Visual Fields, Heather Watkins
📍PDX Contemporary Art, 1881 NW Vaughn St., Portland
⏳Hours: Tues-Sat 10 a.m. -6 p.m.
🗓️ October 8 - November 1
✨Opening reception: Saturday, October 11, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
🎟️ Free to the public
A solo exhibition by Heather Watkins featuring new photogravures and collographs.
#pdxcontemporaryart #heatherwatkins #heatherwatkinsstudio
@heatherwatkinsstudio
A Body (Un)Becoming
Directed by: Beth Graczyk
Performed by: Leah Wilks & Beth Graczyk
Music by: Aaron Gabriel, with cello recording by Laura Sewell
📍Dekum Street Theater
🗓️Oct 18, 7 p.m., Oct 19, 4 p.m., workshop Oct 19, 10 a.m.
A dance duet directed by Beth Graczyk that explores the tension between decay and transformation— where the body meets disintegrating materials through acts of touch, labor, and experimentation. Working with discarded substances such as eggshells, the piece investigates what new forms can emerge through pressure, heat, and attention.
By animating overlooked materials—including an aging, female-identified human body—the work challenges fixed ideas of being and utility. A Body (Un)Becoming proposes humanness as a permeable state: fragile, reforming, and ongoing.
Imagination, Body, Play — A movement workshop with Beth Graczyk
Sunday October 19th, 10am-12pm
We’ll warm up by layering physical tasks that expand attention to breath, space, time, and connection with others—infused with a glimmering focus on gradients of weight, touch, and suspension. Through iterative cycles of action, image, and scenario, we’ll invite the subconscious to lead as we soften how we observe ourselves and each other, making room for play. We’ll move through solo and ensemble practices to ground and grow the architectures of our individual and collective imaginations. Plan to build some heat, sweat and move!
Beth Graczyk (she/her), a native of the Northwest (Arlington shout-out!), is a choreographer, director, performer, and educator who has been based in Brooklyn/Lenapehoking for the past 11 years. Her formative years as an emerging artist were in Seattle, and her pre-formative years in Arlington, where she first learned to dance from her momma. She remains deeply connected to the Northwest through ongoing artistic dialogue.
@dekumstreettheater @bethgraczykproductions
Exhibitions on view at @gallery114 this October
🗓️Oct 2–Nov 1, 2025
✨Opening reception: First Thursday, Oct 2, 5-8 p.m.
⭕️🪡Social Fabric, Zac Banik & Olivia Johnson in South gallery
Artist talk Oct 1, 12–1:30 p.m., followed by Wire as Embroidery Experimental Workshop from 2–5 p.m.
🦆What Remains, Jon Gottshall in North gallery
Artist talk Oct 14, 7 p.m.
The 2025 Sitka Art Invitational Exhibit + Sale brings together 100 local artists and over 300 works of art, plus live music and artist conversation. Do not miss this extraordinary cultural event!
📍Oregon Contemporary
🗓️Oct 10-12, Friday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., visit for free.
In the Name of Progress by Epiphany Couch
📍Souvenir, 1233 NE Alberta Street, Portland
🗓️Oct 4-Nov 16, 2025
✨Opening reception: Oct 4, 5-8 p.m.
“Progress” has long been invoked to justify the displacement, devastation, and assimilation of Indigenous people. At the center of this exhibition are two national symbols: the American flag and the first motto of the United States, “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, one). Both are meant to unify, yet for many Native people, they instead represent promises never fully kept. Through beadwork, family images, archival documents, and Americana objects, I examine these symbols in relation to my own family history, spanning from the Allotment and Assimilation Era to the present. The work does not seek to offer resolution; instead, it probes, asking: What has progress cost? Who has it served? And what does it mean to belong in a nation built on contradictions? It reminds us that truth exists across a spectrum and that progress, far from neutral, has always been contested.
@epiphany_couch_art @souvenirartspdx #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene
Open Call: Curator In Residence 2025
📍Oregon Contemporary 8371 N Interstate Ave., Portland
🗓️ Apply until 10/12
Oregon Contemporary is pleased to announce an expansion of its Curator in Residence (CIR) program through a new partnership with the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Since its founding in 2011, the CIR program has been a vital catalyst for curatorial innovation, supporting mid-career voices in the field in developing ambitious projects that culminate in major exhibitions at Oregon Contemporary. With the addition of Sitka’s residency component, curators will engage in dedicated research, writing, and reflection within an unparalleled interdisciplinary setting in Otis, OR. This immersive period will allow curators to develop deeper connections to place while expanding the intellectual scope of their projects.
Portland TextileX Month is back for its 8th year, and the line-up is fantastic! Expect to see textiles and fiber arts popping up at various galleries all over town. Notable events to check out:
✨Oct 1, 5-7 p.m., PTXM Legacies Opening Celebration at SCRAP Studio
🪡Oct 4-Nov 1, Exhibition: Threadlines SWANA Stitch
🧶Oct 23, 5-7:30 p.m., Panel: Weaving a Living Archive: Space, Memory, Material, and Process
🪡Oct 26, 12-1:30 p.m., Talk: Slovak Kroj: Passing on Traditions Through Color and Needlework
✨Oct 27, 7-8:30 p.m., Event: Embroidered Stories
Members Show & 1975 - 1985: The First Ten Years
📍Blue Sky Gallery
🗓️Oct 2-Nov 1, 2025
✨First Thursday Opening: Oct 2, 5-8 p.m.
The 2025 Members Show features work from over 100 Blue Sky members. Thank you to our members for sharing your photographic talent! All works will be viewable on our website beginning October 2nd. The top 50 jury selected artists will have their work featured in-person on our Community Walls in conjunction with our October exhibition.
Blue Sky honors its five decades of history with exhibitions and publications. Blue Sky 1975 - 1985: The First Ten Years showcases past and new work from artists who have exhibited in the First decade since Blue Sky’s inception. Guests are encouraged to “dress the decade” during the First Thursday opening for a chance to win door prizes. All prints will be available for purchase at $200, offering an accessible price point while supporting a fundraising effort for Blue Sky
Scotty Peek, Nearby
📍Laura Vincent Design & Gallery
🗓️Oct 2-Nov 1
✨First Thursday, Oct 2, 5-8 p.m.
At the opening reception of David Corbett’s New Paintings at False Front a couple weeks ago. Show is on view until Oct 12.
OPEN HOURS: 12 – 3PM, SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS
“This body of work continues my investigation into the idea of the represented landscape in art. Through the use of saturated, contrasting colors and intentionally simple—sometimes awkward—compositions, I explore how landscape can be abstracted and reimagined.
By approaching landscape through abstraction, I’m drawn to color relationships, patterns and visual comparisons that invite a deeper negotiation of unfamiliar elements. During the process, patterns often introduce a kind of visual “glitch”—a disruption that shifts the composition in unexpected or surprising ways. These moments guide the work into new territory, allowing abstraction to evolve and challenge initial perceptions.”
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #portlandoregon #alternativeartspace #contemporarypainting #colorful
A moment for the #timebasedart festival please 🙏🏼 Thanks to the artists! Thanks to @picapdx — staff and volunteers — for making this year so special. 💚💛🩷🩵
#artandaboutpdx
Household Apparitions by Rachel Warkentin
📍Fine Art Fruit - 925 NW 19th Ave. Portland
🗓️ October 2-31, 2025
✨Opening reception: First Thursday, October 2nd, 5-7pm
⏳ Hours: 11am-5pm Tuesday-Sunday
🎟️Free to the public
Rachel Warkentin is a local painter, sculptor, and jeweler. For this show, HOUSEHOLD APPARITIONS she bridges the gap and softens the lines that typically separate art/fashion/sculpture/painting.
Working on everything all at once, this body of work travels between mediums, repeats images, makes copies of copies, changing the story slightly with each new iteration like a game of telephone.
Who’s to say whether the first words spoken, or the last ones, are the truth?
#artandaboutpdx #fineartfruit #portlandartscene
🌀Full Circle: The Harmonic Sum of Current and Light, Shana Palmer
📍 North View Gallery, 12000 SW 49th, Portland, Oregon
🗓️ September 15 - October 23, 2025
✨Opening reception: First Thursday, October 2, 4-8pm ✨ including performances featuring Wild Strawberry, Francisco Botello, Stars without Make Up and Shana Palmer performing with The Tenses
⏳ Hours: M-F 8-4, Saturdays by appointment
🎟️Free to the public
An immersive environment of sculpture, sound and light by the artist Shana Palmer. The exhibition foregrounds the importance of interconnection and the impact we have on each other and our world. Circular forms are evoked throughout the gallery, via the multi-channel sound encircling the space, a harmonic sundial and a series of code-drawn radiating spheres that evoke portals or apertures. The work in Full Circle also resonates with the lineage of women who have used voids or tunnels as sculptural language. The artist is informed by Barbara Hepworth, who described holes as a way of liberating mass into connection and Nancy Holt, whose Sun Tunnels frame constellations and serve as intermediaries between human presence and the cosmos.
The works in this exhibition are hybrid gestures, part poetry and part science. They give auditory and visual form to the often hidden relationships, orbits and vibrations in our environment. The gallery becomes a contemplative space rewarding patience with microshifts in color and tone. Full Circle is not a closed circle but an ever-evolving spiral. The artist hopes that in our polarized world, this opportunity to touch, feel, see and listen becomes an invitation to hold each other in solidarity. In Palmer’s work, the void is not empty, but a space filled with light and potential.
@pccnorthview @shana.palmer @regionalarts @siempreviendo @pccinteractivitylab #artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #portlandoregon #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartist #sound #light #newmedia
Rug Farm by Ricky Bearghost
📍Elbow Room 318 SE Main St Suite 125 Portland OR 97214
🗓️ closing October 3, 2025
⏳ Hours: Fridays from 2-5pm
Elbow Room invites you to join us for Rug Farm, the first (and long overdue) solo exhibition for studio artist Ricky Bearghost. Over the past decades, Ricky has become well known for making vibrant, expressive weavings strung with rainbow pony beads and found and scrounged materials. Working on the loom, Ricky commands the cohesive power of warp and weft, drawing color, texture, juxtaposition, language, and chance encounters into unique gravitational fields. Recently, Ricky has been expanding his textile practice by hand stitching woven panels into colossal garments, and hand-carving wooden furniture with woven chair seats. Ricky is an enthusiastic participant during weekly summer outings to Elbow Room’s community farm plot , often being the first to get down in the dirt pulling weeds and planting. His excitement for garden projects can spill over into his work back at the studio with names of seasonal produce frequently cropping up in his characteristically text-heavy drawings and his foodie collages, each page a veritable feast.
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland#pdx #portland #portlandoregon #pnw #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartists
Mentally we’re here — still looking at @mattbennettlaurents hand-built ceramics and far out glazes at @carnationcontemporary 🪐🏺✨
#artandaboutpdx #ceramics #glazes #vase #portlandartscene #contemporaryceramics
Endless Repose, Nicole Williford
📍 Chefas Projects, 134 SE Taylor Street, Suite 203 Portland
🗓️ 9/26/25-10/25/25
✨Opening reception: 9/26/25, 5PM-8PM
⏳ Wed-Sat 1-6
🎟️Free to the public
In deeply personal collection of paintings, Nicole reimagines her grandfather’s photography through the lens of memory, sensation, and her own painterly voice.
“Through painting this archive, I am looking back into a world that is partially told to me, partially imagined, and completely unreachable,” Williford shares. “It’s a reckoning with how quickly time moves, how memories fade even as we try to hold on.”
Endless Repose honors the in-between moments that often go unnoticed but hold the greatest meaning. In slowing down and paying attention, Nicole invites us into a space of reflection and quiet reverence for the ordinary.
#artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinpdx #artinportland #portlandoregon #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #pdxartgalleries #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #artgallery #artgallerypdx #travelportland #artistsupportartist
how color is place: a natural dye workshop taught by sugar todd as a part of PNCA’s 2025 Symposium: Beyond Boundaries: Visions of Ecological Futures
🗓️Saturday, October 4 · 2 - 4pm
📍Pacific Northwest College of Art
RSVP required/space limited *update:sold out, join waitlist*
color has an origin. when you create—with inks, with paints, with dyes—do you know where your color comes from? when we source color with this question in mind, a path to engaging with our environment and our consumption of it opens. natural dye processes offer a way to slow ourselves and tend to a relationship with our materials.
this workshop will focus on where and how color is grown. we invite participants to reflect on color as something that holds time and place, and how cultivating awareness of place expands our sense of self.
within the workshop, participants will be guided through the process of creating resist patterns on a bandana to be naturally dyed. resist dyeing is a technique that uses various materials to create barriers that prevent dye from reaching specific areas of a textile. this workshop will use physical tying and banding techniques to create designs, and bandanas will be dyed with marigold flowers that were grown at empowered flowers farm.
sugar is sometimes farming, sometimes printmaking, sometimes dyeing, sometimes weaving, always growing, and always rising with the sun.
“In my hand it felt like singing” 🎶📖 Somatic/creative writing workshop led writing and Lead Faculty Stephanie Adams-Santos
RSVP required/limited space available, free
Our hands are archives of vast ecological memory and imagination. In this somatic/creative writing workshop, we will attune to the dreaming capacity of our bodies, returning to the trees and waters that shaped us, asking what we might surrender, what we might tend, and how our imaginations can be returned to life itself.
Stephanie Adams-Santos is a multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, screenwriting, illustration and ritual. Their work draws from the ancestral, mythological, and dream realms of inner life. They are the author of several poetry collections and chapbooks, including Dream of Xibalba (selected by Jericho Brown as winner of the 2021 Orison Poetry Prize; finalist for the 2024 Oregon Book Award and Lambda Literary Award) and Swarm Queen’s Crown (2016 Lambda finalist). Stephanie has written for film, radio, and television, and is currently developing Ojo de la Selva Tarot — a mythic, animist tarot deck for divining with ancestral and ecological memory.
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinportland #portlandoregon #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #travelportland #artistsupportartist #beyondboundaries #symposium #fermentation #ecological
Salt + Water as a Medium💧Bioplastics and fermentation workshop taught by Meech Boakye as a part of PNCA’s 2025 Symposium: Beyond Boundaries.
🗓️Saturday, October 4 · 12 - 2pm
📍Pacific Northwest College of Art
✨RSVP necessary, tickets $10
From mermaid mythologies 🧜🏽 to seaweeds, agar bioplastic and sauerkraut brine, 🪸 this workshop explores saltwater as a medium that holds, grows and transforms life. Participants will have the opportunity to play with foraged salt and seaweed gathered on the Oregon Coast, comparing and contrasting the various shapes, textures, and flavors. Participants will then be shown how to create a translucent, compostable biomaterial using agar, a gelatin-like substance derived from seaweed. The session will end with hands-on play as participants preserve seasonal fruits and vegetables in a salty brine that encourages natural fermentation.
Meech Boakye is a Canadian-American artist and researcher based in Portland, Oregon. Working across writing, publishing, sculpture, foodways, material research, and public programming, their practice is rooted in relationships with human and more-than-human species.
#artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #contemporaryart #pdxart #artinportland #portlandoregon #pacificnorthwest #whattodothisweekendpdx #discoverart #artblog #artplatform #arthappenings #travelportland #artistsupportartist #beyondboundaries #symposium #fermentation #ecological
Beyond Boundaries: Visions of Ecological Futures
🗓️ October 2–4, 2025
📍Pacific Northwest College of Art
🎟️All events are free and open to the public
A three-day convening of critical and creative voices engaging ecological thought across disciplines and communities. Featuring keynote lectures from scholar Dr. Stacy Alaimo and artist Meech Boakye, this symposium explores the intersections of environment, art, activism, pedagogy, and identity—with a focus on how ecological futures are imagined, embodied, and enacted through diverse cultural practices and positionalities.
This year’s symposium encourages participants to reflect on how ecological entanglements shape and are shaped by lived experience, artistic practice, and political struggle. We are especially interested in work rooted in feminist, queer, trans, Indigenous, Black, and disabled approaches to ecological thought.
It will encompass a diverse array of programming including keynote lectures, panel conversations, workshops, a group art exhibition and more.
