Maybe a little bit a fatigue is setting in??

Meanwhile, over at “Engine” things are also going pretty well, as curator Rebecca Dobkins steps back to observe…

and here’s the interior of the lower “entrance” section

meanwhile in the large center gallery “Dwelling” is really taking shape…

It turns out that after each couple of blankets it is necessary to pound on the stack to tamp it down and eliminate the tendancy to “dome”…

By the time I left they had stacked over 400 blankets…ALMOST to the half-way mark….

Looking GOOD!

I’ve had a piece in most of these 10 shows, and it’s always fun.  This year artists were paired randomly and asked to communicate with each other and find a foothold in that communication to build a small piece.  My “penpal” sent a list of the alphabet with all the words filled in except the letter F…so naturally (being more than a little contrary) I did not take the 25 ideas she gave me, but chose the blank word to fill in my own idea…hence the title “The F Word.”  I’ve been thinking about forests and fires a lot this year, hence my idea was formed…the piece is collage, acrylic and wax on panel, and is four- 6″ squares (which could be arranged in a line, or anyway at all).  Here’s how I’ve arranged them:

The show will be up for a month…bids in silent auction style are being taken, or you can buy a piece outright…you can look on line or, better yet, go down to the gallery and see it “in the flesh”!!!

and Angela and Chelsea have begun the stack

…30 down and 930 to go…

Today there were stacks of blankets as yet unwrapped,

and they were just beginning to lay out the blankets for the piece “Dwelling”…

the big white square is the base on which the blankets will be stacked…

another piece in the show is “Engine” and that is taking shape too…

which will look like this when it’s all done

Stay tuned…I’ll make a progress report tomorrow…

Kneeling is well-known sculptor James Lee Hansen, then Rick Norwood, Jack Hammack, and Manuel Izquierdo at far right.  The photo was taken at the Museum School about 1949.

We don’t know what Norwood and Hammack went on to do, but I’m interested in how much bigger the sculptures of Hansen and Izquierdo are, both going on to rich careers as sculptors in the Pacific Northwest.   Hansen and Izquierdo were both students of Portland sculptor Frederic Littman, which causes a bit of reflection on the artistic results (even here in Oregon) of the horrific turmoil of Europe in the war years.  Littman, a Hungarian, was escaping war in Paris…arriving in Portland in 1941 and teaching first at Reed College, then on to the Museum school.  Izquierdo himself escaped Spain as a youngster (with his two siblings), arriving in New York in 1942, and in Portland in 1943.

but this morning the waters were down…

so I had a coffee with a friend and headed to the gym.  The gym sits on a rise above Wallace Marine park…a big park with ball fields and many paths…but not today…the Willamette River had covered the entire park…

In our community there are many homeless people and transients and the river bank usually houses camps of people and singletons…apparently somebody got stranded by the water and the resuce effort was in full swing…

But by then it was pouring rain again so I scampered home before the boat was launched…

Hold on…help is on the way…

Then at 4:00 we thought we’d go take a survey and didn’t have to go far…here’s our corner (Court and 17th)

and we’re still several blocks from Mill creek, so we got closer and it’s not a pretty sight…

the footbridge on Court Street at the creek is awash…

and the river is still 2 feet from flood stage with at least 5 days of rain predicted…(under the bridge at the left of the photo is a paddle wheeler…DOCKED…).

The neighborhood is swarming with volunteers and sandbags are the watchword…

Fingers crossed…

with unique seating possibilities offered…

Today out to lunch at the restaurant located where “Morton’s” used to be…

It’s called “Broken Bread” and here’s the menu…same staircase

but new interior paint:

I had the omelet (very good but too many pumpkin seeds) and my lunch date had the salmon melt without the bread, and salad.  (She brought me a hand-picked treat from the desert…)

later, after the movies (“HUGO”…loved it)

before heading to the beach for Cheryl’s  birthday weekend, wherein Ashton sang

and Cheryl made a wish…

and the rest of us just laughed all weekend (have you ever played “Apples to Apples”??), heading home Sunday with snow threatened in the pass…yup…