Art Snack Portland: Earthquake Hurricane Streams, Book Shop Delivery, ShortBox Comics, War and Peace Book Club
Portland Artists Are Making Art
Hi there! My name is Suzette Smith. You may recognize me from such films as I Was the Arts Editor of the Portland Mercury and Until the Portland Mercury Laid off Almost All of It's Staff Because Bars, Restaurants, and Show Spaces Were Most of Our Advertising Base, and Everything Is Closed Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Just because I don't currently have a job in the arts, doesn't mean that the arts stopped happening—or that we stopped needing them. So here's my emergency, snack-sized guide to help you navigate this pandemic in a responsible, socially isolated way.
These art snacks aim to be brief. Your time is valuable. And although we all supposedly have lots of time on our hands now, I find myself toiling from morning to night—sort of half-working? My mind doesn’t want to check out, and “watch some TV,” as Danny DeVito suggests (the U.S.’s answer to Italian mayors). Frankly it is insulting to suggest that we should, at such a critical time with so many legitimate worries, just shut up and watch Netflix.
Portland artists are making art. This weekly newsletter begins as an attempt to organize information about all the art still available to us—via streaming, delivery, instagram, blogs, archives, chats; however it is that people are making cool work.
Comedy Night
Earthquake Hurricane streamed their first remote show last Thursday, and I missed it because that’s how twitch.tv works. You have to tune in when it’s on. While a curious reversion to “the old TV rules,” that’s also what we would expect from a live show. Last week’s EQH brought in visitors from NY and LA, and this Thursday will continue to draw in friendly star power from across collapsed distances: Amy Miller, Ian Karmel, Caitlin Weierhauser, and Simon Gibson join the chaotic energy of the show’s ongoing hosts Katie Nguyen, Hunter Donaldson, Kirsten Kuppenbender, and Steven Wilbur. “The last one was fine,” Kuppenbender said over e-mail. “We were still working out the kinks, but it was very fun and funny. This one’s going to be nuts.”
This week’s EQH: Thurs March 26, 8 pm, twitch.tv/earthquakehurricane/
Lit Delivery
This mega-list of local book seller and comic book shops, that are now doing pick-up and delivery, is invaluable and should be bookmarked! Alison Hallett, Hollywood Theatre and Movie Madness’ Director of Education and Community Engagement, started putting this list together on her Facebook page, and since she also used to be the Portland Mercury’s Arts Editor (she actually oversaw my internship) they asked to turn it into a blog.
The “shut-in is my baseline” joke is already overused, BUT when all this is over do you think I could still order my comics and pick them up curbside?
Free Comics
Straying outside promised local coverage, I can’t help but link to this tweet about ShortBox releasing free comics online, over the next few weeks. Even when I had a job, I couldn’t afford ShortBox comics so this is really exciting. As you can see from this Emily Carroll comic, ShortBox publishes visually stunning comics from singular voices.
Book Club
If you never got a chance to chow down on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, under the gaze of an oppressive (or excited!) professor, here’s your opportunity to take part in a virtual War and Peace book club. When asked what initially attracted him to my mom, my dad once said, “She was the only girl I knew who understood War and Peace.” Years later, I asked her what she thought about it, and she said, “Oh, I always hated that book.”
That’s it for now! I’m actively on the lookout for cool, funny, threatening, unforgivably weird, or maybe just cute and nice(?) local art. Tell me about your thing! Tell me about your friend’s thing!
This could be as simple as sending a screen grab of an instagram post (Hey, this guy is holding city council meetings in a mini diorama of City Hall and has dressed up his pet lizards as the City Commissioners) or as complex as writing up a simple press release:
Where: My mini City Hall, which I’m streaming here!
When: Wednesdays at 9:30 am
Who: Lizards dressed up as City Commissioners!
Please let me know! suzettesmithsmith@gmail.com