Last Fridays are Portland’s multicultural family room
Want to help? Sign up to volunteer.Special thanks to the people who make Colored Pencils a success: Ronault "Polo" Catalani, Maileen Hamto, Andre Susanto, Nita Shah, Joseph Santos-Lyons, Allyn Mejia, Bobby Fouther, Sunshine Dixon, Dr. Baher Butti, Evelyn Liu, Tommy Meanea, Gary Marschke, Carmen Madrid and Nim Xuto. |
Colored Pencils is a monthly venue for contemporary painters and traditional poets, Old World sculptors and local performing artists, and world cuisine – but at bottom, we are a vision of a New Portland, an ethos and an aesthetic drawing from our city’s newcomer and settled communities’ enormous joint account of social and cultural capital. Last Fridays of every month our Colored Pencils crew – a vigorous collective of 14 nationalities and ethnicities, five religious traditions, three generations, all gender orientations, our city’s homeless, renters, and home owners – delivers a raucous celebration. Events feature our city’s grandest elders, our tiniest dancers, and everyone in between.
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Is your community group or organization ready to host Colored Pencils? Guidelines |
To date, artists representing 32 mainstream, ethnic minority, and newcomer communities, including recently resettled Iraqi singers, musicians, and poets, have contributed to our broad shouldered and big hearted vision of New Portland.
Since December 2008, Colored Pencils has played North, East, and Southwest Portland. We are always open to new Community Hosts. New Portland’s Colored Pencils is a participant sport. Expect lots of sudden laughter, shameless tears, and expect above all: everyone making our city a much bigger Us.