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Tag Archives: Portland

Studio Visits: Blaine Fontana

Another highlight of AM’s Portland trip for the Space//Form exhibition at Breeze Block Gallery was a chance to meet up with long time online friend Blaine Fontana and take a look around his studio. Blaine’s studio is located in a wonderful 1911 brick built 4 storey former seed warehouse in Portland. The building is now occupied solely as artist studios and retains a plenitude of its original features in addition to its high ceilings. The interior of Blaine’s headquarters has been meticulously crafted in his own style, employing an […]

Studio Visits: Mike Sutfin – “Creeping Nomadic” @ Grass Hut

The other weekend, AM swung by Oakland-based painter/illustrator Mike Sutfin’s studio as he was putting the final touches to his Creeping Nomadic show at Grass Hut in Portland that runs til November 30th. The show features a series of small oil paintings on board (none of which are digitally colored!), ink illustrations, t-shirts, and hand-painted versions of his toy, Battle Man and Battle Rat (which were painted by him and other artists). The gallery already has already posted the artwork online, which you can check […]

Studio Visits: AJ Fosik

AJ Fosik’s sculptural artworks almost need no introduction. In a world where it is increasingly difficult to have a true individual voice as an artist, Fosik’s work has an original aesthetic honed over the years from his roots in graffiti, street art and two-dimensional drawing. AJ decided that his imagery would be better represented in three dimensions around seven years ago, and has continued to immerse himself in the medium of handcrafted woodwork for his iconography inspired art ever since. Using modern woodworking techniques (he doesn’t consider himself […]

Preview / Studio Visit: Mark Warren Jacques – ‘Each Story In This Story Has A Story’ @ Breeze Block Gallery

AM has always seen Mark Warren Jacques (interviewed) as much as a storyteller as an artist since we became immersed in his work a number of years ago. His latest solo exhibition opens this Thursday at Portland’s Breeze Block Gallery and is entitled Each Story In This Story Has A Story. Heartfelt sentiments interlaced with abstracted narrative, explosive colours and the very tightest of line-work are just some of the elements that are to be found within his work. We got to spend some time with Mark and […]

Openings: “Live Free” curated by Mike Maxwell @ Hellion Gallery

Opening on the same night as Space//Form in Portland, artist Mike Maxwell (pictured on the right above with Jocelyn Duke, Mark Dean Veca and Hellion owner Matt Wagner) curated a group exhibition at Hellion Gallery. Taking the exhibition’s title Live Free from the regular series of podcast interviews with fellow artists and creatives, and also his own ethos on life (see Mike’s tattooed knuckles in one of our pictures below), Maxwell brought together a selection of artists he has interviewed over time. With the podcast […]

Openings: “Space//Form” @ Breeze Block Gallery (Part 2)

Following directly on from Part 1 of our coverage of the busy Space//Form opening, AM now delves a little deeper pictorially into the artwork created for this huge group exhibition of 110 artists with a series of pictures where the art is more viewable (like the Mark Dean Veca installation above). To recap, all of the participating artists were given an identical 10×10 inch cradled timber panel by exhibition sponsor Ampersand as the medium to work on. The exhibition curator, Arrested Motion’s Sven Davis chose a brief […]

Openings: “Space//Form” @ Breeze Block Gallery (Part 1)

(above – Mark Dean Veca, Sven Davis, Paige Prendergast & Michael Murphy)After months of planning and panel wrangling, the Space//Form group exhibition at Portland’s Breeze Block Gallery opened last week. The group show features 110 artists, each making work thematically linked to Architecture and the environment on a 10×10 inch wooden panel provided by Ampersand – the principal sponsor of the exhibit. Curated by Arrested Motion‘s Sven Davis, each of the paintings was hung in a controlled grid, with the paintings placed randomly as they were unpacked. Installations by […]

Creative Process: Jeff Depner

  Moving on from our recent studio view, and drilling further down into the creative process of the artists involved in the upcoming Space//Form exhibition, we now bring you an insight to how the above piece entitled “Soft- Serve” was created by Vancouver based artist Jeff Depner. Jeff worked on one of the identical 10×10 inch panels that were supplied to all of the artists for the exhibition by Ampersand. The artwork underwent many layers of transition before the final form was arrived at, and we wanted to share the way he […]

Preview: “Space//Form” Group Exhibition @ Breeze Block Gallery

As the opening of the Space//Form group exhibition draws ever nearer, and following on from our studio view, AM brings you a glimpse of some of the work in this huge show. Over 100 artists are participating in the exhibit, which opens on 6th September at Breeze Block Gallery in Portland. The artists were each given the same brief and the same materials to work with and asked to explore and represent their interpretation of space and form within either the natural or built environment. Each piece of […]

Update: Space//Form Group Exhibition @ Breeze Block Gallery

One of the most interesting things about curating a group exhibition of over 100 artists is getting to see behind the scenes as the artists develop their work for the show (Chloe Early seen above). Updates come constantly as the participants share their excitement about creating work for the show, and getting to see  some of the creative process that goes into the work is always a pleasure. Space//Form opens in just a couple of weeks time now in Portland at Breeze Block Gallery and here […]