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Archive for the ‘Out and About in Portland’ Category

Putzing Along

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

picassowomanquilting

So much good stuff going on here. Enjoying our new place and neighborhood so much.

Last Wednesday was Mia’s graduation from Junior High School.  Here she is with the flowers I gave her. We are so proud of her and the confidence and maturity that she has gained over the past year. We are excited to see what she will do in high school. Her gift from us is a trip to Seattle on the train with her Mom and I. Probably won’t get to it until July. After the ceremony, we all went out to a late dinner at Mia’s favorite restaurant. It was great to have time with them before they took off for NC to visit Jack’s parents.

Miagrad

I have been quilting away on the Picasso woman. I was worried about how to quilt the face and body, but decided on straight lines that sort of follow the contours. There have been a lot of thread ends to deal with.

picassowomanthreadends

One of our new adventures was to take the street car to the Portland Farmer’s Market on the Portland State campus. Wow, what a fabulous weekly event. It is considered the best farmer’s market in the country, I was told. I think we will make this a weekly event, when we are here and able.

farmersmarket1

farmersmarket2

I hope to finish Picasso woman in the nest couple of days and get started on a larger version of Sky Blue Pink.

Window Seat at PDX

Monday, April 28th, 2014

 

windowseatsign

Today, I got to go behind the scenes at the Portland airport to see the exhibit that my Prairie Fields is in. It consists of 13 or 14 glass cases with and essay by Jim Earl, a literature professor at U of O. In the essay, Earl uses images taken from Google Earth to educate people about the land below them as they fly. I didn’t realize that the complete title contained the phrase – The Art of the Circle Field. In addition to our 3 quilts, there are several Google Earth photos used to illustrate the story. In it, Earl ponders the artistry of the prairie circles – are they intended to be so artistic or is it by chance. Here are some of the photos he selected:

googleearthcircles2

googleearthcircles

Here are Shirley and Elizabeth with their quilts.

elizabethcircles

shirleycircles

And me:

gerriecircles

And the three of us together.

Ladies3

We met the curator in her office and she took us through to the secure area through a back door. We looked at some of the other art exhibits. I have always enjoyed seeing art in airports and so it is quite fun to be part of an exhibit, now.

IKEA is out by the airport so I had lunch and spent some time there picking up some things for the condo. Then, Mr C and I went to the lighting store and picked out a chandelier. We are tired at looking at hanging wires.

 

What is Normal?

Thursday, September 26th, 2013

laboyprint2

Yes, what is normal, I ask? I am yearning for some days – maybe a whole week – when I can just stay home and do my magic with thread, cloth, dye and paint. It seems as if I am constantly grabbing a few minutes here and there and spending the rest of my time in meetings, entertaining guests (which I love), doing errands, you know – all that stuff that gets in the way of our creativity.

I had an SDA staff conference call at 8 am. Then, I snuck down stairs to make a larger thermofax screen of one of the grafittis. Back upstairs, got cleaned up and headed downtown with Mr C to look at condos. Home in the early afternoon, had a late lunch, went grocery shopping and fabric paint shopping, walked the dog and made dinner. Back to the studio to do some test prints and then settled down to some stitching on the second blue moon piece.

I found a better green for the printing I want to do. The test print is up there. I tried an electric blue for the other one.

bluegraffiti

I am going to sleep on these and decide on printing the actual quilt tomorrow.

Here is my progress on the moon stitching

secondbluemoonstitching

The condo looking was very informative. Just to be clear, we are not putting our home on the market until January and after we sell it, we will decide on our next move. I know I am not ready for the senior housing with the scrabble at 4 pm and a bus ride to the concert.

We do want to be down town where we spend a lot of our time. We want to rely less on  a car and be near public transportation. We looked at 3 different areas of Portland — the south waterfront and the waterfront near the trend Pearl District, both of which are near the trolley. Then we drove to the west side of the city and looked at an older condo on the hillside above a very nice area of Portland which is very near Trinity. We just wanted to wak into some and imaging ourselves living there.

We did not like the townhouse in the south waterfront area. It is a huge area of condo buildings and office buildings with not much ambiance and pretty far from the places we like to frequent. We really like the buildings neat the Pearl. They were new and nicely appointed and seemed to have the accommodations we are looking for. It would be a short trolley ride to the place I plan to have a studio. They are very sound proof condos. There is also a nice fitness area.

The condo on the west side is a great location. We love it up there. There is a patio that backs up to a lovely wooded hillside. The downside is older and grimy bathrooms and a kitchen that I would need to update. There is carpeting which I can’t live with because of my dust allergies. We would need to get a great deal so that we had money to make the improvements. This is all moot because who knows what will be available in four months from now. But, it was educational.

Mistakes and Fixes

Monday, September 2nd, 2013

bluemoonstitchand bead

I have been stitching and beading the blue moon quilt. I really like the stitching, but today, I took off all the beads and am so much happier with it. Photos tomorrow. I have some little circles that were created with a resist when I dyed this piece. They have really faded into the background and I needed to do something with them. I used white beads, but it looked awful . That is what really precipitated the removal of all the beads! I just did some wonky stitching around them.

mooncirclestitching

In fact, a lot more wonky stitching is happening!

I tried to blog yesterday, but my website was down for some reason. We went to the annual Art in the Pearl in downtown Portland yesterday.

artinthepearl2013

I really was not impressed with most of the art and craft.

Even I have decided that Aspens are over done. They were in prints, paintings, glass, everywhere.

ubiquitousaspens

Most of the wearable art began to look like the same old things.

wearableartinthepearl

I did enjoy checking out all of the demonstrations. This guy who is weaving was lots of fun.

weavingdemo

I loved this fused glass art. Very quilty don’t you think?

fusedglassart

So besides beading, what other mistakes have I made. Well, I have had one intestinal bug after another for several weeks, sometimes much worse than others. I decided it was not catching because Mr C did not get it. We eat almost the same things except for breakfast when I make a protein powder shake with frozen fruit. I have purchased and picked lots of fruit and vacuumed packed and put it in the freezer. A few weeks ago, I found the freezer door open and every thing had defrosted. It was still cold so I just refroze the fruit because it was going into a shake anyway. Now, I think it may be the culprit. So I have stopped using it and hopefully, I will be aok. It was a very tiresome problem. The funny thing is, I am usually so careful about stuff like that. Mr C? Not so much so of course I get the curse. Thank goodness for Pepto Bismol chewables!

Here is your cuteness for the day. Paige on her new bike! Gaaaa! Isn’t she the cutest?

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Having an Arty Week

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

trishhasslerwork

I have had a great couple of days out and about in Portland. The work above is by the uber talented Trish Hassler. She has had a very successful career blending steel which she cuts with fiber. It has always intrigued me. The turquoise piece is cut from an old Nash roadster that was donated to Trisha by a Columbia Fiberarts member.

Our local SAQA group was invited by Trisha to see her exhibit with a talk by her.

SAQAgallerytalk

A mixed media artist, Kathy Haydon, shared the exhibit with her and many of the works played nicely together.

nashramblersteel

The two pieces with the ivory steel are Trisha’s and are from another car donated by Marie. The darker piece is by Kathy. I love this orange piece which uses steel from an old Allis Chalmer’s tractor. The farm girl in me couldn’t help it.

AllisChalmerstractorsteel

I really liked Trisha’s new sculptural work which you see in the first photo. It has no metal. She has Parkinson’s and finds it difficult to work with the metal. This show is the last one she will be doing with metal.

Trisha incorporates handstitching in much of her work. It was fun to add a few stitches to this community stitching piece which she will incorporate into a future work.

trishacommunitystitch

I enjoyed lunch with a couple of friends.

This morning, I went to see Kevin who did his magic and made my hair nice and red, again. It had gotten bleached from the sun and had a lot of gray showing. This afternoon, Mr C and I went on an art date to the Japanese Garden to see the Noguchi exhibit. I have long been a fan of his lighting fixtures,  that are constructed from Washi paper and bamboo. They are so sculptural and etherial.

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The exhibit had some of the light fixtures and tables and his landscape sculptures. I couldn’t photograph inside the pavilion, but these were in the garden outside the pavilion.

noguchisculpture

noguchi2

Then we wanderd around the garden. Here are some inspiration photos that I took.

japanesegardenscene

lilypads

koi

morekoi

I need to get down to business tomorrow. Have something I can’t talk about on the blog, yet. Deadline is looming. I want to get that top done – you know the fabric I bought and is now languishing on my sewing table. I am going to have a fantastic guest on Monday, you must wait to see who it is.

Life is still good.