the grapefruits email is back from spring break!

hello again lovely people! i guess the spring turned out to be busier than i anticipated, because i realize it’s been a couple of months since i last sent out an email like this. oops!

that’s ok though. it’s nice to let yourself move a little slower sometimes, especially during this lovely early summer season. here’s just a tiny selection of the many beautiful things i have seen recently or want to see in the next little bit:

ním and i visited “matrilineal memory”, a solo show by mikaela shafer at the native arts and culture foundation, during a mini southeast portland art walk. it was the first time we had been to an exhibition in this space since back in its YU days, and it felt really good in there. the work was primarily mixed-media collage with sewing, some framed and some photographed and printed on sheer silk, situated around ideas and emotions about motherhood and familial legacies. there was soft music playing and sweetgrass or something similar in the air, which added an enveloping sensory atmosphere of tranquility. the show is no longer up, but hopefully this artist will have more work on view again soon. and now we have a new gallery on our neighborhood viewing list!

this one is for my vermont people! multimedia artist rachel rose’s animated piece “lake valley” is on view at burlington city arts through september 15 (although the gallery is closed until june 26). the artist will be in attendance at the reception on july 12. i haven’t gotten to see this video, which is partly inspired by the history of childhood and children’s stories, but it looks really special and sweet (and it’s only 8 minutes long so kids could probably sit through the whole thing too!). if you want a bit more of a preview/background before visiting the show, check out the first 4 minutes of this interview with the artist, where she talks about her process and the ideas behind “lake valley.”

the oregon contemporary artist’s biennial has been a fixture here for over ten years (it used to be called the portland biennial, but the scope has expanded since its beginnings). i stopped by the opening reception for this year’s edition, curated by jackie im and anuradha vikram on the theme of “care,” and was totally overwhelmed by the number of people in attendance. portland really showed up!

some of my favorite pieces were srijon chowdhury’s welded steel “sigil gate,” which transformed into a mini gallery featuring work from several palestinian artists; rainen knecht’s “gorgon 3 graces” (pictured above), a beautiful and poignant painting/sculpture inspired by fairytales and the vulnerability of childhood; sarah rushford’s performance video “elk woke here once…”, which plays with the cooperative and contextual elements of language; and carla bengston’s “other nations: camo perfume,” a really unusual multimedia project that involved squirrel and snakeskin and a wildlife-themed perfume in a giant snake shaped blown glass bottle.

go see it for yourself! the show is open through august 4. if you’re not in portland, you can also browse the flickr gallery here, and the gallery guide here. the willamette week covered the show here.

another stop on the aforementioned southeast art walk was one grand gallery, where artist brock saunders is showing airbrush paintings in his solo show “valentina.” these soft-focus pictures are a sweet tribute to a beloved dog, and to memory and the passage of time in general. i especially loved the pairing of a portrait of a crow, caught mid-caw, with the cropped view of a shingled rooftop against a blue sky. you can catch “valentina” until this friday, june 21.

i recently visited a new shop here in portland called happy anyway, to see a small show of photos, video, and sculpture by local artist julia barbee. as i’m listing the themes in this work (motherhood, youth, fairytales, imagination), i am suddenly noticing this newsletter has a bit of a theme itself! maybe it’s the nostalgic quality of the summer season that is making me want to revisit childhood memories and feelings… does anyone else feel that way in the summer? maybe i’m just getting old.

anyway, i loved this show. it is full of tiny details and evocative combinations of quasi-historic imagery that feels subconsciously familiar—the virgin mary, classical fluted columns, a bundt cake pan, a stork, etc. i’m also just a fan of any type of multiple or editioned artwork. this one is up through july 28, go see it!

if you didn’t get the chance to see joan nelson’s recent show at adams and ollman, i’m sorry for you! these paintings are beautiful in their digital incarnation, but they are straight up glorious in person. nelson uses oil paint, acrylic, glitter, beads, flocking, and a million other things with equal care and expertise—this is an artist who knows her materials inside out and can coax alchemical magic from them. her paintings take nineteenth-century romantic landscape as their jumping off point and spin them into futuristic scenes look utopian, but perhaps not from a human point of view. writer kaya noteboom offers this deep poetic meditation on the show over at variable west… read it!

i’m really looking forward to charlie salas-humara’s upcoming show at nationale, which opens july 6. i wrote some text for charlie’s last show, which was fairly abstract and incorporated elements of collage. this new show seems to pick up on a rustic/childish pictorial undercurrent that has always been present in his work, but until now has been sublimated underneath layers of chalky white and pink paint. i’m so excited to see these little characters and stories emerge from the canvas after lurking in the background for so long!

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mini review: melanie flood and matt morris, designing women at ILY2

the current exhibition at ILY2 (a.k.a. I Love You Too) in portland is one i have been looking forward to for a while. this is a two-person show with photos by melanie flood and paintings/textiles/fragrance by matt morris, all sort of floating around ideas and feelings of beauty and femininity, with an ominous undercurrent. i have an estranged relationship of my own with these concepts. it felt validating and really moving to see work that takes these things seriously and defies any kind of shortcut to conclusions of empowerment, romance, or capitulation.

melanie’s pictures, with their signature lavender frames, continue to build her world of glossy contemplation. one of my favorites in this show featured a crouching nude (self-portrait?) photographed from below and multiplied to create a ring of blurry figures looming over the camera’s lens. it reminded me of carolee schneeman’s posture during her “interior scroll” performance. other images seemed to pose questions about attraction, violence, youth, and personal agency. there is also a clear sense of humor in all of melanie’s work, which operates in a delicate tripartite balance with references to beauty and fashion advertising alongside gestures of radical personal vulnerability.

matt morris is an artist whose work i have admired for a few years. i saw matt’s paintings online after visiting a show of melanie’s photos at the chicago gallery ruschwoman, which they had curated. in person, the balletic pinks juxtaposed with cement-like greys seemed to play with definitions of hard and soft, a dynamic emphasized by the frozen peaks and ripples of once-buttery paint. a series of four nearly identical paintings of a butt being massaged by a pair of disembodied hands reminded me of a flipbook, while in another painting glamorous faces emerge from the smokey background, some adorned with real crystal brooches. the title of the latter painting is “the women (lee miller, dreaming of these 1942/eileen agar, by a harbour, 1934),” referencing two artists associated with the surrealist movement along with (perhaps?) the famous all-female comedy from 1939. the artist also created a unique perfume for the show, which evokes the “freshness” obsession of personal hygiene products marketed to teen girls in the 90s. gallery attendants spritz the scent around the room regularly during open hours, and would probably spritz visitors if asked (i’m just guessing, they seem cool!).

speaking of cinematic connections, i recently re-watched the epic “grey gardens” at clinton street theater as part of their pride month programming. seeing it again after many years, i was struck by the sense of a shared imaginative space, constructed between mother and daughter within the confines of a falling-apart mansion. i realized that the notorious screaming matches between big and little edie revolve mostly around issues of feminine propriety and failed financial prospects, external pressures that can momentarily evaporate when the two are collaborating on a song or dance routine or sharing an ice cream.

i mention it because it feels relevant to the emerging theme of this edition of the newsletter, which i alluded to before and can describe as having to do with the emotional landscapes of childhood, specifically girlhood, where they come from, and what happens to them when you grow up and become the mother (or don’t). it makes me think of the great line i keep revisiting in the “designing women” PR materials (adapted from exhibition text written by jayne pugh): “who is this designer of women?”