Park Avenue Armory (photo James Ewing)

Congrats to Alex Mackin Dolan who was just awarded a residency at New York's immense Park Avenue Armory. In fact, he is the residency's first visual artist... others being mostly performance based. Once again, clear evidence that Portland's art scene is producing sharp new artists that one gets to see develop in very cool, low key alternative spaces... who then completely leap frog the very conservative local-ennials, institutions and awards to end up on the international stage. Dolan has also been curating Appendix, one of Portland's hippest alternative spaces (often Appendix is more experimental than fully realized but I like the risk taking it engenders).

Only just recently in the past year or so has Alex really found his voice... harnessing the design language and cognative projections accrued around the idea of purity (which should be a huge challenge to evoke in that space). In other words, local curators who are not going to alt-space shows are hopelessly out of touch with a scene that is among the most dynamic on the planet. Mackin is just one of perhaps 15-20 hard core like-minded artists in perhaps 2-3 interrelated cliques who harness, interrogate and redirect design's cognitive/perceptual implications. All have a very international outlook and Alex is one of the youngest. I keep saying it, use Portland as a rebel base.