Going back to Cally....

Hey Beautiful People! I'm counting down the hour until I travel south again to bring my Natural Selection installation to Velvet da Vinci Gallery for the month! I have been furiously finishing up three brand new pieces for this final show, and here's a peek from my studio last week:




(This is just a teaser. I will post lots more pictures of the installation and final work this week, so check back!)

I managed to catch a few shows last week as well, which I'll tell you a little bit about. Christian and I went to the Portland Art Museum and saw Terry Toedtemeier's final curation Wild Beauty, which was truly amazing. This compilation of photographs tell both the story of the development of the Columbia Gorge region, as well as a bit of history about photographic processes and the people behind them. There's also a driving tour that you can take with you (for free!) and venture out to see for yourself how the land has evolved. There are fascinating shots of dynamite explosions as the rail lines were built, fish wheels, Native Americans spear fishing, ice formations and many waterfalls. This show comes down next weekend, so if you're in the Portland area, don't miss it. Click here to read more about this show.


I was also thrilled to finally see Portlander MK Guth's installation that was part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. She was asked to recreate that installation for the Museum's Apex Series, and it will be on display through the end of February. Guth traveled across the United States on her way to the Whitney, stopping to gather stories about "what is worth protecting" and braiding them into long strands of Rapunzel-like tresses, which are ultimately draped to fill a room. I saw a smaller version of this at Elizabeth Leach Gallery a few years back, but I'm really glad she continued the project to this achieve this density. Click here to read more about this project in the Oregonian, (where Brian Libby actually makes a nice connection between this and the Wild Beauty show!)

Another show worth seeing was a small curation of Jacob Lawrence paintings in the Northwest Artists section (second floor.) I really love this intimate little space of the museum, where I was introduced to (and blogged about) the work of Dorothy Yezerski a few years back. This grouping was assembled by Ingrid Berger, an assistant curator at the museum who I also have the pleasure of working with on the Art on Alberta board.

Speaking of Alberta Street, there is currently a nice gathering of Cuban posters from the past fifty years at Onda Gallery. If you're a fan of retro graphics, make sure to see this show during the next month!