Well folks, PORT continues to thrive with the supposedly slow month of August being our third straight month of readership growth. Also, you'll notice all sorts of new sponsors.

To our readers and sponsors, your support is overwhelming, thank you... you know who you are.

News from the net:

PICA's Time Based Art festival opens Thursday with the free STREB performance in Portland's living room, Pioneer Courthouse Square... be there.

Modern Art Notes does a good job on arts related Katrina info. Locally, arty Portlanders should email Richard to coordinate Portland efforts for artist victims.

Outside the tragic sphere, John Motley at the Portland Mercury interviewed Merry Scully, the new gallery director at Elizabeth Leach. She seems to have cajones and we are interested how she might affect primary market shows at the gallery. I like adventurous people and Liz (that Portland firecracker) wouldn't have sought out Scully unless she brought that to the table..

Also, my latest Critical i article is out as well.

As for the blogosphere PORT promises we will eventually have a blogroll, but until then we would really like to thank some of those quality art and culture blogs for linking to us:

The OC art blog (thanks for listing us 1st) psst... I grew up in the OC during the dying days of disco... roller disco was a lowpoint for Western Civilization.

Edward Winkleman … a Brooklyn gallerist who has the most consistently content-rich art posts around. He did a good job with Katrina coverage too.

Ultra PDX (Portland's rock'n fashion and culture blog)

From The Floor (a literary critic who often writes about private collections)

… and last but not least the Portland public artwork blog (a masochistic subject if ever there was one… such pain!)

Thanks for the mention of Portland Public Artwork. Yes, I'd rather work Paris, who wouldn't? It could be worse - I could be making a survey of Portland dance, or for God's sake, poetry.

...ohhh now the dancers and poets are gonna be all up in your face. (poets need to direct their outrage anyways) But seriously, Ive heard a ton of terrible poetry in town... there are some good ones though.

as for paris... yeah its got to be one of the top three but I think Rome pretty much takes the cake.

also are you going to consider the silver living statue guy public art as well?

Kudos for taking on a tough subject... psst check out the public sculpture at Linfield college's NW Portland campus... just beacuse its slightly but not very hidden.

I also wonder what you will think of the reinstalltion of the Portland art museum's outdoor collection once the new museum wing is done. Their sculpture collection has some strong stuff. Nice job on tanner creek... are you a Reed-ster?

I've done my time with dancers + poets in this town, I'll stick to things (with the exception of the mad Astoria poet Marty Christensen, author of "My Flashlight was Attacked by Bats."

At Linfield? I think it is St. Francis. And some bears in a pit waiting to gobble poor nursing students? I have some pics somewhere. There's a whole pile of stuff - especially all the outlaw and corporate art, the combination of which I find most interesting.

What makes the task hard is the committee-driven decision-making process for public sector art purchases. It just panders to the lowest common denominator and we get these huge, permanent parts of the landscape which are often as not both incongruous and ugly. Because artists outweigh the arts audience in Portland, the selection process is political – not aesthetic. Such a problem!

I am shielding my eyes from the remodel job on the Masonic until it is done. I loved that old empty shell of a place. But the new interior of the PAM is so intriguing I have high hopes for the annex.