ccp 004
Core Sample: Portland Art Now
Edited by Randy Gragg and Matthew Stadler
416 pp. (with color photographs | DVD included)
isbn: 0-9723234-2-2
$15.95






Core Sample was an artist-initiated, citywide exhibition of contemporary art that took place in Portland, Oregon, in October 2003. A collective effort of 135 artists, Core Sample provided the pleasures of permanent arts institutions—coherence, visibility, excellence—without incurring many of the expenses and obligations such institutions entail. This catalog documents Core Sample's methods and results. It serves as both a practical guide to the mobilization of noninstitutional cultures and a reflection on the worth of such projects. Color photographs document each exhibit, and the DVD, filmed and edited by Matt McCormick, includes interviews with the artists and organizers. With essays by Lynne Tillman, Cecilia Dougherty, Peter Culley, and Lawrence Rinder.

"A kind of delayed, tantric ejaculation."
—Richard Speer, Willamette Week

"Something's happening in Portland that isn't showing up in the Portland Art Museum or the galleries. It's a Do It Yourself movement of mostly young artists interested in film, video, street theater and installation art. They're not just 'good by Portland standards,' they're good."
—Regina Hackett, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Core Sample stands as a culmination of eccentric resources, a self-acknowledgment and an enactment that could not happen anywhere else."
— Jay Sanders, The Organ


Matthew Stadler (editor) is a novelist (Landscape: Memory, Allan Stein), literary editor of Nest magazine, and editor and co-founder of Clear Cut Press.

 Randy Gragg (editor) has written on the visual arts in the Northwest for over twenty years. He is the architecture and urban design critic for The Oregonian, Portland's daily newspaper.