Portland Arts Collective brings art back to downtown

Published 2:30 pm Thursday, January 4, 2024

A new art gallery has quietly opened in downtown Portland, with an old flavor. The Portland Arts Collective opened in October 2023 and has been staging its second show, “Women’s Work.”

The nonprofit is in a space at 120 S.W. Harvey Milk St., which used to be a Tibetan crafts shop, and is next door to a homeless services agency, which keeps the street lively. A sign in the window warns against using the doorway as a bathroom. As the founder Aurora Josephson told Pamplin Media, she always keeps the front door locked so she can control who enters.

The members are all part of Josephson’s orbit. “They can be visual artists, musicians, writers, or dancers — it’s whoever I ask to be in the collective,” Josephson said. “Once you have participated in an action, you are part of the collective.”

The gallery takes 33% of the dollar value of sales, and the artist keeps 67%, which is more generous to the artist than the usual 50%.

The group — which includes former gallery owners Mark Woolley and Dan Ness — stripped the carpet, removed the tile, ground off the tar paper and finished the wood floors. They also painted the sheetrock walls white to contrast with the 19th century brickwork. The long space ends in a closet and a door that leads to the building’s shared bathrooms.

Dream of the ‘90s

The feel is very 1990s Portland, when a bunch of artists could take over a warehouse or storefront at $1 a square foot and showcase their aesthetic. In this case the exhibit, “Women’s Work,” features paintings and sculptures by mid-career to mature Portland artists (including Aurora’s mother, Mary Josephson). It shows through Jan. 12. The title riffs on the name of the show “Women’s Work” at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Lyndhurst was used in filming HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” which is a far cry from gritty Second and Stark, as it was known before being dedicated to gay rights leader Harvey Milk.

The collective was Josephson’s idea. She filed the paperwork.

“Some private, anonymous donors made a generous donation which enabled me to take it to the next level, pay the first and last month’s rent and make the filing. Now I am doing it on my own. The goal is to be more self-sustaining,” Josephson said.

Josephson is paying the rent for now, but will solicit for grants and donations once the 501c3 paperwork is complete. “It’s definitely a needed organization in Portland, it fills a little niche. PICA brings out-of-town artists but no one gets to play with them.”

What is art?

Josephson is also an artist. “I make dump, junk art, the tree lights are mine in the window. But I don’t sell my art, my parents are artists.” Her mother Mary is an established artist, her late stepfather Grenon a star.

Josephson digs around in the 1940s landfills in the Bay Area, and looks for sea glass on beaches. “They burned trash on the beaches for years, so there’s glass all over the beach at places like Fort Bragg. There’s just more people and more stuff in California,” she said.

Josephson also makes music. She splits her time between Portland and California, often performing as a singer, and teaching in the Bay Area. Josephson is a part of a nine-episode radio opera called “The Electronic Lover,” with libretto by Beth Lissick and music by Lisa Mezzacappa from the Bay Area.

Coming highlights

• PDX Arts Collective will be part of the Winter Light Festival with artist Dave Meeker, Feb. 1-28. Josephson said the space will host more than just art on walls.
• There will be a

Butoh

• festival in early April to coincide with the cherry blossoms in Waterfront Park. The salon-sized space is sure to prove popular with those who want to see the Japanese art form up close.
• There will also be a Walt Curtis memorial show of visual art in March.
• Eva Lake will curate and show of other artists’ abstract at in August.
• Marne Lucas, artist and end-of-life doula, will be there in September doing Bardo Project, which is art and community outreach around end of life — art therapy for people who are actively dying.

Fresh paint

The gallery also has a deal with the Hi-Lo Hotel up the street to show some of its artists in the hotel’s window, to create some crosstown foot traffic.

“Women’s Work” includes acrylic paintings by Angelina Woolley. Her portraits of women in brightly-colored dresses are bold and vivid, yet done with great control. They capture movement with a few brush strokes.

Melinda Thorsnes painted a lot during the COVID-19 lockdown. One shows a man partially in the nude with a T-shirt, standing in a suburban driveway. He is wearing bright red Crocs and is peeling his face back to show his true face. The woman is dancing in a high-waisted dress with a long billowing skirt, barefoot, with her dog at her feet. A small, blond girl on a bike whizzes by. Art is one way we can look back at what we were feeling in the lockdown, and what we learned from it.

Josephson concluded, “You can make a stand in Portland. And it’s important that we do that, we all do our part to get Portland back to the place that I want it, that I left it in 1992 when I moved to California, and moved back right before COVID. I want to see this city thriving. I want to see a transformation happen where there’s more art, more culture, more happening, not less. And I think this is a good step in that direction. But I also want to involve the community and not just have you looking at people’s art from afar.”

Hours: noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, and by appointment anytime

Where: 120 S.W. Harvey Milk St.

Info: pdxartscollective

@gmail.com