Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Hayashi Wilder, Emily Small, Jade Ichimura, and Renée Reizman pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
A Meditation on Labor at One Grand Gallery.
Damien Heller Chen: A Meditation on Labor
One Grand Gallery, Portland, OR
November 7th–December 12, 2025
A Meditation on Labor unfolds in the upstairs space of One Grand Gallery, where the brick walls are scarred, the floors are worn from movement, and the ceiling is layered with exposed wood. This is a perfectly aged ecosystem for the 1000 hand-thrown porcelain tea vessels gathered towards the room’s center. In their abundance, these vessels carry glimmers of light while honoring the imperfections of craft, labor, material, and traditional technology.
During my undergraduate studies, I learned about an Egyptian god named Khnum, a potter, who created humans from the clay of the Nile River. I grew attached to this ancient teaching and continue to imagine bodies cradled from earth, so, for me, a vessel is a human. And I’ve been thinking a lot about errors, anomalies, and distortions—the things that make us human. I feel these attributes breathing along the surface of each clay ceramic.
I look over the multiplicity of clay distributed amongst four large pedestals and find the mouths of each vessel agape—ready to grapple, embrace, or carry. There are a few vessels that bear burning incense sticks. Much like a human, these vessels perform. Their sticks grow small, and as they abbreviate, their vitality is translated into smoke, and then scent, and then place. Other vessels have cracks, gashes, and openings where completion might be expected. They’re not rectified or reformed, just a little more vulnerable than others.
The vessels meditate on humanity. They defend what it means to be human—to be in relation, to be wombed from earth, to be a shared place, to be broken and okay, and to be made again and again and again.
Reflection: How do you practice being human?
We Were All Living a Dream: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Lesbian Feminism through the Photography of Donna Pollach
Oregon Historical Society, Portland, OR
April 4, 2025–March 29, 2026
“WE KNOW OUR PLACE, IT’S EVERYWHERE” is neatly written on a sign behind two women demonstrating self-defense against rape. I’m immediately captivated by this photograph—not by the bodies sparring, but by the witnesses whose gazes shift towards the sign instead.
The photograph is in We Were All Living A Dream, an exhibition of intimate images documenting the lesbian and feminist community of Portland, OR, during the late 20th century, captured by local lesbian artist Donna Pollach. There are many themes woven throughout these photos—contemplations on womanhood, the entangled genealogies of feminists and gay rights activism, the grassroots labor required for femme survival and communal continuity. But as someone in a loving sapphic relationship who has, because of that and other things, felt a fissure open within my own biological family, Pollach’s devotion to authenticating queer kinship feels especially monumental. (Yes, I’m a Cancer rising and sun.)
Touched by the sentimental offerings of Pollach’s private life as a friend, wife, mother, and sister, I began to cry. Yet between the tears is amusing recognition, my laughter surfaces as I notice evidence of playful lesbian clichés—lesbians playing softball, lesbians in white tank tops, lesbians cleaning their nails, lesbians outdoors, and then conducting meetings about the outdoors. These are the gay secrets we’re all in on. This exhibition is all about the feel-good and happy endings, but not in a way that waters down the struggles of lesbianism. More so, a reminder that despite the violence of heteronormativity, the life of a lesbian is full of warmth and love.
Reflection: Who is in your chosen family?
—Hayashi Wilder