit all the weird things you do into a coherent story and trajectory. Remove “career” from the equation and the question of what kind of art to make becomes simpler—less “am I transcendent and in service to the muse?” and more “what do I actually feel like doing at 6 pm on a Tuesday?”

POTTERY

Pros: Pottery is the touch grass of the creative arts. It’s so satisfying and tactile that—as the kinds of jobs that a person can make a living with have grown more disembodied—pottery studios have proliferated in the way of third-wave coffee shops, forming a kind of clay-industrial complex. Wedging clay to get out air bubbles is like the earthy equivalent of a rage room.

Cons: You will quickly overwhelm yourself and your friends with all of your little mugs and pots and dishes. Eventually, you will have to start smashing.

Goes well with: Any job that makes you forget that you have a body.

A few places to take classes: The Mud Room, 2011 SE 10th & 1831 N Killingsworth, themudroompdx.com; Radius Clay Studio, 2324 SE Belmont, radiusstudio.org; St. John’s Clay, 6635 North Baltimore, stjohnsclay.com

METALWORKING

Pros: There are very few things more satisfying than banging stu on an anvil.

Cons: Not many places where you can actually take classes. Will anyone actually wear the jewelry you make them?

Goes well with: Any job that makes you long for physical activity, but leaves you with enough cognitive wherewithal to follow proper safety procedures.

A few places to take classes: Multnomah Arts Center, 7688 SW Capitol Hwy, multnomahartscenter.org; Wildcat Welding & Hobby Shop, 3615 NE 50th, wildcathobbyclasses.com

COMEDY / PERFORMANCE

Pros: You get to move your body in space. Lots of standing & yelling. Can inadvertently make you better at other aspects of your life by making you more comfortable speaking in front of (and with) other people.

Cons: Most forms of live performance turn out to be more fun to do than to watch. Your friends will live in fear that you will ask them to come and see your shows. You get so deep into theater and rehearsing that your performance friends replace your old friends. You get so good at saying “yes, and…” that your very boundaries of self dissolve into the theatrical whole.

Goes well with: Any job where nobody ever says “yes, and… .”

A few places to take classes: Kickstand Comedy, 1006 SE Hawthorne, kickstandcomedy.org, Curious Comedy, 5225 NE MLK, curiouscomedy.org; Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th, pcs.org

PHOTOGRAPHY

DRAWING / PAINTING

Pros: Can be extremely tactile and satisfying. Classes with live models make you feel like you’re in an old-timey movie about art.

Cons: The learning curve can be pretty steep, and it can take a long time to make anything that you actually feel comfortable showing to anyone. The aesthetic tropes of life drawing class mean you can wind up with a lot of media depicting rumpled sheets, fruit, spheres, and the pubic regions of strangers.

A few places to take classes: High/Low Art Space, 936 SE 34th, highlowartspace.com; Outlet, 500 NE Sandy, outletpdx.com

SCREEN PRINTING

Pros: Perfect for people who look upon the process of art making and wish that it had more repetitive physical motion and opportunities to obsess over mesh count, ink extenders, and squeegee durometer.

Cons: Screeen printing is among the most conﬂict-prone of the arts in shared studio spaces. Whose turn is it to use the sink? Who didn’t clean all the ink o the last time they used it? Who touched the very expensive paper with their smudgey ﬁngers? The practice attracts those with dreams of merch and craft fair glory. If you get good at it, your reward will be friends trying to get you to screen print tote bags for their wedding.

Goes well with: Any job that has enough chaos to make you long for order and obsessive repetition.

A few places to take classes: IPRC, 318 SE Main, iprc.org; Multnomah Arts Center, 7688 SW Capitol Hwy, multnomahartscenter.org

CHOIR

Pros: Ideal art form if you enjoy alternating between being really engaged with people and totally disassociating to becoming one with a camera.

Cons: Can lead to a lot of computer post-production work. The equipment can get really expensive. Many of the other photographers that you meet will be guys who want to compare lenses. Friends will ask you to take their wedding photos.

Goes well with: Any job that makes enough money to buy all of those fancy lenses.

A few places to take classes: Pro Photo Supply, 1112 NW 19th, prophotosupply.com

Pros: Like pottery, singing with other people can be satisfying on an almost cellular level. There’s a reason all the cultiest religions have a lot of singing.

Cons: With the exception of drop-in groups like Low Bar Chorale, committing to a musical group means showing up for practice, every single time, no matter how inconvenient. You skip at your peril, and you’d better not be o -key.

Goes well with: Any job where you need to be reminded that it’s actually possible to enjoy working with other people.

A few places to take classes: Low Bar Chorale, various locations, lowbarchorale. com; Portland Revels, 128 NW 11th, portlandrevels.org; Portland Folk Music Society, various locations, portlandfolkmusic.org ■

Makers Recognize Makers

A longstanding manufacturer of Japan’s favorite backpack Tsuchiya Kaban opens its ﬁrst US retail space in Downtown Portland.

BY MELISSA LOCKER

If you’ve been to Japan—or watched any Japanese ﬁlm or television show that features schoolchildren—you’ve seen a randoseru backpack. There’s no way you haven’t. The rounded-yet-blocky leather shape is on the back of pretty much every child in Japan. It’s so common that there are anime shows about “randoseru girls.” There are even randoserus for dogs

A longstanding Randoseru Association monitors bag stats like popularity of sizes, material, and color (boys like the black, but navy is catching up, while girls have been opting for lavender over pink lately). The bags are so ubiquitous the paper of record itself, The New York Times, recently published a profile of them

According to their deep-pocketed research, the randoseru became Japan’s de facto school backpack way back in 1885 when “a school that educates Japan’s imperial family, designated as its o cial school bag.” Now, nearly 150 years later, the bag is worn by nearly every elementary school child in the country.

Helping the bag continue its reign is leather goods manufacturer Tsuchiya Kaban, which has been making randoseru in Japan since it was founded by Kunio Tsuchiya over 60 years ago. It’s a laborious process that

involves 50 craftspeople using 150 parts to hand make each bag.

After spending decades content to outﬁt Japanese school kids, the company recently turned its eyes on the rest of the world. They launched a global e-commerce site in English three years ago, and now, Tsuchiya Kaban has partnered with Portland’s own Frances May to open its ﬁrst US outpost,

a shop-in-shop on the ground ﬂoor of the downtown retailer.

“The way they talk about their products, and the way they physically care for them; there’s a preciousness and a respect for the tradition and the quality that each bag has, which you kind of want to be a part of it a little bit,” says Pamela Baker-Miller. As the owner of Frances May, she was able to be a little bit part of the brand by offering them space on the ground floor of her store, an offer they were excited to take her up on.

For the first time, customers in the US can check out the quality of Tsuchiya products in person, and, perhaps most important, try on a randoseru to see if they look nearly as good as a Japanese ﬁve-year old (doubtful, sorry!).

There is one question about their new spot, though: Why Portland? Los Angeles is rightthere. And while we love this city, it’s simply smaller and welcomes fewer fancy-pants visitors who might be angling for a bag that takes 300 steps to make by hand.

“There’s a personal connection,” explains Andi Bakos, who does marketing for the brand. “Two of the people who work for the brand have lived in Portland, so they have a fondness for the city, and they see it as a place where small businesses are very supported. They feel very much at home here. There’s defi -

nitely a kinship with Tokyo, too. Both are places where ‘craft’ is a big part of the local culture—Portland is full of makers, Tsuchiya is a company of makers.”

Along with that longstanding maker tradition comes a desire to continue evolving. While some brands would be content doing one thing really, really well for nearly 60 years, Tsuchiya Kaban isn’t. Instead, the brand has launched on an ambitious global retail expansion and tapped into its creativity. Since the 1990s, it has expanded its line to include 150-ish bags, briefcases, and wallets and started working in a wholly new material, a mushroom fabric, called Mylo.

“Because we have this really good foundation of craftsmanship, we’re able to branch out and do these experimental things and explore ideas and concepts that the brand values, like sustainability,” explains Emmy Kawanishi Reis from Tsuchiya Kaban. “Craftsmanship is really the backbone of the brand, and it has allowed it to do all these interesting collaborations, including with Mylo.” While the material is currently only used in a wallet, there are plans to incorporate the fabric in future goods.

While Tsuchiya Kaban has an eye on the future, their products remain deeply rooted in tradition and are designed to last, making them a worthy investment. That’s what made Baker-Miller a fan in the first place. “I really like how simple and elegant and well made they are,” she says. “If I’m going to buy something, I want to keep it for a very long time.” ■

Downtown’s Frances May will sell the much desired randoseru backpacks.

too.

COURTESY OF TSUCHIYA KABAN

The Mercury’s Time-Based Art Festival Picks

Don’t miss the dance parties, itty bitty music collages, and complete cacophonies—planning your TBA 2024 itinerary is an art form in itself.

BY MARTHA DAGHLIAN

In keeping with its perma-tentative title, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)’s annual experimental performance fete has regularly seen major shifts with each year’s iteration. But one thing we can always count on is the Time Based Art (TBA) festival’s massive lineup of cutting edge work. Which makes planning your TBA itinerary an art form in itself.

This year’s festival covers three weekends, with most programming concentrated on the weekends in order to give audiences and artists time to recharge in between. There’s a dizzying number and variety of things to see, hear, and do—almost too many events for any one person to catch everything—but part of the enigmatic charm of TBA is the thrilling feeling of being a small part of a larger phenomenon that activates people and places across Portland.

Here’s another thing you can count on: the Mercury’s TBA Picks, a collection of the not-to-be-missed highlights of this year’s festival. Start with a few of our selections and see where your curiosity takes you, or explore the full program at pica.org/tba.

Videotones: Outside Inside World

As we noted in our August preview of the fest, TBA 2024 kicks o with an interactive audiovisual happening, orchestrated by the Videotones collective. A project of community art studio Elbow Room, Videodrones are a group of neurodiverse artists who use “homegrown, collaborative editing practices” and accessible tech to create short ﬁlms and experimental music. Across the festival they’ll be turning Pacific Northwest College of Art’s 511 gallery into Outside Inside World, a temporary ﬁlm set / improv theater / exhibition space that will change daily, as the artists go about their creative work. On opening night—conveniently coinciding with the Pearl District’s First Thursday Art

Walk—Videotones invited the public to bring musical instruments and join a free-spirited jam session. (511 Gallery at PNCA, 511 NW Broadway, Thurs Sept 5, 5 pm, free)

Club Alive

Are you ready to feel ALIVE? That is the question multifaceted performance artist Kye Alive wants you to ponder when you join their late-night art party/variety show dubbed Club Alive. [Full disclosure, Kye is also a Mercury contributor -eds. ] Taking

cues both from the New York rave scene where they got their start and the warm and fuzzy world of West Coast socially-engaged art, Kye Alive has been nurturing a unique community of good-natured and wildly talented artists of all stripes over the past year through this semi-regular gathering. Past shows have featured trippy audiovisual experiences, delightful contemporary tap-dance, and edgy homegrown hyperpop. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sat Sept 7, 9 pm, sliding scale $10, $20, $50)

Morgan Bassichis: Can I Be Frank?

Not to be missed is Morgan Bassichis’ Can I Be Frank?, a comedic homage to the legacy of pioneering queer performer Frank Maya—who, like Bassichis, was equally ﬂuent in the traditions of avant garde theater, conceptual monologue, and stand up comedy. As the ﬁrst openly gay comedian to perform on network television, Maya helped to make space for subsequent generations of queer performers. Sadly he did not live to see the true impact of his work, dying at age 45 due to complications related to the

AIDS

On Sept 12 & 13, choreographer Marikiscrycrycry performs ‘Goner,’ a work evoking a new aesthetic tradition of Black horror.

ANNE TETZLAFF

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

HEALER AND AUTHOR FELICIA HOWE

Celebrating the release of Sibyl of the Flora, a collection of floral affirmations with an exhibit of original botanical illustrations.

14 SEPTEMBER 2024

Generous support for the exhibition is provided by the Ford Family Foundation, The Standard, and Garth Greenan Gallery.

nativeartsandcultures native_art_culture

Dyani White Hawk (Siċaŋġu Lakota), Dreaming, 2022, Lithograph, Edition of 20, Photo courtesy Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts

virus. In Can I Be Frank? Bassichis brings a contemporary lens to Maya’s trailblazing material, reprising some of his best bits in an attempt to resolve “the bottomless queer search for laughter in times of crisis.” (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Fri Sept 6 & Sat Sept 7, 8 pm, Sun Sept 8, 6 pm, sliding scale $20, $35, $50)

Marikiscrycrycry: Goner

If you’re a fan of the horror genre, you’ll want to snag a ticket for Goner , a “fearsome choreographic journey” from London-based movement artist Malik Nashad Sharpe, AKA Marikiscrycrycry. Goner draws upon pop culture references to build a new aesthetic tradition of Black horror. Think fake blood, terrifying chases, and desperate attempts to escape, pared down to enhance their physical qualities and combined into an unsettling abstract pastiche that touches on serious issues of migration, trauma, and addiction. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Thurs Sept 12 & Fri Sept 13, 7 pm, sliding scale $20, $35, $50, 16 & up)

Timothy Yanick Hunter: Granular Synthesis

Aﬁcionados of avant garde audio won’t want to miss Toronto-based artist Timothy Yanick Hunter’s one-night-only performance of Granular Synthesis. The title refers to an electronic music form, originally pioneered by New Age artists like Iannis Xenakis, that breaks sounds up into teeny tiny pieces and puts them back together to create glitchy, jittery, and stretchy new sounds. How tiny is a musical “grain?” Less than 50 milliseconds, that’s how tiny! Hunter uses these itty bits in collage-like compositions that act as metaphors for the fragmented nature of memory, life, and death. As a bonus, an exhibition of Hunter’s work titled Noise / Grain will open at Pearl District gallery ILY2 on September 13, in case you just can’t get enough of that granular aesthetic! (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sat Sept 14, 6 pm, sliding scale $10, $20, $50)

Jess Perlitz: Reductions of Mountains Sarah Gilbert and Pato Hebert: Tender Only at TBA can you get curator-guided walkthroughs, artist talks, and a delightful picnic for not one, but two (perhaps 2.5) exhibitions hosted by three di erent venues, all in one event—whatta deal! Jess Perlitz’s geologically-informed artwork in Reductions of Mountains , installed amid the scholarly stacks at Reed College’s Eric V. Hauser memorial Library, complements

the collaborative work of Sarah Gilbert and Pato Hebert, whose show Tender explores nature’s role in the healing process.Tender is on view ﬁrst at Reed’s Cooley Gallery and also at Springfield, Oregon’s Ditch Projects, in October. Spend a Sunday afternoon lounging on the idyllic lawn of Reed’s Sellwood campus for the combined opening reception, where you’ll enjoy music, refreshments, and a conversation with the artists and curators. (The lawn at Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock, Sun Sept 15, noon, free)

Sarah Farahat and Alexandria Saleem: Teta’s Tea

Teta’s Tea is both a tribute to Portland’s SWANA (that’s Southwest Asia and North African) diaspora and a community gathering designed to support connection and nourishment in times of collective grieving. Artists Sarah Farahat and Alexandria Saleem have put together a huge bill, including live Moroccan music from Portland band Se arine, a traditional Gazan kite-building workshop, Middle Eastern food and crafts from local vendors, and a curated SWANA ﬁlm series. Plus, a portion of proceeds from the event will go toward local group Flowers for Palestine, which raises money to help families in Gaza. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sun Sept 15, 6 pm, sliding scale $10, $20, $50)

Elbow Room: Good Dang Weekend

If you found yourself having a blast with Videotones on opening night and wonder: How can I support this awesome project? Then look no further than Good Dang Weekend, a fundraiser for community art studio Elbow Room, a local nonproﬁt that assists artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities in maintaining their practices. The delightful Kye Alive (of Club Alive) hosts the event, as Good Dang Weekend closes out TBA ‘24 with a bingo tournament, “fantastic prizes,” and an inclusive dance party at PICA’s warehouse-esque venue. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sun Sept 22, 4 pm, $20) ■

Morgan Bassichis’ ‘Can I Be Frank?’ is a homage to pioneering queer performer Frank Maya.

BRONWEN SHARP

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Talk About Political Theater

Risk/Reward’s

newest theatrical adventure, the Election Anti-Party, wants to rescue you from this year’s anxiety-spiral.

BY WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

Newsﬂash: Election years are not fun. Now more than ever, big election cycles—like the one we’re currently enduring—are stressful, anxiety-inducing, and for some, soul crushing. Worse still, we as a nation don’t seem to have a constructive way of processing our feelings or even productively discussing it. However, one way of coming to terms with fear and anxiety is through the shared experience of art.

And that’s the idea behind Risk/Reward’s latest theatrical production, the Election Anti-Party, which you’ll find at Portland Center Stage, September 26-28, just over a month before the dreaded election day.

Risk/Reward has been around since 2008, serving up morsels of new, often experimental, art from every possible discipline—including theater, dance, music, ﬁlm, and stu that’s largely undeﬁnable, but always thought-provoking and adventurous. Every year Risk/Reward produces a festival of new works where each performance is 20 minutes or less. The organization also stages new, full-length performances around the city, and programs community dialogues between artists and audiences with the goal of encouraging appreciation for more adventurous performance.

But as for the Election Anti-Party? That’s new. While this “micro-festival,” created by interim festival director James Mapes, is similar to the annual Risk/Reward fest in its adventurous nature and packed weekend format, the programming feels like an assortment of what Risk/Reward delivers in total, but with an overarching theme: the 2024 election and how we’re going to stay mentally healthy and engaged as the clusterfuck continues to unfold.

“For me, this festival is particularly important right now because of the way our political discourse is moving,” said Mapes. “It’s happening so fast, and there’s so little opportunity to think critically about the

“Art does things for us. It gives us new perspectives. It has value in our society—especially when we’re all in the same room, perceiving something and then getting a chance to talk about it.”

tival, presents the Fig Tree Committee’s An Iliad —based on the epic Greek poem by Homer—performed by Paul Susi, with live accompaniment by cellist Anna Fritz. The duo have toured this show to 13 Oregon prisons, and played it for more than 3,000 people. According to Mapes, there’s a direct correlation between Homer’s vision of those who chase the violent glory of war only to be devoured by it, and the take-no-prisoners machinations of political life and the candidates and voters who are swept into the melee.

—Festival Director James Mapes

things we’re putting into our brains. So being able to sit in a room with other living human beings to watch and then talk about things? I’m going to ﬁnd a lot of comfort in that, and I think other people will too.”

As is often the case, there will be post-performance discussions designed to give the audience a chance to question the performers—but this time, the purpose goes much deeper.

“We’ll go beyond the usual Q & A sort of thing,” Mapes said, “and I really hope we can take on weightier topics… such as ‘what do we want out of politics?’ ‘What do we want out of discourse?’ And, like, ‘are we actually polarized in the way the media often says we’re so polarized?’”

And it sounds like there will be a lot to talk about. The opening night of the fes -

“[ An Iliad ] is about how these cycles of violence and rage continue, inﬂuencing war, politics, and people throughout the ages,” Mapes said. “So not only is it appropriate, it’ll be something interesting to discuss through the lens of the upcoming election, and modern United States politics.”

On the second night, the Anti-Party features a double-header event, starting with the Rejoice! Diaspora Dance Theater who’ll perform a selection from their show Afrolitical called “Uprising” about the history of Black protest (casting a particular eye on the racial justice marches of 2020). Discussion on the intersection of activism and contemporary politics follows the performance. There’s also a screening of Tipping Poin t, the recent documentary that dives into Portland’s Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, interviewing participants, police, and activists, while providing a far more nu-

anced lens designed to counter the often hysteric reaction of local politicians and national media.

The fest reaches its conclusion with a Saturday-evening showcase of 20 veryshort, original performances—most staged for the ﬁrst time. It’s a dynamic bill, boasting drag artists Carla Rossi and Pepper Pepper, an allegedly “very angry” piece from choreographer-performer Andrea Parson, first time voters from PSU and Hand to Mouth theater, and lots more (including a mysterious and intriguing appearance from “a sentient karaoke machine.”)

“There’s poetry, drag, comedy, music, theater, ﬁlm, performance art, sculpture… lots of fun things,” according to Mapes. “I’m calling it the best open mic that you’ll ever see… it’s gonna have that vibe.”

When asked what inspired this new festival and why we need it, Mapes responded, “Art does things for us. It gives us new perspectives. It has value in our society—especially when we’re all in the same room, perceiving something and then getting a chance to talk about it.”

“But more importantly, this audience will be getting what they need: an exciting, weird, thrilling night of variety. You can trust all these artists to give you something amazing. And in the end, that’s what we at Risk/Reward are all about—we want to support artists and give them the opportunity to perform something that’s new, original, and truly great.”

Risk/Reward presents the Election Anti-Party at Ellyn Bye Studio at Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th, Thurs Sept 26-Sat 28, 7:30 pm, pay-what-you-will, starting at $5, schedule and tickets at risk-reward.org, 13 & up ■

Left to right: Pepper Pepper, Paul Susi and Anna Fritz from “An Iliad, “ and Carla Rossi.

PHOTOS: JINGZI ZHAO, GARY NORMAN, JEN A. DESIGN: ANTHONY KEO

Portland Opera Makes History Come Alive

Our Oregon debuts commissioned work about poet and advocate Shizue Iwatsuki.

BY ROBERT HAM

Portland Opera’s 60th season ﬁnds the eminent arts institution at a fulcrum. In recent months, it sold the Hampton Opera Center, the organization’s homebase for over two decades, and now it’s deeply embroiled in ongoing discussions about the future of the Keller Auditorium. It’s little wonder then that the company has kept its impressive anniversary season relatively modest, only mounting two full-scale operas: Verdi’s repertory mainstay Falsta , and The Shining, a new work based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel. And both of those won’t open until spring 2025.

What may help the Portland Opera weather this blustery period are the roots it laid years ago, with its e orts to foster new talent and engage with people that may have never experienced opera before. And to do that, the company is looking outside typical performance venues and into school auditoriums, gymnasiums, and community centers across the state.

In 2022, the organization introduced Our Oregon: a series of commissioned operas aimed at young audiences that tell the stories of important Oregonians from historically marginalized communities. That year, the Portland

Opera staged Beatrice , a short work based on the life of Beatrice Morrow Cannady, the first Black woman to practice law in Oregon who also helped found the state’s chapter of the NAACP.

This fall, the project continues with the premiere of Shizue: An American Story, a 50-minute opera that tells the tale of Shizue Iwatsuki, a poet and ﬁerce advocate for Oregon’s Japanese-American community, who spent nearly four years incarcerated at concentration camps in California during World War II. Although her poetry does appear at the Japanese American Historical Plaza, Iwatsuki’s name isn’t well-known beyond scholars of her work.

“I want to say that’s the basis of every woman’s story in history,” says Dmae Lo Roberts, the playwright and journalist commissioned to write the libretto for, and direct, the upcoming performances of Shizue. “When you start uncovering it, they were pretty fantastic! Why haven’t we learned about this person before? I felt excited that young people might be learning about her history through opera.”

The biggest challenge for Roberts and her collaborator, composer Kenji Oh, was working out how to condense Iwatsuki’s life into a musical work that runs less than an hour. The pair hit on a novel conceit: Two actors will play the main character concurrently, Lindsey Nakatani as a younger Iwatsuki and Chihiro Asano as an older, looking back and commenting on her life. The music Oh conceived for this work follows

a similar line, maintaining a modern tone while weaving in melodies from traditional Japanese folk songs.

Iwatsuki’s story is absolutely ripe for an operatic retelling. Born in Okayama in 1897, she was raised in a life of reﬁnement before marrying Kamegoro Iwatsuki and following him to Hood River where he was an apple farmer. Even as she raised the couple’s three children and helped oversee the farm, Iwatsuki helped her fellow Japanese emigres learn American customs. And, says Roberts, she continued her studies of poetry, in particular the form known as tanka, and ﬂower arranging, even during her internment.

“She had to use whatever was around her,” Roberts says. “There were no ﬂowers to use. Her grandson showed us a ﬂower arrangement she made in the camp with pipe cleaners and yarn with hay underneath for the soul. It’s the sweetest, most beautiful thing when you know the history. You could put her behind barb wire, but you can’t take her art away from her.”

World premiere of Shizue: An American Story takes place at Brunish Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, Sat Oct 4, 7 pm & Sun Oct 5, 1 pm, $5+ pay what you will, all ages. After the Portland premiere, Portland Opera to Go carries it to schools and community centers across the state. ■

COURTESY JAPANESE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF OREGON

SILJA TOBIN

COURTESY OF PORTLAND OPERA

Photo of Shizue Iwatsuki (left), workshop performance of ‘Shizue: An American Story’ (right)

One of Shizue Iwatsuki’s ikebana.

St. Johns Shoegaze Revival

Members of Portland bands Ten Million Lights and Kallai worked together to organize two-day music fest Dreamgaze PDX.

BY BEN SALMON

Shoegaze is having a moment. It’s not the ﬁrst moment for the cult-fave genre—a hypnotic amalgam of gossamer vocals and distorted guitars played, often loudly, through an army of nifty effects pedals. Not long after Shoegaze emerged from the British Isles in the late 1980s, its ﬁrst wave crested on the backs of fuzzed-out bands like Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine.

But a shoegaze revival is deﬁnitely underway, fueled by young people discovering the genre’s giants and heretofore obscure bands like Duster, through TikTok clips and Spotify playlists. At the same time, a surge of new shoegaze-influenced (but boundary-stretching) bands have bubbled up, including They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Wednesday, and Feeble Little Horse.

For fans, however, shoegaze’s moment never really went away.

“The reality is that there’s been a shoegaze scene in the Northwest that goes all the way back to the original days in the early 1990s,” said Ryan Carroll, vocalist and guitarist for the Portland-based band Ten

Million Lights. “Obviously, it’s pretty exciting that more people are paying attention.”

Carroll is one of the organizers of Dreamgaze PDX, a new two-day festival that will bring 13 shoegaze—and shoegazeish—bands to the Fixin’ To on September 28-29. (The “ish” gives the event wiggle room to showcase dream-pop, psych-rock, and post-punk bands, too.)

“We’ve been talking about doing something like this with a bunch of the bands in Portland,” Carroll said. “I had a big birthday this year and my wife said, ‘Why don’t you do that thing you’ve been talking about? Get your friends and your favorite bands together and have a big party.’ And I was like, ‘Alright. I’m going to do this.’”

Inspired by the small but sturdy Seattle festivals Seagaze and Tremolo, Carroll went to work. First, he emailed about 15 bands he loves. When several of them expressed serious interest in playing, he realized he needed help to make his idea a reality. His ﬁrst call was to his friends in the Portland band Kallai

“There are bands out there that like to be asked to do stu , and then there are a few

bands that are hustlers—who are interested in actually doing the work it takes to make

“I mean, I’ve heard some bands that sound identical to the old shoegaze bands of the ‘90s, but none of the bands we’ve invited fall into that category. They all have taken elements of it and created their own thing.”

things happen. I immediately thought of Kallai because they’re the type of people who will pitch in,” he said. “This whole thing

is a labor of love. We’re not doing it to make money; let’s be honest.”

Kallai did, in fact, jump into action, according to the band’s bassist Brian Wilcher.

“We’ve played with Ten Million Lights and I’ve known Ryan for years,” he said. “We got to talking about it and we were like, ‘Let’s do it—whatever we can do to help.’”

The group locked down the Fixin’ To as the venue, built a website, ramped up promotion, and secured some highly credible sponsors, including local companies like Catalinbread Effects, which makes guitar pedals, and Benson Amps—plus, the online shoegaze radio station DKFM DJs from the station will spin records at Dreamgaze PDX, and Portland’s own Super-Electric Records will have a pop-up shop at the event.

“These are organizations that know what they’re doing and know the music, and they’ve decided to sign on to be a part of this,” Carroll said. “That’s pretty cool.”

And then there are the bands, which include Ten Million Lights and Kallai, as well as fellow Portlanders Waking Sophia, Tears Run Rings, and the Prids. Out-of-town acts playing Dreamgaze are coming in from Mexico City (Mint Field), Phoenix (Citrus Clouds), Brooklyn, NY (Dead Leaf Echo), Raleigh, NC (the Veldt), Sacramento (Soft Science), Oakland (Fawning), Seattle (somesurprises), and Olympia (Waves Crashing).

While those bands all share traits that might, say, get them invited to play a ﬂedgling shoegaze festival—dreamlike vibes, floaty melodies, guitars that sparkle and fuzz—they each bring their own unique approach to the genre, Wilcher said. “I mean, I’ve heard some bands that sound identical to the old shoegaze bands of the ‘90s, but none of the bands we’ve invited fall into that category. They all have taken elements of it and created their own thing.”

More than anything, Carroll seems to be looking forward to just hanging out with like-minded folks for a couple of nights and developing a network of bands across the country who know and support each other.

“I hope we can build on our sense of community here in Portland, and also bring other people into it, too, not only from our area but beyond,” he said. “For this group to get together and get to know each other can only be a good thing. Wherever you do something like this, it spawns all these other shows in the future.”

Including, they hope, the second Dreamgaze PDX in 2025.

“The goal,” Wilcher said, “is deﬁnitely to keep this going and make it an annual thing.”

Dreamgaze PDX takes place at the Fixin’ To, 8218 N Lombard, Sat Sept 28 & Sun Sept 29, $30 each day, schedule and tickets at dreamgazepdx.com ■

LAUREN RODRIGUEZ

Excellent Seattle band somesurpises are traveling to Portland to play Dreamgaze PDX.

Portland Summer—Reviewed

A deeply subjective account of outdoor events we attended and what we thought of them.

BY SUZETTE SMITH

To be outdoors, in weather, in summer feels increasingly fraught. Outdoor concerts carry a persistent charm and are safer for those with COVID concerns, but climate change increases the riskiness of these open-air events. We’re not just considering heat and unexpected weather, but also the now-seasonal wildﬁre smoke that blows over urban areas with some regularity.

This summer we attended a number of festivals and outdoor concerts in the Portland area; here’s the report back:

Project Pabst

This year, we welcomed Project Pabst back to Tom McCall Waterfront Park for a twoday, two-stage, eclectic ADHD juke-box lineup of rock, hip hop, indie pop, garage punk, and other such sounds. The common musical thread was they were amped, and every band felt good—sounded good—as sets jumped back and forth around a 24-feet tall unicorn statue that sat at the fest’s center.

While this critic thinks mid-80s is too hot to be in a crowd—but acknowledges that crowds are by deﬁnition crowded—the Pabst grounds had a shocking number of seats with sun umbrellas and actual tree shade, plus a little pop-up dive bar in an air-conditioned tent.

We never got too close to either stage, based on a time-honored preference for standing near the sound booth, where the music arguably sounds best. And the sound at Project Pabst impressed. When the music hit as the day cooled o , everything lined up like an unﬂappable, sensorial argument about music outside. Music outdoors! Music everyone can hear!

People who hadn’t forked over the $115220 ticket price lined up on the Morrison Bridge or danced on the waterfront promenade. This is a style we can’t help liking,

even if we are deeply in our pay-for-art-youlove phase. Speaking of love, this was the ﬁrst time we’d caught Gossip since their new record Real Power dropped back in March. Hearing the voice of Beth Ditto is still akin to hearing the voice of god.

A Project Pabst representative estimated the fest drew 15,000 people over the course of the two days. They’re already planning the line up for next year.

Pickathon

My ﬁrst few years at Pickathon were focused on nighttime sets and dance parties in the woods and in open ﬁelds under the stars.

But at some point, I started shifting to day festival mode.

This year, in our group Pickathon roundup, I ventured that there are multiple festivals happening within the annual art- and music-packed weekend that unfolds in early August on Pendarvis Farm.

Performances start as early as 11 am and continue into the next day, past 1 am. That’s over 14 hours a day, on multiple stages. There’s no way you could take in all of it, and at some point, I became a sunhat-wearing day festival type, attending some of the foodie dinners; my metal cup dangling from my jorts. The organic-looking air conditioning system in the Galaxy Barn became my benevolent deity, and I considered building a religion around it. The femme concertgoer, holding a baby and eating a burrito during Rhododendron’s prog metal set, could be our ﬁrst saint.

There were more tickets on o er at Pickathon this year, as its organizers secured a 10-year permit renewal and gained permission to expand the audience from 5,000 paid attendees to 8,500. From what I saw, the ﬁelds and forest absorbed them easily.

PDX Live

Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square turned 40 in April, a fact you may already have surmised from all the big banners all over it. Like with Project Pabst, I have come to appreciate the free show passerbyers can ﬁnd, just from standing along SW 6th. It’s actually a better view of the stage than from the square’s red brick steps.

As an outdoor venue that gambles on multiple dates per year, the weather seemed to treat the Square kindly—though an August 17 Waxahatchee show had to move up its showtime to 1 pm, to avoid an unchar-

acteristic thunder and lightning storm. The vibe at the Square is surprisingly atmospheric at dusk, when the city’s crows swoop dramatically overhead.

Attending the sold out Sleater-Kinney on August 7, I had some complaints about the sound, which felt too tinny. The group’s thought-rock punk energy seemed to evaporate before it made it very far into the crowd.

XOXO

The ﬁnal XOXO Festival was planned for August 2020, but of course, that didn’t happen. The experimental fest for tech-savvy artists and makers, which began in 2012, had skipped years before, but never so many, and never while trying to wait out a pandemic.

“The last five years sucked the moon out of the clear blue sky,” festival co-founder Andy McMillan said during opening remarks, referring to an anxiety he now felt, which hadn’t been there before.

But he and the fest’s other co-founder— and Andy—Andy Baio didn’t want to leave the chapter unﬁnished or attendees without one ﬁnal reunion. Their reasons for concluding XOXO (after putting together seven of them and also organizing a coworking space called Outpost) were related to no-longer-plentiful company sponsorships.

SUZETTE SMITH

Crowdsurﬁng during Rhododendron’s set at Pickathon.

“And always there, waiting: COVID,” Baio said soberly.

For this reason, in 2024, the festival built a giant tent on the lawn of Revolution Hall to shelter attendees who didn’t want to remain masked inside the venue’s amphitheater. And quite uncharacteristically, for the end of August, the weather turned surprisingly cold and rainy on the morning of the ﬁrst day.

XOXO wasn’t a music festival, although there was music, and it wasn’t a conference, although there were talks. But it was partially outdoors and in Portland, so I’m including it. It’s also potentially the most Portland of all the summer festivals I attended.

At several moments throughout the fest, people mentioned “living the XOXO dream,” which Verge editor Sarah Jeong conﬁrmed onstage is “visiting XOXO and then moving to Portland.”

XOXO 2024 had a great line-up of journalists and cultural critics. Ed Young received a standing ovation for a talk he adapted from his regular “How the Pandemic Destroyed America.” This one was called “How the Pandemic Destroyed Me”

and covered his thoughts on journalism as a “caretaking profession.” It’s very easy, he argued, for journalists to become conceited assholes, and he tries to ground his work in empathy, curiosity, and kindness. “Much of what I do comes from that,” he said.

Other takeaways: Casey Newton thinks everyone with a newsletter should also have a podcast and vice versa, though the listeners won’t overlap very much. Cabel Sasser has an incredible story about a McDonalds mural that I daren’t paraphrase. Sarah Jeong discussed what happens when you’re overwhelmed by waves of internet harassment: “You get over it.” Ryan Broderick thinks the internet “is rotting; it’s falling apart.”

“I want to say one thing, which is that I don’t like events organizing,” Andy Baio closed XOXO with, as he and Andy McMillan drank beers on stage to celebrate the festival’s end. McMillan dubbed the festival his life’s work, and once again tried to describe exactly what XOXO is: “It’s a community of people supporting each other through dark times.” “Now,” Baio said, “go make new things together.” ■

Andy Baio and Andy McMillan celebrated XOXO’s conclusion.

Garbage Day author Ryan Broderick explains Myspace at XOXO 2024.

SUZETTE SMITH

CoMiNG HOME

Carson Ellis Draws a Snapshot of Old Portland

A new book from the beloved local illustrator also captures her “bickering but inseparable friendship” with future husband Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy.

BY TAYLOR GRIGGS

While looking through some old boxes a few years ago, Carson Ellis found several pages of diary entries from 2001, documenting her ﬁrst week living in Portland. The journals detailed the 25-year-old Ellis new life in the city, as she moved into a “scrappy but cheap and fabulous” Southeast Portland warehouse, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and hung out with her housemates and fellow artists, including her future husband and Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy. (In January 2001, Ellis and Meloy were “bickering but inseparable friends on the verge of hooking up for the ﬁrst time.”)

Ellis—now an award-winning artist, illustrator, and author—got a kick out of the old entries, which o er a snapshot of Portland during a time of creative abundance and cheap rent. She painted 30 new pieces of art to go along with the diary entries from 23 years ago, and compiled them into a book, One Week in January: New Paintings for an Old Diary, which Chronicle will publish on September 10.

During a recent Zoom call, Ellis talked to the Mercury about her journaling practice, the creative process behind illustrating old diary entries, what her new book says about Portland, and more.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

PORTLAND MERCURY: You write in the introduction to this work that you’re not a regular journal-keeper. Is this diary really one of the only journals you’ve ever kept?

CARSON ELLIS: My journal-keeping history goes back to being a kid, but it’s super sporadic. I think I’ve tended to get rid of them because they’re things I wrote in

a moment of emotional fervor that I then looked back on, felt embarrassed about, and chucked. So, I’ve dabbled, but I don’t have that many surviving journals. When I found the record of this week, I was so grateful that I had done it, because it was such a clear snapshot of that moment in my life, and I don’t have anything else like that.

After you found this old journal, were you inspired to start keeping one again?

Maybe I would do the same thing [I did in 2001], you know, keep a very meticulous record for a week. Or, you know what, I kept one of those ﬁve-year diaries from about 2017 to 2022. You just write down a couple sentences that happen each day. When it comes to journaling, I think that’s as much as my attention span would allow. Either a couple sentences a day for many years, or a lot of sentences a day for one week. Then I’m done.

One Week in January is set during your ﬁrst week living in Portland. I don’t mean this as a loaded or political question, but could you describe how Portland has changed since you ﬁrst moved here?

My life has changed so much in the past 23 years, and my relationship to Portland has changed so much. I live on a farm in Tualatin, and when I visit Portland, it feels really different to me. But I’m also really di erent, and it’s hard to determine where one thing ends and the other begins—what’s me being a middle-aged woman with kids in the suburbs, and what’s Portland changing?

What was it like being an artist in Portland when you ﬁrst moved here? What was the impact of the city on your art?

I feel really grateful to Portland in terms

Illustrator Carson Ellis looks back on her ﬁrst week in Portland.

JASON QUIGLEY

of my art. I was so struck by how welcoming people were, and how much people wanted to create community, get involved, and have parties and art shows. I have a lot to be

grateful for in how much people embraced me as an artist and let me ﬁgure out how to make a living here.

And I made a book series [The Wildwood Chronicles] with my husband that was set in Portland, and Laika is making it into a movie. So I absolutely feel like a Portland artist.

The book contains diary entries from 2001, as well as recent paintings to accompany them. Can you describe the process of making art for this book?

As an illustrator and author of kids’ books, I’m constantly thinking about how pictures and words interact and communicate with each other. The basic idea for this was to feel the feelings I was seemingly not letting myself feel when I was keeping this journal.

As a diarist, I revealed nothing about what I’m feeling, it’s just the bare facts of what I’m doing everyday. The prose is so spare and so stoic; I feel like there’s a lot of pent up emotion that shines through. So I wanted to make some paintings where I did reveal things, and that maybe were a little more emotionally resonant than what was going on in the text.

You’ve created illustrations for books written by other people and for your own children’s books like Home and Du Iz Tak . Was it a different experience to illustrate your own diary entries, especially years after you wrote them? It was a very free experience where I was allowed to follow my instincts in a way that I don’t think I ever have when illustrating a book. It’s an illustrated book, but in a way, it’s almost more like an art exhibit catalog where the paintings are there, and then here’s the corresponding text that goes with them.

I’ll also say it was a very moving experience to work on it. It brought back a lot of memories, and put me back in touch with lots of people. So many people in the book are still my friends, but not people I see all the time. It was really poignant and sweet to be in middle age, still in touch with all those people, and be able to look back with them on this life we all lived together so many years ago.

Carson Ellis appears in conversation with Colin Meloy at Powell’s Books, 1001 W Burnside, Tues Sept 10, 7 pm, free, all ages. The paintings of One Week in January will be on display at Nationale, 15 SE 22nd, Sept 14-Oct 19. Reception on Sat Sept 14, 2-5 pm. ■

CARSON ELLIS

How Lola Milholland Cooked Up Group Living and Other Recipes

It’s a memoir. It’s a cookbook. It’s a combination memoir cookbook.

BY SUZETTE SMITH

“The thing I keep repeating is that I’m not a group-living guru,” says Lola Milholland.

The Portland noodle company CEO and author is discussing things people frequently say about her hybrid memoir cookbook Group Living and Other Recipes. “I don’t think group living is a solution to housing inequality or inequity. It’s a tactic for ﬁnancial survival; it’s also a way to expand as a human. It doesn’t solve the housing crisis.”

Milholland is the multicultural daughter of non-monogamous Portland hippies. (Her mother worked in natural food business management, and her father ran a number of esoteric publications—so they were hippies’ hippies.)

She grew up in a home where she sometimes had to give up her room to visiting Tibetan monks and sleep on the couch in the living room.

Yet, in all of Group Living ’s stories the home is sturdy. In fact, it’s warm, lively, and brimming with comfort. “Guests, dinners, strangers—these were nothing to be fearful about, nor overly prepared for” she

writes in the book’s opening chapter. “The house had extra rooms, and it was no sweat to cook extra food.”

That chapter ends with a recipe for her mother’s “Garlicky Panfried Pasta,” made from leftover pasta from larger meals, which is panfried “until the noodles crisped on their edges, creating contrasting crunchy and chewy textures.”

Group Living has a deceptively simple book structure: It’s short stories, told mostly chronologically—jumping around in time, here and there, to add backstory. Near the end of each chapter there’s a recipe or two, adding a little more character.

It’s hard to imagine a better ﬁt for the zeitgeist right now than: unusual memoir and evocative food writing meets fun and easy recipe guide.

Though she had an interesting youth, Milholland doesn’t luxuriate in it—thus escaping one of the genre’s most contemptible habits. Instead, by the second chapter, we ﬁnd her 21 years old and living in Kyoto, Japan. The adventures and impressions of adult life are fully underway. Thanks to a Portland Public Schools immersion program, Milholland studied Japanese for 15 years before she found herself living abroad, but still feels alienated when her first host family leaves her to eat dinner alone.

The second host family is a better fit, cooking with her and teaching her Japanese onomatopoeia words that are more about sensation than subject. She explains: “’Crunchy’ has many translations: shaki shaki for a texture like biting into celery or daikon; saku saku for a crispy feeling on the teeth, like crunching on cookies or apples; pari pari for the crunch of something freshly fried.”

Milholland really knows her way around sentences about food, which is less surprising when we learn she was an editor at a now defunct nonproﬁt magazine Edible Portland from 2007-2014. The nonproﬁt magazine’s focus on the ecology, politics, farm workers, and Indigenous populations informed her own food views, but she argues that Edible Portland wasn’t ahead of its time. Anyone who thinks so has simply forgotten the movements that came before.

collection of recipes, there are always extra stories scribbled in the margins.

“It was gonna be a giant zine—a COVID cookbook. In so many commune cookbooks there’s weird recipes in there, but there’s also ruminations on things you wouldn’t expect: little essays, instructions for how to do things that have nothing to do with cooking,” Milholland says.

Milholland has not written a glowing portrait of communal life—unless you see a halo in CantaloupeSeed Horchata.

Over time, residencies, queries, and editors, Milholland’s idea for a giant food zine became a work of creative nonfiction. She didn’t anticipate Group Living’s ﬁnal book form, but it’s hard to imagine a better ﬁt for the zeitgeist right now than: unusual memoir and evocative food writing meets fun and easy recipe guide.

Group Living knows where it draws from. It pulls its form from what Milholland originally set out to make: a commune cookbook. You have perhaps seen these before; they’re generally worn, hand-written, and adorned with some sort of root vegetable on the cover. Commune cookbooks are special because, like a grandparent’s

Milholland has not written a glowing portrait of communal life—unless you see a halo in Cantaloupe-Seed Horchata. She has however written a pleasantly pragmatic book about the hardships and rewards of getting along with others and the joys found in cooking together. “Throughout all of history, humans have had a hard time living with one another,” she says. “But we totally need each other. Our lives are richer when they’re tangled up with one another.” ■

SHAWN LINEHAN

Lola Milholland’s memoir won’t sell you on communal living; might make you hungry.

They Said It Couldn’t Be Fun

In its fourth year, Comedy in the Park continues to expand with its ﬁrst-ever, all-day fest!

BY CORBIN SMITH

In 2021, in that weird netherspace between vaccination distribution and the widespread sense that being inside was cool again, Dylan Rei , the Artistic Director of Kickstand Comedy was looking for a way to get Portland’s robust comedy scene back up and performing again.

“We knew that there were opportunities to do something outside that was safe, and fun and that was hopefully something the community needed,” remembers Reiff. “So we started to look around at a bunch of places and spaces, alternative venues that were outside. Parking lots, Drive-In Theaters. Thanks to the Portland Parks Department, we were able to start looking at starting a show in Laurelhurst Park.”

in the middle of the summer—simultaneously a great opportunity to hear local artists to perform in front of an audience size that they would never even dream about, and a good excuse to whip out the picnic blanket, bring the kids—since No Cussin’ rules are in play in the park—and just get your laugh on.

“It’s kind of like a Fourth of July Parade,” says Julia Corral, a local comedian who has hosted the show for the last three years, currently co-hosting with fellow comedian Rachelle Cochran. “Now, this is what people do on Fridays in the summer.”

A crowd of 4,000 at a comedy show can be a little stressful, but Corral thinks Portland audiences are uniquely suited to creating a good environment at a big event.

The first show had about seventy-ﬁve people: Respectable for a local comedy show, but not, like, obscene. Then, it grew. And grew and grew and grew to the point where, every Friday during the summer in Laurelhurst Park, there are routinely 4,000 people attending a local comedy show in a park in Southeast Portland.

Comedy In the Park is a relatively new Portland tradition. It’s an inexplicable thing

“There’s so many activities that are this big,” she said. “I feel like we have a really good etiquette on how to act. I remember the first time I went to a concert at Edgeﬁeld, and my friend was like ‘Just leave your blanket, it’s ﬁne, no one’s gonna move it,’ I was like, ‘What?’ I feel like Portland is really awesome like that. We all collectively decide to be neighbors to each other, in a friendly manner.”

Stand-up comedy is traditionally developed and performed in theaters and little dark rooms, so it’s an odd match for a gigantic park. Corral explains, “I think performing on the outside is di erent because the sound travels di erently,” says Corral. “Usually, when you perform inside, you hear the laughs, but you don’t see the people because the lights are dimmed. But when you perform outside you see all the people, but you don’t hear the laughs.”

Corral says she’s used to it by now, but some people ﬁnd it a little alien. “A lot of my job as host of the show is to really encourage people to walk around the park so they hear the laughs,” she says. “Because it does shake some people, where they don’t feel like they’re being funny. But it’s just the way it’s hitting the audience.”

“The first one I did was extremely hot,” relates Sam Whiteley, a comedian from Tualatin. “I’ve had better luck with the weather on the last two, but the first one was pushing triple digits. I remember being thankful to be irritated about the heat, because it took away some of the nerves of performing in front of such a vast group of people.”

“I try not to take it for granted,” Whiteley says. “It’s cool that it’s accessible to as many local comics as it is. Like, 30-45 people is a pretty good crowd for a weekly show in a bar, and it’s literally, thirty or forty times that.”

Comedy in the Park remains firmly rooted in the local comedy scene, but as it’s gotten bigger and bigger, a few national acts have strolled through. Sean Jordan and Kyle Kinane, national touring guys who live in the area, make it out every year or so. Ian Karmel, Portland’s favorite son, dropped by this year, along with Matt Braunger, Brandie Posey, and Ron Funches, of The Great North fame. Rei is hoping to get some of that firepower for the first ever Comedy In the Park Fest, a two-day event spanning a standard show on the Friday evening of September 6 and the first-ever Saturday show on September 7. Mum’s the word on specific performers as of yet, but I did get Dylan to drop some pretty big names o the record. Whoever is there though, expect a good time, immaculate vibes, and big laughs.

Comedy in the Park takes place at Laurelhurst Park, SE Stark & Cesar E. Chavez, every Friday at 6 pm through Friday Sep 6, free, all ages. The ﬁrst-ever Comedy in the Park Fest kicks o Sat Sept 7, 1–7:30 pm, free, all ages. Some material may venture into PG-13, R-rating territory. ■

CORBIN SMITH

On any given Friday, this summer, 4,000 people laughed along with Comedy in the Park.

Matt Braunger

Julia Corral

Ian Karmel

Zak Toscani

EverOut’s 2024 Fall Arts Event Calendar

BY JULIANNE BELL, LINDSAY COSTELLO, SHANNON LUBETICH, AUDREY VANN

READINGS & TALKS

Khushbu Shah w/ Erin DeJesus

With her debut cookbook Amrikan: 125 Recipes

From the Indian Diaspora, Food & Wine writer and editor Khushbu Shah asks the question: “What is Indian food in America?” She delves into the answer not only with irresistible-sounding recipes that I’m eager to add into my rotation, like saag paneer lasagna, achari paneer pizza, spinach tadka dal with rice, panipuri mojitos, and masala chai Basque cheesecake, but also with images and essays that meditate on the connection between food and identity. As Shah told the New York Times in a 2019 interview, “Food is undeniably intersectional. It’s impossible—it’s irresponsible—to deny it.” Powell’s City of Books (Sun Sept 8) JB

Geek Week PDX

The Rose City Comic Con (Sept 6-8) brings all the geeks and gamers to Portland annually, and this year the fun continues afterward with Geek Week PDX, a newly organized pop culture festival featuring activations across the city. You can partake in over 300 different events hosted at 100+ nerd-focused small businesses, ranging from ﬁlm screenings to game tournaments and cosplay parties (one of which is at an ice rink). There are multiple options for celebrating the 50th Anniversary of beloved role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, including a progressive seven-day campaign hosted by TPK Brewing Co. If you prefer a more IRL adventure, the Treasure Quest photo scavenger hunt leads you on an exploration of the city, each quadrant of which the organizers promise will be “transformed into a new mythical realm.” Various locations (Sept 9-15) SL

Chelsea Bieker w/ Kimberly King Parsons

If authors like Flannery O’Connor, Shirley Jackson, Alissa Nutting, and Melissa Broder are your literary jam, local author Chelsea Bieker should deﬁnitely be on your TBR list. Bieker evoked a unique “California gothic” aesthetic all her own with her 2020 debut novel GODSHOT an unsettling Ethel Cainesque story about a young girl trapped in a cult led by a power-hungry pastor, as well as in her 2022 short story collection of tales about down-on-theirluck dreamers Heartbroke Her highly anticipated

novel Madwoman follows Clove, a wife and mother of two whose dark past threatens to upend her idyllic present-day life in Portland. We Were the Universe author Kimberly King Parsons joins Bieker for a conversation about the new work. Powell’s City of Books (Thurs Sept 19) JB

Portland Zine Symposium

Don’t forget to bring a tote bag for this celebration of Portland’s unique DIY spirit—you’ll wanna ﬁll it with self-published and handmade goodies from small letterpress shops, independent magazines, cartoonists, and more. The long-running Portland Zine Symposium is a solid way to get to know local zinesters, so pop by the free affair to buy from tablers like Antiquated Future, emi koyama, Secret Room Press, Outlet PDX, Sola Habibi, sound grounds wreckin’ crew, That Deaf Zinester, Molly Lecko Herro, and dozens of others. You’ll ﬁnd publications on every theme under the sun, from autobiographical comics to disability awareness tomes and pop culture goodies. Portland State University Smith Memorial Student Union(Sept 21-22) LC

Amy Tan

In 2020, a lot of us started birding—mass layoffs and an unfamiliar amount of hours to fill tends to encourage people to look skyward, I guess. National treasure Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) conjures plenty of conversations about spark birds with her latest gorgeous and witty work The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Even if you’ve never identified a single species beyond a parking lot crow, chances are good that you’ll find this book inspiring. My suggestion?

Go pick up some binos, then head to this talk with Tan, who’s written ﬁve New York Times bestsellers and won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Wed Oct 9) LC

Portland Book Festival 2024

Throngs of book lovers will ﬂock to the Portland Art Museum (and neighboring venues) on November 2 for the Portland Book Festival, which always promises an unmatched lineup of buzzy wordsmiths. Plus, Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover, a week (October 28-November 3) of “neighborhood literary encounters,” will return for its third year, bringing more book-loving vibes to spots across the city. The festival will include discussions with over 80 authors across 10 stages, food truck vendors, and a book fair. Why not stop by to snag a book you’re actually excited to read? Portland Art Museum (Sat Nov 2) LC

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Carson Ellis with Colin Meloy

Powell’s City of Books (Tues Sept 10)

Connie Chung

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Wed Sept 25)

Hernan Diaz Powell’s City of Books (Fri Oct 18)

Charlotte Shane with Lydia Kiesling Powell’s City of Books (Wed Sept 11)

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Tues Oct 22)

PERFORMANCE

Tim Murray Is ‘Witches!’

Tim Murray self-describes as being “like a gay Bo Burnham, but painted green, doing drag,” which is the kind of pre-Halloween cheer I didn’t realize I needed. He’ll bring his creepy-crawly comedy hour Witches! to Portland, blending stand-up with original comedy songs about his favorite pop culture crones and enchantresses, from Sabrina to Anjelica Huston. There’s a deeper meaning to the toil and trouble, too—the show is “a tribute to LGBTQIA people and how we discover our magic once we ﬁnd our coven.” Siren Theater (Thurs Sept 12) LC

‘ Diné Nishł (i am a sacred being) Or, a Boarding School Play ’

When a group of high schoolers is offered the chance to sing the Navajo national anthem at the 2002 Winter Olympics, they’re understandably stoked, but a teacher throws a wrench in the works with a (false?) accusation. The group forms a plan to save their trip, and what unfolds is an “exuberant, sunny, and just a little bit haunted” comedy that celebrates the lives of young Native women. (We’ve got the brilliant Diné storyteller and playwright Blossom Johnson to thank.) After a run at Hillsboro’s Vault Theater, the production will tour throughout the greater Portland area, with performances at the Native American Youth and Family Center October 4-6 and the PSU Native Student and Community Center October 10-13. The Vault Theater (Sep 20-Oct 13) LC

‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’

A barber who murders people and turns them into pies with the help of his landlady sounds like a pretty gruesome tale, but with the magical touch of Stephen Sondheim, this musical becomes a most amusing story. Originally premiering in 1979 (and winning 8 Tony Awards), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was recently revived

on Broadway to rave reviews. Now it returns to Portland Center Stage at the perfect time to bring a little more horror into the haunting season. Portland Center Stage (Sept 29-Nov 3) SL

‘Amélie’

Like countless others, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 romantic comedy Amélie captured my heart the first time I watched it. As a young misfit adolescent, I immediately fell for its charming depiction of Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou), a shy, reclusive, daydream-prone waitress in Montmartre, Paris who embarks on a series of random acts of kindness, meeting a colorful cast of characters and a mysterious love interest in the process. The quirky film seems like ideal fodder for a theatrical production, which is why I’m particularly delighted that the Playhouse has chosen to stage the critically acclaimed musical adaptation, featuring music by Daniel Messé, lyrics by Messé and Nathan Tysen, and a book by Craig Lucas. Here’s hoping it instills a little whimsical joy in all its audiences. Portland Playhouse (Oct 2-Nov 10) JB

Portland Erotic Ball 2024

Emmy-nominated comedian and drag queen Sasha Scarlett will host Portland’s sexiest event, which takes over all three levels of Crystal Ballroom for a night of non-stop entertainment and spectacle. Dress (or undress) to impress—there’s over $10,000 of cash and prizes up for grabs in the costume contest. Strut your stuff as you check out burlesque and aerialist performances, a full ﬂoor of fetish demonstrations, dance teams, stilt walkers, and more. DJ OG ONE—the ofﬁcial DJ of the Blazers—will keep you grooving all night at the 24th installment of this premier adult party, which just happens to fall on the weekend before Halloween. Crystal Ballroom (Sat Oct 26) SL

Sheng Wang

Taiwanese-American comic Sheng Wang turns the simplest, everyday things into hilarious observations that can make your most uptight family member laugh. Originally from Houston and now residing in Los Angeles, Wang’s ﬁrst Netﬂix special, Sweet & Juicy was produced and directed by Ali Wong and earned rave reviews. You can expect musings in the vein of wearing glasses to strip clubs, backpacking bachelor parties, shoeless households, toothbrushes, and if you’re lucky, impersonations of plants based on audience suggestions. Keller Auditorium (Sat Nov 16) SL

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Eugene Mirman: ‘An Evening of Whimsy and Mild Grievances’ Aladdin Theater (Sat Sept 7)

John Early: The Album Tour Revolution Hall (Thurs Sept 12)

Portland Opera to Go’s ‘Shizue: An American Story’ Brunish Hall (Oct 4-5)

‘Hansel and Gretel’ Keller Auditorium (Oct 5-12)

Grand Kyiv Ballet: ‘Don Quixote’ Newmark Theatre (Tues Oct 15)

The Event! Artists Repertory Theatre (Oct 13-Nov 10)

CHELSEA GUGLIELMINO

COURTESY OF AMY TAN

PATRICK WEISHAMPEL

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

VISUAL ART

‘

A Fountain of Creativity: Oregon’s 20th Century Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer’

This two-part exhibition provides a window into the Portland art scene during the beginning and middle of the 20th century, when Arlene Schnitzer’s Fountain Gallery was a major hub of Portland’s downtown arts scene. Even if you don’t recognize artists like Carl Morris, William Givler, and Hilda Morris, you’ve likely seen their work on the walls of the Portland Art Museum, the lobby of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, or anywhere else that prominently displays established local artists. A Fountain of Creativity is an “oh, that guy!” of Paciﬁc Northwest Art, and it’s good to see the artists contextualized. The ﬁrst installment of this collection is on view now at OHS, though Jan 2, 2025. The second piece will open on Oct 25 and remain on view through May of next year. Oregon Historical Society (June 28-May 4, 2025) Joe Streckert

Carson Ellis:

‘One Week in January’

While looking through some old boxes, illustrator and author Carson Ellis discovered several pages of diary entries from 2001, which documented her ﬁrst week living in Portland. The journals detailed 25-year-old Ellis’s new life in the city, as she moved into a “scrappy but cheap and fabulous” Southeast Portland warehouse, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and hung out with her housemates and fellow artists, including her future husband and Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy. Ellis got a kick out of the old entries, which offer a snapshot of Portland during a time of creative abundance and cheap rent. She painted 30 new pieces of art to go along with the diary entries from 23 years ago, and compiled them into a book, One Week in January: New Paintings for an Old Diary, which will be published by Chronicle on September 10. Ellis’ original paintings are on display at Portland art gallery Nationale from Sept 14-Oct 19. Reception on Sat Sept 14, 2-5 pm. Nationale (Sept 14-Oct 19) Taylor Griggs

Ann Hamilton: recent work

Ann Hamilton is, by all accounts, an art star—the Yale-educated textile artist, performer, photographer, and videographer has built her career around site-responsive, tactile, larger-than-life installations since the ‘80s. Not much has been revealed about this recent body of work, but chances are good that it won’t sacriﬁce any of Hamilton’s signature sensuousness and attention to detail. Hamilton’s last exhibition at Elizabeth Leach, Sense, included prints developed from a striking process of ﬂatbed scanning animal specimens, stones, and fallen leaves, and this collection appears to showcase more of the same. I’ll take it. Elizabeth Leach Gallery (Oct 3-Nov 2) LC

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

‘Psychedelic Rock Posters and Fashion of the 1960s’

Portland Art Museum (Sept 7-Jan 10, 2025)

Timothy Yanick Hunter, ‘Noise / Grain’ ILY2 (Sept 13-Nov 9)

FILM

‘Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm’

Portland Art Museum (Sept 14-Jan 19, 2025)

Portland Design Month Various locations (Sept 25-Oct 26)

2024 HUMP! Part Two

Dan Savage’s pioneering erotic film fest premiered an all-new lineup of sexy films featuring all genders and orientations at Revolution Hall earlier this year. Since 2005, HUMP! has brought inclusive, creative, and kinky films to the big screen—and since this year’s fest features not one but two feature-length lineups, you can scope out the sex-positive fest yet again for a tantalizing treat. Part two includes a feast of 25 brand-spanking-new feasts for your eyeballs, including “smokin’ hot paranormal encounters, a mind-bending space carnival, spine-tingling ASMR, [and] all the thermal eye candy you can eat.” It’s worth a venture outside of your sex dungeon, but you can still wear the latex catsuit. Cinema 21 (Sept 6-21) LC

Mississippi Records Music & Film: ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ with the Cosmic Tones Research Trio

Record label and North Albina Avenue mainstay Mississippi Records stays true to its jangly, psychedelic aesthetic with periodic screenings of The Secret Life of Plants, one of founder Eric Isaacson’s favorite documentaries. I’ll also sing its praises to anyone who asks—the ‘79 flick begins as a psychedelic meditation on flora and expands to reflect on Earth, space, consciousness, and life itself, with groovy tunes by Stevie Wonder to boot. Smoke a bowl and get thee to the Hollywood for time-lapses of plant growth, space rituals, and paradisiacal interpretive dance. The Cosmic Tones Research Trio— aka Roman Norfleet, Harlan Silverman, and Kenney Realness—will start the show with “unclassifiable” astral jazz and healing tones with a bluesy, gospel flavor. Hollywood Theatre (Mon Sept 9) LC

‘Daisies’ with woo-woo: Self-

Care Sunday

Once banned in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the gleeful, surrealist Daisies is chockfull of hedonistic splendor, revolving around two young women who shrug off stereotypes in pursuit of debauchery and pleasure. Who says anti-patriarchal antics can’t be fun?! Stop by Tomorrow Theater for the screening of the ‘66 ﬂick, which will be preceded by a “self-care moment” with local wellness experts woo-woo. (They’ll host a Bodyroll session, described as an “all-levels dance practice to heal your inner dancer and enliven the collective spirit,” so come prepared to sweat a little.) Tomorrow Theater (Sun Sept 15) LC

16mm Nyback Showdown

If there’s such a thing as a “legend” in the film archivist and historian community, Dennis Nyback was that man—he screened original film programs worldwide while operating Seattle’s Rosebud Movie Palace and Pike St. Cinema, and also renovated Portland’s historic Clinton Street Theater in the ‘90s. This 16mm tribute to a true PNW force of cinematic nature spotlights flicks straight from Nyback’s recently rediscovered archives, which includes “thousands of titles assembled over 40 years of personal curation” and spans 120 years of movie history. Projectionist teams Darkroom Associates and Astral Projections will curate. Clinton Street Theater (Tues Sept 17) LC

Wyrd War Presents: ‘The Beyond’ and ‘Zombie’ with Fabio Frizzi

Wyrd War’s 10th-anniversary festivities will continue with the ultimate in Halloween pregaming. On September 20, the Hollywood will screen Lucio Fulci’s malevolent meltdown The Beyond, which should put some fear in your heart—chilly composer Fabio Frizzi will perform a live score for the film as you peer into the abyss of hell’s seven gateways, complete with flesh-munching tarantulas, zombies, and demonic dogs. Then, on September 21, he’ll return to perform a live score for similarly terrifying ‘79 Fulci flick Zombie, a gross and graphic tribute to the “walking (and swimming!) dead of Haitian voodoo lore.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Hollywood Theatre (Sept 20-21) LC

Eighth Annual Portland Dance Film Fest

Spotlighting ﬁlms from France, Vietnam, Greece, India, Iran, Japan, and many other countries this year, the Portland Dance Film Festival will return to cultivate more poetic connections with “the language of our bodies.” Three screenings of curated picks include between eight and 10 short ﬁlms, so you can return for each evening of the multi-day festival and have a completely different experience. Passholders can meet-cute with other dance fanatics at informal after-screening gatherings, too. Tomorrow Theater (Sept 26-28) LC

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Hanabi Film Fest

Clinton Street Theater (Sept 1-13)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Hollywood Theatre (Sept 5-12)

The Substance Cinemagic (Opens Sept 20)

Betty Boop’s Halloween Party

Clinton Street Theater (Sat Oct 26)

LIVE MUSIC

PDX Pop Now! 2024

PDX Pop Now! is your annual reminder of the vibrant music scene that exists within our city. The donation-based, all-ages festival is back for its 20th year with a weekend-long schedule of local musicians performing at Portland’s oldest (and largest food) cart hub. Highlights from this year’s lineup

include synth-pop quartet Reptaliens, indie rock project Queen Rodeo, dreamy punk trio Public Pleasure, and beloved rockers the Mistons. I am also excited to see the Eugene-based indie rock outﬁt Growing Pains on the bill, whose 2023 EP Thought I Heard Your Car evokes the swirling harmonies and cathartic buzzing of shoegazers like Lush and Slowdive. Midtown Beer Garden (Sept 7-8) AV

Remi Wolf

Remi Wolf is a firecracker, both live onstage and in her recorded music. Her 2020 EP I’m Allergic To Dogs! exploded onto the scene with cheeky lyrics and boppy beats, and her pop dominance has only grown since. Big Ideas her second full length, was released in July of this year and showcases a broad range of genres and influences in her music, from psych rock to R&B. Her show calls for barefoot dancing in the grass in your brightest threads and chunkiest jewelry. Groovy alt hip-hop artist Lava La Rue opens the show. McMenamins Edgefield (Fri Sept 13) SL

ESG

If you’re a man giving me a long-winded speech and I look distracted—my eyes glassy, my foot tapping, my blinks slow—it’s probably because “You Make No Sense” by ESG is booming through the corridors of my brain. The track, which repeats its sassy title on a loop atop a bouncing bassline and interspersed drum ﬁlls, embodies the band’s ethos of turning rage into something fun, cathartic, and free. The trailblazing sister-led dance-punk band will dance through Portland for one last party alongside DJ crew Strange Babes and rock ‘n’ roll outﬁt Dirt Twins. Wonder Ballroom (Sat Sept 14) AV

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio

I’ll admit it; jazz can feel very intimidating! There are so many subgenres to learn, names to remember, and history that feels gatekept by boomers with hi-ﬁ equipment. However, nothing compares to hearing a skilled jazz ensemble play live. It’s truly transcendental. If you haven’t had the pleasure, Seattle-based ensemble Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio is an excellent place to start. The trio employs Jimmy Smith-style organs, Motown-spiced rhythms, and Jimi Hendrix-hazed guitars for the timeless, feel-good soul-jazz you can dance to. The Get Down (Tues Sept 24) AV

Dreamgaze PDX

This year’s inaugural Dreamgaze Festival will seep dreamy sounds through the St. Johns neighborhood for two days of experimental post-punk, shoegaze, and psych-rock tunes. Don’t miss a performance from pioneering shoegaze band the Veldt, whose unique R&B-infused dream pop has led them to tour alongside goth household names like Cocteau Twins, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Echo & the Bunnymen. If you’re unfamiliar with their music, I recommend you check out their 1994 debut, Afrodisiac, which Pitchfork hailed as one of the top 50 shoegaze albums ever released. Some highlights from the lineup include the Prids, Mint Field, Somesurprises, Dead Leaf Echo, and Citrus Clouds. The Fixin’ To (Sept 28-29) AV

AMY SUSSMAN

Empress Of

I became enamored of the Honduran American songwriter, musician, and producer Lorely Rodriguez, better known by her stage name Empress Of, after seeing her open for Carly Rae Jepsen in 2023. Rodriguez took her stage name from the Empress tarot card, representing the divine feminine, and it’s not hard to see why—she channeled pure sensuality and power as she commanded the audience’s attention, gyrating to sexy bangers like “Save Me” and “Wild Girl.” On her latest release, the bilingual album For Your Consideration, she deftly plays with power dynamics within love, sex, and the entertainment industry and has fun doing it. The “Jolene” tribute “Lorelei” casts her as a homewrecking femme fatale, while the single “Femenine” expresses her desire for a subservient man: “Sabes que yo soy tu daddy,” she purrs. Wonder Ballroom (Thurs Oct 3) JB

André 3000: New Blue Sun Live In Concert

In November of last year, André 3000 surprised fans with his first new music in 17 years—but it wasn’t what we anticipated. The OutKast rapper released a full-length album entirely of flute music. New Blue Sun is an odyssey of spiritual jazz and electronic ambient sounds that could perfectly soundtrack an Octavia Butler novel. Featuring instruments like mycelial electronics, plants, shakuhachi, and sintir, the album is equal parts acoustic and electronic with multiple types of flutes played by André himself. Joined on stage by album collaborators Carlos Niño, Surya Botofasina, Nate Mercereau, and Deantoni Parks, the ensemble will present an immersive concert that enchants audiences with improvisation “sensory grandeur.” Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Mon Oct 14) AV

Nada Surf

Nada Surf has been a band for over 30 years, which means fans of all ages have been drawn to their music at different points in their career. My coworker remembers their 1996 debut hit “Popular,” which catapulted them to alt rock popularity; I fell in love with their ﬁfth full-length Lucky in high school. Now, the group known for bittersweet anthems is set to release their next album in September, with currently released singles hinting at an era of reﬂection, musing on the human experience with notes of love, grief, doubt, and

hope, told through soaring harmonies and strong instrumentation. Up-and-coming New Zealand indie rock trio Ofﬁce Dog opens the show. Wonder Ballroom (Wed Oct 16) SL

Third Angle New Music Presents: Dracula

Summon the spirit of Béla Lugosi on the eve of Halloween with an immersive viewing of the 1931 ﬁlm Dracula. Philip Glass Ensemble music director Michael Riesman will lead the Third Angle New Music ensemble in a performance of Glass’ hypnotic original score for a string quartet and two grand pianos. Patricia Reser Center for the Arts (Wed Oct 30) AV

Katie Gavin

As a devoted stan of the queer indie pop icons, Gayotic podcasters, and self-proclaimed “greatest band in the world” MUNA, I’ve enjoyed watching member Katie Gavin step into her own solo project on the side. She cites Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos, and Sarah McLachlan as inﬂuences on her debut album What a Relief which was largely written on acoustic guitar over the course of seven years, and their raw honesty shines through on nostalgic ‘90s-tinged singles like “Aftertaste” (a sweet, woozy ode to the vulnerability of a nascent crush) and “Casual Drug Use” (a compassionate afﬁrmation in the face of substance abuse issues, penned in the wake of a breakup in 2016). A dollar from each ticket will go toward the organization Critical Resistance’s mission to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. Wonder Ballroom (Wed Nov 20) JB

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Mitski Moda Center (Sat Sept 21)

Childish Gambino: The New World Tour Moda Center (Tues Sept 24)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ in Concert

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Sept 28-29)

Clairo McMenamins Edgeﬁeld (Wed Oct 9)

Killer Mike with the Oregon Symphony Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Thurs Oct 17)

Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: Sweat Moda Center (Tues Oct 22)

COURTESY OF EMPRESS OF

EMMA MCINTYRE

Empress Of

COURTESY PATRICIA RESER CENTER

Savage Love

BY DAN SAVAGE

Top Five

Dear Readers: Instead of digging through all the emails that hit my inbox this week, I grabbed the ﬁrst ﬁve questions at the top of the pile and answered them in the order they came in. — Dan

I am a man. I met a beautiful Nepalese woman at work. The co-worker who introduced us basically told me this woman was unhappily married. We started spending time together, and we have now been seeing each other for almost three years. Everyone on my end knows about her (and knows she’s unhappily married) but the fact that we’re seeing each other is a mostly secret on her side, as only a few close friends of hers know. I have to pretend at work that we aren’t as close as we actually are, and it makes me feel like a shadow.

She has no kids and has told her husband she wants a divorce, which he won’t consent to. He doesn’t need to consent — she could divorce him anyway — but she’s leery to. The house is the only thing she owns with him, while everything else is in his name. Most of her friends, also Nepalese, have told her that white men can’t be trusted, which I can’t really disagree with, given our history as a nation. And they are telling her that having a baby with her husband will improve their relationship. I think that’s the worst possible reason to have a kid, especially when the dude in question is an emotionally abusive POS.

I love this woman. She makes my heart ﬂutter every time I see her. She’s kind, compassionate, intelligent, and hot. But after three years, she still can’t leave him. Which I can only imagine is di cult, as she has a lot to lose, but I love her and want to be fully with her. But I don’t want to push her to do anything she’s not ready to do or that she doesn’t want to do. That would make me no better than all the other men she’s had in her life. But I’m starting to feel like this isn’t going to happen. She sleeps in bed with him every night. He tracks everything she does and where she goes. I’m not sure how much longer I can be patient. I’m sick of being a shadow boyfriend while she just keeps playing wife, and we have to pretend we’re just friends. Should I leave this relationship? Am I an idiot to think she’ll ever leave him? Leaving Isn’t My Best Option

LIMBO, and you’re going to get the same answer everyone else gets: If she was gonna leave him for you — which she’s not gonna do — she would’ve left him already.

I’m guessing you weren’t able to independently verify that your girlfriend asked her husband for a divorce, LIMBO, which means you only have her word to go on. And as commenters on this and every other advice column are quick to point out, the word of a cheater isn’t worth much. And the reasons she’s given for not leaving her husband — the house is the only asset that her name is on, her husband refused to consent to the divorce — sound more like excuses than

Dom/sub stu . We like the same porn, for example. The sex we have is usually pretty nice, but it’s also very vanilla. I have more experience with kinky sex than he does, but always as a sub with an experienced Dom. We have never really managed to bring our shared interest in D/s into our bedroom. I think part of this is us not knowing where to start. Part of it is also that it’s hard to distance ourselves from our reality. We played with bondage, for example, but I didn’t ﬁnd it particularly hot because it was him tying me up, and since I knew he would never actually hurt me, it all felt like play. Any advice?

Been Dithering Since Marrying

cars, and the dogs. I really am much happier now. Here’s my dilemma: while we were together, he was an amazing and loving doggy daddy and absolutely doted on our two pups. In the ﬁve years we’ve been apart, he’s never once asked to visit them (even though doggo visitation was written into the divorce settlement), and the few times I’d asked him to check in on them if I had to travel, he declined, citing plans with his new boyfriend (now husband). One of the dogs is getting very close to crossing the rainbow bridge. Do I do the right thing and o er him one last moment with her? Or do I just send him the vet bill when it’s done?

Following Intensely Dan’s Opinion

reasons. If she lives in a marital property state, she’s entitled to half of everything, including assets that are in his name, and she doesn’t actually need her husband’s consent to divorce him.

I’m not sure what your whiteness or your girlfriend’s Nepalese-ness have to do with your question, LIMBO, which is one I get all the time. The genders are reversed — it’s usually a woman who’s getting strung along by a married man — but your predicament is a common one. And since you’re a regular reader of at least one advice column (that would be mine), you’ve most likely seen questions like yours in my column before,

Now, it’s also possible that she’s afraid to leave him — she may have legitimate worries about violence or social consequences in her community — but even if her reasons for staying with her husband are understandable (if deeply sad), LIMBO, like all mistresses, whether you’re willing to settle for what she’s able to give you is a decision you get to make. If being her sidepiece insults your dignity, you need to break up with her. If you love her too much to ever leave her, you’ll have to make peace with being her sidepiece.

My husband and I — straight, cis, and in our 30s — are very happy together, but our sex life has never really “clicked.” In our day-today lives, we’re best friends, and we’re prone to silliness. The sex feels like it should work out: we’re attracted to each other, and we have similar sexual fantasies, mostly related to

Picture this, BDSM: you and your husband are tied up together — maybe you’re strapped to the bed, he’s strapped to a chair — while the pro-Dom you hired (or the amateur Dom you met at a munch) playfully but plausibly threatens to “hurt” you both. Finding a very special guest star who not only shares your love of Dom/sub stu but really enjoys playing with couples will take e ort, BDSM, but calling in the kink cavalry — outsourcing the domination to someone who might (but wouldn’t) actually hurt you — could help you and your husband ﬁnd a groove that makes kink feel more possible/plausible when it’s just the two of you. Or you might learn that bondage and D/s play don’t work for you in the context of a committed relationship, BDSM, and you’ll have to keep bringing in those special guest stars if you wanna keep that Dom/sub stu coming.

My relationship of twenty-seven years ended a few years ago in divorce. While I’m mostly over it, I am still a little bitter about my 57-year-old husband dumping me for some 19-year-old kid. Whatever. I got the house, the

Do the right thing and tell your shit ex-husband your dog is dying. (I’m using the singular “your” in reference to your dog; your ex-husband may have a legal claim to the dog, per your divorce settlement, but he long ago forfeited any moral claim.) Based on the small amount of info you shared, FIDO, it sounds like you’ve behaved admirably since your husband left you for someone who may not have been able to legally drink champagne on his wedding night. If I were you, FIDO, I wouldn’t cede an inch of the moral high ground: I would let my ex-husband know “our” dog was dying, if only to deny my ex and his current the satisfaction of telling themselves I’m a shittier person than they are. ■

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN

—and ﬁnd podcasts and more—at savage.love! Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan!

JOE NEWTON

POP QUIZ PDX POP QUIZ PDX POP QUIZ PDX POP QUIZ PDX

BY WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

Portland’s most troubling (and erotic) public sculpture is directly across the street from Powell’s on Burnside and is affectionately (and erotically) known as “Satan’s Testicle.” What’s its REAL name, and who’s the artist?

“Pod,” Pete Beeman, 20

“Capitalism,” Larry Kirkland, 1991

“Folly Bollards,” Valerie Otani, 1998

“Beelzebub’s Juicy Bits,” Portland Church of Satan, 1982

It’s time to play… WHOSE BUTT IS THIS??

That’s Mr. Muffler’s butt (from the Mr. Muffler muffler shop statue on 82nd Ave)

That’s Paul Bunyan’s butt (from the statue in the Kenton neighborhood)

That’s Dairy King’s butt (from the former Dairy King fast food joint on 122nd Ave, RIP)

That’s author Wm. Steven Humphrey’s butt (note the apple-bottom jeans and boots with the fur)

Which band (pictured above) recorded the classic party tune “Louie Louie” in Portland in 1963?

Paul Revere and the Raiders

The Kingsmen

Richard Berry and the Pharaohs

Five White Guys Who Just Got Sweaters for Christmas

Which of the following members of the rock group KISS was born in Portland and grew up in Beaverton?

Paul Stanley (The Starchild)

Tommy Thayer (The Spaceman)

Eric Singer (The Catman)

Gene Simmons (The Sexist Dickwhistle)

What in the holy hell is this crazy thing?

A statue of Sikh warrior Mata Bhag Kaur, located in the South Park Blocks

A statue of Celtic queen Boudica, located in front of a post ofﬁce in Rose City

A statue of Joan of Arc, located in a Laurelhurst trafﬁc circle

A statue of former Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, on her way to slaughter the rich racists who tanked her political career

Portland’s own Gus Van Sant has directed SO MANY movies. Which of the following ﬁlms (described by its plot) did he NOT direct?

A crazy dude who runs a hotel stabs a lady in the shower—and his mom is a dead skeleton!

A brilliant Boston janitor discovers he’s a math whiz and uses the phrase, “How do you like ‘dem apples?”

A group of drug addicts rob pharmacies across the Paciﬁc Northwest—hijinks ensue.

A lesbian gym owner tries to frame her father for a murder committed by her bisexual bodybuilder girlfriend—hijinks ensue.

Two dudes get lost in a desert, wander around aimlessly, and hijinks ensue—before one of them croaks.

Satyricon

Dante’s

Berbati’s Pan

You know… that one place. Where the bathroom was always covered in an inch of pee?

One of Portland’s most memorable works of outdoor art is called “The Quest” (alternatively known as “Three Groins in a Fountain,” “Quest for the Breast,” “The Grope,” and “Saturday Night at the Y”). What downtown building is it in front of?

The Standard Insurance Building on SW 5th Pioneer Courthouse on SW 6th Portland Opera on SW Oak

Commissioner Rene Gonzalez’s condo (purchased by Jordan Schnitzer)

In which famous Portland rock club did Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain allegedly meet Courtney Love (of Hole)?