FIGURING
FIGURING is a publication of The Ford Family Foundation. The annual arts journal (shifting title as it progresses) is part of the program element CRITICAL […]
Contributor: The Ford Family Foundation
Oregon
Phantom Limbs
When we look back on this time of the pandemic, it may be the confusion that we remember the most. We have been bombarded by […]
Julie Green: Flown
by Sarah Sentilles How do you represent absence? How do you depict loss? For two decades, Julie Green has been painting the final meals of […]
Radical Indigenous artist Natalie Ball is unapologetically moving forward — as mother and artist.
by Jeanine Jablonski When I first came across images of Natalie Ball’s work, I was floored. Who was this amazing indigenous artist living in Oregon, […]
Ludd or Lucifer: Felicity Fenton Considers Whether to Abandon the World Wide Web or Strike a Deal with the Devil and Use the Internet to Critique the Internet
by Richard Speer To post or not to post? In light of the “delete-Facebook” and anti-social-media movements, an increasingly vocal contingent of visual artists is […]
May It Always Be Legendary
by bart fitzgerald I. Santal 33. Boonk. A libation awaits—whether prepared, or freshly colliding due to the presence of its necessary ingredients—Hennessy and sticky-sweet pineapple […]
Sacred Threads at Great Vow
by Jovencio De La Paz Between Tank Creek and the hills of Clatskanie, Oregon, just south of the Columbia River, a Zen Buddhist Monastery nestles […]
Through Ancestral Lands, Reading An Infected Sunset
Editor’s Note: The following essay is composed of three excerpts from an audio diary recorded by Portland- based artist and poet Demian DinéYazhi’ while driving […]
The Image Collectors
By Samantha Wall and Stephen Slappe In the midst of the vast, world-changing events of the past year, we have been reflecting on the nature […]
What Comes after the Museum? Remembering PMOMA (The Portland Museum of Modern Art)
By Libby Werbel Is it possible to grow your own museum? What would it look like? How would it be different from the museums you […]
D. E. May and the Gift of Unknowable Intimacy
by Abigail Susik I One of the reasons for abstract art’s ascendancy over the last century is surely its simultaneous accommodation of the ego’s conflicting […]
Ocean X
by Prudence Roberts This is the story of one of Terry Toedtemeier’s most distinctive photographs, its place in his career, and how the image made […]
Jess Perlitz’s Tragicomic Practice
by Bean Gilsdorf Perlitz’s grounding in sculpture underscores the spirit of these practices, explicating the real and symbolic power of objects and their potential to […]
To the Air • Paul Maziar and Cynthia Lahti
by Paul Maziar Originally published March 2020 Author’s Note: I’ve been enchanted by Cynthia Lahti’s work since the moment I first saw it—thanks to my […]
Laurie Danial’s Dynamic and Enigmatic Abstraction
by Patrick Collier Originally published May 2019 To the casual viewer, abstract painting may seem to lack coherence. Familiar epithets abound, usually because there is […]
Alison Jean Cole’s Way West
by Paul Maziar Originally published July 2019 Precipitous calcite Mined from the hills of Nephi By harried and obsessive men Who probably tote guns Who […]
Arranging the Deck Chairs
by Josephine Zarkovich Originally published May 2019 Recently I have begun to document all the steps I take to perform each task in my very […]
Kristan Kennedy: A Corporeal Presence
by Meagan Atiyeh Kristan Kennedy’s color-field paintings are worked and washed in a repetitive process. A small number of marks, additive or reductive in ink, […]