SideStreet Arts Gallery

Chilly First Friday

Dear Liza,

Last Friday was very cold but not wet, so Auntie Bridgett and I bundled up and walked over to First Friday at SideStreet Arts Gallery. Although she is not a member anymore, she still has art on the wall and lots of friends there.

I wore my light-up hat because by the time we stepped out at 4:30, it was dark outside! These short winter days sure make me appreciate light. And warmth. And art!

The gallery is all decked out for Christmas, with several small trees decorated with hand-made ornaments. Our friend Melody Bush has carved these whimsical Santas from basswood.

Besides Christmas themes, there seemed to be birds everywhere!

Amelia Opie made this bright owl from wood and clay…and there was a whole flock of birds along one wall! Scott Cameron Bell’s Ceramics, Jackie McIntyre’s paintings, and even a raven book carving by Melody Bush.

I got to visit with Anna Magruder, a new member of the gallery, about her paintings that bring history to life. I had recognized many of the images from my history research. Here, she shows a fictionalized Abigail Scott Duniway leading women to vote.

When we had seen all the art we could digest, it was off to find dinner. The temperature was dropping quickly, so we dashed across 28th Street to The Bivy, a pod of food carts. We enjoyed the wood fire pit as we waited for our dinner of chicken crepes to be ready, then walked home enjoying the Christmas lights in the neighborhood.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Fun, Delicious Birthday

Dear Liza,

I turned 66 on Saturday and had a fine time doing it. I woke up early and did my French lesson as usual, then Auntie Bridgett and I took the red wagon and walked to The Portland Nursery. I was looking for tomato plants, but was told that it was too early to put them in the ground and I should come back in April or early May.

Oh, well. Patience is a virtue. And we did find lots of potting soil, herb plants and other things we could use now.

Back home, I opened presents. Auntie Bridgett’s Momma Donna sent me a beautiful and useful bag for my gardening tools. I will be the gardening Queen!

Auntie Bridgett had found an adorable Amelia Opie painting called Therapy Cats at SideStreet Arts Gallery, and we got it hung on the wall. I felt like the richest woman in the world, but the day wasn’t over yet.

That evening, we headed down to La Moule for a delicious French dinner. Duck Confit, Tuna ceviche, absinthe, red wine from Bordeaux and a chocolate mousse absolutely topped off the day.

And after dinner, we walked a ways through the neighborhood to enjoy the magic of lights in darkness. I am now older, richer, and a little heavier. And very, very happy.

Love,

Grandma Judy

New Art Comes Home

Dear Liza,

At the beginning of October, we visited SideStreet Art Gallery’s new show and bought a wonderful ceramic plate created by Rabon Thompson. We had to leave the plate at the gallery, though. It was part of a show, and moving it would make everything cock-eyed.

But Friday, we got to bring it home!

Of course, that led to the big question. Where should it go? Our walls are already pretty full of wonderful art, collected on our travels and from local artists. I plan on actually using the plate as a plate sometimes, so I wanted to have it close to the dining room. Bridgett found the perfect place!

Once we got the plate home, we realized that it has the same colors as our favorite painting, done by our friend David Gettman over forty years ago. Bridgett found the perfect place, where we can actually see the plate and the painting at the same time.

Of course, hanging it in that spot meant we had to move the Gary Carmody art, which meant moving other pictures. It was a domino effect of re-hanging.

But now, all is well. The pictures and new plate are handy and harmonious, and all is right with the world.
Love,

Grandma Judy

SideStreet Arts is Open! Part 2

Dear Liza,

There were a lot of artists showing at SideStreet Arts last Friday.

Alicia Justice’s nostalgic constructions take hours to create, and are so pretty! They feel like a set design from ”Life with Father”. Here is a detail of just one room.

Auntie Bridgett has some work for sale, too. Her painting called ”New Home Coming”, showing Mt. Hood all pink at sunset, is displayed with some lovely pink glass by Phyllis Flury.

The last artist I will mention is Melody Bush. She does what are called Book Excavations, which highlight the art of old, forgotten books by carving into them, showing different parts of the book all at once. We own two of her works already! Here is a pretty one on display.

I am happy that with higher vaccination rates and so masking, we can enjoy getting out and about again.

Love,

Grandma Judy

SideStreet Arts is Open! Part 1

Dear Liza,

Last Friday night we went to SideStreet Arts Gallery for our first in-person First Friday in a year and half. It was so good to be with artists and their art again, even with everyone wearing masks.

The artist in the Small Works Spotlight is Sharon Jonquil, who does oil painting and encaustics. We met Sharon a few years ago at her Open Studio event, and got to see her process. We even bought two of her small encaustics.

At this show, Sharon is showing oil paintings. They are abstract landscapes of Canyonlands and the Deschutes River, and they are wonderfully evocative. You almost feel the sun on your back and smell the sagebrush that grows along the banks of the river.

We also met Rabun Thompson, a ceramicist who was the Featured Artist of the month. Rabun works in high-fired stoneware, and many of his pieces can be hung on the wall as art and also used as serving plates. Auntie Bridgett and I fell in love with this one during the on-line Preview, and bought it before some else did!

It is about 18 inches across and fully glazed, so I can use it for food! Won’t it be pretty piled high with cookies or just-out-of-the-oven bread?

There was a lot more to see on the walls, but I will tell you about them tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Auntie Katie Takes Her Books to the People

Dear Liza,

This past weekend Portland hosted, among many other things, The Rose City Comic Con. This is a convention for people who love comic books and the characters who` live in them. I’m sure thousands of people went. We didn’t, because we are concerned about indoor crowds in this age of Covid.

Auntie Katie, who runs a comic book and graphic novel book shop, Books with Pictures, would usually have a big table at the Comic Con. But she is concerned about Covid, too. So she took her books outside!

She posted on Facebook and Instagram to let people know that she and her books would be at the Food Truck Pod on SE 28th, just across the street from The SideStreet Arts Gallery. She and one of her staff, Kitty, showed up with boxes of books and shelves to put them on.

In the midst of the Saturday evening crowds, they set up shop. And as the Rose City Comic Con shut down across town, the crowds came to the food court to see Katie and buy her books!

It was quite a thing to see. We stuck around for long enough to buy a book and watch the crowds form, and then headed to the grocery store and the home.
What a day!

Love,

Grandma Judy

After the Heatwave

Dear Liza,

Wednesday was the first day of human-level temperatures since our historic heat wave began. We woke up to cloud cover, cool air and even a bit of dampness. It felt wonderful.

I went to the garden early. My friend Tonya gave me one of her parsley plants, and I planted it between my radishes and lettuce. My garden is doing well, even though it isn’t as tall as the other ones. They have five foot tall trellises and arbors hanging with peas and beans. I have a magnificent beast of a zucchini.

I walked around Laurelhurst Park for the first time in a week, enjoying the cool green, the ducks, and all the people out doing their people thing. Tai c’hi classes, guitar practice, dog parties….. it was life as normal, out on the grass.

After a morning of sewing, French lessons, crossword puzzles and cartooning, the three of us headed off to Grandpa Nelson’s favorite lunch spot, Zach’s Shack. Auntie Bridgett got to go because she isn’t working at the SideStreet Arts gallery anymore. Her new comic strip, Auntie Beeswax, allows her more flexibility with her time.

We ate hot dogs and fries, and, since the sun had come out, appreciated the icy cold sodas.

Then came ping pong! Zach’s back patio has a table and enough hard surfaces that even if the ball misses the table, you can keep it in play. We get a little nuts sometimes, and it is fun!

We played until we were played out, then walked home by way of the Taylor Street chickens. The day had warmed up to 88 degrees and we were happy for the air conditioning.

This heat wave was bad. It send a lot of folks to the hospital. We need to figure out how to help our planet heal so we can all be well.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Auntie Beeswax

Dear Liza,

Did you know that your Auntie Bridgett Spicer was a cartoonist? From 2009 to 2012, her comic strip called Squid Row ran in the Monterey Herald newspaper. It was about an artist living in a touristy seaside town. Since Auntie Bridgett was an artist living in Seaside, California, it made perfect sense. The strip was really popular, too.

After we moved to Portland, she took a few years off from cartooning to do painting. She joined the Sidestreet Arts Gallery and helped make it a better place for people to see and buy art. And now she has starting cartooning again!

The city of Roseport and some characters

Her new comic strip is called Auntie Beeswax, and will be in the Willamette Week newspaper here in Portland. Auntie Beeswax is an eccentric lady who lives in “Roseport”, a thinly disguised version of Portland. She keeps bees, cats and chickens, rides her bicycle everywhere, and is an organic gardener. In other words, she is a delightfully ordinary Portlander. But she always does things just a little differently.

The comic will be about her adventures, and will include a young niece who learns about life ‘outside the box’ from her Auntie Bee.

I am so happy to see Bridgett smiling and sketching, getting her stories all ready. I look forward to reading about Auntie Beeswax!

Love,

Grandma Judy

North in the Sunshine

Dear Liza,

The other day I knew I needed to get out of the house, but had no motivation. Grandpa Nelson suggested a walk, and promised me goodies somewhere along the way. I went.

We headed north through the Laurelhurst neighborhood, then kept going up to Kerns. About a mile and a half from home, we stopped at Oregon Park and watched two little girls learn that going down a slide doesn’t have to be a straight forward proposition. It was fun to see their inventiveness.

“Where next?” Grandpa asked.

“I’m not sure, but it seems I remember a bakery just over that way,” I said, pointing north west-ish. He checked his phone.

“Good call! Helen Bernhardt Bakery is just 1.2 miles away. Practically around the corner.” So off we went. In the neighborhood in between, we found all sorts of delights. These stone lions are very stylish and Covid-aware.

These vintage, hand-carved children’s rocking chairs sat outside a turn of the century home, as if waiting to be adopted.

We got to Helen Bernhardt’s Bakery, which has good Covid procedures in place, and chatted with the lady behind the counter.

She said that this past Easter, a week ago, was the best Easter ever for the business. That’s since 1924! It’s nice to know that some businesses have been able to survive and even thrive in this weirdness, and that we will have this lovely bakery around for a long time.

Grandpa Nelson has been eaten by a camellia!

After sitting on a low wall outside the bakery, enjoying our donut, Florentine and coffee as we watched happy folks come and go from the bakery, it was time to “South” a little. That is, to head towards home. We found this incredible camellia bush that was huge outside and magical inside. The flowers under the ‘umbrella’ seemed to glow pink with the afternoon sun.

We walked back across the Banfield Freeway and were soon in our own neighborhood. We stopped to say Hi to Auntie Bridgett, who was working her shift at the SideStreet Arts Gallery, then got home to crash before dinner.

The Banfield….. an ugly scar of a road with good views

Another fine adventure!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Bernies and Jackalopes

Dear Liza,

Even with the lockdown, there is always so much going on! If you stop and look around a bit, the world is a busy place.

First, Auntie Bridgett has a cousin who got a 3-D printer, and the first thing she thought to make were some delightful teeny tiny Bernie Sanders models! They came to us last week, and are currently perched on our mantelpiece. I have tried to find little tableaux for them to be in, and haven’t found anything suitable yet. Any suggestions?

There are lots of little eccentric bits around the neighborhood. Houses with pumpkins still perched on the porch, skeletons posed as Santa Claus, and little triangular rocks with Google eyes.

Daniel Haile’s delightful work at SideStreet Arts

And, of course, there is the work at the SideStreet Arts Gallery! A local illustrator named Daniel Haile does tender portraits of all sorts of folks, but this baby Jackalope sitting in a bowler hat is my very favorite.

Since it is the third anniversary of the gallery, Auntie Bridgett did a series of things in threes. She loves bees, so they are all over the place. There is always something new to see.

I hope you have a wonderful week !

Love,

Grandma Judy