Opb's State Of Wonder

If you’ve been feeling like the lines are blurring between the America you imagined and the America we all live with, take a listen. We found some incredible artists and writer addressing the magical thinking, fantasies, and illusions that shaped our world.

This week, we’re diving into the "State of Wonder" archives for one of our favorite guest curators. Corin Tucker spent 12 years in the iconic Northwest band Sleater-Kinney. We asked Corin to look back at the Sleater-Kinney catalog with us, and think about what's changed since she moved from Olympia down to Portland in 1996.

This week we’re handing over the keys for State of Wonder to local musician and small business owner Fabi Reyna. She's the creator of the guitar magazine "She Shreds."

In this week's rebroadcast, we welcome user experience (UX) designer Elena Moon as our guest curator. She has this fantastic way of explaining what works and why. She’s going to lead us through her own work and the designed world, from parking meters to space ships.

Every person who makes something, anything, it doesn’t even have to be particularly artsy, there comes this moment of like, all right, you got this idea, but you have to get it done

Virtual reality may not quite be the tech that all the kids are doing these day, but there are entire communities interacting as we speak in VR worlds. This week, we hear about an 87 year old drag queen is the subject of a new VR narrative documentary, gearheads using VR to learn how to dismantle a car transmission - while the transmission is still running, and the fantastic UX designer Crystal Rutland talks about using VR in her firm’s practice.

The firebrand music critic has a new memoir, chronicling the formative time she spent in a gentrifying Chicago in the mid 2000's.

What is it with humanity, anyway? Seems like, since the beginning of time, we have just been waiting for it to all fall apart. (seriously, how many sci-fi books have you read set in a time of global peace and infinite resources?) And how is it that the best futurists can extrapolate an entire world from just one concept? Listen in as we explore future-tense ideas on technology, the way we treat each other, the way we view ourselves and our environment.

This week, artists whose work — and sometimes even their mere existence— have caused a kind of social friction. In an awesome way. You’ll hear from prolific drummer and polymath Madame Gandhi, actor/director/writer John Cameron Mitchell, musician Black Belt Eagle Scout. Also, the story composer Gabriel Kahane's groundbreaking composition for the Oregon Symphony.

Not so easy keeping up with this week’s guest curator, Rebecca Gates. But fun? You bet.First, there’s her recording career, both in the Spinanes and as a solo artist. (if you haven’t checked out 2012’s The Float, you need to do that)A few years ago, she began a journey into music advocacy, exploring revenue for artists and other messy areas of the post-milennial music industry. She also has a foot in the contemporary art world, through her consulting work and practice in sonic art.This week she’s bring us some perspective on -The economic realities of music revenue-How art fairs are changing the game for gallerists and artists-Building a creative life around community…and more.

We’re exploring those connections between art, food, culture, ancestral lands and how it all fuses and fits and makes up who we are. Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast talks about her powerful essay in the New Yorker about crying in Asian grocery stores. Artist Demian DinéYahzi shares a poem about survival. Stacey Tran invites us to her storytelling series in which women and femmes of color tell stories about culture, through a potluck-style meal, and the Last Artful, Dodgr talks about finding her place in the hip hop firmament.

What exactly is art supposed to do about the state of the world in 2018? Carry a political flag? Make us forget about bad things? This week we’ve got a pile of stories for you about some of the things art can do in traumatic times. Man-of-all-bands Papi Fimbres talks about meeting the weirdness of 2018 head-on with a radical act of self-care. The hilarious and amazing comedian Caitlin Weierhauser tells us about processing a horrendous tragedy, right in the spotlight. Cult of Orpheus founder Christopher Corbell dreams up new myths and narratives for a troubled world, and the Manila Sound shows the way through a time of martial law.

Come explore — this week, Centennial Mills, the 107-year old site of an old flour mill, gets the treatment from conceptual artist Anne Hamilton, social practice originator Harrell Fletcher and friends create a contemporary art museum inside a K-8 school, writer Cindy Baldwin interrogates parenting with a chronic illness, plus music from Jessica Hernandez and the late, great Richard Swift.

It has been a devastating summer for students and staff at two Oregon that helped thousands of creative Oregonians to find their calling. The Art Institute of Portland and Marylhurst University are two very different schools, but they're both succumbing to big challenges facing all universities. We get the details, then talk to reporter Rick Seltzer of Inside Higher Ed.

Fill up the cooler and buckle up! We are getting you all set up for your weekend summer road trip — lots of great music to keep you moving, including pillow talk with the R&B singer Blossom and MC Ripley Snell. They’ll invite us inside the dreamy world they created for their new EP. We've also got a session with one of our favorite breakout acts of 2018, singer-songwriter Haley Heyndrickx — luminous, wise, and winsome. And we’ll tell some stories about how we get where we’re going, both ON the map and OFF. One remarkable guy, living outside Eugene, Orego, is one of the country’s foremost cartographers. We’ll hear how he shares his vision of the world through handmade maps. Plus, a pianist throws his grand piano onto a trailer to play across Eastern Oregon and back again.

This time we live in is a feast of audio storytelling. You can find a podcast for any interest — from Harry Potter to stories of death-defying survival — and it turns out Oregon is a hotbed of homemade shows. We’re taking this as an opportunity to talk to them about their shows and to spotlight some more of our favorites made in Oregon:

We gathered some of Portland’s brightest minds at the creative event space the Nightwood to ask: What would buildings designed by and for women look like? Developer Anyeleh Hallová of project^ and Amy Donohue, a principal with Bora Architects talk us through big picture issues. And we check out a couple of case studies: Alicia McVey and Maren Elliott of Swift Agency join us for a look inside their headquarters — a study in transformative design. Rose Ojeda, Director of Housing Development for Hacienda CDC shared details of a multi-generational housing complex in development at the former site of a strip joint. We also get a word with our host for the evneing, Nightwood founder Michelle Battista. Her lady-led collective employs a range of artisans in food, wine, and design for a vertically-integrated event experience.

This week on “State of Wonder,” some of the Northwest’s most prominent writers come together to share stories and memories of the man the “New Yorker” called “the Portland sage,” Brian Doyle, who died in 2017 at the age of 60. We hear readings and tributes by David James Duncan, Robert Michale Pyle, Kathleen Dean Moore, and others.

This week's show is guest curated by Victor Maldonado.. An interdisciplinary artist who works in paint, as well as more ephemeral mediums, he also teaches at PNCA in Portland. We talk with Victor about what shaped his life and practice, from growing up crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, to finding an invisible college of peers to support and sustain his work, to the students who now look to him for advice on building a sustainble life in art.

Twenty years ago, Elliott Smith opened a door into a hypnotic new world. The album, “Either/Or” marks a turning point in Smith’s transition from Portland rock journeyman to international star. We sat down with Smith’s friends, peers, and a live studio audience in 2017 to talk about “Either/Or” and Smith’s legacy.