Side Street Gallery

A Bittersweet Goodbye to Max Jacob

Dear Liza,

You know that Auntie Bridgett Spicer is an artist. You know she can paint, draw, and make beautiful collages and cartoons. Did you know that she sells her art?

Well, she does! Last night just before First Friday’s New Artist Reception at The SideStreet Arts Gallery, she sold her first piece of art since we moved to Portland. Her beautiful collage portrait of Max Jacob sold to a nice lady who bought it as a gift for her husband.

We are all so happy and proud of Auntie Bridgett! She works hard on her art and makes such lovely pictures, and it makes me smile to know they will go out into the world and make people happy.

How did she make this beautiful piece? She has given me permission to show you.

Step 1: She drew a pencil portrait of Max Jacob, using photographs for reference. Max was an artist and friend of Picasso in the 1920s and 1930 in France, so there are lots of pictures of him.

Step 2: She cut out all the different parts of the drawing to use as templates for the collage pieces.

Step 3: From her huge collection of papers, she found just the right ones to create his face and suit, then carefully cut them out and glued them down. She rolled each bit so it was smooth. She used paints to give the portrait wonderful depth and humanity. When it was perfect, she matted and framed it.

Step 4: Listening to me when I told her she HAD to take it to the Gallery for her show!

This was a long process where a stray sigh could blow all the bits away, but she stuck with it and made a wonderful piece of art.

Farewell Max!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Busy Sunday!

Dear Liza,

Sunday was another full day. As Summer comes to an end, it feels like we are all trying to fit as much sunshine time in before Autumn chases the big events indoors.

Auntie Bridgett was busy most of the day, helping host Mimosa Sunday at the SideStreet Gallery. Grandpa Nelson and I walked down to the Hawthorne Street Fair to see what was going on there. The weather was cool enough that I actually wore my jacket and hat!

The booths were a lively mix of local artisans, people with political agendas, and established businesses hoping to pull in some new clients. The more interesting of the first was a lady (whose name I neglected to get) whose company, Deja, makes lamps from old 33 mm film strips. Each lamp has film from a particular movie…my favorite was “ParaNorman”. The strips of film are hand-crocheted together to make lampshades. The lamps aren’t very bright, but are delightfully moody and I love the re-use of materials.

Another a creative example of re-use was this dress made entirely out of beer bottle caps. at The House of Resource booth. Each bottle cap was hammered flat, pierced, and strung to its fellows with a slightly stretchy rubber strip. I imagine it would need an undergarment and would be very heavy, but it was wonderfully creative.

A booth with a very unusual political agenda was the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a group of folks who see humanity as a real blight on the Earth, the one species that seems to be making it harder for all the others, as well as ourselves. They say that fewer humans would make a healthier planet and advocate that humans stop reproducing, or, if we have already, don’t pressure our children to. The members of the movement that I met are very positive, cheerful people, who just want to make sure people understand that, when it comes to population, sometimes less is more.

Pets and their people are always a big part of Portland events. We met Millie, a dog who must weigh over 100 pounds, and Hollandaise, a hen who looked very well cared for.

Grandpa Nelson and I got tired and went back home, and then Auntie Bridgett got done at the SideStreet Gallery. She and I walked to the library to return some books and then went back to the fair! I was totally worn out by the time we got home for dinner. We had planned to go to Laurelhurst Park for another symphony concert, but we were done in.

I am sad to say that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and we sure had it yesterday. We slept like rocks and today are enjoying the sounds of men pressure-washing the building prior to re-painting.

Love,

Grandma Judy

First Friday at Sidestreet Gallery

Dear Liza,

First things first, I can’t believe that it is August already and wisterias are still blooming here in Portland!

This past Friday there was a new show at Sidestreet Gallery, the gallery in our neighborhood where Auntie Bridgett is showing her art. We started with dinner at Ankeny Tap and Table, which is always tasty. Bridgett had street tacos, and I had macaroni and cheese, which was so good and such a huge serving that I brought a bunch home for leftovers.

But between dinner and home was the gallery. We got there while they were still setting up, so we got to look around and chat with the artists.

Cathi Newlin was the featured artist of the month. She does delightfully quirky ceramic dogs and other critters, including this wonderful political piece that shows a giant dodo bird perched on an elephant, which is standing on an old fashioned child’s pull toy. It is intelligent and funny and cracks me up.

The other featured artist was Don Hall, a painter who seems to do a lot of self portraits, in various poses.

The other resident artists were also showing, like Dawn Pantteja, Alicia Justus, Michael Allan Pratt, and Denise Krueger. The ceramics and paintings were delightful, as was the wine, snacks, and conversation.

And of course, Auntie Bridgett’s cups and collages were on display. I always love seeing her art out in the world, playing nicely with the other art.

A Song for Fun

Dear Liza,

Your Mommy or Daddy can teach you the tune for this silly re-write. The Song is called “My Favorite Things.”

(Read the captions!)

First Verse:

**Beaches with grandchildren, giggles and tickles**

These are the things Portland’s given to me!

Second Verse:

**Art found on sidewalks and up on a tower**

**Hearing the voices of love’s greatest power**

All of these just since the summer’s begun!

Bridge:

**I’m up to my eyeballs in Portland, my friends,**

Love,

Grandma Judy

Friends, Pizza, and Art

Dear Liza,

**View of the Lan Su Chinese Garden from across the street**

My projects continue to keep me busy. I am finishing Cousin Kestrel’s princess kitten birthday present and had to change my story a bit. Did you know that in America in early 1900s, classes in the U.S. didn’t go on field trips? At that time, they were not considered valuable. So I needed to remove a field trip from my 1903 story. Sigh.

Yesterday I also had a nice surprise. A former student and his wonderful family came to visit! First they visited famous Powell’s City of Books, and then came to see me at Auntie Katie’s Books with Pictures. They had fun and bought tons of books! Then they invited me to have lunch with them at Old Town Pizza, a “haunted” pizza parlor downtown.

Of course, I said YES! Pizza, friends, ghosts? I’m there!

The pizza was good and the air conditioning most welcome, as it has been hot here. (Hot for US, like 80 degrees. I understand many places are really suffering.) I didn’t notice any ghosts. After Kyle, his sister Gillian, Mom Heidi and Dad Paul headed off to the Creo chocolate tour, I caught the Orange train back to Auntie Katie’s shop and rode my bike home.

Since it was First Friday, we walked up to Ankeny Tap and Table for street tacos, grilled Brussels sprouts, beer, cider, and french fries. Yum! We walked over to the Sidestreet Gallery to see Auntie Bridget’s new art, as well as all the other new things. I got to meet Dawn Panttaja, Erin’s aunt, creator of lovely, odd sculptures. This one is called “Miss Fortune”, with a skirt made of old prophesies. Creepy and beautiful.

Auntie Bridgett was going to stay and talk to folks, but Grandpa Nelson and I walked to the Laurelhurst Theater to watch “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”, which was a fun roller coaster ride with an ending that surprised me.

Walking home, we swung by the flamingo house, where the birds are apparently enjoying the World Cup Soccer games.

Happy July!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Cousins and Shakespeare

Dear Liza,

Yesterday was hot again, but we had fun anyway. Grandpa Nelson’s cousin Sara and her husband Jim were in town visiting their new grandson, and they came by to visit. It was too hot to be comfortable at our house, so we drove across town to Genie’s, a cool cafe across Division Street from Auntie Katie’s store, Books with Pictures. The food was very good and the service was chatty and quick.

After lunch, I went across the other street to Gordito’s Mexican restaurant to get Auntie Katie a burrito for her lunch, since she was working in the store and needed to eat standing up. After lunch we went back to our house and talked for hours about family history and all the cousins…there are a lot of cousins in Grandpa Nelson’s family!

Grandma Judy, Grandpa Nelson, cousin Jim and cousin Sara

Sara and Jim left to beat the rush hour traffic to Lake Oswego and Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I went out to see some art galleries for First Friday. They are all within three blocks of us, so it was a short, but very warm, walk. Side Street Gallery is closing but will re-open as a co-op, a gallery run by the artists who display their work there.

Wolff Gallery was mostly collages from photographs. True Measure Gallery had really modern, interesting paintings by Jesse Reno, Jesse Narens and Melissa Monroe.

When we were tired of the heat we went back home and watched the Giants lose on TV. And I took a nap. About 8:30 I woke up and we decided it was cool enough to go for a short walk through Laurelhurst Park. We didn’t hear the hawks, but quite a ways into the park, we saw lights and heard shouting, and there was a Shakespeare troupe, (different from the one we saw in Lone Fir Cemetery) called “Original Practice Shakespeare”, performing a history play called Richard III.

It is a very good play about a very bad king.

“Original Practice” means they do the plays as they were done in Shakespeare’s time (he worked from 1590 to 1613). What is different from modern plays is that each actor is only given their own lines, not the whole script to the play, and they do almost no rehearsals with the whole troupe. This means that the actors make some mistakes, and are sometimes surprised by what is happening, but it is so much fun to watch!

The audience was sitting on fold up chairs and having snacks and water. They were even heckling, which means booing or cheering, during the show. In “Original Practice”, this is totally polite, because the audiences in Shakespeare’s time DID heckle! I guess you could tell if you were playing a bad guy really well, because the audience would yell at you!

Once the play was over, we walked back home. Far off across the park we heard an owl hooting, which made us happy. We had heard that the owls weren’t in Laurelhurst Park anymore, but if we heard them, they still are. They were awake and hunting, but it was time for us to sleep.

1200501Barn Owl_IMG_8712_2000pxl_0.jpg

Love, Grandma Judy