So Long Sam

It’s the kind of a group show where no artist wants to participate: “Northwest Mid-Career Artists,” which includes 20 notable locals who probably cringe at being placed mid anything. But still. Unlike some patrons and museums in this economy, the city is still buying, so let’s be grateful for that. Jaq Chartier employs “DNA gel electrophoresis” to create a very scientific looking color chart. John Wimberley’s black-and-white view of swollen storm clouds over Crater Lake is photographed so crisply you could mistake it for Ansel Adams. But my favorite piece is Michael Hensley’s painting So Long Sam, which crams together cartoon figures in a teeming frame of blue. It’s like Breughel meets Mad magazine—a little dreamscape of whimsical beings and Escher architecture. The painting makes you think what our world would be like if there were only one color, with all dogs, buildings, and people the exact same hue. Almost everyone and everything would look alike, the individual dissolving into the monochromatic universe—like Sam, wherever he is. BRIAN MILLER

Related Content

Mondays-Fridays, 5 a.m.-7 p.m. Starts: April 6. Continues through July 2, 2010