Category Archives: Arts & Culture

What to do when you retire? Sharon Wagner was faced with just that problem seven years ago when she left the U.S. Forest Service and decided to learn to work with clay.

Drawn to the sensual feel and pliability of the material, she focused on hand building rather than using a clay wheel. Although she has created functional wares, she prefers to create sculptural works.

Wagner lives on a bike path, with her house located on the corner of Alberta Court and NE 37th Avenue. Her yard is alive with windsocks and whirligigs, and in the tree near the road is a life size figure of a boy made out of clay.

Using photos of her friend’s twin boys, Wagner made “Dream Boy” in four clay pieces: the head, two halves of the torso plus a leg and a backpack that sits at the foot of the tree. The pieces were created at the Multnomah Art Center and assembled after the last firing.

The work took her a year to finish with months needed to dry the clay before it could go into the kiln to be fired. One bubble left in the clay or even residual moisture could cause the clay to break or even explode when fired.

“One of the biggest challenges of making Dream Boy had to do with the shape of the tree and the shrinkage of the clay,” she said. The clay she used shrinks almost 11% from wet clay after it is fired, making it a real challenge to ensure the work would sit perfectly into the crux of the tree.

Through her big front window, Sharon can watch as people enjoy her artwork. “The public space between our houses and the streets is ours to take care of for the good of everyone. This is my way of taking care of it.”

Michel Reeverts, aka Maquette, holds a master of arts degree in art education and serves Alberta Art Works as director and Alberta Street Gallery as a board member. She is also a practicing artist. Contact her at Maquette@AlbertaArtWorks.org.

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Anya Mironets Keyes moved to the United States when she was 16. Her family has lived in Ukraine for 14 generations.

“When I moved to the U.S. I was a junior in high school,” she said. “I didn’t speak English then and to get enough credits to graduate I took as many art classes as possible because I didn’t have to speak. My AP art teacher taught me fundamentals and instilled in me the idea that I could be an artist one day.”

Being a first-generation immigrant, a career in arts was not a reliable choice, so she studied and became a pharmacist. Nonetheless, Keyes continued pursuing her art, creating paintings in oils and watercolors, centered around her Ukrainian identity.

Her experiences as a first-generation immigrant, a foreign-born mother, friend and American citizen are expressed in her atmospheric paintings, the most recent of which feature images of her fellow Ukrainians.

“I enjoy the creativity and solitude that comes with art,” she said. “It’s meditative and restorative. It truly is the best fit for me.”

When the war in Ukraine erupted, she felt helpless watching the senseless devastation of her home country and decided to create a body of work and donate all proceeds to help volunteer groups in Ukraine, especially in underserved areas. Her portraits, mostly of women, are currently available for purchase.

For more information, visit AnyaKeyes.com or visit the Blind Insect Gallery, 2841 NE Alberta St.

Michel Reeverts, aka Maquette, holds a master of arts degree in art education and serves Alberta Art Works as director and Alberta Street Gallery as a board member. She is also a practicing artist. Contact her at Maquette@AlbertaArtWorks.org

By Rob Cullivan | CNews Editor

Concordia resident Amy Daileda will showcase a group of paintings in “Micro Flora,” an exhibit at Flour Market Bakery, 5507 NE 30th Ave., from Wednesday, May 4, through Sunday, May 29. A reception will take place from 5-8 p.m. Friday, May 6. Admission is free and open to the public.

Daileda said her paintings are being exhibited “mere blocks from where my subjects grow. Flora is a list of the plant life of a particular area, period or habitat. These acrylic paintings represent part of the flora of my Northeast Portland, Oregon native, edible, organic garden.”

The artist used macro, or close-up photos of plants to help her create her works. “I also study their botany, edible and medicinal uses, history and beauty, and try to connect to them using all of my senses,” she said. “Using acrylic paint on locally made wood panels, I painted them while working next to the studio window that overlooks our organic garden where they grow.”

The exhibit is part of the Taking. Up. Space. Initiative facilitated by the Artist/ Mother and Thrive Networks. Taking Up Space or T.U.S. is a female focused community global art exhibition taking place in more than 80 locations in May. You can learn more about them by visiting the #takingupspace2022 hashtag on Instagram.

Daileda has lived in Concordia for 21 years and is a clothing designer creating wearable art for even longer under the name Vivid Element. She said that this is her first painting exhibit since 1993.

“During the pandemic I started painting again,” she said. “Since we were quarantined at home, I used the details of plants and flowers I grow in our Backyard Habitat Certified garden as subjects. I studied painting in college and am now inspired to take it further. I’m thrilled to be showing at this great new bakery in our neighborhood.”

For more information, visit VividElement.com/art_event/micro-flora.

Living as a street mime in Paris, Bruce Marrs was influenced by the use of masks in theater productions. A year later he tried his hand at creating masks while working with the Oregon Dance Theatre.

Although the show was not a success, it inspired him to want to learn more about the art form.

Bruce took an intensive class in commedia del’arte – a form of theater using masks that is both scripted and improvised – at Del’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.

He was hired to teach dance, mime and mask making. He worked at the school for the next 25 years.

During the summers Bruce worked at county fairs as a stilt character, dancer, clown or whatever was needed. Rather than changing makeup for each character, he decided to create a set of papier-mache masks from brown grocery bags.

The Pickle Family Circus and Jeff Raz of the Clown Conservatory in San Francisco commissioned a set of masks and, through word of mouth, there became a demand for his handmade character masks.

Bruce’s mask set of 10 characters became popular with universities, high schools and guest teachers all over the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia, India, England and Australia. Touring companies asked for custom sets for their shows.

He made and sold thousands of masks to sustain his family through the summers when school was not in session.

The masks are transformative for the actor, according to Bruce. “They are magic. The same mask on a different actor will be a different personage.

“For teachers, it’s always new and surprising. For students, they are, at first, invited to be other than themselves. Then they become responsible to discover and serve that new life.”

Michel Reeverts, aka Maquette , holds a master of arts degree in art education, serves Alberta Art Works as director and Alberta Street Gallery as a board member. She is also a practicing artist. Contact her at Maquette@AlbertaArtWorks.org

If you want to get your art, political message, logo or just your name out there, stickers are the media of choice to reach the masses. Slap tagging – or sticker bombing – has been a viral art medium since before the internet even existed.

Spray paint or a marker takes time and increases the chance of being caught. Stickers can be slapped up quickly. It is mostly an urban art form that focuses on walking, public transit and public spaces where people wait and look at their surroundings.

Stickers are easy, cheap and can be made at home in bulk or printed at the local print shop. Priority Mail stickers can be obtained for free from the post office and make a great surface for drawings or tags. Sticker artists often trade their work with each other to expand their distribution.

Some slap their stickers next to friends’ stickers to say hello, or they place stickers next to better-known artists to get noticed. This is called spot jockeying or side busting.

Portland is a hub for slap tagging and, over the course of the past decade, has elevated Portland to be the sticker capital with Alberta and Mississippi districts having high concentrations. That’s because both have specific walls that are popular with local and national sticker artists.

Like other forms of graffiti, slap tagging can be seen as an unsightly nuisance that contributes to the negative impact on livability. Others see it as a form of chaotic and free human expression – an attempt to reclaim boring environments or public space.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation spends an average $42,000 a year on cleaning street signs and helps coordinate community volunteers to clean graffiti.

There are also individuals who take the task upon themselves – which can end up stripping the reflective surfaces off street signs and rendering them illegible at night.

Michel Reeverts, aka Maquette, holds a master of arts degree in art education, serves Alberta Art Works as director and Alberta Street Gallery as a board member. She is also a practicing artist. Contact her at Maquette@AlbertaArtWorks.org

After seeing friends share photos of themselves standing in front of wings painted on walls, artist Stefan Senna was inspired to direct his talent toward a public purpose.

Stefan lives on the section of Alberta Street designated as a bike corridor. “After the last year and a half being so challenging on everyone, and me having my own experiences, I decided to focus on things that would be fun – things that make me feel good.”

The artist got to work painting wings cut from wood, with each set in support of or to acknowledge an aspect of local culture. The first set in the Freedom Wings Project are dedicated to equality and freedom for all people of all back–grounds, race, gender and identity.

The second set, the Butterfly Wings Project, is dedicated to all of the teachers who helped students traverse the challenges of the pandemic. Stefan is currently working on the Flying Fish Wings Project, in honor of beautiful oceans.

The Phoenix Wings Project comes next. “I asked my teenager which set of wings would be a good symbol for all of the challenges that our kids have faced during the pandemic,” he explained. “His response was the Phoenix. It seemed fitting.”

Stefan intends to install the wings from 70th to Mississippi avenues, and a map of the wings is part of his final plan.

The artist is seeking residents on the south side of the bike corridor streets to host sets of wings. To participate, contact him at StefanSenna@gmail.com, or help fund the project GoFundMe.com/f/cku8w4-wings-of-freedom.

Michel Reeverts, aka Maquette, holds a master of arts degree in art education, serves Alberta Art Works as director and Alberta Street Gallery as a board member. She is also a practicing artist. Contact her at Maquette@AlbertaArtWorks.org