Mother with Julia Oldham and Roxanne Jackson

What could be better the day after the Women's March on Washington DC (and round the country) than a show titled, Mother at the Art Gym? Hopefully nothing. Since Blake Shell has taken over the Art Gym its shows really havn't had the same frission and edge that she previously brought to the Archer Gallery but this show's inspired pairing of Julia Oldham and Roxanne Jackson... two artists who always bring the macabre/mythical phantasmagoria and physical encounters with their work threaten to bring things back into form. Besides you can also catch the Tad Savinar exhibition a few miles away (you know you want a little roadtrip out of Portland after these storms).

Mother | January 17 -March 18
Reception: January 22 4-6PM
Art Gym (Marylhurst University)
17600 Pacific Highway (Hwy. 43)



Tad Savinar, 2064: England's Master Architect Presents, to the House of Commons, the Plan to Add Minarets to Buckingham Palace (2014)

Tad Savinar is a Portland fixture as an author, conceptual artist and intellectual so this overview collection of work youniverse-past, present, future might be just what the doctor ordered after a brutal election season and winter storms. What Ive always appreciated in Savinar's work is the way they work as set pieces for the sort of ridiculous human dramas that always seem to occupy civics. Perhaps he is Portland's Aristophanes?

youniverse—past, present, future | January 17 - March 5
Reception: January 22, 3-5PM Lecture: February 26, 3PM, Miller 105 Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art
Lewis & Clark College
0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road


Rodin, Honore de Balzac

Considering the turbulent times the Portland Art Museum's Rodin: The Human Experience—Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections, couldnt be more appropriate. Some might think its simply mre dead french art but Rodin was a maverick who literally broke the mould of classicism. Thus, instead of illustrating the classical allegories of the ruling elites (thereby maintaining their power) he brought a populist humanism into vogue that had wide ranging implications... not the least of which is a sense that art is for the people as is "their" history (no matter what tyrants and elites wanted it to be. That was a radical idea back then, and sadly is once again. Sometimes art is on the front lines of the way thought culture and civics intersect, Rodin was definitely one such historical nerve cluster. The exhibition includes studies for The Burghers of Calais (an everyman's heroic civic memorial), as well as works derived from his greatest work, The Gates of Hell (arch-ironically doors for a museum that was never opened). It is also heavy on monumental sculpture of writers from the New Republic like Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. If you want to learn more, there's a lecture Sunday.

Rodin: The Human Experience | January 21 - April 16
Judith Sobel Lecture Experiencing Rodin: January 22 2-3PM
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Ave