One of Art Scatter’s favorite blogs is Fifty Two Pieces, on which the erudite Amy and LaValle write about specific works at the Portland Art Museum and then let their minds wander into those strange and fascinating places that great art tends to nudge active minds. The blog is called Fifty Two Pieces because its [...]
I’ve been thinking about Wordstock, Portland’s annual orgy of wordsmithery, which runs Oct. 10-11 at the Oregon Convention Center.
Lots and lots of good writers will be showing up: Glad, for instance, to see that Sherman Alexie’s finally making the party, and so soon after nabbing the National Book Award for his first young-adult novel, the [...]
Ah, the workhorses — nay, work-MULES — of the West: A twenty-mule-team outfit rambles through the desert. Photo: wpclipart.com
Sometimes we pioneers in the barren wilderness of the blogosphere think it might all be a lost cause. We throw seeds into the wind and they blow away onto rocky ground, never to flower into the loveliness [...]
Let’s have a party: Alyson Cambridge fires up the menfolk as flirtatious Musetta in Puccini’s “La Boheme.” Photo: Portland Opera
Art Scatter remembers a time in Portland when the cornucopia of performance was overflowing and Friday evenings confronted culture-hoppers with the sobering reality that despite theoretical breakthroughs in physics and mathematics, mere human beings can still [...]
UPDATE: Barry Johnson takes the story further on his Oregonian blog, Portland Arts Watch, with this post on Friday. This appears to be very much a hot issue. Keep watching Portland Arts Watch.
Ever since last spring’s remarkable bailout from its equally remarkable tumble down the financial rabbit hole, Oregon Ballet Theatre has been trying [...]
BodyVox’s “Water Bodies,” which helped inaugurate the new dance center (minus the sand!) and is going on the road. Photo: J. Dunham Carter, Polara Studios
The downside of BodyVox’s ambitious move into its own new BodyVox Dance Center in Northwest Portland?
Jamey Hampton, co-artistic director with his wife, Ashley Roland, of the Portland-based touring dance and movement [...]
O mighty carving of the air: From “A Manual of Gesture: Embracing a Complete System of Notation,” by Albert Bacon, 1870s.
We knew our man when we deputized Mighty Toy Cannon, charter member of the League of Tough-Guy Arts Observers, to devise the League’s official secret handshake. A tough man in the double-clutch is Mr. Cannon, [...]
Luca Signorelli, “Resurrection of the Flesh” (1499-1502). Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto/Wikimedia Commons.
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Labor Day’s gone. School’s on. Summer’s over. First day of fall. Just like that.
With renewed academic rigor now that classes are in session, we turn to more serious matters. We turn to Heaven above and seek the answers to the really big [...]
Bent beneath the weight of sudden responsibilities and an uncooperative lower back, Mrs. Scatter staggers to the first meeting of her Important New Job. Drawing: “The Crooked Man,” from Project Gutenberg.
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Did you hear I got a new job? If you missed the first two installments, read …
Part 1: The short-lived dream of running for president.
Part [...]
Portland Taiko is 15 years old, which in people time would mean it’s itching to get a driver’s license but in Arts Group Years means it’s long out of those troublesome teen years and well into its energetic adulthood. Still growing, still learning, but with the assurance that comes with the self-confidence that comes with [...]