Todd Molinari, Failure Studies 📍 after/time 🗓️ May 14 - June 6, 2026 Failure Studies is an ongoing photographic project upon which artist Todd Molinari embarked as a sustained engagement with the question of what defines or determines success and failure in our current historical period. It is also a recognition: the recognition of image-fatigue, of the forces that conspire to devitalize the human, of the wreckage of absolute utopias and their effects on art. Rather than proposing an end to art, Failure Studies considers the exhaustion of its current mode of contemporaneity. In its wake, the exhibition opens space to renegotiate the conditions of the definitions of art and the conditions of the possibility of art-making in the face of repetition, unfulfilled promise, and structures of ignorance. At a moment when accepted definitions of “contemporary art” feel increasingly unsatisfactory and not up to the challenges of our times, the exhibition investigates what remains obscured beneath dominant aesthetic languages and cultural narratives – and which new forms of expression become possible once those structures begin to recede. Failure Studies is both an investigation of the contemporary and a deliberate destabilization of the familiar, of cultural muscle memory and what is accepted as second nature. Failure Studies does not have the pretensions to give definitive answers. It is, in fact, an invitation to restless inquiry and to committed dissatisfaction without the cheap consolations of “quick fixes” or aesthetic tricks. Instead, it engages these tensions directly, producing works that embrace vulnerability, ambiguity, and emotional immediacy as necessary forms of inquiry.

Desert or Ocean, Mark R. Smith 📍Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave. ⏳Hours: Tues-Sat, 10:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 🗓️ Dates: May 6 - 30, 2026 ✨Artist talk: Saturday, May 23 at 11 am 🎟️ Free to the public New textile paintings and works on paper for which the subject of climate change and the resulting climate-induced migration serve as a narrative backdrop for the artist’s material investigations and symbolic use of color. In this work Smith continues to investigate the notion of symmetry as a harmonizing element, fashioning linear units of striped fabric into complex interlocking forms and completed rectilinear circuits. While formally abstract, the work visually references large and small environmental phenomena–meandering rivers, snaking roadways, insect foraging trails, and vast columns of people–to suggest essential movement, questing and/or displacement. This looping and layered imagery also references existing cultural and political polarities in which policy priorities seesaw between competing narratives, as the public at large navigates toward effective solutions to these existential problems. In the Meander series, the dome-like shapes at the top of each composition double as cross-sections of the human brain including its central amygdala, the primary hub for emotional processing. Although the pathways wind through color fields evocative of climate extremes, the brain-like domes suggest a collective and meditative destination point, where fear and irrational thinking can also be subject to information and reason. Several paintings and works on paper in the exhibition focus exclusively on images of domes, which can be seen as dwellings, colonies, or communities. Inspired by collective human architecture, such as churches or stadiums, these forms also allude to natural domes, both terrestrial and aquatic: insects (ant hills, termite mounds) and sea creatures (reef colonies, rocks with mussels, barnacles). #MarkRSmith #ElizabethLeachGallery #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene

Outer Voice: Real Time 📍 Outer Voice at Dekum Street Theater 814 NE Dekum Street 🗓️One night only — May 24, 2026 ⏳ 4:30pm doors, 5pm show, no late seating, 7pm reception 🎟️Free to the public! Outer Voice: Real Time is a showcase of time-based art by the Outer Voice 2025/2026 cohort; Martha Daghlian, Adia Gibbs, Anne Greenwood, Emma Lutz-Higgins, Carolyn Supinka, and ariella tai, with co-directors Roland Dahwen, Sarah Rushford, and Ash Stone plus SPECIAL GUESTS! The works shown will be video art, dance, and performance art. Outer Voice: Real Time is the culminating event of Outer Voice’s 25/26 nine month season. Outer Voice’s mission is to intensify the felt reality of ongoing, supportive solidarity among time-based art and artists in and around Portland Oregon. Started in 2023, Outer Voice is an artist-run, nine-month residency that holds bi-weekly creative sessions that meet the art, and artist, in-process. We also organize public events and exhibitions, and produce publications. Outer Voice deals with theme in a process-aware way. The artists have chosen the work they wish to show, and Outer Voice has chosen the artists based on artistic integrity, vitality of process, experience, the ability to share, and more. This season the theme of relationship has come to the fore; both human and non-human, relationships to one another, nature, language, the body, and the image; the work thinks-in-motion about existing with and among. 1. 25/26 Outer Voice cohort Martha Daghlian, Roland Dahwen, Sarah Rushford, Anne Greenwood, ariella tai, Ash Stone, Todd Umhoefer (guest), Carolyn Supinka, Adia Gibbs, Emma Lutz-Higgins at Outer Voice: All Time Dekum St Theater, Dec 7, 2025. 2.-4. Ash Stone, Untitled, Adia Gibbs, teach me to remember you, Emma Lutz-Higgins and John Niekrasz, Dancer X Muse, at Outer Voice: Plus Ones, Dekum St Theater, Dec 7, 2025. all photos by Conner Enloe @seahorsesunited @amgartworks @apricotfool @emmgemmzz @queenofcalcium @ariellatai @rolanddahwen @sarahrushfordart @yourfavoriteashhole and special guests @hannahkeliza @emulyjones @todd.umhoefer @outervoicepdx

Aesthetic meets athletic. Art fans. Baseball fans. Same heart. Art x Sport = Art & About at Pickles Baseball We’re thrilled to team up with the one and only Pickles Baseball this season as part of their Small Business Alliance! ⚾✨🥒 When we caught up with Dillon, he had one big question for you: what does this mean for the fans?! 👉🏼A special discount code for tickets “Art-SBA2026” so… see you at Opening Day on May 26? 🎨 All season long, we’ll be sharing the art and artists behind their incredible Artist Poster Series ✌🏼PLUS—ticket giveaways throughout the full 50-game season 🧩AND you can book our custom painted picnic table by Dillon’s hideaway And of course, there are so many fun themed nights including: Pride Night, Simpsons Night, Dillion’s Drag Race, and so. many. more 🎉 📍 Come find us in person—we’ll be tabling on Wiener Dog Wednesday, July 15 🐾 Join us—let’s celebrate art, community, and baseball season together. 🪑 #artandboutpdx #artandsports #picklespicklespickles

Most Nearly Perfect Ham, Kelda Van Patten 📍Well Well Projects, 8371 N Interstate Ave. #1, Portland 🗓️ Dates: May 2 - 31, 2026 ⏳Hours: Sat-Sun 12-5 p.m. 🎟️ Free to the public Biomorphic watercolor shapes restlessly loop and collapse across sheets of roughly cut paper, while gestural black lines race through, suggesting mouths, limbs, and faces without ever settling into them. Fragments of identity surface, provoke, and dissolve. Outdated magazine pages are cut, torn, and reassembled. Irreverent still lifes and performative self-portraits punctuate the exhibition: an obscured face dissolving into purple light, a worn tube of concealer, an estrogen patch, a gold heart necklace, a duct tape figure with unblinking googly eyes, and the gaze multiplied and made absurd. Kelda Van Patten finds strength in the precarious and imperfect: tape seams catch the light, folds of soft pink fabric conceal and expose, and a red pipe cleaner quietly resists a smile. Kelda Van Patten is a Portland, Oregon–based artist who creates disorienting pictorial spaces through still life, collage, drawing, animation, and photography, blurring reality and artifice. She holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and an MAT from Lewis & Clark College. She has received grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council and completed residencies at Kala Institute, Jentel, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology; her work is held in the collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and in multiple private collections. Most Nearly Perfect Ham is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council. @regionalarts #portlandartscene #artandaboutpdx #keldavanpatten #readymadesculptures

A Year and a Day” Solo Exhibition by Aubrey Sloan 📍 Stark Street Studios and Gallery 2809 SE Stark St, Portland 🗓️ Dates: June 5 -July 3, 2026 ✨ Opening reception: First Friday, June 5, 5:30-8:30 pm ⏳ Hours: Fridays: 3–6 PM Saturdays & Sundays: 1–6 PM 🎟️Free to the public Portland-based ceramic artist Aubrey Sloan presents A Year and a Day, a solo exhibition opening June 5 at Stark Street Studios & Gallery in Southeast Portland. This installation-focused exhibition explores working-class labor, motherhood, and the unseen labor that carries life through time. At its center is a 365-piece ceramic installation representing the daily labor through the lens of lunation and cyclical time. Subtle variations across the work reflect the shifting conditions of time, energy, and lived experience. Additional works expand this framework across multiple scales—from a single moment of birth, to the span of a year, to the arc of a lifetime and beyond. Together, the exhibition considers how care, labor, and endurance sustain both individual lives and collective experience. The exhibition includes a collaborative installation, Vessels, featuring invited artists who are also mothers, creating space for shared experience and connection across practices. Presented within Stark Street Studios, a working pottery studio with over 40 years of history, the exhibition is grounded in a space that has long supported artists balancing making, labor, and everyday life. @vibrantpottery @starkstreetstudios #portlandlocalart #ceramics #soloexhibition #contemporaryceramics #artandaboutpdx

you + me at @palswithus ⛵️ We got the invite to join the first Wine on the Deck series Pal’s. Pairing local in season produce in a lite and 🤤 4 course meal alongside small wine producers, like @limitedadditionwine. All against stunning views of the Hayden Island Marina and native wildflowers. Happening throughout the summer on Tuesday evenings, $65/per person and so worth it on every level ~ good food, delicious wine, and great vibes ✌🏼 officially adding to our Art & Culture map. #artandaboutpdx #portlandartandculture #palwithus

Becoming Feral, by Pearlyn Tan 📍 The Center Gallery at MAC, Multnomah Art Center 7688 SW Capitol Hwy 🗓️ May 22 - June 27, 2026 ✨Opening reception: Thursday, May 28, 6-8PM ⏳ Hours: Monday - Thursday 9AM-9:30PM Friday-Saturday 9AM-5PM 🎟️Free to the public Becoming Feral traces the shifting internal landscape of midlife, when the body and mind begin to operate in unfamiliar ways. Hormonal changes, nervous system fluctuations, and heightened awareness can create a sense of instability but also open the possibility for transformation. To become “feral” here is not a loss of control, but a return to instinct. A reawakening of the body’s own intelligence and a redefined relationship to self. All of the works are created using solar printing processes, allowing light itself to generate the image, an unpredictable process shaped by exposure, time, and environment. This reliance on natural energy mirrors the themes of the exhibition: exposure, transformation, and a return to cycles beyond human control. The work exists at the intersection of body, nervous system, identity, nature, and growth. Pearlyn is a Portland-based visual artist from Singapore whose practice intertwines growth, transformation, motherhood, and nature. Her work is held in several public collections across Oregon, including the Portland Public Art Collection. @The_Unordinary_Motherhood #perimenopause #menopause #solarprints #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene

Two fantastic group shows at Antler this month— A Wood Show & A Summer Show curated by Anna Rogers + and solo exhibitions by Marjorie Snyder and Jade Sturms ☀️A Summer Show artists: Kirsten Bauer Logan Britt Sierra Fortune Hananiah Mays Rachel Murray Nate Orton Anna Rogers Marjorie Snyder Alex Stone Rachel Warkentin 🪵A Wood Show artists: Tim Liles
Nathan Paul Rice Chris Lael Larson Christopher Belluschi 📍Antler & Talon, 2714 NE Alberta St 🗓️ May 28 - June 21, 2026 ✨Opening reception: Thursday, May 28, 6-9 pm ⏳ Hours: Friday 3-7, Saturday 2-6, SUnday 11-3 🎟️Free to the public! Antler & Talon is celebrating the arrival of the warm season with two local group shows curated by Anna Rogers. Alongside 2 solo exhibitions— Marjorie Snyder and Jade Sturms. DJ Ramon Vasquez will be spinning vinyl and drinks will be provided by Fossil & Fawn and Gigantic Brewing Company. @fossilandfawn @giganticbrewing #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #localart @antlerpdx @annarogersart #woodworking #painting

We’re collaborating with @padaoregon — here’s a selection of some of their May exhibitions BLACKFISH GALLERY Invitational, MANY BRIDGES AANHPI through May 30 GALLERY 114 - Phil Harris, Boundless Duration through May 30. Artist Q&A, May 23, 10:30am-12pm J. PEPIN ART GALLERY - Group Show, With Gratitude through May 23 LAURA VINCENT DESIGN & GALLERY - James Florschutz - Sounds of Memory & Robin Kerr - With the Windows Wide Open through June 13. A Dialogue with James Florschutz & Robin Kerr May 23, 11am-12pm ONE GRAND GALLERY - Lukas Kubeja, Diaries through June 19. Artist Talk & Reading Event, June 5, 6:30-8 pm PDX CONTEMPORARY ART - Jenene Nagy - when once our shadows touched, moving gently on this wide path through May 23 @russoleegallery - Margot Voorhies Thompson - From the Edge of Beauty and Survival & Michael Spafford, The Origin through May 30 WATERSTONE GALLERY - Susan Harrington, Resilience Is Our Nature through May 31 + more PADA and ORVAA member events online ✨ #artandaboutpdx #padaoregon #collaboration #artplatform

In This Sand: Seven Days of Collective Care is a weeklong series (May 18–24) of public and private community events that will take place in the Main Gallery at Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE). In This Sand invites Portland religious leaders, healers, artists, and activists to utilize Cara Levine’s exhibition Without End as a site for grief processing and embodied healing. ✨All events are free with registration. In This Sand is presented as part of Without End: Recent Work on Grief by Cara Levine, on view through May 31.

Ruby Webb @rubychickens @fruitfulinterpretationoftime for Art & About ✨ Q: Three to five words that describe your art? RW: Playful textures of nostalgia Read more on the blog…

Ruby Webb is a force. She began sewing as a teenager, laying the foundation for a practice that has since evolved into her clothing line, Fruitful Interpretation of Time. Even at this nascent stage, her work reflects a confident, fully-formed vision—one rooted in instinct, imagination, and an unapologetic commitment to her craft. 👔🎀✨ 🕤 @rubychickens 🪡 @fruitfulinterpretationoftime 🔏🎞️ Intro + film photos by @ashxgifford 📖 Read more on the blog at — artandaboutpdx.com/blog/mini-interview-ruby-webb 💌 Become a newsletter subscriber (it’s free) to get The Latest in Portland’s art scene delivered to your inbox #artandaboutpdx #artistinterview #rubywebb #independentdesigner #portlandartscene

when once our shadows touched, moving gently on this wide path new paintings by Jenene Nagy 📍PDX Contemporary Art, 1881 NW Vaughn St., ⏳Hours: Tues-Sat 10 a.m. -6 p.m. 🗓️ April 29 - May 23, 2026 🎟️ Free to the public Artist Statement: In this exhibition, sweeping, gestural strokes of blue gouache and silver mica on handmade paper evoke an expansive sky scape with small graphite marks, creating an atmospheric depth and tension. The painted ground results from a different physical engagement with the work. This surface is built from a more distant perspective and made with the whole body, followed by the opportunity to look closely and quietly. The paintings are laborious and contemplative, their meaning centered in process. Each small gesture gently accumulates, demonstrating a steadfast dedication to stillness, a welcoming of silence, a landscape of peace. Developed while in residence at Yaddo in New York, the works are a continued practice of present mindfulness. Having been deeply moved by the 2025–2026 Walk for Peace, a 2,300-mile pilgrimage by Buddhist monks from Texas to Washington D.C., I use the time in my studio to cultivate gentleness and goodwill. Similar in spirit to the walk led by Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra, the work promotes kindness and compassion, serving as a reminder that small, sincere actions can change the atmosphere around us.

What Remains: 2026 BFA/MFA Exhibition 📍Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, 1855 SW Broadway ⏳Hours: Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. & Thurs 11 a.m. -7 p.m. 🗓️ May 14 - June 6, 2026 ✨Opening reception: Thursday, May 14, 5pm 🎟️ Free to the public The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University presents What Remains: 2026 BFA/MFA Showcase, an exhibition of work from the 2026 graduates of the BFA in Art Practice and MFA in Contemporary Art Practices Programs of the PSU Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design. ⭐️BFA Candidates: Tyler Arnette, Luciné Asadorian-myers, Amelia Asder, Rui Barajas, Lari Bodi, James Brady, Lindsey Bross, David Brothers-Handwerk, Evie B., Mel Castaneda Sanchez, Shirley Castillo Ku, Allison Chastain, Maisee Collett, Rebecca Jane Demorest, Setaria Depue, Yakelin Echeverria Garcia, Olivia Jean, Lucas Figueiredo, Lily Fisher, Alondra Gomez Barajas, Ember Gulden, Annie Hall, Lola Haynes, van hopper, Iyla Ingalls, Katie Jacobs, Clara Johnson, Rachel Kang, Stacey Korn, Dylany Kvetny, Jovan La Grotta, Anders Larson, Rain Le, Ryleigh MacDonald, Alex Merg, Tricky Moody, Say Wah Paw, Audria Oakes, Rey Platero, Joel Rapp, Andi Ruth, Anya Talbert, and Jun Tellez ⭐️MFA Candidates: Simeen Anjum, Lou Blumberg, Clara Harlow, and Nina Vichayapai @psu_museum_of_art @psu_artanddesign @psustudiomfa @psu_artpractice @psu_arts @psu_printmaking @psupaintdraw @psutextilearts

Soul of the Hyperreal, by Allan Pichardo and Alyssa Pichardo 📍Carnation Contemporary, 8371 N Interstate Ave #3, Portland ⏳Hours: Sat-Sun 12-5 p.m. 🗓️May 2–31, 2026 Experiences once rooted in place, body, and memory are now filtered through screens, algorithms, and digital systems. This shift has created a condition where we increasingly relate to life through technologies that don’t just represent reality, but transform it into something else. A kind of copy that can feel more vivid than the original. Soul of the Hyperreal explores what survives this transformation through interactive installation, video game media, and generative prints. A personal act of mourning is reconstructed as an interactive digital space. A park trail becomes a distant voice, navigated through a rotary phone. Plant life is translated into genetic algorithms that produce new, uncanny forms imprinted onto tactile objects. These works don’t attempt to return to an untouched “real.” Instead, they embrace the mediated version. What remains is still recognizable as ritual and form, but changed. Traces of presence, filtered through the systems we use to remember. Allan Pichardo is a Dominican American new media artist based in Portland, Oregon. His work spans interactive installations, video games, and speculative software, exploring how digital systems shape identity, memory, and truth. Alyssa Pichardo is a textile artist and painter from Olympia, Washington working in Portland, Oregon. Her textile work focuses on sculptural and tailored garment making. #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #altspace #collaboration include & Instagram accounts to tag @carnationcontemporary @mylovemhz @lpmodestudio

Some Funhouse moments for the grid — @picapdx knows how to throw a party 🎉✨🎪🎈🎠🍭

Portland art scene snapshot for May, all wrapped up in our easy to read newsletter🌼 The Latest in exhibitions, workshops, and events happening this month, put together in one place, ensuring you won’t miss a beat of this month’s vibrant creative scene. Our monthly ✨must see art newsletter✨ is free sign up: artandaboutpdx.com/newsletter #artblog #artnewsletter #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene

Don’t Be Clever, Be True: Late Works by David Eckard, Curated by Daniel Duford at PNCA - 511 NW Broadway, until June 27, 2026 ✨Public reception: Thursday, June 4, 5-8 pm This memorial exhibition honors the artistic achievement and community impact of David Eckard, an artist and educator who touched the lives of generations of students, having served as Associate Professor and Head of the Sculpture Department of PNCA from 2000-2025. This title of the exhibition, Don’t Be Clever, Be True, is taken from a note written on the wall of David’s studios in the last years before his death. While Eckard was primarily known for sculpture and performance, works in the exhibition include paintings and 2D constructions completed in the last decade of his life. These works, many never publicly shown, capture the technical prowess, poetic wit, and beautiful strangeness indicative of Eckard’s work.

Seeing the What: A Pop-Up Art Exhibition by The Lobby @ The Writers’ Block @thelobbypdx @thewritersblock.studio n First Thursday May 7th | 5-8pm Live Jazz Music by the Meg Samples Trio (Meg Samples Morrow, Mieke Bruggeman, Mont Chris Hubbard) Titled Seeing the What, the exhibition takes inspiration from Henry David Thoreau’s observation: “The real question is not what you look at, but what you see.” The show explores perception, interpretation, and the shifting meaning of images through works by Brandon Ballengée, Erica Baum, Joe Brainard, Matt Connors, Leonardo Drew, David Hockney, Lonnie Holley, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Vik Muniz, Ronny Quevedo, Deborah Roberts, and Ranjani Shettar. Spanning painting, collage, sculpture, photography, and printmaking, Seeing the What invites viewers to reconsider how meaning is constructed—and how it changes through the act of looking. 📌Featured work by Deborah Roberts.