Featured Database! Mango!

Interested in learning a new language? Why not come back to school in the fall with a brilliant new skill! Did you know that your library card gives you access to Mango, a great, interactive, language tutorial? It’s a wonderful tool, and will help you to brush up on your Spanish, Danish, or 63 other languages (seriously, you have to see this list–amazing choices, they just added Cherokee!).

So what are you waiting for? Try Mango, and learn a new language! You just need your library card and your PIN (don’t know that one? try the last 4 digits of your phone number, or contact the library to reset it).

Book Review: Snapshot Poetics

In a time when American poetry was still constrained by formalist rules, the Beat Generation broke down convention in favor of uninhibited expression. Suddenly, poetry became immediate, unposed, a moment captured on the page. Allen Ginsberg‘s work is emblematic of this style, and, in Snapshot Poetics, his photographs are too. Find this book on wccls.org or on the shelf here at OCAC: PS 3513 .I74 Z475 1993.

Featured weekend art event: OCAC Experimental Fashion Event at Disjecta!

Friday, April 24th, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Disjecta Contemporary Art Center is pleased to present Oregon College of Art and Craft’s Experimental Fashion Event. This collaborative event is created by the OCAC Fiber Department’s Experimental Fashion class, which addresses the relationships, crossover and theories of fashion, costume, sculpture and culture. The students will be showcasing a variety of concepts and skill sets through costumes, contemporary fashion, installation, and performance.

The Experimental Fashion Event features the work of Donald Bergstrom, Jennifer Cooke, Meera Duncan, Tesla Kohl, Phoenix McNamara, Madeline Mitchell, William Moss, Rebecca Owen, Chardonnay Tobar, Una Rose, Emily Silvis, and Elizabeth Supica.

Participating students are from the OCAC BFA program and the OCAC and PNCA joint Applied Craft + Design MFA program.

Admission is FREE, people! So get over there! More info: http://www.disjecta.org/exhibitions-events/ocac-experimental-fashion-event 

Wednesday, April 29: Anders Ruhwald | MFA AC+D Visiting Artist Lecture

Anders Ruhwald lives and works at Cranbrook Academy of Art outside of Detroit, USA. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2005.Ruhwald has had more than 20 solo exhibitions for the last 10 years in museums and galleries around the world including Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (UK), The Museum of Art and Design (Denmark) and the Saarinen House (USA). During the this time his work has also been shown in more than 80 group shows at venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Fondation d’entreprise Richard (Paris), Pinakotek der Moderne (Munich), Taipei Yingge Museum (Taiwan) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen) His work is represented in over 20 public museum collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), The Denver Art Museum (USA), The Detroit Institute of Art (USA), Musée des Arts Décoratifs (France), The National Museum (Sweden), The Museum of Art and Design (Denmark) and Taipei Yingge Museum (Taiwan).

In 2011 he was awarded the Gold Prize at the Icheon International Biennial in South
Korea. He also received a Danish Art Foundation three-year work-stipend in 2010 and the Sotheby’s Prize (UK) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2007. Reviews include publications like the Guardian (UK), Wallpaper (UK), Artforum.com (US), Financial Times (UK) and Avenuel (Rep. of S. Korea).

Ruhwald has lectured and taught at universities and colleges around Europe and North-America since 2006 and has held an associate professorship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently he is the Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Ceramics Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA.

Co-Sponsor Mudshark Studios

Lectures are free + open to the public.

April 29, 2015
AC+D STUDIOS | 421 NE 10TH AVENUE
6:30-8:30pm

New Resource: Legal Information Reference Center

The navigation of legal issues can be difficult and complicated. EBSCO’s Legal Information Reference Center aims to uncomplicate these challenges with handy guides and access to forms. Here’s a description from Arlene Weible at the Oregon State Library:

The State of Oregon Law Library has purchased EBSCO’s Legal Information Reference Center. This resource is accessible from any browser, any location, within the borders of the state of Oregon. People do not need to come to a library for access.

This service contains a large number of NOLO legal reference books and various legal forms. NOLO publications are books on common legal topics aimed at non-lawyers. The NOLO books are a good resource for people looking to get a handle on common legal problems.

Oregonians simply go to the link, enter their county of residence for their “patron id” and “oregon” as the password. Neither is case sensitive.

Libraries are free to link this great legal resource to your website and encourage people to use it. If people need more assistance with this and other legal resources they can contact their local county law library or the State Law Library.

Book Review: Self-Portrait as Your Traitor

Is it a poem or a painting? The answer is yes. Or it is a sculpture and a story, an illustration and an essay. Debbie Millman’s work happens where visual art meets the written word, and in Self-Portrait as Your Traitor, the resulting images are compelling both in narrative and design. See for yourself! Click the cover image to find this title on wccls.org.

Tonight: Conversations on Craft

From ocac.edu:

Conversations on Craft

April 16, 2015, 7:00 PM

Vollum Building, painting/drawing studio

Public Forum

CONVERSATIONS ON CRAFT is a forum addressing the skill and art of creativity. Focused on a making space, the intention is to incite discourse and exercise motivations, aspirations, even prejudices that surround Contemporary Craft, particularly Craft’s persistent presence in a contemporary culture suspicious of labored beauty and material literacy.A public forum, with speakers including:

• Howard Risatti (Moderator) – Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art and Critical Theory , Department of Art History, Virgina Commonwealth University
• Don Crow – Instructor in Residence OCAC MFA in Craft
• Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen – Ford Family Foundation sponsored Golden Spot Artist in Residence at OCAC, Adjunct Instructors at Portland State University
• Jeffry Mitchell – Collins sponsored Artist in Residence at OCAC
• Ben Buswell – Ford Family Foundation sponsored Golden Spot Artist in Residence at OCAC, Instructor in Visual Arts at Portland Community College

This public forum is part of OCAC’s Speaker Series, Connection: Intersecting Tradition and Innovation, brings guest makers and thinkers to Portland to engage in a conversation about Craft and its role in the current practice of art and design.

Art of the Story comes to OCAC on Saturday!

From http://www.wccls.org/festival:

This year, Washington County Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS) hosts its 11th Annual Storytelling Festival — Art of the Story April 11-18. The week-long storytelling extravaganza features sixteen storytelling performances throughout Washington County.

Performers in this year’s festival include both local and national storytellers – Judith Black, Sam Payne, Kuniko Yamamoto, Chetter Galloway, and performers from Portland’s Brody Theater company.

Admission is always free and all festival performances are designed for the enjoyment of adults.

See the schedule of events

Please call 503-846-3222 no less than 3 business days prior to an event to schedule assistive listening devices or sign language interpreters.

Saturday, April 18

11:00-1:00
The Techniques of Telling: Judith Black
(For adults & ages 10+)
The wonderful thing about storytelling is that it is a folk art rather than a fine art. Far from having to balance on your toes or hit high C, all one has to do is figure out how they tell best. During this workshop we will play with and stretch all of your potential assets for making a story you love come alive for listeners. From dramatic use of your voice, an expressive body, an imagination that creates images in thin air, to dancing fingers, participants will play with techniques. Ultimately, you will emerge with a broader palette of expressive tools to choose from in your storytelling.

1:00
Story Swap with Portland Storytellers’ Guild
(Adults & children ages 10+)
An opportunity for members of the public to tell a 5-minute story. Designed for both beginners to seasoned tellers interested in testing out new material. Meet and mingle with members of the local storytellers’ guild.

Oregon College of Art & Craft
Centrum Studio (see campus map – PDF): 8245 SW Barnes Rd, Portland, OR 97225

Featured Periodical: Selvedge

You don’t have to be a fiber artist to appreciate the visual appeal of Selvedge — just look at this cover image from Issue #63, Pattern:

Each issue of this magazine is full of richly colored and lovingly photographed examples of fiber art. If you do happen to be a fiber artist, you’ll also find Selvedge to be an educational and inspirational resource. Come on by to take a look!

From selvedge.org:

Selvedge is a design-led, 100 page, bi-monthly magazine that covers every facet of textiles – interiors, fashion, art, craft, travel and shopping – in an intelligent and inspiring way.

Founded in 2003 the magazine revolutionised the way textiles are presented and quickly became the world’s leading textile publication. Six times a year we cover textiles made with time, thought and skill in a magazine produced in exactly the same way – with quality writing, stunning photography and original illustration. Focusing on textiles doesn’t mean we turn our back on the rest of the world… the exact opposite is true. We see the world though a textile lens but cast our eye far and wide looking for links between our subject and achievements in other fields from architecture to archeology.

More flexible than other textile magazines – Selvedge fits seamlessly into a creative lifestyle.

Book Review: 33 Artists in 3 Acts

So, you read Seven Days in the Art World and you’re ready for more? Good news! Sarah Thornton’s follow-up, 33 Artists in 3 Acts is another entertaining view of the art world and is available now! This book focuses on artists’ personas, politics, and personal relationships. Thornton asks, over and over, “What is an artist?” and never receives the same answer twice. How would you answer if the question were put to you?

From Book News:

Thornton, best selling author of “Seven Days in the Art World,” explores the question “what is an author” in this collection of profiles of thirty-three contemporary artists. Artists range from international superstars to art teachers. Stories are divided in to three acts: Politics, Kinship and Craft. Each “scene” provides intimate details into the author’s life and explores the triumphs, crises and habits of successful artists. Examples of each artist’s work are also included. Artists profiled include Ai Weiwei, Carroll Dunham, and Jack Bankowsky. Artists and lay people alike will find this a fascinating and enjoyable read. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)