Sow Your Seeds and Jump Back

At a certain point when I was a young'un growing up on the high, dusty desert of Central Oregon, my grandmother moved from L.A. to be closer to our family in Bend. I remember her talking about the soil and the weather in coastal Southern California, saying something like, "you just toss some seed at the ground and jump back." A foreign concept to me, a child of some of the most un-farmable land west of the Great Divide; a point driven home to me a few years later when, as a teenager, I attempted to cultivate sunflowers in our south facing side yard and was rewarded with a few stunted starts and a whole lot of volcanic sand.

Here in Portland, I've invoked those words from my grandmother many times. It's almost alarming how quickly things grow here. It's the rain. The damned, damned rain. It's what keeps the lush and the green here year 'round.

It's the rain that's made me feel ok that the garden is going in a little late this year. We're about halfway there. We're building raised beds this year in addition to our bit of dug up yard, and it's ok that our greens could have gone in the ground a month ago, because it's still raining. Some time in June, or maybe July, the sun will come out, and maybe sometime in August my sunflowers will tower over my head and remind me that I live in a pretty amazing place.

Help Keep Print Alive

Plazm magazine, bringing arts and culture to you in a beautiful, large format, gorgeously printed, internationally distributed magazine for 20 years, could use a little help with printing issue #30. Issue #30 will feature art by David Lynch and Raymond Pettibon, interviews with Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney) and Bruce Sterling, fiction and poetry, photography and graphic design, and much, much more.

It's ready to go to press. We just need to match our RACC grant to pay the printer.

As much as it sucks to have to fundraise, we think it's worth it, because we don't think a $1.99 download can do justice to the images and artworks featured in this magazine, nor would the the feeling of holding the magazine in your hands, having it on your coffee table or in amongst your vinyl collection compare to reading it on your iPad.

Our Kickstarter project is getting close to the halfway mark, both in dollars pledged and duration of the campaign. We are really excited about this issue, and we hope enough of you are too!

OCAC spring sale

It's time again for the annual Oregon College of Art and Craft spring sale. This year it will be two full days of shopping in the Book Arts, Metals, Ceramics and Fibers studios.

Saturday May 14 - Sunday May 15

10 AM - 5 PM

Free and open to the public

8245 SW Barnes Rd.

Portland OR 97225

For more information please visit OCAC's events page

or call 503-297-5544

All funds raised will go directly to the artists and to help fund visiting artist lectures and studio equipment. If you're in Portland next weekend, please stop by!

to the left and to the right...

Listing, listing, listing.

New listings are here and here.

Cards

& blank books.

just kids

I just finished reading Just Kids, Patti Smith's memoir of her first 10 years in NYC, chronicling her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, her lover and lifelong friend.

I'll admit, though I've loved Patti Smith for years, and I count Robert Mapplethorpe as one of the very first artists to impress me and make me think of becoming an artist myself, I hesitated before picking up this book. I'm weary of druggy memoirs of self-destruction and pain that many rock-and-roll bios are fraught with. Even triumph over adversity is something I felt I didn't have the stamina for.

But Just Kids is far from all of that. It's a tender, insightful love story and coming-of-age tale. The story of two young people who are as much in love with each other as they are with art, and are imbued with a confidence that their path is a true one. It's as much an inspiring tale of two artists finding their voice as it is a public memoir of the characters in late 60s, early 70s New York. In fact, it's their private, quiet growth together - and later as they both begin to grow into their mediums - their growth apart, that carries the most sweetness and honesty.

Smith's writing is strong and straightforward, the poetry is found in its lack of embellishment. I read or heard somewhere that she wanted to write a book that Robert would have read. She describes their circumstances in their first apartment in Brooklyn, their stay in the famous Chelsea Hotel, and later in a cold loft a few doors down from the hotel with reverence and clarity. Every minute of their lives was devoted to their work and to each other.

It's a book about making the work, as opposed to the work itself. A story of the genius that flows through a receptive artist, rather than the ego. Patti Smith mentioned in an interview that Robert helped her to feel confident to call herself an artist - not an apprentice or a student, as he never doubted that he was an artist. What impressed me was their ability to take hold of that ownership without a sense of entitlement - they worked hard, scraped together dimes, never wanted what they couldn't have.

I'm feeling kind of empty in the way a good book leaves you feeling. I'm searching for extra pages at the back of the book, hoping for a little bite more. But instead, I'm left to carry on here in my own studio. Left to think about the choices I make here and how I want to approach my work now that I've been so inspired.

beauty shots

This morning I re-photographed some older work that I'd like to place in new venues this spring. I already have beautiful shots taken professionally of these two books, but like the impulse to spring clean, I wanted a couple of fresher shots as well.

These are a few 'outakes.' They're sort of like beauty shots. I book can convey a lot of emotion, just in its form. The printed word, and the touch and smell of real books.

Plazm magazine is turning 20!

Portlanders - please join us to celebrate at Powell's Books downtown next Monday, May 9, at 7 pm. Start the evening off with theremin music by Larold Will, followed by readings by:

Jon Raymond, author of the novel The Half Life and screenwriter for the films Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy, and most recently, Meek's Cutoff.

Leanne Grabel, poet, teacher, and former owner of Portland's longest running poetry open mike venue, Cafe Lena.

Tiffany Lee Brown, writer and multi-disciplinary artist and author of A Compendium of Miniatures.

and Kevin Sampsell, founder of Future Tense Books and author of the memoir A Common Pornography.

For full details please visit the Plazm blog.

five (or so) things I've learned from doing craft fairs

I'm not that great at craft fairs, I've got to admit. As well-prepared as I try to be, as early as I try to get my game going and build my stock, it's always a slightly torturous process for me. Despite the fact that I'd been producing at a steady pace and keeping very close to my schedule, I still found myself awake at 3 am the morning of the Rieke fair, up after working all day making last minute adjustments to my displays and packing last minute cards into cello bags.

In my 3 am angst, in anticipation of the scant hours of sleep I was destined to before the fair, I questioned myself, "why am I doing this again?"

Even in the midst of my early morning exhaustion, the source of what drives me to do this to myself over and over again was still apparent.

I like it. I was enjoying myself.

Not the torture part, but the challenge and the pushing myself, and the satisfaction that I've done all that I can to make this the best it can be - for now - and for the next time, there are the lessons learned and the growth that occurs from putting yourself out there in slightly uncomfortable circumstances.

The five (or so) things I've learned doing art fairs:

1. There's nothing like a deadline to kick you in the pants.

2. The opportunity to place your work among that of other artists you know make excellent work, and who have been doing it for a lot longer than you creates an excellent opportunity to challenge yourself.

3. The craft fair milieu itself challenges me to think about a specific audience, which is a good exercise in and of itself.

4. The networking is great! This Sunday I met a handful of really talented local artists, including Cathy McMurray, painter and multi-media artist. Her gorgeous work can be found on Etsy here, and on her blog, Habit of Art, which is a wealth of beautiful eye candy and helpful information on the business of art making.

5. This is perhaps the most important, yet the most difficult point for me to digest - that the part of my practice that is making ephemeral printed things and blank books for craft fairs, for selling on Etsy, and for -honestly- my own personal enjoyment, is just as important to me as making so-called fine art. I'm inexplicably drawn to this process, probably because it's personally challenging to me. I'm unearthing a part of me that I've buried for a long time, the part of me that wants to be good at this and not be dismissive of my stationery as an incidental pastime, while also acknowledging that the many facets of what I make and do are more integrated than they are compartmentalized.

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P.S. Spring seems to really be here! I hope you're getting at least as much lovely weather as we are here in the great PNW.

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P.P.S. I have a TON of things to photograph and list for ye olde shoppes. Updates to follow in the next few days.

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P.P.P.S. Check out the awesome displays The Monkey built for my cards and posters!

They're a little hard to see in this photo - but they're much fancier that I ever would have dreamed up had I built them, and completely collapsable and assemble-able without any hardware, (gotta love living with a machinist) so there's an upside to running out of time and delegating tasks to willing co-conspirators.