Is it possible for there to be too much glitter? We think not, but it will surely be put to the test next weekend. Two of the Northwest’s most ambitious drag queens are presenting full length shows that blend dance, drag, comedy, blistering soundscapes, and utter hijinkx … with wigs the size of Volkswagons. Kaj-Anne Pepper started out as the youngest member of the infamous performance art drag troupe Sissy Boy in the mid-aughts. He’s since matured into Portland’s youngest grand dame, hosting TBA...
Apr 23, 2016•9 min
Painter Katherine Bradford and her son Arthur (a Portland writer and filmmaker) are having entirely too much fun talking about each other's work. See "Katherine Bradford: Divers and Dreamers" at Adams and Ollman gallery this month.
Apr 23, 2016•11 min
Too soon! Too soon! What are we doing here again, eulogizing one of our musical icons? And yet, there it was: Thursday’s news about the death of Prince. Even Portland's Morrison Bridge (left) went all purple in mourning. We hear an appreciation of his career. Listen up....
Apr 23, 2016•11 min
The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art announced Thursday that a patron has bought a 16,000-square-foot compound at 15 NE Hancock St. and offered it to PICA rent-free for 10 years, with an option to extend the lease 10 more. “We’re moving into a space and not having a capital campaign,” said Ethan Seltzer, PICA’s board president and a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. “This is mind-blowing.” For 21 years, PICA has been a pied piper of contemporary art, le...
Apr 22, 2016•6 min
To prep for Design Week Portland, we're listening back to our guest curator show with user experience (UX) designer Elena Moon. She has this fantastic way of explaining what works and why, and she’s going to lead us through her own work and the designed world, from parking meters to space ships. User Experience 101 - 01:08 We kick off with a quick primer on UX. Whether you’re talking about everyday objects or brand new apps, solid design is anything but accidental. Elena explains why some brands...
Apr 14, 2016•54 min
As the 2016 mayoral race picks up speed, we continue to bring candidates in to the studio to talk about the future of arts and culture in Portland. First-time candidate Sarah Iannarone is a program manager at Portland State University, where she is also a PhD candidate in the School of Urban Studies and Planning. She is on the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Mixed Use Zones Project Advisory Committee and is a small business owner. 1:50 On her vision for Portland arts and c...
Apr 09, 2016•32 min
Our candidate interview series continues this week with Shannon Estabrook, a retired Portland Community College instructor and seasoned political campaigner who has volunteered with Democratic Party campaigns stretching back to Robert Kennedy’s in 1968. Estabrook is now focused on her own campaign for City Commissioner Position 4, and visited us to share her vision of how art and culture fits in to Portland’s future. 3:34 On what art can do for students “[Art] is what motivates us and it’s what ...
Apr 09, 2016•25 min
The latest mayoral candidate to hit the State of Wonder hot seat is David Schor, an assistant attorney general at the Oregon Department of Justice. For a lawyer, Schor is surprisingly artsy: he holds a degree in music from the University of Oregon and has toured the world playing upright and electric bass. We spent time grilling him about his campaign and the future of arts and culture in Portland. 0:00 On his musical background and art he has recently enjoyed 1:40 On his vision for arts and cul...
Apr 09, 2016•22 min
This week's show is filled with joy and sorrow, because there're always two sides to every coin. The Passing of an Oregon Giant - 1:03 Last week the beloved artist Rick Bartow passed away. His boldly colorful, emotive and idiosyncratic works featured creatures on the cusp of the material and the spiritual world, like stories and myths made flesh. Seinabo Sey - 12:49 Swedish performer Seinabo Sey's powerful, soulful delivery betrays the complicated uncertainty that lies beneath the surface of her...
Apr 08, 2016•52 min
Apr 07, 2016•3 min
Apr 07, 2016•4 min
Almost since the release of her first single, "Younger," at the ripe age of 23 in 2013, Gambian-Swedish singer Seinabo Sey has been hailed as a pop sensation. She went on to win the Swedish Grammy for Best Newcomer in 2014 and, after the release of her debut LP, "Pretend," last year, for Best Pop Song in February. Her performance at the Grammys, compared in the European press to Beyonce's SuperBowl show, involved bringing 200 black women on stage to stare silently at the audience while she sang....
Apr 07, 2016•12 min
Almost since the release of her first single, "Younger," at the ripe age of 23 in 2013, Gambian-Swedish singer Seinabo Sey has been hailed as a pop sensation. She went on to win the Swedish Grammy for Best Newcomer in 2014 and, after the release of her debut LP, "Pretend," last year, for Best Pop Song in February. Her performance at the Grammys, compared in the European press to Beyonce's SuperBowl show, involved bringing 200 black women on stage to stare silently at the audience while she sang....
Apr 07, 2016•18 min
Rick Bartow, one of the region’s most striking and accomplished artists, died on Apr. 2 at the age of 69 from complications arising from congestive heart failure. Bartow's sculptures, paintings, and prints have shown everywhere from the White House to the Smithsonian, and they hang in museum collections around the country. His boldly colorful, emotive, and idiosyncratic works refuse to be contained by medium or style or even species. Inspired by his Native American heritage and travels to Mexico...
Apr 05, 2016•11 min
Our columnist in residence, Randy Gragg, directs the John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape. This week he suggested we talk with Gil Kelley about Portland and San Francisco's parallel tracks. Gil is director of citywide planning for the City of San Francisco. He also served for 9 years as Portland Planning director under Mayor Vera Katz, guiding the Pearl District’s ascent, setting the stage for OHSU’s expansion into South Waterfront, and codifying the planning goal that Portland's ...
Apr 02, 2016•24 min
What happens when a conductor, a chanteuse, and a visual artist walk into a dance studio? To start out, you get words and descriptions like “floorography” and “it’s jazz crabs versus hot rocks.” That is, if you’re working with the likes of Pink Martini singer China Forbes, Oregon Symphony music director Carlos Kalmar, and artist Malia Jensen. The dance company BodyVox has always delighted in pushing boundaries, whether defying genre by mixing in things like opera or monsters, or defying physical...
Apr 01, 2016•9 min
Hear the Dandy Warhol's new record early at a dive bar near you; get moved by BodyVox's big collaboration with A-list non-dancers; tune in to an opbmusic session with the Thermals; meet Oregon's new poet laureate and more. BodyVox Brings Its A-Team - 1:01 The dance company BodyVox does not do normal, choosing instead to push boundaries of genre and form. So how are they pushing forward with their new performance, “The Pearl Dive Project”? How about asking eight top-tier artists to choreograph fo...
Apr 01, 2016•51 min
Shelley McLendon struggled for years to find affordable theaters to stage her sell-out adaptations of movies like “Road House” and “The Lost Boys,” as well as sketch and improv comedy shows. “It wasn’t just affecting me — it was affecting everybody else,” McLendon told State of Wonder during an episode she guest curated. “So you had all these companies, from comedy to straight-up drama to dance to poetry, looking for places to put up a show—places that were not only available, but affordable. We...
Mar 28, 2016•11 min
Leviathan bills itself as the monster of all improv shows, and a canny beast it is. It works like this: a guest storyteller tells a series of stories based on suggestions from the audience, and then a group of hardy improvisers riff off those stories through a serious of hilarious sketches. When Leviathan producer Shelley McLendon invited be to risk my dignity on stage, I demurred, intimidated the idea of having to generate not one but multiple stories off the cuff. But as we talked further abou...
Mar 26, 2016•15 min
One of the prime movers we have to thank for Portland’s incendiary comedy scene is Shelley McLendon. She’s the mastermind behind Bad Reputation Productions, which has staged hilarious adaptations of movies like "Road House" and "The Lost Boys." She's a member of several of the city’s top sketch groups, including the Aces and the Liberators. She’s the proprietress of the Siren Theater, a new downtown venue dedicated to the comedy and the zanily theatrical. And she's our guest curator this week, t...
Mar 26, 2016•52 min
Sisters Wendi McLendon-Covey ('Bridesmaids,' 'The Goldbergs,' 'Reno 911') and Portland performer Shelley McLendon on growing up Baptist, how their mom inspired Wendi's character Beverly Goldberg, kissing Nicolas Cage, and the time Shelley grew a tail (or, why you might want to check in with you coccyx). Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/shelley-mclendon-and-wendi-mclendon-covey...
Mar 25, 2016•42 min
We catch up with Precipice Fund grantees Pochas Radicales - you can hear their podcast, echo/hecho right here on Soundcloud. https://soundcloud.com/pochasradicales
Mar 19, 2016•5 min
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down on opbmusic Thao & the Get Down Stay Down's latest release, A Man Alive, is a striking alliance with tUnE-yArDs' electropop virtuoso Merril Garbus, where the band stretches its sound in inventive ways. Host April Baer spoke with Thao about working with Garbus, the band's new direction and how her relationship with her father propelled the direction of the album. Margaret Malone Gets Nominated for a PEN/Hemingway - 9:00 This week, PEN New England revealed tha...
Mar 19, 2016•52 min
Artists Repertory Theatre production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s "We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915" is a nervy farce-meets-race riot. The play follows a troupe of actors — half black, half white — as they struggle to prepare for a presentation about the first genocide of the 20th century, the extermination of the Herero people of Namibia by German soldiers. However, r...
Mar 19, 2016•11 min
Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down teamed up with Merrill Garbus of tUnE yArDs for the new record. Here's music and conversation from this week's show. Catch the full opbmusic session over here: http://www.opb.org/opbmusic/series/sessions/thao-the-get-down-stay-down-live-at-opb/
Mar 17, 2016•8 min
Jim Lee is a regular visitor to city council meetings, frequently encouraging leaders to improve the quality of the city's publicly-owned venues. 00:28 Jim talks about art that's affected him. "In 1995 I was in Ferrara, Italy, giving an acoustics paper at a convention. Ferrara has a provincial opera house that dates from the 1790s. They put on Mozart's "Magic Flute" for us. A period opera in a period house. Period instruments. That absolutely blew my mind." 03:30 On his vision for Portland and i...
Mar 15, 2016•34 min
Bim annotation Bim Ditson's a well-known guy in rock circles, as the drummer for And And And, also for his work on Red Bull's Sound Select series of showcases. He talked to State of Wonder's Rene Bermudez. 00:06 What Bim's checking out lately: bands, bands and more bands "Amazing culture happens in third spaces. It's what makes Portland: this creative class that's a middle class." 01:08 Bim's vision for Portland and the arts "The way that we look at arts and culture in Portland needs to be reall...
Mar 12, 2016•21 min
[image: 20160310_stupidbird_pw,right,300x390,56e209465487d8005522ce05] Portland is no stranger to the works of Eugene-born playwright Aaron Posner. Portland Center Stage and Artist Repertory Theater have staged his adaptations "Sometimes a Great Notion," "The Chosen" and three short stories by Kurt Vonnegut. Now, Portland Center Stage is producing the first of what he calls his irreverent adaptations: "Stupid F**king Bird," which runs through March 27. A play on Chekhov's "The Seagull," the fowl...
Mar 12, 2016•7 min
We have binders full of stuff for you today. As it turns out, many are full of women. Qcut And The Quest For Jeans That Fit - A new Oregon start-up is hoping to provide relief from long, torturous hours of finding jeans that fit. Owner Crystal Beasley, a former Mozilla software developer, has developed an algorithm that pairs users with the right blue jeans out of a selection of some 300 different fits. We learn about some of the potential behind the new technology. PDX Women In Tech - A recent ...
Mar 12, 2016•51 min
What would job descriptions sound look like if they really reflected what goes down for women in tech workplaces? April chats it up with Megan Bigelow, Kasey Tonsfelt, and Amanda Brooks of PDX Women in Tech.
Mar 11, 2016•9 min
