Missgeburt, by Erik Geschke

Erik Geschke turns the concept of heroic sculpture on its head

With mouth agape, eyes closed and hands slack, Missgeburt rests his weary body against a wall in Clackamas Community College’s Alexander Gallery where I first noticed him dozing last month. Despite being almost twice life-size, he is anything but heroic.

 

See the entire Art Letter

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, A monumental snore (with a wink), featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

 

emily ginsburg, THUD metabolic

Forty-odd pound masses of wet clay bagged in plastic. Scrap discarded by factories, free to takers. Each different, yet each the same: damp metaphors for humanity. A gift from industry to the hands of ceramic artists, to be worked, folded, coiled, or spun into bowls, cups, vases.

See the entire Art Letter

 

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, ‘Thud’: Emily Ginsburg’s crazy quilts of clay scraps, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

“All art is propaganda.” George Orwell

Political art is now “in.” In art schools. In galleries. In museum shows. In the homes of sophisticated collectors. And now, in seventeen venues throughout Portland as our city’s revived biennale, Converge 45, begins an ambitious run through December.

 

See the entire Art Letter

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, Converge 45: To repair a wounded world, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

Derek Franklin

My phone told me to turn right, then left. I drove down a quiet east-county street that couldn’t decide if it was rural or suburban. I glanced around, hoping to see something that looked like an art gallery.

 

See the entire Art Letter

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, Derek Franklin: An artist in three acts, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

Beethoven, quotation marks

There are no quotation marks in the grammar of music or painting. But composers and painters quote from each other all the time. Sometimes they do it intentionally, but more often, the creations of others have been so absorbed into their artistic vocabulary that they can’t help themselves.

 

See the entire Art Letter

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, Four chords and a dark mirror, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

 

Art galleries have distinct personalities. Some are refined, quiet, and classy, where the art is so carefully curated that risk has been eliminated, and there is nothing not to admire. . .

 

Read the entire Art Letter

 

 

oregon artswatch

 

 

Read David’s Art Letter essay, Chefas Projects: Fresh with color & light, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

the dream, mlk memorial, portland, oregon

I write this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. How can a sculptor memorialize a great person without sinking into cliche or banality?. . .

 

Read the entire Art Letter

 

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essays, The wrong way/the right way: Memorializing Martin Luther King, Jr, and Farmers in the lumber room, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

lynn goldsmith, prince

Artists have the right to own what they create. But all art, to one degree or another, is derived from the creative work that came before and the visual influences of the prevailing culture. . .

 

Read the entire Art Letter

By Voxx Romana

Driving through Portland, I often pull over to look at street art, much of which strikes me as powerful creative expression or potent social commentary—or both. . .

 

Read the entire Art Letter

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, Graffiti: The good, the bad, and the ugly, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

John Vitale, Information 6

In the final moments of Goethe’s Faust, as angels lift the soul of the repentant scholar to heaven, a celestial chorus chants: “Everything ephemeral is but an allegory”. . .

 

Read the entire Art Letter

 

oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, In defense of nonsense: John Vitale at Stephanie Chefas Projects, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch