The exhibit “Matter” continues through February with artists: Mike Andrews, Catharine Draper, Karen Gelardi, Amy Honchell, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, and Mark Newport. The exhibit is curated by Catharine Draper as part of SPACE Gallery’s annual “Artists Curating Artists” series.
Singer Morgan Taylor and his band of musicians cater to an active and often verbally inquisitive audience—perfect for children and families. They musically narrate the story of Gustafer Yellowgold, a golden alien who comes from the sun, blessed with a magnetism for making friends with some of earth's odder creatures. It all comes to life in a "moving book" of songs and pictures, projected in full color onto a big screen, with subtitles for early readers. The New York Times called the Gustafer show and accompanying live music "a cross between 'Yellow Submarine' and Dr. Seuss, filtered through the lens of the Lower East Side." Time Out NY Kids magazine called it "Beatlesque...very beautiful." http://www.gustaferyellowgold.com/
Boston's Beat Circus was formed in 2002 by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brian Carpenter. Their new record, Dreamland is the first part of Carpenter's Weird American Gothic trilogy, a bizarre old-time gypsy and carnival exploration of personal songs about family and fatherhood in the tradition of Southern Gospel songwriters and Southern Gothic literature. Carpenter leads a nine-piece band of tuba, viola, guitars, banjo, violin and bass featuring members of Kayo Dot, Xiu Xiu, Karate and Cul De Sac. Arborea combines the common emotional thread running through ancient British murder ballads and the more evocative music found deep in the Appalachian Mountains. Featuring Buck Curran on acoustic, slide, and electric guitars, flutes, banjo, and vocals, along with Shanti Curran, who sings lead and plays banjo, percussion, gutiar, bowed strings, and ukulele. http://www.myspace.com/beatcircusdreamland
2.9.2008 |Sat |
Doc. Film: Kurt Cobain About a Son
Doors open at 7:00pm, film starts at 7:30pm, $7, $5 for members, all ages (viewer discretion is advised) Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com
Kurt Cobain About A Son is a an intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain told entirely in his own voice - without celebrity sound bytes, news clips, sensational tabloid angles or attempts to mimic a grunge aesthetic. Instead, filmmaker AJ Schnack has created something closer to an autobiography of Cobain - a profound first hand account of Cobain's own successes and failures, thoughts and experiences, allowing the audience unprecedented intimacy with a legendary figure in popular culture - set against the wildly divergent Pacific Northwest locations that loomed so large in Cobain's life.
http://www.kurtcobainaboutason.com/
2.14.2008 |Thurs | Sole & The Skyrider Band with Telephone Jim Jesus and Brzowski
With some fairness, Sole's musical arc to this point might be described as a series of battle raps whose range of targets has gradually widened. In 2005 he began working with Bud Berning, aka Skyrider, an electronic musician and dub bassist, who introduced Sole to musician John Wagner and ethnomusicologist William Ryan Fritch, who added their own distinct musical voices to Berning's sampler and keyboard-based ideas and Sole's lyrics. Telephone Jim Jesus has a new album, 'Anywhere Out Of The Everything,' a testament to the loneliness, abandon, growth, and madness of a life lived on the road. Portland emcee Brzowski brings a gothic sensibility to a dark, eerie style. http://www.myspace.com/soleandtheskyriderband
2.15.2008 | Fri | Doc. Film: Doxita: The Hours of Our Lives
Doxita is a traveling festival of documentary films that are under 40 minutes in length. The program, comprised of approximately two hours of film, represents a wide variety of documentary - domestic and foreign, super-short and longer format, serious and funny. It is designed to profile the great content and artistic vision that non-fiction short films provide but that viewers don't often get a chance to see. http://www.doxita.org/
2.16.2008 |Sat | Company with Modern Syndrome and Honey Clouds
Those who have seen Portland's Christopher Teret perform solo around town should relish the opportunity to catch a rare live performance with his full collaborative band Company supporting their excellent new release, Old Baby. Index Magazine writes "folk rock is the label closest to Company's sound, but their rock references are more Clash, Joy Division, and Meat Puppets than '60s California." Honey Clouds featuring former/current members of Harpswell Sound, Diamond Sharp and The Bollard [!] make their much-anticipated SPACE debut and local rock wunderkinds Modern Syndrome open and unveil their new EP of recent recordings that should be enjoying heavy rotation on local CD players for some time to come. Doors open at 9pm, music starts at 9:30pm, $7, 18+ http://www.abandcalledcompany.com/ http://www.myspace.com/honeycloudshttp://www.myspace.com/modernsyndrome
Mark Newport is an Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Fiber Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit. You can see his knit superhero costumes in the gallery this month at SPACE. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, has been recognized with grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and is included in numerous private collections and the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Racine Art Museum, and Fundacion Coleccion Jumex, Mexico. http://www.lyonswiergallery.com/artists/newport/marknewport.html
Billy The Kid is a sensitive and humorous vérité portrait of Billy, a 15-year-old outsider growing up in small-town Maine. He's into heavy metal and martial arts, is desperate to find a girlfriend, and aspires to a career as an actor and rock star, yet a troubled past and ongoing behavioral issues have left him marked. But he is unapologetic about his personality and refuses to be victimized, creating his own techniques to help him survive in an environment of pain, conformity, and prejudice. Billy is funny, sharp, strangely wise for his age, and remarkably candid. We witness life from his perspective-from intimate conversations with his mother, to being bullied at school, to his fantasies of becoming a superhero. We also experience the exhilarating pangs of first love as Billy pursues Heather, a shy 16-year-old waitress. Doors open at 7:00pm, film starts at 7:30pm, $7, $5 for members, all ages http://www.billythekiddocumentary.com/
Hailing from Massachusetts, Caspian is a dynamic instrumental band with heart. SPIN Magazine said of their recent CD; "with crushingly pretty melodies, Thor-approved feedback, loops andguitar hooks, "The Four Trees" transcends post-rock cliches with meticulously crafted songcraft." Sumner McKane, known the world over via his popularity on NPR's "Echoes" program, collects images as if they were postcards sent directly to his conciousness. The compositions and live performances by the Sumner McKane Group vary from sparse ambience to rich sonic washes, pretty, thoughtful songs to aggressive suggestions. http://www.caspianmusic.net/ http://www.sumnermckane.com/home.html
2.23.2008 |Sat | UpBeats: A Kris Clark Dance Party
Cabin fever? Seasonal Affective Disorder? No problem. Turn your February funk into FABruary Fun! Transform your winter blahs into Dance-floor Aaaaahhhs! Kris Clark delivers UpBeats, his tenth and funkiest SPACE dance party yet starring premiere body motivator Marcus Caine (Zodiac, Una) and brings-you-smiles, DJ Niles (Brooklyn, NY). Move your body. Free your soul.
Favorite psych-and-prog-spiritual pioneers Black Mountain come to Portland in support of "In The Future," their second full-length album that resonates with the same epic ring, beloved deep rock touchstones and genuine folk fragility that made their self-titled debut full-length an instant classic. Their debut album garnered an impressive amount of critical acclaim, including Pitchfork's prestigious "Best New Music" tag. Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair; French for "good winter" is a greeting, a celebration and a sentiment, and spelled wrong on purpose) consist of thick layers draped in lush choral walls, with rarely more than an ancient acoustic guitar or the occasional bass drum providing structure. The majority of their record is sung in falsetto, which painfully expresses the meanings behind its overt, yet strangely entangled words. http://www.blackmountainarmy.com/
In the latest installment of our listening series, national radio producer Josh Gleason presents stories of people and animals finding themselves face to face with one another, often in unexpected ways. Sometimes it's a welcome thing, like when the Ivory-billed woodpecker returned to the area around Brinkley, Arkansas. More often then not it creates strange instances, when a call to pest control may be the most tempting option. With live music by Tempera and Over a Cardboard Sea. Presented in partnership with the Public Radio Exchange http://www.prx.org
