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From Oregon ArtsWatch: ‘A Poem of Perception’ marks a new era for contemporary art at Portland Japanese Garden

Photo by Kenji Ide.

Oregon ArtsWatch contributor and Portland-based journalist Brian Libby visited Portland Japanese Garden to cover Kenji Ide: A Poem of Perception, an exhibition open now through February 19, created specifically for the Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery in the Garden’s Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center. Including a tribute to its late curator, Matt Jay, Libby writes the exhibition, “invites us to stop and ponder not just nature’s wonders, but the inherent lyricism in our everyday objects, even (or perhaps especially) that which we might discard. Ide’s show, like the genius of Japanese garden design, is a call to be vitally present: to recognize that life and our everyday realities are always more fleeting and ephemeral than we expect, yet all the more wondrously compelling as a result.”