Swap Time!

About eight months ago, fresh from the joy of the Holiday Ornament Swap, I signed up for a 9-9-09 postcard swap!

I got my list of swap partners via Swap-bot about a week ago. When I go to the post office today, I'll be mailing cards to Serbia, Canada, Sweden, and all over the U.S.! How cool is that?


So, I wanted a postcard that was original, but still said, well, "Portland." Using my newly honed Photoshop skills, I took a scanned image of a Portland map and a photo I took of the St. Johns Bridge, and overlaid them. After all, what's more Portland than the river and its bridges? I printed the digital collages out, and then attached them to some self-adhesive postcard backs called PhotoPostos that I found in my stash. Presto Posto! Swap accomplished. Now off to the post office.

Bead-o-Rama! or Get Your Craft On This Weekend

Here a few of my glass beads - I got most of the antique ones locally at Knittn' Kitten and Beads at Dusti Creek, and got some of the fancy handmade ones while I was in Venice last year. (See the little balloon-looking ones with the white stripes? Wow!)

I pulled these out to remind myself that I do not necessarily need to go down to the Portland Bead Expo at the Convention Center this weekend and buy even more beads . . . no matter how tempting it may be! Especially since my copy of Bead Simple, the new book by local craft luminary Susan "West Coast Crafty" Beal is on its way to me as I write! Must . . . practice . . . self . . . control . . .

Other cool arty-crafty happenings this weekend include the local celebration of SWAN Day - Support Women Artists Now Day - as part of the Energy Trust Better Living Show down at the Portland Expo Center. (If you visit the SWAN site, there's a cool video with actress Sandra Oh talking about how Bjork has inspired her.) And yes, I'll be there from 2-5 on Saturday, March 29th along with a bunch of other great local artists, musicians and performers! Check out the whole local line-up here - it's all free! I'll have a table set up so that women artists, the people who love them, and the people who want to be them when they grow up, can come by and make their own collage! (Did I mention this was all free? Unlike the beads?)

And if that's not enough, the artists who make these amazing things will be there!

Tammy Paladeni - visit her site here:


And Lauren Black - check out her work here:


Of course, I may still have to drop by the Bead Expo on my way over . . .

Now, my Sunday will probably be spent with the Sweetie surfing blogs . . . and I just wanted to send a special shout out and thank you to the folks over at the Craftzine blog (if you haven't seen this blog or read the magazine - do! Very inspiring stuff!) and Leah at Creative Every Day (who helps me remember that all the little things add up to a very creative life - and who keeps recommending cool books I need to read!). Both of these folks had nice things to say about my recent Bicycle Inner Tube Jewelry DEMO! Thanks!

But Before International Women's Day . . .

There was the Craft 06 Release party! I was only able to drop by for few moments, but I still got to see Sister Diane, gape at Susan "West Coast Crafty" live and in person (too shy to say hello) and meet Moxie - the lady behind the oh-so-friendly cover creatures on this issue #06 of Craft: (photo by the lovely Leethal)


But even cooler than the cuddly Moxie monsters are the marvelously mischievous felted bunnies available on her etsy shop. She will make them into rings or pins for you . . .
I am going over right now to order mine . . .

Portland International Women's Day

The Portland International Women's Day on Sunday was wonderful . . . I set up my little table and tempted folks with jewelry and crafty doodads and information about classes; chatted with some lovely ladies from Siren Nation, who are planning another big festival here in Portland celebrating women in the local arts scene; drooled over earrings made from recycled skateboards from MapleXO; and bought Persepolis from representatives of my local independent women's bookstore, In Other Words. It was also a great excuse to wear some of my jewelry from K Robbins, which I traded for years ago at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival . . . this was during my other life as Banshee Designs. I haven't made the clothing she traded for in years (and it has likely long since disintegrated), but she still offers these designs through her website!


But the best thing of all? I had a prime seat to see the performers! The Urban Berbers tribal belly dance troupe was there from Gypsy Caravan (I almost want to take classes just so I'll have an excuse to wear the outfits . . .) and it was such a highlight to see women of different sizes, shapes, and ages all so eloquently shake their groove things!

We also heard from teen girl band Blubird, performers The Alphabetix, poet S. Renee Mitchell, and finally, singer Liv Warfield. The crowd had thinned to almost nothing by the time she went on, but this soulful singer and her band still gave us a high-powered performance, and I promptly went home and bought her song "Sophisticated Sista" from iTunes. I'm planning to add it into the music mix I'm building for Tuesday night's Playful Prayer class.

Mad/50: Shadowbox Shrine in Process

I'm diving head first into a big project this weekend - a drawer-sized shadowbox shrine for installation at Mad/50, the groovy outdoor community art space at the corner of Madison and SE 50th in Portland. Here's the space, which I photographed this fall at the opening of the Day of the Dead installation.

It's protected from the elements, and the installation space for the shadowbox shrine is about 20" x 26". I'm working with a drawer, this drawer in fact, as the base.


The drawer is about 15" x 19", giving me a little bit of wiggle room if I want the shrine to extend outside the confines of the box. Which I probably will. So far, I have the box gessoed, and have been playing with some imagery and elements.

The theme is "home." It's a theme I've been working with a lot lately. Reconciling my desire for a home with a desire for freedom, trying to figure out what really makes up a sense of home, of being at home, of feeling at home. At home in your body, in a place, in a family or community. Needless to say, there are very few places or people with whom I feel at home. Hence the exploration.

The New Oregon Flag: Initial Attempts

Michael5000 recently posted a flag makeover contest on his blog. As a proud Oregon resident - and as the person who first suggested the ridiculous idea of a flag makeover contest - I feel obliged to enter.

Now, I'm not real keen on competition. Ignoring the fact that I recently sponsored a contest on my own blog, the whole "who's better, who's best" thing makes me a little wacky. But, I do love a challenge. And I love visual brainstorming.

In the spirit of quantity not quality and deferring judgment, I wanted to let you in on how this flag development process is going.

I started by considering some of the elements already on the flag: a beaver, the color blue, the color yellow, the state seal, the easy-to-spot-in-a-line-up words "State of Oregon." I considered elements that are iconic elements of our state: beavers, salmon, Nike, Mt. Hood, wine, trees, eco-stuff, grass farms, tree farms, rain, skiing, rugged coastline, a wide variety of berries.

How to present rain in a flag? Or, how to present the fact that only recent transplants, tourists, and Odd Ducks on Very Rainy Days will actually use umbrellas here in the Beaver State? I began to sketch, using the only paper available to me while eating lunch at Chili's with the Sweetie: the envelope from my PCC W2 form.


Not entirely satisfied, I wanted to see how it looked in color - using blue and green, the colors I primarily associate with my adopted state, so full of moisture and lush, mossy growth:

Sadly, it's not very . . . stately. So, I began to look at iconic animals. The salmon. The beaver. How to get them both on the flag? Representative of our waterways and our forests and their interconnectedness? Hmm . . .

What about a hybrid? The . . . Beamon! A quick sketch of the Beamon skiing (er, sorry, snowboarding) down Mt. Hood was rejected for further development, but the Beamon concept was explored in color. Unfortunately, the artist did not have reference images of either a beaver or a salmon at the time of the drawing:


The Sweetie commented that it looked sort of like a shrimp.

Back to the drawing board.

It's just too cold . . .

and I've been checking out what's happening at everyone else's blog, so the pattern finalization will have to wait. But if you're local to Portland, and into doing cool things with scraps of felted (or "fulled") sweaters, I also heartily recommend the Recycled Sweater Craft classes being held at a library near you - Midland, Belmont, Capitol Hill in the next few weeks alone! Now, I can't swear to this, but I do believe these are being taught by Sister Diane herself!

And for those of you preparing for Valentine's Day, here's a link to some cool pop-up card tutorials from the Princess of Pop-Ups!

The Chuck Close Exhibit

Today's drawing inspired by a visit to the Chuck Close Exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. Wonderful to see so much about the process of his printmaking . . . He was a photorealistic painter, started with close-ups of faces, used a grid to break it up and enlarge it while maintaining the perspective. His later work showed the grid , even emphasizing it and using it as a compositional element. He also used different types of marks - scribbles, circles, even fingerprints - and frequently vivid color to create the images.

Nest Head

I've certainly had days like this. Fortunately, today was not one of them. The ennui is fading, and I'm starting to feel energized again! I'm not teaching at all during January - I've got too much work scheduled for the Other Part of my Brain - so the drawing a day (along with some classes I'll be taking) will serve as my creative accountability.

And, I've got a few cool links to share!

For you Portland folks, the main library downtown is featuring a mail art show! I didn't pull it together to participate (it wasn't juried, making it a great opportunity for the entire community to participate), but am excited to visit - Diane over at DIY Alert talked about it on her Cool Places Alert blog this week, and gave some great links to learn more about mail art.

I'm also very excited about the up and coming jewelry exhibits at The Museum of Contemporary Craft here in Portland - Touching Warms the Art and Framing: The Art of Jewelry. Both look like they're set to open January 19th, but get this - visitors get to touch and even try on the jewelry created for the Touching Warms the Art exhibit - I cannot tell you how much this thrills me. I am thinking about becoming a member of the museum just so that I can crash the pre-opening gala! (Although it's not really crashing if I'm a member and have an invite, is it?) It also looks like the jewelry is made from a lot of found, recycled, and non-precious materials - something that appeals to me. I'm going to be reworking my Toolbox Jewels class into Junk Drawer Jewels - incorporating more different types of found objects into the workshop.
And last but not least, my friend Mark Silver of Heart of Business publishes an e-newsletter that is full of wonderful information for the spiritually-minded entrepreneur, folks who want to "make a difference and a profit." His newsletter this week was about creativity - and he hit on a really important point: it takes quiet time in order to turn around and have productive time. You have to allow yourself times to be fallow or to simply be quiet and reflective in order to be creative. If you want to read the whole article, go here.

And perhaps that is part of the purpose of post-holiday ennui: my mind forcing me to rest, to contemplate . . .

Junk to Funk

Wow.

Last night was Junk to Funk here in Portland. I put on my didn't-quite-make-the-cut ensemble, took a few cheesy overexposed pictures (who doesn't love to play Supermodel in their garage?), and headed out to check out the competition (and say hello to the folks from Orlo who use the arts to promote environmental action and SCRAP who encourage creative reuse).

Wow.

Not all of the outfits were well-executed, but all of them were over the top in terms of what they re-used. One gal (who came in for an honorable mention - or was it third place?) had constructed her outfit entirely out of trash that had washed up on Oregon beaches. Another had gathered used latex gloves from tattoo artists and constructed a skirt. Yet another designer gathered used gelato spoons, cups, bowls, and taster spoons - all in pastel candy colors - to create a bustier, mini-skirt, headdress, and parasol.

Wow.

All of which beat my used t-shirts, sweaters, and bicycle inner tubing hands-down (though I did get many compliments on my hat). Corset made of record albums teamed up with wig made of 80's mix tapes? First place. Amazing vintage-look swimsuit and bathing cap made entirely of recycled bicycle inner tubes, down to the thread holding it together? So charming! Delicate leaf-net-vine dress made of the urban tumbleweed, beige plastic bags? Looked couture. Enormous jacket made of air-pocket plastic packing material, teamed with dreadlock wig made of melted and shaped plastic bags? Hope it won the People's Choice award. And don't get me started on what a woman can create from used dryer sheets or excess recycling bin labels . . .

Oooo, I have got my work cut out for me for next year! So, feel free to start sending me all of your unwanted VHS tapes and DVD's NOW - I have a vision!

(And, as a side note, the Sweetie is currently reading a comic - downloaded on his computer, no less - that contains a character called Squirrel Girl. I am not making this up.

Of course, I'm sitting next to him laughing at the parts he reads out loud and thinking how I can re-use the plastic VHS cases - in an outfit, of course - once I get the tape out. It's a very sweet and geeky Sunday.)

Holiday Hipness

The Dinnergrrls Holiday Bazaar is coming up at CubeSpace here in Portland on Sunday, December 2nd, 12-4. Yes, I'll be there, selling some fiber art, some encaustic work, some jewelry, some collages . . . and Kristin Gross of Konfections will be there selling delicate and tasteful jewelry . . . but really, the reason you have to go is this: Bodywreaths. Let's just say it's been time to retire my old I-bought-some-things-at-Michael's-in-the-early-90's-and-used-a-glue-gun holiday wreath for several years now - I've just never had an excuse before. Now, I have an excuse. No, more than that - I have A Call to Action. Really. You have to go look at these. Now. And buy one. For yourself. For someone you love. For the good of the whole freakin' nation. 'Cause if you don't, I may buy one for you.

Heck, I may buy you two.

Chocolate Cake and its Repercussions

I went to the fancy party to celebrate the union of DIY Lounge and Collage last night, and I dressed in my bumblebee costume.

Really, I just wanted to stay home and watch Season 2 of Project Runway (Which I've been downloading from iTunes, thanks to an innocent comment from Euphrosyne, and am now sadly hooked on. Pathetic. I dislike the egos and the cattiness, but oh, the niftiness they come up with! And the challenges, so fun! And besides, I can't find Craft Corner Deathmatch on iTunes. I guess it was cancelled).

But, I had told Maria (the owner of Collage) that I would come as Crafty Bee to help her celebrate, and I just couldn't let her down . . . and once I got the costume on, I started getting into it. That's me and her in the newly redecorated craft-makin' DIY Lounge in the back room at Collage. Doesn't she look happy? (added: And doesn't the Lounge look AWESOME?! Ok, the parts of it that you can see behind my enormously luscious bee bottom! Wow! And, no, they are not paying me to say this - though I did win a cool prize in the raffle!)


Of course, then I got into the chocolate cake. Which was dense and sugary and made with wheat and sent me off into a weird bumble-bee disco frenzy. Did I mention there was a DJ? Anyway, I didn't touch a drop of alcohol and I still managed to make a complete fool of myself.


Which, frankly, is not that difficult. But, I also ran into Gretchin of Scarlet Star Studios, pictured below with a beam of inspiration pouring into her head and holding the number 2. What does it mean? We may never know . . . Gretchin remains delightfully inscrutable.


And me? I woke up this morning with a chocolate cake hangover. Go figure.

Birds, Shopping, Hats, Bridges and Other Wonderful Things

I love birds. I love shopping. And, I love hats.

It is no surprise, then, that I was inspired and delighted by this picture of Gretchin in her chicken hat from Liv and Lotus.

I saw the hen hats, the tea cozies and the Lumpies at the Trillium Artisans sale . . . and somehow I managed to resist buying one of each. Perhaps it has something to do with the big box of felted recycled sweaters in my sewing room . . . or the fact that I made a tea cozy a few years ago . . . or the recycled sweater hats I bought from Sweaterheads last year when I made the Sweetie wander at Saturday Market with me in the freezing cold! Those are all really good excuses, but really, can a girl have too many things made by local craftistas out of recycled sweaters? Of course not! Perhaps I do need a Lumpie . . .

What I did buy at the Trillium Artisans Sale was a Johnny Pillow from crazycoconut. It has a lovely silkscreened picture of the local St. Johns bridge on it - and really, besides a hat that looks like a chicken, what could be better than a beautiful bridge that you can hug?!



And I've tried taking pictures of the St. Johns bridge, and they just didn't do it justice . . . somehow crazycoconut managed to capture its cathedral-like elegance and its total approachability . . . . on a pillow.

Wow.
I have loved bridges for as long as I can remember . . . I loved the idea of crossing over, of being suspended . . . of seeing the water rushing below. And if it was a suspension bridge or a covered bridge, even better - you were contained, but still totally out in the open . . . that was the best. No wonder I moved to a city divided by a river . . . a city with so many bridges.

But now I have to go put on a bumblebee costume and attend the grand re-opening of diy lounge at collage.

Hunting in Autumn

The Sweetie and I took a lovely walk through the Irvington neighborhood in Portland today. Ostensibly, it was so that I could get . . . er, hunt out shots of autumn leaves to add to my copyright-free collage materials file . . . but, truth be told, we both needed the exercise! And, despite forecasts of rain (Rain? in Portland? Never!) it was a clear, sunny day . . .




The Sweetie also helped me capture a variety of actual leaves, which I have corralled here in my scanner:


No leaves were harmed in the making of this post. All leaves will be released back into the wild.

This is the week!

Halloween. Dia de los Muertos. The true deep dive into fall. I don't have any big plans for Halloween - I may put on the Bumblebee Costume and go dancing. I may stay home and make some art. I may actually give candy to trick-or-treaters, as there may actually be some in my neighborhood this year. But no matter what the week holds in the way of celebrations, I gotta say that this time of year is invigorating in that go-deep-within, bake-and-snooze-in-front-of-the-fire, make-shadow-art, do-tarot-card-readings, layer-up-with-sweaters-and-scarves way.

Here is one of my seasonal touch drawings - Mr. Skelly - done a week ago, and feeling very timely . . .

Last week, I went to the opening of Mad/50's latest outdoor shadowbox installation - this one, a Dia de los Muertos shrine to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. For those of you unfamiliar with Mad/50, it's another one of those cool Portland things - two artists (one full time, one part time) who share a house and a life at the corner of SE Madison and 50th have created a yard full of art and neighborhood involvement. Four artists a year create shadowbox installations for the outdoor art display - and it looks like I'll get to do one next Spring! Right now, though, the featured artist is Malaina Guzman, and the piece is wonderful.







Here, you can see the shrine in context - complete with Marigolds - as well as a marvelous detail of some of the handmade figures. The shrine is up through December 10th, so definitely come by if you can! (PS - couldn't find a website for Mad/50 or the current artist - don't think they have one, but if they do, let me know what it is!)

The most exciting thing this week though is two openings on Friday, November 2nd - One: the Dia de los Muertos show at the Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, OR and the other: the Celebration of Souls show at Sixth Street Gallery in Vancouver, WA. Both shows feature some of my encaustic work and promise to be very fun shows for those of you interested in the traditions of the Day of the Dead . . . to find out more about both shows, check out my website here. There's even a few links to more info about Day of the Dead, if you're curious . . .

More Proof that Portland is the Best Place for Me Ever

As if I needed more proof - after Powell's Books, Collage, New Seasons Market, Stumptown Coffee, and the little horses project (I could go on!) - there's this: a blog post about a lovely local hiding happy fortunes all over downtown . . . there are so many wonderful places in the world, but there's no place like home!

Back to School

The past month or so has been like "back to school" for me - taking classes at Art & Soul, getting my own class schedule up for fall, and then taking a class with Wendy Huhn at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts here in Portland (yes, a hoity-toity place that still actually uses the word "craft" in its name - wow). Wendy Huhn is a very cool fiber artist who lives here in the Great Northwest and the class I attended was called "Transferology" - oodles of cool techniques for transferring images to paper and fabric (yes, those are some of my samples above).

I had a lot of fun, met some other very cool mixed media artists, and got some great ideas for the pieces I'm working on for the December Gresham Arts Council Show "Postcards from Afar." It was great to see how the other folks in the class worked and experimented, see what their process was like, then see some finished stuff live and in person, and then go check out their work on-line! I love looking at other artist's work - These are the participants with websites that I know about: Trisha Hassler - who mixes fabric and metal in her work, quilter and fiber artist Gerrie Congdon, and mixed media artist Mar Goman (go to the site, click on "Artists" then on "Mar Goman").

Workshop: $$$
Supplies: $$
Getting to see other artists at work: Priceless!

Junk to Funk Fashion Show

I'm working on my entry for Junk to Funk today - here's some footage from last year's show! (added later: and no, I didn't get it together in time to enter last year - but I was very inspired!)

Poetry and Chocolate . . .

Together, they make for a perfect evening . . .went for a chocolate tasting at Alma - and was blown away! They hold them the second Thursday of every month, and I think it's going to become a permanent fixture on my calendar . . . chocolates of different textures with strong and subtle tastes . . . like wine . . . my oh my! Like an art museum for the palate . . . And then, on the way home, I stopped at the downtown post office and the lady I parked next to asked to play with The Blank Canvas (my dear white truck now covered with magnetic poetry)! I giddily said yes - and here is a poem she made:

and here is a compliment she left for my lovely little Poetry Posse member - The Blank Canvas can hardly wait to show Trixie!

Art and Soul

I love Portland. I've lived here for 15 years, and it still surprises and delights me. Art and Soul is a cool mixed media arts retreat that's been held in Portland for 5 years now - finally, this year, I got to go! I took a class today from Diane Downs today on how to alter a canvas by adding niches to it - one of those things that I'd read about, but really needed to see hands-on to "get." I had made some paper by arranging and color photocopying recipe cards from a box of old family recipes that my mom gave me - things in my mom's handwriting, my dad's, my grandmother's - even old ones my mom had typed! I used the paper as a cover for the foam core that formed the niche, and for the background of the canvas.


And then somehow the heart just seemed right, along with the white picket fence and the dollhouse window (a gift from Diane - I love it!) Later, I added some matches to one of the niches and have my eye on some etchings of cutlery and my artmaking neighbor from Texas, Ann Webb, gave me some skulls that may need to find a home here . . . there's a strange death and domesticity theme popping up - again.
A friend recently asked me "why shrines"? I think it's largely because I was turned off by modern art and art that was only about deconstructing and challenging the aesthetic ideals of other artists. This happened during art school. I think it happens to a lot of artists. We lose the soul, and get caught up in critiques and techniques and how our work contributes to "the art dialogue." It was around this time that I was really drawn to craft, to outsider art, to process art, to folk art, and to devotional art. Art that was made out of passion, compulsion, prayer or practicality. Art that came out of the need and desire of people to make meaning out of their lives, not just the work of other artists. Devotional art and folk art let me to mandalas, masks, rituals and shrines, as did my own exploration of different spiritual traditions. And I began to look at my precious artmaking objects and my memorabilia and all the evidence of my history and experience of spirit and gather those things together into shrines as a way of both understanding them and honoring them and making art that was meaningful to me. More later, but that's it in a nutshell. Whew!