No8wired
April 30, 2009
Just a quick one: Ran across a Kiwi Londoner’s site using relatively inexpensive tools to produce stunning results. Designdev George Coltart did it, and it’s a keeper.
Moviola, northwest style
April 29, 2009
Portland Art Museum is screening new short films by Northwest filmmakers tonight (April 30) and there’s one I particularly recommend: Help Wanted, by Teo Guardino.
WHERE: NW Film Center at the Whitsell Auditorium (inside the Portland Art Museum)
1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97205
WHEN: Thursday, April 30th at 7pm
FREE ADMISSION!!
The film is superbly done (even more impressive when you hear the conditions under which it was produced). It’s simple, doesn’t make the mistake of whacking you over the head with the obvious, and although it’s only 13 minutes long I fond myself choking up, watching it.
Please, if you can show up and agree with me that it’s a nice film, vote for Teo. The bigger the turnout, the more votes this film gets, the more likely it is to be invited to the Portland International Film Festival and the NW Film & Video Festival, both great places to get backers when you’re a fledgling independent filmmaker.
Just BTW, I was watching it at Teo’s mother’s place–Guardino’s Gallery on Alberta Street in Portland. From what I saw, she has an impressively talented son. And her gallery has done a lot for the arts in this town and on Alberta Street in particular, so it’d be kinda nice if Portland returned the favor…
MAXimum games
April 29, 2009
In Boston, the street signs can only be correctly interpreted by natives, as in “if you don’t already know where it is, we sure as heck ain’t gonna tell ya.” It’s about the only place I know that puts the directions AFTER the turn-off, so that the sign really says “ya shoulda turned back there…”
In Portland, they do much the same thing, only they call it the MAX. That’s Portland’s commuter train system and we’re having a kind of love-hate relationship.
Now, I love trains. To be able to ride MAX I’ll put up with its really horrible signage, lackadaisical ticketing (MAX is losing money and I suspect it’s because they use the honor system instead of turnstyles and conductors) and really confusing scheduling. Why? The people.
Portland Open Studios
April 28, 2009
Beware of wild impulses. Supposedly they lead to great new opportunities, but every so often they also lead to hundreds of strangers tramping through your house.
Met up with some very nice people at Pacific Northwest Sculptors the other night, and two very nice sculptors asked if I’d applied to be included in Portland Open Studios? “You mean the thing where you buy the calendar and it lets you drive around to the artists’ studios, see them doing their work and, I imagine, buy their stuff?”
That was the one, they confirmed. Pate de verre sculpture was unusual enough to be a big draw. Why hadn’t I applied?
Uh, because my studio is crowded when it contains two people, let alone 30, I’m not exactly centrally located, I’m not set up to take credit cards in my home, and the thought of strangers borrowing art off my walls and somehow forgetting to bring it back doesn’t exactly fill me with joy?
They assured me it wasn’t like that, that POS was a great chance to meet lots of interesting people, instead of touring them through my little studio space I could set up a larger studio/gallery in the garage, and the selling part of the equation was actually an incentive. “Trust us,” they said, “You need to get experience talking about your work like an artist and there’s no better way to do that than Portland Open Studios.”
Alright, I admit I need to get out of the Sally Field school of artistic response, i.e., “You like it? You want to buy it? Are you nuts?” Although I have yet to commit the cardinal sin of pricing (“I dunno. How much do you think it’s worth?”), I’m told I’m not far off. “If you’re going to make it, you’ve got to learn to sell it,” a very successful artist friend said, darkly.
Weeeeeellll…the prospect of visitors usually sparks a massive remodel project with me, and this one would force me to actually turn the garage into a real studio, something I’ve been promising myself for the past three years. I like meeting new people, the art collection is insured, the little selling thing wasn’t to be denied…so I sent in the application.
The POS jury accepted me about 15 minutes after I’d changed my mind. Ain’t that always the way?
And so now the garage renovation MUST be done by October, I’ve got a very tight deadline–like most ex-journalists, I still need impossible deadlines to prod my lazy carcass into producing–and I have a genuine excuse to spend a LOT of time in the studio.
And if you’re in PDX in mid-October, buy a calendar and come visit.
Guessing game
April 26, 2009
OK. For a free drink during BEcon (or whenever you get to glassland and can get me to hold still for 15 minutes), what the heck is this?
Massive glass attack…
April 25, 2009
…and ceramics and metal and beads and fiber arts: The gigantic Portland crafts show is this weekend at the Portland Convention Center, the Oregon Glass Guild is in hall B, and the quality of the work in all media is just outstanding.
(Also the quality of the demonstrators, she said modestly…) I spent the better part of the afternoon demonstrating pate de verre history and techniques to a surprisingly interested audience.
Now, while I love PdV dearly and it’s a lot of fun to DO, watching someone ELSE do pate de verre is slightly less interesting than watching paint dry. I did a lot of different things to make it more interesting, i.e., prepared samples at different stages a’ la cooking shows, and I brought a lot of examples of my work so everybody had a bunch to look at. Even so, the enthusiasm was kinda gratifying.
So gratifying, in fact, that the demo went for three hours instead of one and my feet have formally seceded from my body.
Highlights: A boy of about 12, Mirka, moved from the back to the front row during the demo, asked a lot of questions and then, at my casual, “Want to try it?” leapt to the table and started making pate de verre. In about five minutes he was mixing frits, tamping them down in the mold and listening for the “tunk, tunk” that says it’s compacted.
It was great to have someone else doing the work while I yakked, and he stayed until his mother literally yanked him (nicely) away. Alyssa, about 10, quickly took his place, but I gotta admit that Mirka was a master.
BTW…
WIN AN ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS BLOWN GLASS BOWL!!!!!
The incomparable Molly Barnes, quite possibly one of the best blown glass colorists I’ve ever seen, has donated the Oregon Glass Guild door prize for this year’s show. It’s a beautiful blue-green-creme bowl, all swirls and serenity, in a plexiglas case up front. People have been stopping before it, thinking it’s a museum piece.
Nope, that’s what we’re giving away, and it can be yours just by filling out an entry form at the show. Admission is free; how can you beat that? And there are almost equally nice door prizes at the other crafts exhibits as well.
Show ends (and the raffle takes place) tomorrow evening, so if you’re near PDX, stop by.
Tulip hoppin’
April 21, 2009
Somewhere there’s a list entitled “No-brainer photo opps,” and giant tulip fields are surely on it. (And nope, I did not TOUCH the saturation settings on the above photo. That’s the way it looked.)
Kat and I spent Sunday morning wandering the fields of Wooden Shoe Tulip Farms south of Portland, taking pictures and people-watching. It was a beautiful spring day just begging for a convertible with the top down and the tulips were only an hour away, so off we went. As is usual for me, people-watching probably edged out tulip-shooting…but not by much.
I once bought 900 tulip bulbs (yeah, yeah, but they were on sale) and was thrilled with my purchase until my mom reminded me that the only way to actually watch them bloom was to plant them…one by one. Not being of a gardening persuasion, that was pretty much a bummer which ruined a good manicure, but I’ve had at least a few tulips blooming in the yard ever since.
So I don’t need to drive an hour to see a tulip. On the other hand, I can’t see several thousand of them from my back porch, either, and as gardening folk suggest, massing them does make a difference:
Tulips weren’t the only masses out there–a couple hundred tulip-tiptoers showed up with us. Wooden Shoe Farms lets you tiptoe through the tulips for free, but it costs $10 to park the car and there’s the usual spendy sausage rolls and drinks, anthropomorphic-trams-pulled-by-tractors and funny jumpy-screamy things for the kiddies. About the only bargains are the tulips–3 great bunches for US$12–and we both took home an armful.
I lugged the good camera, tripod and shutter release down the fields (I’ve lost too many great shots to camera shake not to use them), stopping frequently to snap a bloom or catch the inevitable sweep-across-fields-to-Mt.-Hood-on-the-horizon shots. Truth be told I was late to Kat’s house and the light was a tad flat for my tastes by the time we arrived, but I did OK.
Apparently the tripod also makes me look like I know what I’m doing, because two groups stepped over OTHER camera-toting tulip fiends to ask if I’d take group shots of them, with their cameras. 
In return, I got a couple shots in of my own, and got hung up on taking pictures of people taking pictures.
This is Vijaya, whose friend was visiting from Pakistan; I think the two of them in their bright cottons caught as many photographs as the flowers. She asked if I’d shoot a couple of her, sitting in the tulips as her friend didn’t trust herself with their fancy borrowed digital camera.
I said sure, and she plopped down in the middle of the rows. If the mud bothered her, she didn’t let on; she just smiled and I got my shot. Then Kat and I moved on, chasing people and petals.
It was all great fun, and we headed back to the gift shop to track down some parrot tulips, Kat’s favorite. And there was my money shot, ironically NOT of tulips or people:
Crazygood artists
April 18, 2009
I’m in the middle of about six very different web projects right now, all of them centered on making WordPress (the software that drives this blog) stand up and do tricks. My latest personal site, crazygoodartists, popped up this week, and I thought I’d ask you guys what you think.
Far too many people think of a blog as a serial diary that runs on and on like literary diarrhea (OK, no cracks about yours truly). In fact, however, blogging software has evolved into one of the most sophisticated and easy to use content management systems out there.
Add the fact that it’s virtually free, and you get an incredible, low-cost website tool for organizations that don’t have a dedicated web team. (Or for many that do, but that’s another story). Instead of adding a blog to the website, though, I’m suggesting that the blog BECOMES the website.
It helps artists, for example, get around the single biggest barrier to entry for an effective portfolio site: The need to either learn HTML yourself, use a limited number of commercial templates supplied by your host, or hire someone to build your site and keep it current.
Difficult concept to get across, but I’ve been putting together a series of testblogs to show how versatile WordPress can be. And I found a really cool template, Threat to Creativity, from a guy named Max, that I needed to do SOMEthing with.
So I grabbed a cheap domain, installed WordPress and the theme, made a few small modifications, and started uploading content. Whole process took maybe 30 minutes…and crazygoodartists was born.
Personally, it’s a great way to bookmark the sites of my favorite artists, and maybe also give them a minor web traffic boost. It’s also a fast way to share them with others. Click the browse menu on the right to select a medium or type of work you’re interested in, and you’ll see only artists working in those areas.
Whenever I get a chance I’ll be updating and modifying the template–I have a lot of ideas about it–but I’d love to read your opinions. What would you do with this site?
(Oh, and check out some of the artists. They really are crazy-good.)
Mommy needs a cocktail
April 14, 2009
Until you’re a mother, the whole sweet mommy-baby-birth-toddler syndrome pretty much leaves you cold. (Unless you’re a wanna-be mommy, meaning you’re sucking up the “and then my water broke (giggle) all over Cynthia’s hand-made Tibetan wool rug” jollies like a chocoholic at Godiva.)
I’m one of those hapless non-mommies who listens to mommyflock conversation with a bobbing head and slightly bemused smile until presented with a convenient escape. So far I’ve failed to find the humor in birthing, toilet training and other things involving messy bodily functions, especially over dinner.
Which is why I’m totally astonished that I’m *still* laughing at Mommy Needs a Cocktail (because sometimes the chocolate brownies just don’t do the trick). It’s the blog of a freelance legalist and writer, Kristen, who also sells t-shirts, mugs and bags on a separate site. I can honestly say that she’s written the first birthing story I ever read twice. It ain’t exactly hushed and reverent, and it’s a bit short on the wondrous joy part…which is maybe why I like it…but it sure is fun.
Bay Leaf (Chinese vegetarian)
April 13, 2009
- Restaurant website
- Location: Hawthorne district (roughly)
- Price for dinner for two: About $28
Here’s the thing about vegetarian restaurants: They’re either exquisite, or they forcibly remind us why grass clippings belong in lawn mowers.
Bay Leaf edges a wee bit closer to the latter than the former, and that’s a shame, because it’s also one of the prettiest Chinese restaurants I’ve encountered in a long time. The surroundings are tasteful and immaculate, the people are friendly, the teas are diverse and tasty (although Typhoon beats them on variety) and the food is wonderfully presented.
But Bay Leaf’s offerings were a feast for the eyes, not the stomach: Most dishes were far too bland. Robyn and I started with an order of lettuce wraps, one of my favorite can’t-go-wrongs. It looked lovely, but pretty much tasted like stewed celery with a little soy sauce.
We chose vegetarian mu shu and a mushroom dish called Satay Lion’s Mane for our entrees, with steamed brown rice. The rice was nutty and fresh, possibly just a tad undercooked but certainly eatable. Alas, the vegetarian mu shu repeated the mistake of the lettuce wraps; it was nicely presented but bland as all get-out, with the only real taste notes coming from the plum sauce.
The Satay Lion’s Mane wasn’t as bland, but that wasn’t saying much. The lion’s mane mushrooms were limp and slightly off, with a slight alkali tang that didn’t pair well with the over-soyed satay.
Robyn had a bit of a cold and ordered Chrysanthemum Flower tea for its medicinal properties. I ordered plum green tea, which was delicious and is supposed to stimulate the appetite. I finished the pot but left most of the meal; even though the portions were on the skimpy side we didn’t finish what we had.
We left in search of something a bit more substantial than usual for dessert (and we found it, but that’s another story…).