Justin L'Amie: Willamette Week "The Trunk of a Tree"

Justin L'Amie: The Trunk of a Tree
Visual Arts
RICHARD SPEER
Tuesday July 23
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders St.

Antique books by botanists and other naturalists influenced Justin L’Amie’s suite of new works, collectively titled The Trunk of a Tree. Their subject matter—birds, insects and plants—could indeed be found in and around the trunk of a single tree. The artist is at his strongest in small-scale works such as Delaney’s Moth, which depicts the eponymous moth via carefully placed slivers of gouache atop a background of rough-edged handmade paper. In "The Island", L’Amie zooms out to a wide shot of a fantastical landscape. There are similarities between this vision and that of another PDX Contemporary artist, Adam Sorensen, but whereas Sorensen’s landscapes are barren, L’Amie’s teem with animal life. Although there is an undeniable whimsy in these works, they manage, barely, to avoid preciousness. Through July 27.

http://www.wweek.com/portland/event-162475-justin_lamie_the_trunk_of_a_t...