Crying for a chance

On First Thursday, people were laughing and pointing as others cried sometimes-fake tears.

The Portland Art Center (PAC) opened three collaborative exhibits and an independently curated group show last Thursday and “Crybaby’s, or a Sad State of Affairs” was the most popular attraction. PAC is the only non-profit and completely contemporary gallery space in Portland.

In “Crybaby’s,” small televisions tucked lovingly into quilted blankets inside white wicker bassinets release a great collective bawl into the installation space. The young and old faces cry, sometimes sadly, and often with laughter besides the tears in their eyes.

While Kerry Davis and Jim Neidhardt’s artist statement for the show asserts that the difference between real and comically exaggerated tears was irrelevant, the amount of mirth involved varies accordingly with age. The teenagers and kids laugh the most and cry the fakest, while the adults’ tears are often modest and sad, and an older woman on her own pedestal near the door seriously explains why people cry until I cry too, grabbing one of the thoughtfully provided tissues. The single baby in the group consistently looks serious and cries least of all.

Age differentiation works with Davis and Neidhardt’s thesis, which states the world provides many reasons for tears and that politically conscious adults probably have a lot more to cry about than youth. The “state” of social or political sadness relates to Neidhardt’s recent work in the “Blots, Nots, and Spots” series, which are acrylic paintings in which the main figures are hooded or blacked out, as if they are victims of political crime or possibly awaiting capital punishment.

Less people lingered over the traveling exhibit in the bright front room of the Main Gallery. “Console” is a unique collaboration in which the three artists installed their own work in an arrangement that appears all at once as a series of satellites that, at times, spill over into each other. Aili Schmeltz’s contribution-modular environments encased in clear plastic and resting on handmade placemats atop large yellow cushions-is itself an arrangement of satellites. It reminds the viewer that the familiar shapes of a golf course, a stadium, a corporate park and a factory make sense on Earth about as much as they would on the moon, or floating alone in space.

A mesmerizing piece by Colin Ives and Andrew Carson, from Eugene, also had the smallest crowd, possibly because of the cramped size of the space in the upstairs Light and Sound Gallery. As a result, anyone who cared to could spend some time completely alone with “Swimmer,” a video projection that travels from the floor up the wall, across the ceiling and back down again on a worn wooden wheel.

The loop represents ambivalence toward our relationship with technology, but the image, surrounded by a blue glow of water, is uniformly calming, with its even, precise, and utterly identical breaststrokes. Unlike the restless vacuum of glowing television or computer screens, the image feels trustworthy and personal, and has the homemade aspect of a memory or family camcorder.

Next door in the Open Space Community Gallery is “New High Renaissance,” a show curated by the NHR group’s founder, Alan Morris Bell. The highly technical paintings utilize the techniques of the old masters, and many are gorgeous studies of color and light in landscape and figures.

In particular, John Van Dreals’ oily smooth backgrounds create a mood that has a life of its own in both his Oregon landscapes and, in “Dusk-Lit Figure Seated in Tranquil Impersonation,” the expansive negative space behind a woman’s head. Similarly, Juliette Aristides’ triptychs feature figures in the center panel with matching landscapes of sky, nature or city skylines. It’s an intense study of the otherwise invisible aura surrounding the lifelike central figures.

Plenty of people showed up at the opening for the future rather than for the current exhibit–PAC is giving away over 200, 24 inch x 24 inch, untreated wood panels to any upcoming (or established) artist in Portland, and requesting them back by Dec. 1 for a holiday exhibit opening on Dec. 6.

The event will be a fundraiser for PAC, which is collecting 75 percent of the profits, and a chance for new artists to show work in a First Thursday opening. It also gives local artists the chance to support each other and PAC by buying the work, which will be priced uniformly at $300.

The Portland Art Center at 32 NW 5th Ave. is open Wednesday-Sunday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. All four exhibits will be up until Oct. 26. An artist’s talk with Jim Neidhardt, Kerry Davis, and Colin Ives will be held Oct. 21 and admission is $2 for non-PAC members.