Casa Diablo

Beast, Portland, Oregon

Like its name, Beast is straightforward and simple. This Portland-based restaurant offers up prix-fixe six-course menus of uncomplicated yet refined dishes. Each week the cuisine changes according to apparent inspiration from the fields, forests, and moods of the owner and her culinary team. Foie gras bons bons may share the menu with pork, pork liver, and sour cherry pate. Read more

Yacht’s Secret Playlist

YACHT founding members Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans live in Portland, Oregon and Marfa, Texas, and consider themselves ‘generalists’ in the fields of music, art, writing, and everything in between. Their new album, See Mystery Lights, has just been released, along with companion materials ranging from book and mixtapes to a limited-edition playable copper record of mantras. We checked in with Jona to get his thoughts on the music that inspired their own album and he started with the Radha Krishna Temple song, Hare Krishna Mantra: ‘A not-so-secret-thing about YACHT is that when we see Hare Krishna monks dancing down the street in their orange robes and shaved heads, it takes a great deal of self-control for us not to run after them. This is not to say that we want to stop them or join them. We just want to see what happens at the end of the chase’. Read the rest of Yacht’s Secret Playlist.

Theo Ellsworth

Portland-based illustrator and graphic novelist Theo Ellsworth has a style that is odd and surreal enough for the thirty-something indie set, but also have an innocence about them that would suit children’s books — his drawings are dense enough to keep people of all ages staring at all his weirdo characters and animals. Read more

Rafael Grampa

Comic book artist Rafael Grampa’s style reminds me of Taiyo Motsumoto’s but with an art-nouveau and even tattoo-inspired sense of layout informing each panel. His unique renderings of classic comic book characters has certainly rekindled my interest in superheroes. His comic, FURRY WATER and the Sons of Insurrection, co-written with Daniel Pellizzari, is due out from Dark Horse next year.

Andre Ethier

Toronto-based painter Andre Ethier combines traditional painting techniques with flowing, textured brushwork to lend his psychedelic paintings a brooding moodiness that is reminiscent of the work of Ivan Albright as well as that of the Surrealists. Unlike other artists working with similar themes, Ethier’s images are more somber than they are giddily hallucinatory, and the horror he portrays is more nuanced, with vague references to ancient mythology and pop culture Read more

Cardboard animation by Sjors Vervoort

Dutch animator Sjors Vervoort’s amazing short CARDBOARD was made with painted cardboard placed on the street. The character designs are pretty cute, too.