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Join Cinema Project at the Experimental Film Festival Portland for their curated program of 16mm surreal cartoons. From Sally Cruikshank's Quasi at the Quakadero whose main character Anita has been described as "Betty Boop with a New Wave wardrobe," to Amy Lockhart's Walk for Walk with its bubbling nursery of tear drops and googly-eyed hamburgers. Cinema Project is excited to present Weird Worlds as part of the 2nd annual Experimental Film Festival Portland. Click to buy tickets.

Weird Worlds: Experiments in Animation | Cinema Project | Experimental Film Festival Portland
May 23rd | doors at 6:30 . screening at 7.
Studio Two | 810 SE Belmont. Portland, Oregon
Admission $7

www.falsefrontstudio.com

In the Bathroom with Barry, An Introduction

The walls of the hall that I stood in were white.
The ceiling was white, and the floor was white.
The Christmas lights strung along the hall and the sink at the end were white.
On the sink was a white candle inside of a red jar in front of a mirror.
I was waiting by the sink for the bathroom.
I was first in line and under the impression that the door with the lightcoming from underneath was the bathroom.
That the door with no light coming from underneath was the closet.
The man who was soon to be second in line tested the door with the light and found it to be locked.
He declared that it must be a closet.
I posited that the light suggested an occupant locked in the bathroom.
He tested the door with no light and found it locked.
We had reached a stalemate.
That is until we heard the flush of a toilet and the lock clack.
I offered to let the other man go first and he locked the door behind him.
Two more joined the line and the man in the bathroom opened the door.
"Would you like to come in? There's two in here."
I stepped past the other man and the urinal, past the small wall to the bowl next to the window in a white room.
He locks the door, and we both begin our independent study of the porcelain forms before us.
"Hello, I'm Barry."
"I'm Justyn."
"Are you an artist?"
I had been thinking, lately, about the need to work on my elevator speech.
The one where in a couple of sentences I neatly encapsulate a description of my work that is both accurate and, with any luck, interesting.
Here was a captive audience, but all I could say was that, "I am a painter, are you an artist."
"No, I am a writer. What kind of painter?"
Another chance and it was a good question.I have been trying to figure this out for myself.
At the best of times I am sitting at home with books and tea considering the ideas of other artists.
Provisional, Casual Abstraction, these are the shorthand signifiers that reduce my approach within critical discourse.
I wanted to say that I was an "abstract genre painter."
But this felt clunky and like it needed explaining.
It also made me think about how the term "genre painting" was considered demeaning when it was first used. So why not Casual Abstraction?
All this while pondering the appropriate duration for a conversation that involves two men holding their penises, divided by a wall.
"Small/abstract. What kind of writing do you do?"
"Non-Fiction. Where did you go to school?"
"I didn't."
"Good."
"What about you?"
"I teach."
There was a pause, I imagine, as we both attempted to determine,from either side of our wall, whether the other was done.
The door rattled and I anticipated the faces of those in line as the lock turned and the door opened in.

Justyn Hegreberg creates small paintings as quiet disruptions, breaks in the noise of life and daily thought. They allow space for one to pause and step outside one's self, to follow the material trajectory of another person.

http://cal.pnca.edu/e/777

In a special exhibition at Vigor Industrial on Swan Island the MFA in Visual Studies proudly graduates 15 students and presents their thesis work, the culmination of two years of multi-disciplinary and mentor-based study. PNCA's Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies encourages cross disciplinary studies, allowing students to work within a singular discipline or to pursue a combined practice that bridges disciplines and media.

The exhibition will feature work by Christina Bailey, Terri Bradley, Erin Dengerink, Kiel Fletcher, Linden How, Timothy Janchar, John Knight, Matthew Leavitt, Daniel Long, Andrew Lorish, Cristin Norine, Justin Schwab, Edward Trover, Lindsay Williams, Takahiro Yamamoto.