Textiles are a window into the communities that created them, with every motif and line signalling a different memory, tradition or identity. Often seen as folk art, these pieces of embroidery and weaving bring together dozens of narrative threads, from Japan to South America. But nowhere is it more fraught with meaning than in Palestine.
More and more, I am realizing that we need art to survive. The phrase worked in two ways: We need art to survive for our personal enrichment and enjoyment. We need art to survive for its own longevity, so it can be around for us and those who come after us.
Upon entry, Kent's "IF" (1965) lures the eye upward. The serigraph-a silkscreen print in fine art parlance-hangs high on the wall with a subtle vulnerability. Two orange letters hover toward the composition's top edge, as if pushing to transcend the picture plane. A feeling of possibility emerges through the conjunction and its visual form.
It was the first Wednesday of December and the last One-Page Wednesday of 2025. Hosted by Portland novelist Emme Lund (The Boy with a Bird in His Chest) at the Literary Arts bookstore, the free monthly event is an open mic that functions more like a public writers' group. Students, aspiring writers, and National Book Award-winning authors hang out and read aloud one page from a work in progress.
The Azn Zine Fest is to show Portland there's a fuck-ton of Asian creatives. When we put out the call for vendors, we were like, 'Maybe 30 to 50 people will respond to our call.' We had probably 120 respond.
The third Wednesday or Thursday evening of each month, comic book shop Books with Pictures ( 1401 SE Division St) hosts this open-invite book club devoted to a wide variety of graphic novels-from the Bitter Root series, about a family of sympathetic monster hunters during the Harlem Renaissance, to an illustrated retelling of the 1872 queer vampire murder mystery Carmilla. Sometimes artists and writers join to talk about their latest work.
Knitting is the perfect activity to calm the body and soothe the mind during a high-pressure event like the Winter Olympics. Once you internalize your stitch pattern, you can just zone out and focus on how the yarn feels between your fingers, and for those EMDR girlies among us, knitting also counts as bilateral stimulation. Since diver Tom Daley went viral in 2021 for knitting between events at the Tokyo Olympics, he's become something of a knitbassador for the craft,
With most of us, 90 minutes of reminiscing wouldn't make for scintillating theater. Gert Boyle, as played by Wendy Westerwelle, is the exception to that rule. The late Gert came to fame when she took the reins of Columbia Sportswear after her husband's death in 1970 and also became the "One Tough Mother," with gray hair and glasses, of its comedic '80s and '90s ad campaigns. In one, she put her son, Tim, through a carwash to test the durability of a coat.
The ongoing repression of dissidents in Venezuela following the US attacks reminds us that President Trump never had the interest of the nation's people at heart. The painful reality of many immigrants is one of being caught between dehumanizing forces in their native countries and in exile, and reduced to abstractions in an increasingly unnuanced "discourse" that flattens lived experience.
The mixture of old world and new inside a pub that also features a dark, polished wood bar, feels just right for Corrib Theatre's variety show An Scéal (The Story), which combines traditional storytelling and music with modern movement to celebrate the Celtic feast day Imbolc and the return of the sun as well as the Irish National holiday St. Bridgid's Day, both of which are on February 1.
