Art

In this bi-lingual Japanese and English interview, Jon Barthmus of Sun Airway and Takayuki Nakazawa, art director and designer for Japanese art collective NAM, offer their perspectives on designing an album cover together.

In this back-to-back exploration of animal portraiture, the bleak reality of unwanted shelter dogs contrasts sharply against the vividness of exotic animals set against brilliant backdrops. Ultimately, both celebrate life and humanity’s relationship to the animal kingdom, though in vastly different ways. The full post includes personal summaries on what each artist hopes to accomplish with the series. (12 IMAGES TOTAL)   Karen Knorr In Karen Knorr’s India Song series, she digitally inserts rare and wild animals, from cranes and tigers to elephants, in ornate north Indian buildings. Where Yun-Fei Tou’s appeal to human nature is more obvious (below), Knorr’s is more veiled and steeped in cultural knowledge. According to her website, “The photographic series considers men’s space (mardana) and [...]

Scottish illustrators Kyle Noble and Jamie Irvine travel the world individually but remain tethered together through the constant exchange of twisted, fantastical comics. Emerging from their psychedelic landscapes — some of which hardly resemble landscapes at all — come floating heads with third eyes, praying mantises with Madonna streaming out of the top of their heads, fungal universes, and possible tractor beams. Noble and Irvine’s collaborations are inspired by Exquisite Corpse, a Surrealist invention that serves as a mode of artistic interplay between individuals. Drawings are exchanged back and forth to evolve an image spontaneously and to create an organic, ever-unstable narrative. In the case of Noble and Irvine, this results in works that they describe as “unutterably absurd, sexually [...]

In a three-part performance full of bizarre gestures and circular wording, a Japanese theatre troupe examines office politics in an off-the-cuff way. Performed completely in Japanese, everything in Cheltfisch is translated via a series of projected subtitles, allowing the subtle social dynamics of Japan to really shine through. Part One: Hot Pepper Three office temps sit around the table. Cue music — and it is revealed that these three office temps are in charge of organizing a coworker Erika’s farewell party. These three workers are organizing Erika’s farewell party. As they discuss organizing Erika’s farewell party in a roundabout fashion, they are offering very little information as they are speaking in circles. They are hardly saying anything at all despite [...]

Adorable husband and wife duo The Last Names, consisting of Justin Rice of Bishop Allen and his wife Darbie, have now released Wilderness, a 12-track indie pop record that floats through dual-vocaled harmonies with the peacefulness of a ’60s haze. To bring their intimately self-recorded and self-mixed project to life, the couple decided to go one step further, by incorporating a one-of-a-kind hand-woven LP cover. Inspired by German education theorist Friedrich Froebel, who created the concept of “kindergarten” and is credited with laying the foundation for one system of modern education, the 15 x 15 grid which graces the cover of Wilderness offers a pattern-based playground of visual satisfaction to anyone with a latent curiosity and child-like love of play. [...]

Imagine the possibilities of world revolution – an upheaval of design, and distribution of resources lighting the path to global peace and (relative) happiness. The largesse of this task is daunting, and has throughout history been commandeered by a few ambitious individuals. Thoughts like these swirled about in a small man with coke-bottle glasses: the inimitable R. Buckminster Fuller. Inventor, engineer, architect, theorist, orator, among many other things, Fuller was first and foremost a futurist – an optimistic man bent on improving his social, political, psychic and physical world with radical thought. His unique life and lifestyle have created an altogether compelling character of sizeable proportion, comprised of all the quirks, hiccups, and gemstone moments worthy of a Wes Anderson-inspired [...]

Tuesday’s late night TBA fare began with a bang at Washington High School with Terrifying Women. The ambiguously advertised event promised “a video, comedy, performance, live, streaming, extravaganza” featuring Sarah Johnson, Kathleen Keogh, Angela Fair, Tanya Smith, Wendy Haynes, Diana Joy and Alicia McDaid. SEE FULL PERFORMANCE REVIEW It’s worth including an excerpt from the Facebook invite, which read: A lot of people ask me “What do you mean by “terrifying?” And I say, “You know, like, kind of crazy but, like, good crazy? Most of the time?” Are you a terrifying woman? Or have you ever been terrified of a woman? IS TERRIFYING WOMEN FOR YOU? 1. Have you ever been told you are “too sensitive” or “too intense” [...]

Looking Through The Glass When I first wrote about the work of Sydney, Australia’s Mark Whalen years ago, I was fascinated by his use of bright pinks and blues in angular ways that can’t possibly exist in “real life”. Now, in 2012, Whalen has taken those same tendencies and brought them into a Homer Simpson-meets-3D-world level of trippiness, as parabolic three-dimensional grids cross with graph paper lines and shapes in various stages of dimension transformation. Lankier versions of the same characters Whalen used before traverse his far out illustrated environments in varying chaotic states. Some are being swallowed up by giant golden chess pieces; some engaging in ritualistic sacrifices; others falling down stairs and holding up basketballs on royal pedastals. [...]

At the start, I am paired with a stranger. We are the only two participants for this iteration of the piece. An assistant equips each of us with headphones and an iPod Nano. We follow her up Multnomah County Central Library’s grand staircase. She motions for us to take our seats at a table in a public reading room. Before us lay twin stacks of three books: Blindness by José Saramago, The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie by Agota Kristof, and When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. We sit in silence for two minutes. Then a hushed voice with a British accent comes through the headphones and reveals the library to be “dedicated to the collection of [...]

Andrew Dickson is neither licensed nor experienced as a life coach. He simply believes that no one is broken or requires fixing; everyone just needs a little help to bring their own answers out. He encourages us to see the life coaching process as a catalyst for working on our own lives. Dickson humorously launches each Life Coach session with a disclaimer reminding his audience they didn’t pay anything to attend, so they shouldn’t be too judgmental if they’re not terribly entertained. Life Coach lacks the energy and humor of Dickson’s previous TBA performances. Yet while not particularly amusing, Life Coach may be one of TBA’s most genuine and truly interactive offerings. SEE FULL PERFORMANCE REVIEW  

Portland’s greatest interdisciplinary festival, TBA Festival, is back in 2012 with some of the most diverse and impressive programming it’s had in years. Check out our picks in dance, theatre, performance, and music for a what’s what in local talent and international ideas. Sam Green & Yo La Tengo – The Love Song Of R. Buckminster Fuller Wednesday, September 12th @ 6:30pm and 8:30pm @ Washington High School (SE Stark, Between 12th and 14th, Portland, OR 97214) $20 Members / $25 General Filmmaker Sam Green executes a “live documentary” witha live score by Yo La Tengo, as Green cues images and narrates a film that explores the utopian ethos of theorist and idea-weaver R. Buckminster Fuller. – VIVIAN HUA   [...]

World-renowned photographers Claudia Rogge and Spencer Tunick possess artistic visions large enough to fill city blocks. By orchestrating large-scale installations, they create visual interpretations of order and chaos, comprised not of inanimate objects, but of human beings obediently adhering to another’s direction and vision. Rogge and Tunick’s props at times engage actively like sentient beings and at others detach like stones. And despite the fact that they are frequently unclothed, the sheer number of individuals involved and the overarching aesthetic quality of each photograph makes every human component important only inasmuch as it forms a significant piece of the whole. (12 IMAGES TOTAL)   Claudia Rogge These images below are primarily from Rogge’s 2007 – 2008 series, Dividuum. Spencer Tunick [...]