Workshops

Friday, October 28, 2011

Day of the Dead: Portland Style


Last night was the opening of the Day of the Dead show at Guardino Gallery, all part of the Last Thursday Art Walk on Alberta. Lots of my artist friends contributed to the show and Stephanie Brockway was the curator extraordinaire!

The altars . . .



The curator . . .



The musicians. . . .


Some of the people . . .










Some of the art . . .












Overall, it was a campy, high energy opening reception. I'll leave you with a parting shot of a guy dressed up as a female ghoul looking longingly into the gallery.

Arty Road Trip


I was invited to join three artist friends on a trip to the Long Beach Peninsula in SW Washington for three days. We packed up our art projects, comfy clothes, scads of food (and my portable latte machine), and hit the road on Tuesday morning. Besides myself, the bandits included Tory, Suzanne, and Debi. We're all artists and all members of the Portland Art Collective. It was a grand three days.

ASTORIA

Our first stop was Astoria, where we had lunch at T Paul's Urban Cafe, then hit up Lunar Boy Gallery and Cargo, with a stop for lattes at Astoria Coffee House. Of course we also popped into Riversea Gallery.




VINTAGE HARDWARE AT THE ASTOR HOTEL

This little, I mean BIG, store was a fun discovery!

















DOTS AND DOODLES

Astoria's amazing art store, Dots and Doodles, is always worthy of a stop. We had so much fun with the owners and their little dog, too!







LOW KEY WEST

Over the bridge we went and deep into the Long Beach Peninsula to Ocean Park. We arrived at Suzanne's beautiful beach house, located right across the street from the ocean. Such a warm and comfortable home. Tory and I shared a room and we even had our own bathroom! We got the latte machine fired up and eased into our art making by looking at a large selection of art magazines first.








JAMMIE DAY

Wednesday was our designated jammie day - all day, all he time. I abided. Making art, going to the beach, even to the grocery store to return and rent another movie.





BEACH WALK








THE ORANGE BEACH CHAIR





ART-MAKING

I worked on several Fearless Faces during my art-makin' time, also moved forward on my journal for the Sketchbook Project.








POST SCRIPT

We are fortunate to have a big old house in Astoria that has been divided into an apartment and a studio. The upstairs studio is vacant, so we swung by to have a look see. Well, four artists looking at a studio in Astoria with a view of the bay? We went crazy planning for converting it to a little apartment to use for visits to Astoria . . . we even had ideas of how to convert the closets into sleeping quarters. Alas, the timing isn't quite right to undertake something like this, but we came this close and plans are underway for a future conversion.