Did you know that a flower coming out of a pizza pie represents the destruction of New Orleans? Wondering what our local galleries have in store when they hit Miami? Which color for corduroy will be hot this winter? Get all of those answers and more from this enlightening article. I love these kinds of articles in the NYTimes. Usually they predict the end of a career that’s just beginning. Warning: if you’re young and on the verge of breaking out don’t answer the call for an interview with the Times…no matter how nice they seem on the phone.

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Chris Johanson has a solo show through December 22, as well as a show he’s curated at Galleri Nicolai Wallner. The curated show, “Solo Show Solo Soul” includes Dana Dart-Mclean. Laurel wins this week for being the first to send me an email about what’s happening outside of Portland to artists from Portland.

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Art has always had about it an aspect of simulacrum, re-presentation and facsimile; offering up what can’t be offered in the real. Though purists may wince, does it matter if you get the shorthand or the longhand as long as you get it. None of that is to say that the experience of a conversation, space or piece replaces this mind-numbing box I’m sitting in front of-it doesn’t. But that’s picky. And since I can’t get out of dodge today (why does it have to be so beautiful out?); and because part of my job here is to find things beyond our borders I can’t help but look for more on YouTube.

Despite the recent pooh-poohing about YouTube and the purity of video art, I’m still interested in exploring what’s on offer on that site. The cheapest and fastest way to experience the artworld outside of our artworld is to go online. YouTube offers one of the fastest tickets to the world beyond and for me it’s like a feeding tube. It’s not just video art that‘s available; it’s first hand experience of art and information that I’m not seeing here that I find of real value.

First, we’ll start with “Vik Muniz skywriting art "Cloud Cloud" over Tampa”. I’ve only seen these as photographs, never in the real. Conceptually, they’re easy to get. Seeing it in motion makes it even more compelling.

Jeff Jahn spilled the beans on the upcoming Hirst show at PAM. Brush up with this interview with Damien Hirst from the London Times about his show from this past summer called “A Thousand Years & Triptychs” at Gagosian. Find out if he’d use a human body someday in his art….

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Every week I’m going to ask you to send me something, so here I go again...Have something to brag about? Drop me a line at melia@portlandart.net.