Victoria Haven @ PDX

Well, as a New Year's treat, I have the First Thursday listing up ahead of time (who-hoo!) and have included every single opening I received a press release for. Usually, I comb through the announcements folders and pick some favs but this month, I'm pulling out all the stops. There's lots going on so you've got no excuse to sit at home. And don't forget to save room for First Friday!
♦ = Favs

Gustavo Ramos Rivera • Recent Works on Paper
Admired for his works on paper, Riviera is a contemporary abstractionist who has been active and acclaimed for over three decades. Hap Tivey continues Leukos Transit.
♦ Also, MK Guth presents Video Window, a showcase of different video works by national, international and local artists. Each month, a new video will be presented in the window of the gallery on opening night, after which the monitor will move in the gallery for the remainder of the month. The project kicks off with Alix Pearlstein’s “Forsaken”.
Opening Reception • Thursday January 5th • 6 to 9p
Runs through January 28
Elizabeth Leach Gallery • 417 NW 9th Avenue • Tel. 503.224.0324

♦ Hildur Bjarnadottir • Overlap • new weavings, embroideries, and other works
I swoon for Hildur's work- tattings, embroideries, graphite drawings, and weavings with a kick. Impeccable craft with delightful and unespected execution.
Opening Reception • Thursday January 5th • 5:30 to 8p
Runs through January 28, 2006
Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery • 929 NW Flanders Street • Tel. 503.228.6665

♦ Victoria Haven • The Lucky Ones
"The Lucky Ones is a continuation of ongoing concerns about perception, multiple views and collapsing space that [Haven's] work has focused on over the past ten years. This series of drawings has the additional layer of critiquing the art practice itself--the process of selection, the value of emphasis and questioning relevance."
Opening Reception • Wednesday January 4 • 5:30 to 7:30 p
Runs through January 28, 2006
PDX Contemporary Art • 925 NW Flanders Street • Tel. 503.222.0063

Margot Voorhies Thompson • ROME: Architecture and Inscription • new paintings
and
Louis Bunce, Kenneth Callahan, William Givler, Sally Haley, Charles Heaney, Carl Morris, Arthur and Albert Runquist, Michele Russo, Mark Toby and others • Early Northwest Artists
Margot Voorhies Thompson creates an exploration of alphabets and their historic precedents in mixed media that includes brushwork and print collage. Early Northwest Artists includes work from a variety of regional artists from the 1940s onward.
Opening Reception • Thursday January 5th • 6 to 9p
Runs through January 28, 2006
The Laura Russo Gallery • 805 NW 21st Avenue • Tel. 503.226.2754

Harry Widman • oil paintings
This solo exhibitions features oil paintings showcasing Widman's energetic exploration of color and gestural brushstrokes; a style that has established
him as a seminal NW painter.
Runs through Saturday, January 29.
Opening Reception • Thursday January 5th • 6 to 9p
Blackfish Gallery • 420 NW 9th Ave • Tel. 503.224.2634

Hayley Barker, Tara Jane O'Neil, Zefrey Throwell • drawings
Three young talents elaborate on the descriptive and detailed qualities of drawing in a dynamic show at BH. Throwell (co-founder of the much missed Alphabet Dress) seems to be back on the scene after a Bay Area hiatus joining Portlanders Barker and O'Neil.
Opening Reception • Thursday, January 5th • 6:30 to 8:30p
Show runs thourgh January 31, 2006.
Basil Hallward Gallery (on the 3rd floor of Powell's Books) • 1005 W Burnside • Tel. 503.228.0540

♦ Rachell Sumpter • Tigerballad • new works on paper
Rachell Sumpter crafts delicate metaphoric worlds in gouache and ink on found paper with a signature compositional restraint. Her distinctive figurative style embodies delicate line work and a restrained brush stroke with a visual vocabulary that is both immediate yet nuanced and symbolic.
Opening Reception • Thursday January 5th • 6:30 to 9:30p
Runs through January 21, 2006
Motel • Located on NW Couch Street between 5th & 6th Aves • Tel. 503.222.6699

♦ Julianna Bright • new work in pencil and gouache
Bright presents 12 new pieces (one for every month of the year) and 12 songs to correspond with them. A member of the hibernating, possibly defunct San Francisco band the Quails, Bright will perform the songs with her new group, the Golden Bears at the opening.
Opening Reception • Thursday, January 5 • 6 to 9p
Live Music starts at 9
Valentine's Cafe • 232 SW Ankeny • Tel. 503.248.1600

Will Not Run in Oven • Group Show
The couch collective opens Will Not Run in Oven, a group show of work from the same artists who brought you, "Das Gutte, Celebrating the Life of Steve Guttenberg and most recently their holiday T-Shirt show. Couch is a seven member organization of artists that went to school together in Savannah, Georgia, and who found themselves all in Portland running an art gallery together.
Opening Reception • Thursday, January 5 • 6 to 9 (I'm guessing?)
couch (in the Everett Station Lofts) • 328 NW Broadway, 117

Amelia Santiago, Eric Rue • paintings
Santiago and Rue present works exploring identity, secrecy, fantasy, mysticism, intimacy and the unknown.
Opening Reception • Thursday, January 5 • 6 to 9p
Berbati's Restaurant • 19 SW 2nd Avenue • Tel. 503.248.4579

Cherie Hiser • Retropective • photographs
Hiser’s nearly four decade career began with Minor White at the Portland Art Museum and she went on to collaborate and commingle with prominenet twentieth century artists including Ansel Adams and Jeanne Adams, Hunter S. Thompson, Imogen Cunningham, Walter Chappell, Leon Uris, Ruth Bernhard, Shel Silverstein, and a host of others.
Opening Reception • Thursday January 5th • 6 to 9p
Artists' Talk • Saturday, January 7 • 3 to 4 p
Photographic Image Gallery • 79 SW Oak Street • Tel. 503.224.3543

♦ Corey Smith • Seven Day Weekend
As Justin Oswald's Gallery 500 hibernates indefinitely, there's no dust settling on his former space. Sugar Gallery picks up the arty party slack without missing a beat. Clearly these folks know they've got some shoes to fill, "Taking over the notoriously urban loft-space and party-soaked floorboards of Gallery 500 is no simple task. Many are holding their breath to see if the renegade spirit, and captivating means of display and interaction will continue to draw crowds of both the recklessly hip, and the sensibly acute. Striking quickly and while the iron is still melting... Sugar Gallery is pleased to announce their grand opening show with Seven Day Weekend". And there you have it, the party roars on.
Check out the new digs this Thursday with the inaugural solo exhibition by snowboarder/pop-artist extraordinaire Corey Smith. Smith's slick iconic paintings exploit classic rebel themes: making fun of celebrities, glorfying drug use and defaming authority. If there are strippers at the opening, it will almost be like Gallery 500 never left.
Opening Reception • Thursday, January 5 • 5 to 10p
Sugar Gallery • 420 SW Washington, Suite 500 • Tel. 503.222.7722

And last but not least, an obit...
R.I.P. V-Gun
V-Gun, the art space housed inside Veganopolis will no longer be continued as of January 2006. But rest assured, curators Bruce Conkle and Marne Lucas have more tricks up their sleeves...

 Rachell Sumpter at Motel