Filmore East Takeover - Bev Grant, photographer

Born and raised in Northeast Portland, photojournalist Bev Grant long ago moved to New York where, while Portland slept, the world was happening. . .

 

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oregon artswatch
Read David’s Art Letter essay, Art from Tumult: Bev Grant’s Photographic Record of Radicalized New York, published by Oregon ArtsWatch

A Few of My Favorite Things, by Sherrie Wolf

Why do Sherrie Wolf’s still lifes of flowers, fruit, vases and other commonplace objects, now on exhibit at Russo Lee Gallery and the Jordon Schnitzer Family Foundation warehouse, somehow satisfy more deeply than the real thing? . .

 

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oregon artswatch
Read David Slader’s visual art review, Sherrie Wolf at Russo Lee: Wrong in just the right way, published by Oregon ArtsWatch

lemon peel, hot sauce, chicken chocolate - by david slader

I know, I know: I just had an exhibit at the Ford of my most recent work, but this is different. Half of the paintings in that show have run off to new homes, and gallery space formerly graced by the work of other artists was offered to me. . .

 

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'flow and beat' by David Slader, Artist

My show at The Ford Gallery of Art opens this Saturday. I will be showing this painting, “flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing,” along with a selection of other work from the last few years. . .

 

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David Slader, artist - in the studio, Art Letter

I crave beauty. The fragrance of a heritage rose. The cry of a newborn. The reflection of late afternoon sunlight on the underside of breeze-bounced cottonwood leaves.

 

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'blowing in from chicago' by david slader, artist

When this painting was little more than a colored sketch, she and I were listening in my studio to KMHD Radio play tracks from the 1957 Blue Note album, “Blowing in from Chicago.” The painting liked the music and chose it as her name (paintings do that kind of thing).

 

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'flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing' Painting by David Slader

Flow and Beat, Advance and Retreat, Rise and Take a Bow in Disappearing.  That is how Langston Hughes described the pulsating rhythm of James Baldwin’s prose, and it became the goal for my most recent painting, a sprawling five-panel pas de deux.

 

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Kris Hargis Looking Back at Myself

Self-portraits seldom portray contentment or joy. We see an artist glancing in a mirror as it captures the doubt and intensity of the act of creation. It is as if the creator and their reflection are each an expression of the other’s anxieties—yet they are the same person.

 

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Emmett Till - by Dana Schultz

In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black youth, was tortured and murdered by two white men in Mississippi. The crime galvanized the Civil Rights Movement at a critical moment: Rosa Parks had Till on her mind when she refused to move to the back of the bus. A photograph of the young man’s mutilated body in his casket became an icon for Black Americans.

 

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destruction of art, iraq

Join me for a stroll through a minefield: What do Chuck Close, Michael Jackson, Robert E. Lee, T.S. Eliot, Joseph Stalin, Christopher Columbus and the Taliban have in common? Answer: They have each been on one end or the other (sometimes both) of calls for the destruction or erasure of art.

 

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