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D.E. May at Sun Valley Center for the Arts

D.E. May in "Northwest Artists Draw"
May 7–July 3, 2010

Together with work by artists Michael Brophy, Cat Clifford, Eben Goff and Helen Loggie, D.E. May presents works that focus on drawing and the creation of handmade objects.

Storm Tharp: Artist Talk at Portland Art Museum, June 10th

MONTHLY ARTIST TALKS SERIES CONTINUES AT PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

JUNE 10th - STORM THARP

The second Thursday of each month offers the unique opportunity to casually explore pieces in Portland Art Museum’s permanent collection through the inspired lens of a local artist. All talks depart at 6 p.m. from the Hoffman Lobby and are followed by a lively happy hour with the artist until 8 p.m. that includes complimentary food, beer, and wine. Free for members or with Museum admission, but tickets are required. Space is limited to the first 45 ticket holders. Advance tickets are available at the box office.

On June 10th, Storm Tharp will lead a discussion about the biographical, philosophical, and aesthetic building blocks shared by Agnes Martin’s painting, Untitled #15, and Shirakura’s four-paneled literati painting, Visiting A Mountain Recluse. He is drawn to how Martin essentially abandoned her life in New York in order to pursue a humble and rigorous practice, living alone in New Mexico. Regarding his selection, Tharp expounds, "It may not be accurate to say that Agnes Martin was a recluse, as she maintained friendships and business relations with a select few. But it is fair to suggest that she turned her back on the voices and the influence of her day in order to locate the purest form of unadulterated inspiration within herself that she translated into painting." Considered a Minimalist in the canon of art history—suggesting a contemporary intention of formal reduction and essentialism—Tharp rather romanticizes her practice to be "reminiscent of a master Chinese calligrapher from the 12th century."

Storm Tharp was raised in Ontario, Oregon. He attended Cornell University and received a BFA from the College of Architecture, Art, and Urban Planning in 1992. Upon graduation, Tharp moved to Portland, Oregon where he presently resides. His work is representational—by both figurative and conceptual means—and expressed through a variety of media. Tharp was one of fifty-five artists selected to exhibit in the prestigious 2010: Whitney Biennial for which he created a series of new portrait works. He is represented by Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York City, Galerie Bertrand & Gruner in Geneva, Switzerland, and PDX Contemporary Art, where his solo exhibition Hercules will be on view June 1-26, 2010.

*****

Storm Tharp: "Modern Painters" Whitney Biennial review

The show makes a strong argument for photojournalism’s interacting with art. In the context of Nina Berman’s photo series depicting a soldier disfigured by a suicide bomber in Iraq and Stephanie Sinclair’s gruesome shots of Afghan women who have self-immolated as a form of protest, the stained, splotchy faces in Storm Tharp’s washy gouache portraits begin to evoke abrasions or burns. The theme of bodily disfigurement is continued elsewhere in the juxtaposition of Thomas Houseago’s hulking, seemingly hacked-at sculpture of a crouching figure with David Adamo’s installation comprising an ax, its wooden handle cracked and eroded, stuck into the wall and surrounded by whittled-down canes. Adamo’s ax appears to have done a number on Houseago’s statue, while the canes evoke missing limbs.
Not that "2010" doesn’t make missteps. I wanted to like the Bruce High Quality Foundation’s installation: a hearse, headlights ablaze, playing on its windshield clips from various TV shows and movies to a soundtrack ranging from "A Whiter Shade of Pale" to the "Star-Spangled Banner" and including a voice-over recounting an aborted love affair with the U.S. ("We fucked America to make America disappear"). But the work comes off as juvenile, bathetic, too tongue-in-cheeky by half. One marvels that light fare can be so heavy-handed; Josephine Meckseper displays a far more nuanced take on capitalism’s ills in her brooding video meditation on Minnesota’s sprawling Mall of America. And although Lorraine O’Grady’s sepia-tinged photographs of Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire convey something ineffable about the romantic nature of celebrity and America’s worship of it, their pairing with the Bruces’ piece feels ponderous. Still, O’Grady’s photos beat out by miles Daniel McDonald’s kitschy sculpture in the museum’s lobby of Jackson with Uncle Sam being rowed across the river Styx by Charon, which has all the subtly of Beetlejuice-era Tim Burton.CLICK FOR FULL REVIEW

Marie Watt: "Forget-Me-Not: Mothers and Sons" at the Museum at Tamastlikt Cultural Institute

May 14 - July 9, 2010

In regard to her large-scale installation, Marie Watt, Seneca artist, states, "Forget-me-not is about memory, story, and devotion. In part, it stems from my disinclination toward the abstraction of war by the modern media." The Iroquois concept of “mother” is broad, extending from one’s mother through a long line of women. She views Forget-Me-Not as a continuing dialog. "I asked the men I know to suggest women who were significant to them to include in this work." Forget-Me-Not consists of weblike constructions of portraits of soldiering sons and their mothers. "Some of these women were mothers in the physical sense; others gave to our culture in other ways." Ms. Watt's work draws from indigenous design principles and oral tradition. She uses a vocabulary of natural materials (stone, wool, cedar, cornhusks,) and forms (blankets, pillows, bridges) that are universal to human experience. Her large-scale works bring about an intimate focus.

More information about the exhibit at http://www.tamastslikt.org/exhibits.cfm

Transportation to "ONE STEP BIG SHOT" at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

SATURDAY MAY 15th:
In conjunction with our May exhibition, "Cut-ups" by Gus Van Sant, PDX will sponsor transportation to the opening of "ONE STEP BIG SHOT: Portraits by Andy Warhol and Gus Van Sant" at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene.

REGISTER TODAY FOR YOUR SPOT ON THE RESERVED COACH BUS: http://uoalumni.com/jsma-bus. The registration fee is $10 and covers your round trip from Portland to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Gus Van Sant: Artforum article

view article at: http://www.artforum.com/words/#entry25387

The Academy Award winning director Gus Van Sant is well known for his unparalleled vision in cinema, as well as his original screenplays. An accomplished artist as well, he is debuting two bodies of photographic work in Oregon this month. “Cut-ups” opens at PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, on May 5, and “One Step Big Shot: Portraits by Andy Warhol and Gus Van Sant” will be on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, from May 16 to September 5.

Storm Tharp and Ryan Wilson Paulsen: Judd Related Symposia April 17th 3pm

A multidisciplinary panel of Portland artists whose work has had a strong relationship to Donald Judd's. This will be a be a thought provoking discussion about intersecting influence, precedent, examples and the inevitability of where these artists differ from Judd. Of particular interest is the inter-artist note-comparing portion of this gathering as they all produce such divergent work.

Where : Pacific Northwest College of Art.1241 NW Johnson, Portland OR

Hosted by the Painting Dept Room 201

When : Saturday April 17th. 3 PM

Moderator: Jeff Jahn

James lavadour: Portland Art Museum Artist talk April 8th

On April 8th, James Lavadour will lead a discussion about Max Beckmann's oil painting The Mill, 1947. Lavadour notes that he is drawn to talk about this work in particular because of the personal meaning it holds for him. A self-taught painter, he is known for his expressive abstract landscapes that are influenced by movement through the mountainous region of northeast Oregon. Lavadour is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation where he lives and works in his studio, and where he helped found Crow's Shadow Institute. - CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

James Lavadour: on Art Focus Tuesday March 30th

Eva Lake will interview James Lavadour on KBOO Art Focus. Airs at 11:30am Tuesday March 30th

Hear it at the following address. http://kboo.fm/node/20446

Adam Sorensen and Joe Macca: Featured in New American Paintings #85

Adam Sorensen and Joe Macca are included in he latest edition of New American Paintings.

Nancy Lorenz: Tea House installation at Volta NY

Thursday, March 4th - Sunday, March 7th: 7 W 34th Street, New York, NY; 11th floor - CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen: In “Of Walking In Ice”

Inspired by Werner Herzog’s book “Of Walking In Ice,” Sixteen artists explore themes of ice
and travel – through film, sound, installation, painting, photography, sculpture and writing.
For more information about the exhibit and the White Box, visit http://bit.ly/d0mOLr.
ªAnna Gray + Ryan Paulsen
Color in "Of Walking in Ice", by Werner Herzog, 2009
archival inkjet)
CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

Storm Tharp and Jessica Jackson Hutchins: NYT photo

Storm and Jessica at photographed at the opening of the 2010 Whtiney Biennial

Storm Tharp: Image of "Pigeon (after Shunsen)" featured

Best of the Whitney Biennial by Rachel Wolff, Thedailybeast.com.
" The premier American art exhibition is smaller and more fun this year, and pays tribute to “the coolest artist of all”—in the White House. "
Tharp left hand image, Aurel Schmidt, upper right, Pae White’s tapestry, lower left.

Storm Tharp: Art Olympics: Ranking the Whitney Biennial from Flavorwire

Storm Tharp, Pigeon (after Shunsen) (2010) and Dolores (2010), both ink, gouache, colored pencil, graphite, charcoal and fabric dye on paper.

Gold Medal in Watercoloring

Five large-scale portraits by Storm Tharp are at first glance a nifty exercise in watercolor painting. A closer look reveals a more layered process: he contours the paper with water before sketching out enigmatic portraits, gilded them with geometric sequences of gold leaf and details in drawn pencil. The black and white Rorschach blots around his faces are a little menacing and a little ambiguous when paired with light, crisply rendered tones in costume and accessories.
http://flavorwire.com/73010/art-olympics-ranking-the-whitney-biennial

2010 Whitney Biennial OPEN!

Congratulations to Storm Tharp for his inclusion in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, opening this week. CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

James Lavadour: "Painter's Eye" Vanderbilt University.

Paintings by 11 artists “exploring the use of color, the development of space” make up The Painters Eye exhibit, curated by Ron Porter and Marilyn Murphy. Runs Feb. 18 to March 12 at Vanderbilt University, Nashville.TN

James Lavadour: "American Indian Landscapes" The Heard Museum

This exhibit at Heard Museum North Scottsdale will explore the unique relationship American Indians have with land and how that has been expressed in art. Land/ landscape as a subject matter for Native artists is a personal journey in history, culture and identity. The exhibit will explore the connection to and loss of land—a universal theme for Native peoples. CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

Terry Toedtemeier: Smithsonian Catalogue dedicated to Terry

Smithsonian American Art Museum catalogue for "Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan" is dedicated to Terry Toedtemeier. CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

Charlotte Good: Valedictorian of Sotheby's Graduate Study Programme in Contemporary Art

Congratulations Charlotte ! Charlotte has been at PDX part time since last September. We are happy to announce that as of March 2010 she will being working full time. CLICK TO FIND OUT MORE.

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