The Latest

I Love From Memory, Nate Orton 📍Purple Door Gallery 🗓️March 27-April 26, 2026 ✨Opening Reception, Friday, April 3, 6-9 p.m. ⏳ Hours Thursday- Saturday 2-8pm; Sunday & Wed, 2-6pm 🎟️Free to the public Rooted in observation and transformed through repetition, I Love From Memory is a meditation on time, place, and what lingers. Orton captures otherwise ordinary moments of daily life, drawing out the quiet magic that might go unnoticed. He regularly returns to the locations of his favorite sketches, drawing them again and again—allowing compositions to shift and simplify over time. Working in casein tempera—one of the oldest painting mediums—Orton builds each piece through quick-drying, layered applications. What begins as documentation gradually shifts into something more reflective: a reevaluation of memory and circumstance rather than a direct record of place. As always, @thepurpledoorpdx has a little something special waiting in the back gallery 👀

All the spring blooms and the earth coming out of hibernation is reminding us of the bioplastics and fermentation workshop that was a part of PNCA’s 2025 Symposium: Beyond Boundaries by Meech Boakye🌀🌿🌼 #artandaboutpdx #onviewpdx #portlandartscene meechboyake

Dream: ... Dream: ... Another dream: ..., Linda Hutchins 📍Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave 🗓️ April 2 - May 2, 2026 ✨Opening reception First Thursday, April 2, from 5-9 pm Saturday, May 2 at 11:00 am (doors 10:30) Hutchins will be joined by filmmaker Steven Doughton and art historian, curator, and critic Sue Taylor for a Reading / Screening / Conversation at the gallery (the final day of the show) 🎟️ Free to the public ℹ️Nine Gallery is located inside Blue Sky Gallery, at 122 NW 8th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97209. Gallery hours are the same as Blue Sky: Wednesday - Saturday 12-5 pm. Nine Gallery member Linda Hutchins exhibits handwritten dreams from fifty recent nights. Irregular script and scribbled redactions blur the distinction between drawing and writing, continuing the artist’s long-running investigation of the formal and metaphorical possibilities of line as a visual element. By developing her dream recall and sharing her findings, Hutchins daylights the universal experience of dreaming that has largely disappeared from modern life. @lindahutchinsstudio @ninegallerypdx #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #lindahutchins #artistgallery

Born REMEMBERING, Garth Amundson & Pierre Gour 📍Well Well Projects, 8371 N Interstate Ave. #1, Portland ⏳Hours: Sat-Sun 12-5 p.m. 🗓️ April 4 - 26, 2026 ✨Opening reception, First Saturday, April 4, 5-8 pm 🎟️ Free to the public Born REMEMBERING examines memory as an embodied and cumulative force, one that shapes identity, place, and visibility across time. Bringing together collaborative and individual works by Garth Amundson and Pierre Gour, the exhibition explores how personal and collective histories are constructed, preserved, and contested. Addressing themes of loss, queer identity, and social memory, the artist’s work with found, archival, and personal imagery, employing collage, photo-scanning, and installation to sort, sew, and suture fragments of lived experience into new visual narratives. Working independently and together for over four decades, Amundson and Gour merge distinct studio practices into a shared interdisciplinary language. Gour’s research in painting and drawing and Amundson’s focus on photography converge through physical and digital manipulation, producing works that question how memory is recorded and how identities are made visible or erased. Their collaborative project included in the exhibition draws from nearly forty years of vernacular photography, snapshots of everyday life that both conceal and reveal complex personal and cultural histories. These images are bound into cyclical forms that function as calendars, memorials, and devotional objects, referencing Victorian collage and early photographic traditions while emphasizing self as subject. At a moment when human rights and visibility are increasingly challenged on a global scale, Born Remembering insists on the urgency of making the invisible visible. The exhibition positions memory not as a static archive, but as an active, resistant process, one that continually reshapes how lives are seen, remembered, and understood.

Explorations: New Paintings by Michael Spence & Love you More: New Work by Angela Riggs 📍Gallery 114 🗓️April 2 – May 2, 2026 ✨Opening Reception: First Thursday, April 2, 5 – 8 pm Two shows on view at Gallery 114 this month! 🎨🧶 Michael Spence has been an abstract/figurative painter for years. But for this body of work, he decided on a risky new strategy: he would work on each painting in the series until it was finished, then use that picture as a jumping-off point for the next one. Then he would display all the paintings in the series as a sequence. This allows the viewer to follow his cul de sacs, solutions, decision-making and discoveries in the studio alongside him, in real time. Michael says: “These new paintings are for me, an exploration into new nonrepresentational territory. The work is nonetheless influenced by the colors, shapes and emotional experiences I’m inspired by in nature.” Angela says: “Love You More” is a fiber art exhibit inspired by – and created from – the clothes that my grandmother knitted for me when I was a child. The exhibit title comes from a phrase that my grandmother, Mommy Ferne, always said to us: I love you more. Not more than you loved her, or more than someone else loved you, but just - more. More than she ever thought possible, more and more each day.” Mommy Ferne passed in 2023, and I’ve created the art for this exhibit in her honor and in her memory.

🔊Virtual Artist Talk and Q&A with Leonardo Drew on Saturday, April 4 at 2pm 🕑 for Seeing the What: a Pop-Up Art Exhibition by The Lobby @ The Writers’ Block + don’t miss First Thursday, April 2, 5-8 pm 📍The Writer’s Block, 818 NW Flanders St., Portland ⏳ Hours: Thurs-Sat from 12-4 p.m. or by appt 🗓️ Until May 23, 2026 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, 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. This partnership reflects The Lobby’s ongoing mission to make significant contemporary art accessible to the Portland community, while also highlighting The Writers’ Block’s vibrant commitment to art and creativity, multidisciplinary programming, participation in First Thursdays, and active role within Portland’s cultural landscape. #thewritersblockpdx #thelobby #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene

Inhabitations, a solo exhibition by Nathan William Lambdin 📍PDX Contemporary Art 🗓️ April 1- 25, 2026 Lambdin’s work is informed by the rich history and ongoing evolution of our built environment. Drawing from a wealth of influences including Light and Space art, minimalist painting, modernist craft traditions, and residential architecture, Lambdin creates dynamic colorful sculptures from wood, fiberboard, and house paint. Inhabitations features series of wall sculptures and free-standing sculptures constructed from layered slats of painted wood. The use of color is a central component, creating spatial and visual effects as you move around the work. From a single vantage point, the stacked layers read as a flat, graphic image but open to something else entirely as one shifts their position, revealing the physical depth and complexity beneath. Nathan William Lambdin is an interdisciplinary artist whose work references a culture of building and making. His practice draws from a culmination of experiences that spans skateboarding culture of the late eighties, art school during the nineties, and professional experience in both graphic design and architecture. #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #contemporarysculpture #color #wallsculpture

New mini #interview with Emily Elizabeth Wise online ✨🛸 Her third solo show, Meet Me at the Mothership, at Chefas Projects @chefasprojects is on view (March 6 - April 4, 2026). The show title, a tasteful allusion to sci-fi, signals the standard themes in Wise’s work (femininity, relational intimacy, naturalist compositions) with an additional exploration into the concept of the mothership. We discussed a wide range of topics overlooking her new series of paintings, but what would a sacred feminine space, structure or utopian world look like or represent? ⛲️ Artwork @emily_elizabeth_wise 🔏🎞️ Intro + film photos by @ashxgifford 🔗Read more online 🌀 artandaboutpdx.com/blog/mini-interview-emily-elizabeth-wise #artandaboutpdx #artistinterview #emilyelizabethwise #portlandartscene

Visiting Artist Lecture: Yeni Mao 📍 Pacific Northwest College of Art 🗓️⏳Wednesday, Apr 1 from 6 pm to 7:30 pm 📌Free & Open to the Public! This lecture will be both livestreamed and in person. Pacific Northwest College of Art’s MFA in Visual Studies program, presented in partnership with Stelo is proud to welcome Yeni Mao for an artist talk. About Yeni Mao The sculptural practice of Yeni Mao engages in issues of fragmentation through a series of assemblages and architectonic arrangements. In a manner of material fetishization, the works imply abstracted, unraveled bodies; cyborg constructions of found, fabricated, or sculpted components. Predominately using steel, ceramic, and leather as raw materials, Mao cites the act of making, the transformation of materials, as a vehicle to both content and form. Mao evokes and examines a sense of otherness, with the concurrent sensations of restraint, domination and order. His works are coded with references to subcultures, countercultures and outsiders; enforced or self imposed on account of their social, racial, sexual, or transnational status. Mao sees deviance as the basis for his multivalent practice. Often layering these larger concerns over his own personal histories and social positioning, most recently the projects are based in family mythologies. Stelo illuminates the power of art to invite conversation and build community. We are dedicated to responsive models of support via partnerships, collaboration, and exchange.

Gracie Ellison 📍Stumptown Coffee Roasters Division - 4525 SE Division St 🗓️ February 27 - May 28, 2026 ⏳WEEKDAYS 6:30AM-5PM & WEEKENDS 7:30AM-5PM 🎟️ Free to the public Gracie Ellison, born and raised in Portland, Oregon, has been illustrating faces her whole life; painting portraits on canvas since early adulthood. She has no formal training or education, her art has always been instinctual and learned through years of studying the art surrounding her. Gracie almost exclusively paints busts of surly faced women; within that realm, she likes to explore with color, patterns, texture, and imperfections. While her creative process is somewhat whimsical, Gracie strives for her subjects to be commanding and impactful. @gracieellison #portlandartscene #drawing #painting #stumptown

Paintings by Joel Fleminger 📍River Art Gallery, 19 NW 5th Avenue, Portland ✨Opening reception: First Thursday, April 2 from 5:30-6:30 PM with a Free Pizza Buffet 🎉🍕 🗓️ April 2 - May 4, 2026 🎟️Free to the public Joel Fleminger is a Portland based artist working in oil, acrylic, and gouache. Through his exploration of color, shape, and line, his paintings create movement and space that are a visual response to past memories. While his works are abstract, the suggestion of landscapes and figures offer the viewer an opening to apply their own interpretations and narratives. The works presented in this show span from 2011 to 2026, and represent a continuation of the ideas and motivations that keep Fleminger engaged with making new works. The mission of the River Art Gallery is to advance the cultural renaissance of Old Town Portland, by enriching the community through the transformative power of art. By ensuring free and easily accessible opportunities for engagement, and by providing an open and commercial free workspace for artists to create and exhibit their work, we seek to cultivate creativity, strengthen neighborhood connections, and inspire a vibrant, inclusive community for all. #artandaboutpdx #riverportland, #oldtownpdx #firstthursdaypdx

Creative Resilience: Critical Mass 2025 Top 50, curated by C. Meier 📍Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., Portland ✨Opening reception: First Thursday 5 - 9 PM 🗓️ Apr 2 - May 2, 2026 ⏳Hours: Wed-Sat, 12-5 p.m. 🎟️ Free to the public Blue Sky, in partnership with Photolucida, is pleased to present Creative Resilience: Critical Mass 2025 Top 50. Curated by Blue Sky’s Exhibitions Director, C. Meier, this exhibition features one image from each of the fifty artists of the Critical Mass Top 50, offering a dynamic snapshot of this year’s outstanding work. This exhibition celebrates Photolucida’s 25 years of excellence and its deep connection with Blue Sky. #artandaboutpdx #photolucida #bluesky

A Question of Balance, Elliot Ross 📍Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., Portland ✨Opening reception: First Thursday 5 - 9 PM 🗓️ Apr 2 - May 2, 2026 ⏳Hours: Wed-Sat, 12-5 p.m. 🎟️ Free to the public Elliot Ross’ 2025 Critical Mass Solo Exhibition “A Question of Balance” examines a water crisis shaped by inequity in the American Southwest. As the region faces its worst drought in 1,200 years, Navajo Nation residents haul and conserve scarce supplies while nearby communities consume abundantly at low cost from the same source. This project reveals how water access defines daily life, landscape, and opportunity. Rooted in lived proximity and relationships, Ross asks not just how water will be managed in a changing climate, but for whom. Elliot Ross is the recipient of the 2025 Critical Mass Solo Exhibition Award, chosen from a pool of 200 portfolios. #artandaboutpdx #blueskygallerypdx #ElliotRoss #aquestiionofbalance

“an imagined place (here and now) by Satpreet Kahlon 📍Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 15 NE Hancock Street 🗓️April 4 – May 23, 2026 ✨Opening reception: April 4 from 3–5 PM ⏳Hours Thursdays 2–8 PM, Fridays 12–6 PM, Saturdays 12–4 PM 🎟️Free to the public PICA presents an imagined place (here and now), a multichannel audio and visual installation by the Brooklyn-based artist Satpreet Kahlon. A 2022 Creative Exchange Lab artist, Kahlon’s exhibition will transform PICA’s 10,000-square-foot main space into an immersive exploration of fugitivity, deep space time, geologic memory, and possibility. A newly composed soundscape, both orchestral and intimate, threads through the installation, blending otherworldly registers to collapse distance between planetary time and lived embodied experience. an imagined place (here and now) centers a full-scale replica of 2025 PN7, a quasi-moon that has been following the Earth’s orbit since the 1960s, but only discovered by NASA in 2025. PN7 becomes a jumping off point for the artist to continue her investigation into the memory of nonhuman entities, including light rays and geologic entities (such as mountains), the Earth, and asteroids. Alongside the recreation of PN7, the exhibition includes installation components with immersive audio, reflected video fields, and photograph-based sculptures with images from the artist’s personal archive. A core feature of the sound score references Kahlon’s ongoing engagement with the archiving of Boliyan, held in the exhibition as one strand within a larger structure of memory, relation, and refusal. For Kahlon, collage and assemblage across many mediums and constructs offers an opportunity to reframe images and memory. Existent narratives surrounding the artist’s childhood were misleadingly happy, disguising a childhood dominated by abuse and neglect. Through an imagined place (here and now), Kahlon hopes to tell a truer, more honest story of her life, and in so doing, release herself from a familial orbit of harm. @picapdx #artandaboutpdx #picapdx #portlandartscene #satpreetkahlon

The Thread from Your Head is Connected to the Sun, Anna Fidler 📍One Wall Gallery (Eugene) 🗓️March 3-29, 2026 ⏳Open every day 10-7, Sunday 12-6 Free and open to the public Work exploring the spiritual, the surreal and the feminine rooted in memory, mark making and intuitive mark making. @annafidlerart @one.wall.gallery

Picnic, by Lisa Onstad 📍Hoffman Center for the Arts (Manzanita) 🗓️March 5–28, 2026 ✨Opening reception: March 7, 3-5 pm Travel strongly influences Lisa’s work. While traveling, she often feels as if she is on one long, glorious picnic, sampling everything at the buffet: ripe strawberries, vivid emotions, layered histories, and life in all its beautiful and ruinous glory. Being in new places heightens her senses, and those feelings follow her back to the studio. Lisa’s new work, Picnic, is a response to the rich and sometimes overwhelming emotion and visual stimuli she experiences while traveling. Lisa uses familiar patterns in her mixed-media paintings to organize and bring order, allowing her to fully inhabit these moments. In Picnic, Lisa invites viewers to approach each day as a kind of picnic, an opportunity to pause, savor, and enjoy the present moment. Based in Portland, Oregon, Lisa Onstad is an abstract painter who explores shifting connections to self, place, and others, balancing intention with chance and structure with spontaneity, always seeking surprise in the outcome. Lisa has worked as an art therapist, managed a letterpress print shop, and taught painting and book arts workshops in Oregon and California. She studied art at Lewis & Clark College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Oregon College of Art and Craft. Her work is held in public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad. #artandaboutpdx #portlandartscene #contemporarypainting #hoffmanartcenter #artbythebeach

Keepsakes by Kiko Bordeos and Alexis Gallo 📍RSA Projects Gallery, 1327 SE Division St ✨Opening reception: First Friday April 3rd, 2026 from 5-8 PM 🎟️Free to the public! Keepsakes is a collection of work by Kiko Bordeos and Alexis Gallo that capture and preserve moments in time. Through the use of grids and vibrant colors the canvas acts as a record and container for experiences and emotions, making the intangible, tangible. These process based arrangements allow for play and spontaneity that create a dialogue of past and present self that is reflective, energetic, and immediate. #portlandartscene #artandaboutpdx #risograph #printedmatter #artopening

Notch for the Heart, by Ben Skiba 📍Carnation Contemporary, 8371 N Interstate Ave #3 ⏳Hours: Sat-Sun 12-5 p.m. 🗓️ April 3 - 26, 2026 ✨Opening reception: Friday, April 3, 5–8 PM 🎟️ Free to the public Building upon a connection to clay’s continuous teachings, Notch for the Heart is Skiba’s first show of ceramic works since 2018. Glazed wall sculptures merge with carved wooden limbs while others are connected and wrapped in bandages of colorful tape. The same carved hands that shaped and supported the ceramics through their process extend from the wall in a split gesture of offering and withholding. On the floor, a knotted snake-form and an inverted jar point towards both a career of exploring the ceramic line and the human capacity for love, pain, curiosity & fear. Handbound, on a bench for reading, is a one-of-one copy of “Notch for the Heart”, Skiba’s first collection of poems intermixed with excerpts from texts by Annie Dillard, Jack Whitten, Jasper Johns and a few others. Alongside the sculptural works are paintings in house paint, oil, grease pencil and pastel. These paintings join their sculptural kin to form a group of objects functioning as “The things and the people. / The signal and its noise.” (Peter Gizzi, Findspot Unknown from ‘Fierce Elegy’, 2023) Ben Skiba was raised in the St. Croix Valley of Wisconsin and received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He lives and works out of his home studio in Portland, Oregon, working primarily with clay, paint, tape, canvas and paper. Also a poet, his studio centers around the connective tissue between his writing and a growing cast of shapes & forms that both need and provide support. In 2023, he started HIDE & SEEK, an open home gallery project focused on curatorial projects that extend from his studio work. Friday lunch gatherings occur weekly at his home/studio/gallery. #portlandartscene #artandaboutpdx #ceramics sculpture @benskiba @hideandseekgallery @carnationcontemporary

A moment for @pdxjazz fest last night at @revolutionhall featuring Jeff Parker IVtet + SML 🎶✨ absolutely incredible @jeffparkersounds @sml.band #artandjazz #portlandjazz #jazzfestival #artandculture