Here is some more Miami to process, including Tyler Green's initial take, sounds like the superflat paradigm to me.

PORT's coverage of Miami art fairs looked like this.

Portland boasts 10-20 artists every curator looking for new artists should consider: Sean Healy, Storm Tharp, Ellen George, Matthew Picton, Jacqueline Ehlis, Chandra Bocci, Bruce Conkle, James Lavadour, Vanessa Renwick, Laura Fritz (yeah my GF but others say this), Michael Knutson, Matt McCormick, Michael Brophy, Tom Cramer, David Eckard, Brenden Clenaghen, Red 76 and Patrick Rock are just the tip of the iceberg. People like Jesse Hayward, Brad Adkins, Carson Ellis, PORT's own Katherine Bovee & Philippe Blanc, TJ Norris, Marne Lucas and Daniel Peterson are all up and comers who might excite national audiences too (I can go on and on with more, Jesse Rose Vala, Paul Green, Daniel Fagereng, Joe Macca, Sincerely John Head etc.).

On Point.Flux.Broadcast the lovely Natasha Snellman blogged Miami as well.

...and as congratulations to Jerry Saltz, may he win the damn Pulitzer some time soon, has any art critic in recent memory deserved it more?

Cutting short flaccid repetition of best of lists, the ravenous young present the animation fest as sensory wave. Last night at the venerable Hollywood Theatre screening of “Take It Easy II,” an evening of film and video animation proficiently curated by Daniel Peterson and Jeff Kriksciun, I reflected that a car bomb detonated in the ladies’ room would effectively wipe out a full third of Portland’s avant-garde. Fortunately, the only warfare we demi-monde are subject to are aesthetic nattering and the assault thrown by the screening came in the form of aural, visual, and sentimental grist. Psychedelic overlays, neo-surrealist jokes, nostalgia, and sardonic self-portraiture provided the loose armature on which this carefully slack event hung. One transcendent example of the reigning “experimental” work was Eliza Fernand’s playful animations. Perhaps, she simply showed a more complete synthesis, but her dear, anthropomorphic boat and factory belied a sensibility informed by the feminist radicalizing of decoration. Similarly Alex Felton’s busily animated wall grid of the Joker’s colors filtered a youngster’s recollections through a rigorous formal process, striking gold. Would that all such stylistic posturing gush from a source as informed. Buried within the chafe, Sam Gould’s earnestly glib sock puppet Allen Ginsberg illustrated how most of the pieces showed humor as an amplification of entertainment instead of a means of transgression. Amidst the trippy effects, homemade music videos, and adorable drawings, Jo Jackson and Rich Jensen provided poetry of an older school—their respective animation and 16 mm film suggested the possibility of cohesion, not stripped of mystery or anger, but drawn the same from our 24-7 mediated existence. Steve Schroeder’s druggy video diary pieces were perhaps the younger set’s closest equivalent, balancing between awareness, dumb luck, and self-congratulation. In the words of poet, Henrik Samson, “Seriously, are we alive or are we just blogged? It’s easy to forget.” As to the event as a whole: Dudes, I hope these dudes keep fronting—Portland’s art community could use the octane.

Thanks for the unsolicited review... if you, or anyone else feels a need to review any of the obscure events in Portland (like this film fest) that are related to the whole Portland Art experience feel free to drop me an email. We might just publish it (pictures are nice too).

Thanks WP

and yeah more octane... I'm hearing great things about Storm Tharp's show in January... Steven Slappe at Tilt has great buzz too, along with the POW show and the museum caliber Robert Colescott show at Laura Russo.

In terms of octane, Colescott is running on racing fuel, this stuff makes Lisa Yuskavage and Cecily Brown look tame.