By Saturday night I had pretty much had enough art and enough art talk to last me a few days, what with our own Genius Awards, and then the opening of Baja to Vancouver at SAM (see review, page 36), and then a day full of panel discussions about West Coast art at the museum, and even more free-floating conversation with my old friend Mary-Kay Lombino, who was up from Los Angeles for the event and who happens to be a really good curator at the Cal State Long Beach museum. But I buckled down for another day's worth of art anyway.

The occasion was Core Sample, a group of exhibitions organized by Portland artists under the direction of writer Randy Gragg. Months ago I had heard, incorrectly or not, that Core Sample was organized in a rather aggressive response to B2V, a "West Coast this" gesture, but by the time the event rolled around, SAM and Core Sample were vigorously promoting each other and even organizing, along with Clear Cut Press (which is publishing a Core Sample catalogue), a trainful of writers, curators, and other devoted art people from Seattle to Portland to tour the shows. It's so nice when everyone gets along.

I was definitely not ready for art conversation at 8:00 a.m., when Mary-Kay and I arrived at the train station. The train seemed to be full of morning people saying things like "What this work accomplished was..." and "The problem with performance is..." I perked up for a video by Miranda July, a spaced-out personal version of the standard safety-precaution video (Amtrak's version of which is surreal even by art standards), and a live in-person lecture by Amos Latteier--in fact, a reprise of his performance at Hugo House last weekend--in which he waxed profound on the joys and dangers of taxonomy and games and rules.

Here are the highlights, according to me: a giant soiled, slumped canvas bunny by Malia Jensen; Laura Fritz's cat-in-a-box video sculpture; CHARM BRACELET's droopy clear vinyl elephant being progressively stuffed with shredded flyers for Portland art events; Ryan Boyle's Company Chode drawings--a Barry McGee/Margaret Kilgallen sort of assemblage of drawings and objects, featuring amazingly drawn little bullet-headed creatures visiting all kinds of atrocities on each other; Bill Daniel's Free Ride Prototype, a Volkswagen bus rigged with sails and a rig for carrying music equipment--an escape vehicle for punk rockers and others fleeing the everyday; Vanessa Renwick's hunting videos inside refrigerators; lots of video installations in Capture and Release; yearbook-style drawings by Harrell Fletcher; and the Red Shoe Delivery Service, run by M. K. Guth, which would taxi you around Portland for free, if you donned some red glittery shoes and clicked your heels together.

emily@thestranger.com