Art Grrll on the Town

Besides watching CSI last night and staying up until 3 am trolling blogs on the web, I also went to Last Thursday on Alberta . . . my first stop was the Guardino Gallery. I've seen a lot of things there in the past that I like - they have a huge variety of work and seem very comfortable bouncing back and forth across the great art/craft divide and ignoring it as is appropriate.

This show blew me away - Diane Archer was one of the featured artists, and she uses topographical maps combined with natural found objects to create what I think of as interior landscapes set in the natural world. And sometimes they have words! What could be better than that? Maps, bones, words . . . I was in heaven. So I bought a piece. After all, if I'm not out there supporting artists in a town where art is really pretty cheap, then who the heck will? I got to talk with her a little bit about her process - she described a level of precision and planning that is utterly alien to me - but looking at her jewelry, it makes total sense. And Oregon Art Beat (I love public television!) is even featuring her this month!

And I got a really cool piece by Julia Gardner - an artist whose work I've had my eye on for a while . . . transparencies and found objects and resin and text . . . Yummy! Though she doesn't seem to have a website anywhere . . . so I took a picture of it sitting on my file cabinet in my office. Right now, it's sitting there inspiring me - soon it will go up to the living room.

Life is good that there are such beautiful things in it!