By Bob Hicks

Good lord, it’s December. And it’s Thursday, the first Thursday of the month. And that means tonight is First Thursday in Puddletown, the city’s monthly art walk of mainline galleries. (There are other such monthly festivities, including First Friday on the East Side and Last Thursday in the Alberta District, but First Thursday is the granddaddy and reigning poobah of the crowd.)

If you’re adventurous and like to party, you can plot out your route and do your gallery-hopping tonight. If you’d rather skip the crowds but still see the art, don’t worry. Most of this stuff will be on display throughout the month, although in December you’ll want to be sure to check for holiday closures.

Mr. Scatter’s guide to this month’s art shows (incomplete, as always) is in this morning’s Oregonian. Don’t forget to check out sculptor Tom Hardy‘s 90th birthday-bash exhibit in the old OGLE space: November 30 was the big day. Mr. Scatter stopped by Wednesday evening’s preview/birthday party, and Tom was at the center of things, sitting down and grinning broadly as he greeted old friends and well-wishers, a few of whom were carrying just-purchased prints or drawings tucked under their arms. The exhibit, which covers several decades and includes a lot of the welded sculptures for which he’s best known as well as works on paper, is an eye-opener. Here in our midst was a genuine midcentury figurativist-turned-modernist, although a modernist in that quintessentially stubborn Oregon/West Coast way — an artist who has never crossed over completely to abstraction but retains reminiscences of nature, animal or mineral, in everything he creates.

And he’s created plenty. The guy was making significant art before most of us were born. Even Mr. Scatter, who is reluctantly contemplating joining the AARP.

FROM TOP:

• Tom Hardy in his Swan Island studio. Photo: Mark Woolley.
• Parisian artist Sophie Calle, part of “Body Gesture” at Elizabeth Leach Gallery.