We've got issues.
Snow Tha Product is a pint-sized rapper who brings high-voltage ferocity to the hip-hop scene, drawing on her Mexican heritage with a twist of Cali-Texan influence. The self-made femme-c seamlessly creates rhymes that are on par with — if not better than — most mainstream artists of the same genre. Snow started sewing together rhythm and words at freestyle battles down in Texas, where she found her niche. Continue reading
For touring bands, finding a reliable person to run the merch table, selling assorted paraphernalia, can be a challenge. But on one of Jaill’s passes through Eugene, the band found a creative solution. “We were bringing an elderly man-puppet on tour to help sell merch,” recalls Jaill bandleader Vincent Kircher. “We were putting taquitos in its mouth, glasses on his face and people posed with the doll. That sounds dumb and unfun, but it wasn’t.” Continue reading
Oil paintings of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Frida Kahlo and Abraham Lincoln, among others, lined the walls of downtown Eugene’s Townshend’s Teahouse amidst the chatter of conversation and the clinking of ceramic mugs against tabletops. These portraits are the work of Simon Graves, a Eugene artist whose current oeuvre is focused on the importance of the constructs of good and evil — and specifically the characters we tend to conceive as being good on an iconic, archetypal level. Continue reading
Purple pages: Storm Entertainment, a Portland-based comic and graphic novel company, has just released the comic book biography Tribute: Prince in honor of the late artist and his June 7 birthday. Michael Frizell wrote the 24-page comic and Ernesto Lovera and Vincenzo Sansone created the art. “His sound and lyrics defined the era for me in ways that Michael Jackson didn’t and, quite frankly, couldn’t,” Frizell says via press release. Continue reading
Many head for the hills, beaches, mountains and rivers to bask in what is the Great Oregon Summer. Others run for their paints, chalks, clays, sewing machines and cameras to capture the spirit of summer. Or dive into exhibits in museums and galleries (mmm, air conditioning). Summer in Oregon is prime time to explore the arts, from Springfield to Coos Bay to Portland. Here are EW’s top summer picks for the arts: The BIG INK Express Continue reading
When it comes to making art, people in the performing arts get a raw deal. A poet just needs a pen, right? A studio artist just needs a little space and some supplies. (Unless you work in a medium like cars or buses or something. Please don’t flood my inbox with letters of complaint; I’m just trying to make a point.) Anyway, for dancers, rehearsal time is pretty dear: Rents can be prohibitively high for sprung-wood floors, safe for bare feet and careening bodies. And securing a performance venue? Oy. Continue reading
It’s not the fault of X-Men: Apocalypse that its villain, with his plan to destroy the world and all the puny people in it, feels extra tired just now. The filmmakers surely didn’t know that a very similar plot would play out in DC’s televised universe this season: On Arrow, a TV show based on comic-book character Green Arrow, the terrorist kingpin Damien Darhk wanted to do away with most of humanity. Continue reading
The most terrifying villains are never monsters, only men — a fact that Green Room writer-director Jeremy Saulnier reiterates, most effectively, with his third feature film. Continue reading
Local soccer fans will be spoiled this summer with several Lane United FC matches at the Willamalane Center as well as the July 24 International Champions Cup match between Paris Saint-Germain and F.C. Internazionale Milano, to be played in Autzen Stadium. And yet, if Eugene soccer fans are as passionate about the beautiful game as I am, they might be most excited about the Copa América, to be hosted in the U.S. for the first time in its long and influential history, with the closest matches being played in Seattle and Santa Clara, California. Continue reading
It was the early 2010s when the fountain of indie and alternative bands touring Eugene started to run dry. The new decade instead spewed more touring hip-hop, rap and pop artists until the floodgates finally burst with the eruption of the EDM scene. Continue reading