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October 16, 2005
portland open studios tour: westside
by gl. at 5:56 pm
the portland open studios tour eastside conflicted with the hp lovecraft film festival last weekend, so we made up for lost time on the westside this weekend. the westside tour is always a difficult trail to follow because you invariably end up getting lost in multnomah village or the west hills around beaverton & tigard.
saturday
dave & toby graham: glass beads & jewelry. he talked while he melted & swirled the beads to keep them round. foos ball for display table. i picked up a couple of small beads because they were beautiful and so cheap. tiny art for $6!
sharon geraci: collage
shu-ju wang: a smart, welcoming, talented gocco printer! as if i wasn't already lusting over the gocco, i've now had the chance to see more types of pieces made with it, including 4-color process! and we were encouraged to handle the books! (nothing makes me sadder than book artists who have a hands-off policy.) i also met jennifer there, another young book artist. shu-ju teaches a gocco class in november i am almost certain to take. ee!
tupper malone: watercolor and former clay artist. giclee prints.
kitty wallis: sven called her brilliant, but she also had an acerbic edge and someone was quite angry at sven for taking pictures.
susan foley: a pastel artist who has been to an artist's way open studio & who we introduced to the church of art! but we didn't know she was in the tour because she never told us her real name. :)
phil seder: fish & metal, grinding a shower of sparks
katy mcfadden: clay sculpture garden and the best treehouse! sven was especially inspired and made discoveries about his own work as relates to scale, texture & figures.
willam rutherford: african american sculpture, painting, ink. sven found the plexiglass/acrylic interesting.
sunday
lucas klesch: a vaguely creepy guy who did pretty decent urban photography, but his collage, painting and nude portrait photography were uninspiring.
katherine kramer waters: along with shu-ju's gocco stop, this was one of the best places on the tour! an exciting, well-organized space w/ friendly people doing interesting collage, acrylic & photo collaborations.
molly torgeson: interesting sculptures made from rusted metal strips, friendly. the building also houses a "G. Laird," who turns out to be a lawyer named gregory.
ryan birkland: sven wanted to see his reverse glass painting on discarded windows. it was an interesting process, but didn't really grab us. howEVER, his studio is right next to the montgomery park east parking garage, which was a fascinating place to explore! it was creepy but solid at the same time. and we had a couple of horror-movie moments, including picking up the phone to a voice on the other end. it would be a great place to film.
ruth waddy: the picture in the calendar doesn't indicate enough how dimensional these paintings are, several of them with multiples frames painted over frames. inside a charming 23rd ave converted studio apartment lived a bandsaw and a dust tent, a HUGE cat and a friendly artist who created these multi-level acrylic pieces. alas, when we returned to trixie, we had a $50 ticket waiting for us. i hate parking in nw.
barbara gilbert: a book artist we saw two years ago, which was sven's introduction to tunnel books. i saw some pieces i recognized from then and she had some new stuff, too, but i was too bonky from sleep dep by then to be able to get much out of it. she had two collage books i think i want to pick up: collage discovery workshop and its sequel, beyond the unexpected.
jane levy campbell: last stop! a watercolorist with a simply phenomenal house who did a hoyt arboredum series i found quite pleasing.
afterwards, we went to an ostentatious open house (over $850,000!) and explored a couple of other houses w/ unusual construction. then we came home, ordered pizza, and watched nausicaa.
what a busy week we've had! and i haven't begun to write about many of our other artistic adventures. i'm a little heartened that it seems to be getting easier to talk about ourselves as artists, although after pushing myself to have my artist's way spring schedule ready for the open studios, i only gave away 2 cards. :P
sven & i have discussed applying to the open studios tour ourselves, and we get stuck at "but what's the point?". neither of us necessarily feel compelled to sell art, especially sven. i'd want to get participants for clusters, but the tour is unlikely to be a big source for that. we like talking about our work and inviting people to the space -- is that enough?
posted by gl. | October 16, 2005 5:56 PM | categories: exhibits & events