Newish Mercury critic Matt Stangel has a review of Bobbi Woods at Fourteen 30, a show I'll definitely check out before the end of the month. Nice to see the Merc is still committed to criticism in a time when all publishing is facing serious business challenges.

NYT's architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff discusses the newly unveiled Net's stadium design by none other than SHoP architects, one of the four teams that competed to do Portland's now iconic aerial tram. We absolutely require another such competition to produce an acceptable design for the new I-5 Columbia River Crossing. Current design is a farce, lacking the world class thinking such a complicated project requires.

For once, the O just sticks to the facts in their reportage poll results (70% in favor) for CAN's plan to raise 15-20 million in a new tax levy for the arts. Seriously, I enjoy not having to bitch about his conservative-reactionary O'Reilly Factor style reportage and it is nice when Row doesn't editorialize or hyperfocus on money as if it is the only thing that matters in the arts. Quality matters more than anything and it's the quality here that has an international reach, relevance and growing acclaim. In short, money is a trailing not a leading indicator in Portland, and the quality of artists living and working here has been the driving impetus for Portland's decade + long renaissance and rising prominence (he has utterly failed to capture that story in the past decade). To be fair, his editors may play a part in this as well as they love to paint Portland's art infrastructure as wealthy people feeling the economic pain... when in fact they are mostly small business people feeling the pain.) Meanwhile new alt spaces continue to sprout up left and right economy be damned (artists are used to not having any money and making the most of very little).

New Arts blog Culturephile, with old PORTpal Lisa Radon reviews Robert Boyd's TBA video at PNCA. Always good to have more critics in town and glad the Portland Monthly has jumped into the game. Good arts writers are much rarer than good artists in Portland these days.