On May 17 at the Crystal Ballroom, bankers, architects, lumberjacks and surgeons will represent their companies and compete for prizes at Battle of the Bands, a benefit for Work for Art. Tickets are $12, on sale now at the Crystal Ballroom box office and online via workforart.org/bob. A limited number of VIP tickets are available for $100 each, including reserved seating, and hosted food and beverages.

Six bands, made up of employees who play music on the side, will compete in front of family, friends, coworkers and a panel of celebrity judges. Several prizes will be awarded including the title of Best Company Band. Audiences will select an “Audience Favorite” as determined by the band that receives the most in cash donations the night of the event.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Food and beverages are available for purchase. As a warm-up act, Brothers Jam will perform until 6:30 p.m., featuring BodyVox artistic director Jamey Hampton.

The main event begins at 6:30 p.m., emceed by Sarah G of WE 96.3 FM. The six competing bands are:

• Hampton Lumber, Petty Crimes
• Kaiser Permanente, Members Only
• KeyBank, Hair Nation
• Portland City Hall, Copper Goddess
• Stoel Rives, The Bears
• ZGF Architects, Pencil Skirt Paula and The Straight Edge Rulers 

Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and ZGF Architects principal Sharron van der Meulen are co-chairing this year’s event, and the competing bands are being mentored by Portland jazz musician Christopher Brown. The judging panel includes three local music industry celebrities:

• Valerie Day has been a vocalist and percussionist for many years beginning with the Grammy nominated group Nu Shooz in the 1980’s. She has toured extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe, appeared on national and international TV programs, sold over a million records worldwide, has sung with orchestras and performed at numerous music festivals. In addition to her life as a performer, Valerie had a private vocal studio for over 20 years.
• Rindy Ross is the lead singer, saxophonist, and co-founder of Quarterflash and The Trail Band, both bands she formed with her husband, Marv. Their platinum debut Quarterflash album produced the hit single, Harden My Heart, and they traveled extensively including tours with Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, Sammy Hagar and others. Since the Eighties they have released six Quarterflash and thirteen Trail Band albums and have been inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.
• Edna Vazquez is a Latin American artist based in the Northwest who performs original music that pays homage to her many influences from across the Americas. Edna has traveled far and wide with her band of all-star musicians to share their message of light, love and cultural healing.

There will also be a special performance by Rock N Roll Camp for Girls’ Strawberry Jam, with band members ranging in age from 15 to 17 years. This opportunity is made possible by a sponsorship from The Standard.

At approximately 8:30 p.m., while the judges deliberate and the cash is counted, the Portland Timbers Army band Greenhorn will perform. Timber Joey will be on hand to help announce the winners at the end of the evening.

All proceeds from Battle of the Bands benefit Work for Art, an annual campaign to raise money and awareness for local arts and culture organizations.

“As the top Work for Art campaign for six years in a row, it’s clear our employees are big believers in the power of art and its undeniable impact on our community,” said Kregg Arntson, director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Portland General Electric, and chair of this year’s Work for Art campaign. “Battle of the Bands is the perfect venue to celebrate the arts and creative expression, while cheering on our favorite local company bands.”

Battle of the Bands is sponsored by headliners Hampton Lumber, KeyBank, KINK 101.9 FM and The Standard. Additional sponsorship support is provided by Kaiser Permanente, Stoel Rives and ZGF Architects.

Work for Art is a program of the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), which distributes a full 100% of all Work for Art donations, including Battle of the Bands proceeds, to arts organizations in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties. For more information visit workforart.org.

Open Signal and the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) have partnered to support an artist-in-residence, Kalimah Abioto. The residency is part of Night Lights, a monthly digital media event in which artists project their work onto the north exterior wall of RACC’s downtown offices on First Thursdays. Abioto will produce a new work for the next edition of Night Lights on Thursday, March 2.

A graduate of the film program at Hollins College, Abioto’s work includes experimentally edited short documentaries and narrative films, with a focus on the Portland and Memphis African-American communities.

Through Night Lights, Abioto was granted a stipend of $5,000 from RACC and use of Open Signal media equipment, facilities and training. In November, she used these resources to travel to Mali, West Africa, where she collected video footage in Dogon Country, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since returning to Portland, Abioto has collaborated with local dancers, musicians, filmmakers and prop-makers to create her Night Lights film entitled Sight. The film tells the story of three young girls with the ability to travel to different dimensions, who help an adult woman to rediscover her own power.

“It’s a film about spirituality—going inside to retrieve your gifts and share them with the world,” Abioto said. “Embracing your shadow, in a way.”

Through her residency, Abioto had access to Open Signal’s equipment and production studios, which she used to create one of the dimensions in Sight. Dancers Uriah Boyd, Akela Jaffi and Mia O’Connor staged a dance alongside the three young leads in Open Signal’s Cyclorama green screen studio, to music written and performed by Abioto’s sister, Amenta Abioto.

“The green screen studio is phenomenal,” Abioto said. “So is having the office space to meet with the team and the talent, as well as access to the equipment—it’s like having a support team.”

Abioto will debut her film at Night Lights on Thursday, March 2, starting at dusk, at the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s north exterior wall, 411 NW Park Avenue in Portland.

Abioto will also share her work in progress during Open Signal’s first Open House on Saturday, February 25 from 4-8 p.m. at 2766 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. in Portland.

On Wednesday, March 22, she will deliver an artist talk in conjunction with her collaborators at Open Signal at 7:00 p.m., screening her film again, discussing her filmmaking process and taking questions from the audience about its inspiration and production.

Locus Turris by William Rihel and David Valdez is a low tech, real time exploration of visual science. By focusing on the physics of what humans can hear and see, both pattern and reaction transform into art.

Locus Turris explores light and sound in a way that is, not new to many, but is different in how it isolates the results. In addition to the creation of more complicated experiments, festival goers will get a chance to make their own patterns and see what impact their small scale visual concoctions have on a large scale projection.

Locus Turris sheds light on the parallels of the micro and the macro, to see how a simple ripple becomes a big wave, showing how the forces of the universe are constantly in flux.

William Rihel serves as RACC’s Public Art Program Specialist.

See the Portland Winter Light Festival schedule.

Drawing on her previous work exploring unusual and interesting physical properties of materials, Stephanie Simek will install a deftly crafted, hand-built “table of holograms” in the Portland Building Installation Space.

The holograms consist of three-dimensional images of common minerals that appear to hover in space above the tabletop. The table structure not only serves as a way of building an illusion, but also functions as a container for Simek’s personal table of elements, an offering of silicon, quartz, calcite, iron, copper, and bismuth. “It’s a table within a table, a reliquary for various elemental materials with remarkable inherent potential.” Simek says, “Each possesses magnetic, electrical, or optical capabilities, and all have the ability to do work, such as carrying a signal or storing information.” These familiar minerals have been used by the artist in her past installations, projects that include the construction of a room-sized crystal radio, an invisibility cloak, a compass, and a levitating sculpture.

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5^th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday. Table of Elements (and Minerals) runs from February 21 to March 17, 2017.

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) manages the 13’ x 8’ installation space in the lobby of the Portland Building and presents installation-based art there year round. For more information, including images, proposals, and statements for projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.