Mary Henry

Jeffrey Thomas' new gallery is doing a lot to build understanding around the work of the departed and seminal modernist Mary Henry. She studied under Laslo Maholy-Nagy and eventually chose a career as modern painter rather than homemaker and the sheer excellence of her work has Major national museums bringing her into their cannonical collections. The latest exhibition Mary Henry: The Fabric of Space explores her studies and process for creating her often large abstract paintings.

Henry absorbed the teachings of the New Bauhaus thoroughly but gave them a West Coast vibrancy and Arcy conveyed a while back here on PORT. So often female artists have to traffic in a sense of vulnerability in their work but Henry, like Agnes Martin and Frankenthaler, is just excellent and justifies how abstraction gets us back to basics by removing gender norms from the work all together.

Mary Henry: The Fabric of Space | March 9 - April
Opening Reception: March 9 6-8PM
Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art
2219 NW Raleigh



Wengechi Mutu

The big art event in Portland this week is Wengechi Mutu's talk at PNCA. She's currently showing the Hybrid Human, a series of prints from The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation's collection at the 511 gallery and Im curious what this international mediator of chimerical feminine anthroplogigical forms drawn from science, fashion and her own more surrealist imagination? She presents a chimerical grotesque that pushes back rather than points and in my mind she's a bit of a modern Mary Shelly with these (one could say) monsters as her beautiful creations. We will have more on this soon.

Wangechi Mutu Talk
March 10: 6:30-8:00PM
PNCA (Mediatheque)
511 NW Broadway