Everything you need to know about the Portland art scene this September in our โจMust-Seeโจ art Newsletter.
Including @picapdx #timebasedart #festival @p_n_c_a @ccac_pnca Fall Events, recent articles and collaborations. And of course, and what we’re looking at and what’s on our radar. xoxo
Not subscribed? Our monthly email is free to sign up! ๐artandaboutpdx.com/newsletter. Our newsletter will help you stay in the know slash be the cool artsy friend that knows what’s happening.
Let us know in the comments what exhibitions you already saw or want to see in #Portland, throughout #Oregon or #Seattle this month! Also feel free to send news /questions / comments / gossip / collaboration requests to us at hello@artandaboutpdx.com ๐#artandaboutpdx #criticspick #artblog #portlandartscene
Revisiting our archive today ~ and was reminded of Asher Hartman’s mini series/live-in art project of The Dope Elf at YU in 2019.
Presented in 3 parts this performance transformed the gallery space into an interactive set that blurred the lines of the audience and actors. Blending modern life in a dystopian folkloric approach while combining elements fairytales — wolves, trolls, magicians…to be honest we think about this performance quite often and seeing Blessed with a Switch at TBA brought it back to the front of our mind.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Peggy Chiang โจpresented in partnership with Adams and Ollman
๐๏ธ Friday, September 12 at 6 PM
๐ PNCA Mediatheque - in person
Peggy Chiang makes images and objects that scratch the laminate of representation. She works by abstracting conventions around value, labor, and material memory.
Recent solo exhibitions include barn burner at Adams and Ollman, Portland; Wasted at Laurel Gitlen, New York; Fiend at hatred2, Brooklyn; and spleen and ideal at Prairie, Chicago.
She is a 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellow and received an MFA from Rutgers University. Chiang is a Professor of Sculpture at the City College of New York, CUNY and lives in Brookly
Bookends ๐๏ธ๐๐ชจ
๐ PDX Contemporary Art
๐๏ธSeptember 10 - October 4, 2025
โจOpening reception, Saturday, September 13 from 3-5 pm (RSVP encouraged)
Participating artists Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Iván Carmona, Jodie Cavalier, Nan Curtis, Marjorie Dial, Jess Perlitz, and Joshua West Smith each created a set of bookends reflecting their practice, point of view, and use of materials.
Books continue to be treasured for the knowledge they contain and as objects themselves. September seems like a perfect time to add bookends to your collection. Our exhibition Bookends, is group show featuring conceptual and functional bookends ready to hold your favorite books.
Each bookend is made from a variety of mediums—ceramic, steel, wood, and concrete, as well as more unconventional materials like crayons and beans. The works reference steadiness, the weight of loss, the closeness of friendship, landmark events, and things that hold.
Day 4 (Sept 7) of @picapdx #timebasedart festival.
๐ป๐๐๐พ๐๐๐, ๐ Performed by Tahni Holt and Emma Lutz-Higgins. With composer Luke Wyland, visual artist Jess Perlitz, lighting designers Al Knight Blaine and James Mapes, costume designer/visual artist Kim Smith Claudel, and dramaturg Kate Bredeson. Directed by Tahni Holt. Choreographed in collaboration with Emma Lutz-Higgins.
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #tba #tba25 #timebasedartfestival
Day 3 (Sept 6) of @picapdx #timebasedart festival.
Inebria Me, San Cha @__san_cha__ ๐ฅ๐ฅ co-presented with @boomartspdx
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #tba #tba25 #timebasedartfestival
Day 3 (Sept 6) of @picapdx #timebasedart festival.
Dads, Drama Tops @drama_tops_official ๐ co-presented with @pwnwpdx
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #tba #tba25 #timebasedartfestival
Day 2 (Sept 5) of @picapdx #timebasedart festival.
๐ฉ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐บ๐๐๐๐๐, Asher Hartman @chickentasteslikewood and Jasmine Orpilla @jasminemediumrare ๐โจ co-presented with @pamuseum_
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #tba #tba25 #timebasedartfestival
Day 1 (Sept 4) of @picapdx #timebasedart festival ๐ถ Omni Rail by Angelo Scott and collaborators at @p_n_c_a 511 Building
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #tba #tba25 #timebasedartfestival
In the lull between Summer and Fall, the Time-Based Art Festival takes place. The annual event is known for presenting visually stimulating performances, videos, talks, workshops, and exhibitions across the city. Artists from up and down the West Coast, including Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles, will be highlighted, making this year a regional spectacle.
This year, the iconic Portland festival will be spread across 10 days, Sept 4-14, so you have plenty of time to attend one, some, or all the programming. Go with friends, make it a romantic or platonic date, or even bring your kids this year, since some showtimes have been pushed up; you don’t even need to call the babysitter. Or go alone, but do go to something! You don’t want to be the person who didn’t go this year or doesn’t know firsthand the magic that is TBA.
Not to mention the after-hour hangs that commence once the show ends, allowing you to discuss what you just saw, thoughts and feelings, etc, etc, etc. Even if you can’t linger after a show, make sure to plan to attend the after-hours Dirty Thirty Closing party (yes, PICA is growing up like the rest of us & celebrating turning 30 this year.) We’re excited to collaborate with PICA to share what’s happening throughout the festival, so keep an eye out for what’s to come and what we’re seeing!
A beautiful evening visiting, Slip Condition a site-specific installation by Los Angeles–based artist Lily Clark @lilyyill, presented in collaboration with Marta Los Angeles @marta.losangeles staged across the oak woodlands of AnticaโฏTerra in Amity, Oregon.
A variety of sculptures that utilized rocks, water, and magnetic forces that initiated movement and explored themes of containment, motion, and energy.
Glasses of wine poured by @antica_terra only helped us linger in effortless contemplation as we watched the sunset and threw gifted seed balls with wildflowers into the wind, dispersing on the grounds. Plus, a fun ride up and back on ATV golf carts through the vineyards.
Thank you Rachel and Antica Terra team for inviting us and hosting magical experience. โจ๐ณ๐ชจ๐ง๐ท๐๐
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #sitespecific #sitespecificinstallation #lilyclark #waterart #sculpture #martalosangeles #anticaterra
dance apron, Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos)
๐Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., Portland โณHours: Tues-Sat, 10:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
๐๏ธ September 4 - October 11, 2025
โจOpening reception: September 4, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
๐๏ธ Free to the public
dance apron, is Sara Siestreem’s (Hanis Coos) second solo exhibition at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Featuring sculpture, installation works, and Siestreem’s most ambitiously scaled paintings to date, dance apron represents a continuation and evolution of the artist’s multifaceted practice. In dance apron, Siestreem examines themes of land, culture, and identity, combining traditional forms and media with contemporary art practices.
The exhibition underscores Siestreem’s commitment to ecological and social justice, Indigenous feminism and survivance, and the continued expansion of her visual language, making hers a leading voice in contemporary art on this land mass.
Siestreem’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in ecological and social justice, and her works draw inspiration from the land, the fight for women’s rights, and her Indigenous heritage. Her visual language is grounded in patterns drawn from the Coos weaving tradition and a specific color palette, which Siestreem calls her “first language.” As such, these new works carry intentional and layered meanings, infusing each work with both personal and collective resonance.
๐ป image featured: crazy quilt, 2016-2025, acrylic, graphite, color pencil, Xerox transfer on panel boards, 60 x 84”
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland SaraSiestreem #HanisCoos #ElizabethLeachGallery
Justin L’Amie | Dismal Nitch Polyphemus Moth
๐ PDX Contemporary Art
๐๏ธSeptember 10 - October 4, 2025
โจOpening reception, Saturday, September 13 from 3-5 pm (RSVP encouraged)
The works in this exhibition are inspired by a gift to the artist of a Polyphemus moth. The moth was found at the Dismal Nitch rest area, a cove in Washington along the lower Columbia River and notable as the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s last campsite before sighting the Pacific Ocean.
Over the next couple years, L’Amie made many drawings of the moth and credits these drawings in helping him find excitement, meaning, and inspiration from the natural world.
Also during this time, he began falling more in love with different kinds of art and artists: Japanese prints, Morris Graves, Odilon Redon, naturalist drawings, folk art, early manuscripts, and codices. These artistic influences have shaped L’Amie’s practice through the years as he renders flowers, moths, birds, insects, and creatures of all kinds into his compositions with a dexterous hand and gentle sensibility. The works are a reflection of his fascination and adoration with the natural world, capturing its tender resilience in both beauty and darkness.
๐๐ฆMoon Moth
๐๐๐ซThe Snake of Warm Welcome
๐ชถ๐Bramble Bird
๐๏ธAll #watercolor and gouache on paper and made in 2025
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartists #justinlamie #pdxcontemporaryart
Cascades, Chris Lael Larson
๐The Purple Door Gallery 3557 SE Division Street, Portland OR 97202
๐๏ธ September 6 – October 12, 2025
โจ Opening reception: Friday, September 6, 6:00 PM
โณ Hours: Sun / Wed / Thur: 2-6 pm. Fri / Sat: 2-8 pm
Free to the public
“Cascades” at Purple Door Gallery: A Vibrant, Immersive Collision of Nature and Art — Step into a surreal forest ๐ณ of paint, ๐จ light,๐ก and found materials in this solo exhibition.
Purple Door Gallery invites you into a vivid, surreal, and deeply sensory world with “Cascades,” an experimental new solo show by Chris Lael Larson, on view from September 6 through October 12.
Cascades isn’t your typical landscape show — it’s a ritualistic, shape-shifting exploration of the Cascade Head Preserve on the Oregon Coast, where boundaries between photography, sculpture, and painting are constantly blurred, broken, and rebuilt. Each piece invites the viewer to get lost in a layered terrain of color, texture, shadow, and light, where the natural world is reimagined through studio experimentation and gestural expressionism.
Cascades is designed to be more than an exhibition — it’s an invitation to pause, wander, and get immersed. Each work asks viewers to look closely, to lose their bearings, and to consider how we experience the world around us. With its unusual materials, dreamlike compositions, and recursive structure, the show reflects the messy, layered brilliance of the natural world itself.
#artandaboutpdx #chrislaellarson #thepurpledoorpdx
THE NO VACANCY WINDOW GALLERY ๐ช
๐Old Town PDX
๐๏ธSEPT 4 - DEC 1
The No Vacancy Window Gallery has transformed Portland’s historic Old Town Chinatown neighborhood into a vibrant, accessible, and free open-air art gallery featuring local Portland artists. Seventeen boarded-up storefronts have been converted into dynamic exhibition venues, creating a continuous art corridor that begins at the iconic White Stag building and guides visitors throughout Old Town’s culturally rich streetscape.
The No Vacancy Window Gallery is a collaboration between the Old Town Community Association, elle Gallery, and Field States. Together, we are creating a bold new model for culture-driven streetscapes, proving that art accessibility and economic development can work hand in hand to create lasting positive change in Portland.
Curator Lauren Lesueur is a multi-media Artist and Founder of ODE Artist Wellness Initiative, elle Gallery and Portland Tastemakers Market. elle Gallery hosts a collective of local Artists work, monthly solo exhibitions and events that foster togetherness.
No Vacancy Window Gallery Artists
Franz ‘N Family Footwear
Tylor Rogers
Jasper York
Mark Anthony Brown Jr.
Ruby Webb
Adia Marie Gibbs
Shadrach Subah
See King
Anthony Roberto
Julie Lai
amen, amen. Studio
Wesley James
Ryan Swedenborg
Katharine T. Jacobs
Lauren Lesueur
Anastasio Wrobel
Kim Smith Claudel
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartists #ellegallery
Warp Speed: Contemporary Conversations in Fiber
๐PNCA - 511 NW Broadway @p_n_c_a @ccac_pnca
โจPUBLIC RECEPTION: Thursday, September 4th, 5-8pm
โณGALLERY HOURS: Monday - Saturday, 10am-4pm
๐๏ธDURATION: September 4 - October 26, 2025
The Center for Contemporary Art and Culture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art is proud to present Warp Speed: Contemporary Conversations in Fiber. Featuring new, contemporary works in fiber from 5 Portland-based artists: Carolyn Hazel Drake, Michael Espinoza, Abbie Miller, Melissa Monroe, and Joshua Sin, presented alongside historic fiber works from the former Museum of Contemporary Craft Collection, Warp Speed spans over five decades of fiber innovation and artistry.
Presented in conjunction with Portland’s Textile Month @portlandtextilemonth, Warp Speed blends historic fiber works alongside innovative use of fiber and textile-based artwork, including disparate techniques and material applications, ranging from hanging interactive sculpture to tufted furniture. Each of the five Portland-based artists follow the inquiries present in their rich practices, to colorful and textural ends. Individual artist inquiries include: matrilineal heritage, queer sexuality and community, textile history and production, wonder and play, and cultural symbol and ceremony.
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #travelportland #artistsupportartists #fiber #textile
Promise Me Everything, mixed media work by Randall Slaughter ๐
๐Happy Anyway Gallery + Shop, 3125 SE Belmont Street
๐๏ธ August 8 - October 6, 2025
Cleveland artists, Randall Slaughter and Cheryl Andrey will be in Portland to open their concurrent shows at Happy Anyway Gallery + Shop on SE Belmont Street. ๐โจโจSlaughter’s show, PROMISE ME EVERYTHING, will hang in the main gallery and feature his colorful and energetic mixed media work. Andrey will be showing a small collection of her cosmic-themed cardboard assemblages in what the gallery calls a “sideshow”.
@randallslaughter @cardboardsea @wearehappyanyway
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland#pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartists
Elizabeth Arzani @elarzani #Footnotes at @chefasprojects ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฆท
These #tin sculptures are compelling in form — the curves and angels — directs the viewers gaze. You can also find hidden details, like contrasting patterns sneakily in these crevices. These wall sculptures are an exploration of color, form, and memory through material.
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartists
Angelo Scott “Omni Rail” presented with @picapdx for TBA:25
๐๏ธSeptember 4 at โณ 6 PM taking plsce at the 511 Building home to @p_n_c_a
In collaboration with PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival, Angelo Scott presents “Omni Rail,” an ambisonic, walk-through instrument designed from the stairwells, railings, and cable system of Portland’s historic 511 Building. Across three floors of PNCA, musicians strike, bow, or slide the instrument as it acts as its own speaker system, both metaphorically and physically.
Angelo Scott is an interdisciplinary artist from the South currently living in Portland, OR and completing their BFA in Intermedia at PNCA. Their sonic compositions build shifting layers of melodic sentiments from splintering phrases, emphasizing irregularities in live sampling, synthesis, and insisting upon fleeting swells of emotive expression as a passage through intricate patterns in overwhelming soundscapes.
Photo of Angelo Scott by Christopher Paul Klarer
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #TBA #tba25 #timebasedart #picatba #artinpdx #artinportland #pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pacificnorthwest #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #travelportland
We have a new ๐mini interview๐ on the site today with Margaux Ogden @maggie_ogden & Tess Bilhartz @tess_bilhartz in conjunction with their show “Blonde on Blonde” at SE Cooper Contemporary @secoopercontemporary
Both accomplished artists and close friends, the show brings together their unique blend of contrasting techniques and approaches. Their rich friendship forms a uniting bond between the two. Along with their shared passion for art and their admiration for Bob Dylan. In fact, the exhibition’s title is a direct nod to their love for Dylan’s music.
A key theme in both artists’ work is transformation. Bilhartz explores the ephemeral through surrealist landscapes and portrait, while Ogden presents bold, crisp, and vibrant geometric designs. Blonde on Blonde beautifully showcases how these two friends, with their distinctive styles, are united by their creative process and a shared desire to create. A reminder that art can transform both the artist and the viewer’s experience of the world.
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #artistinterview
