Portland Friday

Today was a bit gloomy in that good Fall way…leaves fluttering down, a bit of rain.  We took off early for Portland and after an errand, we caught up on a few shows in the galleries currently on… by some of our favorite artists…

PDX Gallery (9th and Flanders) is featuring a very nice Marie Watt show this month (and there’s still time to get there!).  Marie, formerly of Portland and now in Brooklyn, works a lot with blankets as you may remember from earlier this year when a bunch of us sewed bindings on a ton (almost literally)of blankets for her show at the Hallie Ford Museum of art.  I bonded with her work I think, so it was fun to see the new work…

and here’s the answer to the question “what keeps those stacks of blankets upright?”

and this wonderful small piece by the door (I LOVE changes of scale…!)

On to the Augen Gallery (716 NW Davis) for George Johanson’s terrific show which includes several very nice (and humorous) self portraits…

including this witty art historical reference (see “Matisse”)…

several swimming pool scenes including this one…

with these great animal details…

the paint itself, the “drawing”, the wit…all wonderful, but the overriding sense of “somebody” (that would be George) having too much fun really comes through…the joy of paint and painting.

Next door at the Froelich gallery is a show by PNCA faculty member Victor Maldonado and the work piqued my interest, now that I’ve taken to painting walls…

Then we took in the newly placed and dedicated sculpture by Lee Kally near the “new” PNCA building…dedicated Friday morning…a handsome corten steel piece from 1999 called “Memory”…

last stop was the St Phillip Neri Church where R had to measure an Izquierdo sculpture for the manuscript (proofs coming soon)…

but I sat this one out in favor of a little needlework…

Happy Friday!