Artist Emily Stone, showing her new site-specific installation "House/Hole" for our next TSA Gallery work, has requested that guests plan to attend a closing night event on November 1, Day of the Dead, instead of an opening this Friday, October 1.
"House/Hole" is an ongoing, transforming work happening outdoors on SE 36th Avenue in Portland, between Salmon and Taylor. It will begin October 1 and evolve throughout the month, sometimes with live presence and performance by Emily. We invite you to wander by and check it out any time... and hope you will join us for the Day of the Dead ritual.
For more about TSA / Temporary Semi-Autonomous Art, keep reading...
The TSA Gallery series of temporary, semi-autonomous art works, is a production of New Oregon Arts & Letters. Project instigator Tiffany Lee Brown says she sees TSA as a natural extension of how Portland organically creates and disseminates creativity. "It's where home meets public art. The front garden where the 2010 episodes of TSA is taking place represents the intersection of public and home life. It's a liminal space."
Using your own garden or sidewalk as an art venue makes the art experience accessible to everyone—artists, viewers, and curators alike. "We didn't have very many legit venues twenty years ago," she adds, "and nobody had money. So in the nineties in Portland, we put on salons in our houses, for poetry and art. Growing up in Oregon in the eighties, it was all about bands in basements, underground parties." In bigger cities, lofts and warehouses might play a bigger role in DIY creative production, but here, houses and gardens are plentiful.
These days, Appendix Project Space near Alberta Street turns a home garage into a gallery, while the thematic territory of domesticity sparks local shows like the M. K. Guth-curated "House Arrest" at Worksound Gallery and Emily Stone's production "Domestic/Wild" at Performance Works NorthWest, a theatre venue where a proper studio and stage sometimes overlap with personal space; the director lives on-site, and her home kitchen doubles as a lobby during shows. Stone, Brown, and other women artists of New Oregon (then called 2GQ) mounted another collision of domesticity and theater called House Bound at Performance Works in 2007.
Brown says, "I'm into exploring how art and other forms of expression manifest themselves in public space, especially unsanctioned space... but also how our society marginalizes and dismisses the creative and community work we do at home." Institutions, money, and the media often play no part in that work, a fact that has been highlighted by influential feminist artists and writers like Karen Finley, Linda Montano, and Judy Chicago.
Southeast Portland's relaxed creative feel is part of the point. "TSA is starting off in the Sunnyside neighborhood," says Brown. "There's a poetry garden a few blocks away. This is where City Repair transformed ideas about urban living by transforming an intersection. The Horse Project does well in this part of Portland, too—those plastic ponies tied to the city's old horse tie-up rings, started by Scott Wayne Indiana."
Applying a curatorial hand to this homespun, DIY tradition felt natural to Brown, who has explored intimate space and unsanctioned public space in art, performance, and writing. "I spent several years investigating home and my immediate neighborhood through art," she explains. "I was going through an intense process of grief and found myself kind of confined a lot. Plus I work at home as a freelancer, and now I'm pregnant. I thought, well, maybe woman's place is in the home, after all. Maybe art's place is in the home, too."
It doesn't hurt that New Oregon is headquartered in an office—a home office, of course—right in the neighborhood. Next spring, Brown hopes to curate TSA events and installations throughout eastside Portland. —Mandy Catalano
ABOUT NEW OREGON ARTS & LETTERS
The new publisher of PLAZM magazine and presenter of the New Oregon Interview Series, this nonprofit organization was formerly called 2GQ, part of 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts. The group has presented literature, performance, art, and publications in Portland for over eight years.
The mission of New Oregon Arts & Letters is to create and present arts, literature, and media. Its programming encourages collaboration, supports interdisciplinary practices, and contextualizes creative culture. Participants are committed to fostering innovation, integrity, and critical dialogue across a broad range of communities.
Along with publishing and media projects, New Oregon is known for performance work and multidisciplinary extravaganzas like "Exquisite Language" at the Heathman Hotel and "Light + Shadows" at Yoga Shala of Portland—shows that involved over 100 artists, writers, and musicians. Earlier this decade, the group combined literary readings with performance at Wordstock, Powell's City of Books, Gallery 500, and other Portland venues.
In 2010, New Oregon launched the TSA Gallery of temporary, semi-autonomous art. Thanks to grants from RACC, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and the Oregon Cultural Trust, this year New Oregon will also publish a new issue of PLAZM magazine and a new collective content website at plazm.org.
New Oregon collaborates with DIY-style producers in a cooperative approach as well, creating experimental and exploratory work including "House Bound" at Performance Works NorthWest, the "Public Works" series of works in progress at Someday Lounge, and "The Easter Island Project," at locations throughout the US and South America.
New Oregon Arts & Letters
PO Box 2863
Portland, Oregon 97208 USA
www.neworegon.org
inquiries: neworegonarts att gmail.com
join the mailing list: neworegonarts-subscribe@googlegroups.com
