City Day

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, City, Coffee art, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, PNAA, Sky

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Augen Gallery, George Johanson, John Yeon, PNAA, Portland Art Museum, rain, Randy Gragg

Saturday we left home early to hear George Johanson talk about his new show at Augen Gallery (in the DeSoto Building)…the paintings are lovely and lively, as is the painter. I particularly liked this self portrait…(just above George’s head in the upper left of the painting is Louis Bunce’s life mask, which hangs in George’s studio…) but they are all nice. Go take a look…

City lunch followed…

and then we took in the show of architect John Yeon’s work curated by Randy Gragg, which recently opened at the Portland Art Museum. There are some rather fantastic new models of some of Yeon’s famous houses, and these GIANT photo murals of places he worked to save…it’s a nice show…go take a look. Here’s the Aubrey Watzek House (1936-38)…

and this fascinating description of his idea of letting the balloon frame “show” and just inserting windows in the spaces between studs…

Leaving the museum I was reminded of Dale Strand’s gardening advice to me some years ago…”stake every stem”…

We headed to Sidney’s house and crossing the bridge saw a view of about the closest I’ve ever been to a rainstorm but yet NOT been in it…

then a hole in the storm…

then hail (or “kale” as Sidney later told us as in “there was kale all over the ground after the storm).

It WILL stop raining, right? We chatted with Sidney while some activity was going on…

and did a sleep over so that we could be on hand for the Mother’s Day Brunch…Yum!!

then home to the Capital City once again for a quick 15 minutes of gardening before the next storm…

and a Blue Apron dinner…

off into the new week ahead…

The Lan Su Chinese Garden

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Art work, Celebrations, Drawings, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Uncategorized

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Aislinn Adams, Chinese gardens, dinosaur lunch, Edgeworthia, formal gardens, Lan Su Chinese Garden, Sidney Day

The Lan Su Chinese Garden (poetically “Garden of Awakening Orchids”) in Portland was completed in 2000, and I’ve long wanted to go for a visit. R noticed this year that our Oregon Historical Society memberships gave us free entrance to the garden in March so it became the birthday excursion last Thursday, my birthday AND Sidney Day. The three of us did a little fern trimming at Fernridge and then headed downtown…where Sidney petted a fierce Foo dog before we went in…

The booklet given to visitors told us that “The Lan Su garden is considered the most authentic Suzhou-style Chinese garden outside of China. The more than 500 tons of rock in the garden are from China. 65 artisans for Suzchou (Portland’s sister city) lived in Portland for 10 months while they assembled and completed the structures that were crafted in China. The garden features more than 300 plant species and cultivars found in traditional Chinese gardens.” The “LAN” in Lan Su represents PortLANd and the Su from SUzchou…hence the combining of the two sister cities.

If you go on a Thursday morning you might want to take advantage of the free tai chi group…on the terrace of the Hall of Brocade Clouds…

But my delightful first encounter was with a beautiful Edgeworthia…

which took my breath away. There were tree peonies in evidence everywhere, though not in bloom until May. Around the grounds in various of the buildings was a temporary show of botanical drawings which were beautiful and I delighted to find several by my neighbor Aislinn Adams, including this one (sorry about the photo Aislinn)…

Sidney, however, had found the koi and we did lots of running the paths as the fish swam back and forth…

and the paths are also beautiful…

and all of the traveling revealed MORE Edgeworthia…hooray…

Mine has a ways to go…

there were waterfalls…

and many gorgeous wooden details on the buildings themselves. Really, put this on your calendar for May and go see the garden in Spring bloom…I know I will, and you won’t be sorry.

Then on to lunch with the dinosaurs and a little drawing…

Back to Fernridge for some birthday action…

and then the lovely day had to end…

SUMMER!

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Celebrations, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Quilting, Recipes, Salem, Trees

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Blueberry chutney, charm packs, eating outside, garden parties, gardens, quilting, summertime

I actually do have a serious and informative post for later in the week, but I’ve been doing some summer things of late…it began with a seismic upgrade which meant cleaning the basement, this of a house we’ve lived in for 36 years…can you IMAGINE what a momentous photo this is??

…and artist Kathryn Cellerini Moore has been working to make our garden so gorgeous before she goes off to an AIR at Playa in Summer Lake, Oregon, in August…it has been great to have an artist in the garden…

and gardens are key…ours and the gardens of friends…

eating outside…

good fresh produce…

and for the third year having to look up my blueberry chutney recipe on my own blog…good quick summer cooking…(this was a garlic aioli potato salad)

looking at fabric…this beautiful piece from Japan collected by a friend…

a little sewing…

making an “artist-curated charm pack” (I stole the idea) for Sharon’s birthday…

and garden parties! Kay and John’s 25th wedding anniversary in their beautiful and lively garden…

and then in Sharon’s garden remembering Bob who has been gone from us for 5 years now… his ties were colorfully decorating Sharon’s tree today in remembrance…

happy summertime friends.

Rite of Spring, 2

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Court Street, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Quilting

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Euphorbias, first dinner outside this season, herb garden needs weeding, portobello/pea soup, quilt stack, tree peony, wild ginger

Hello March!

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Artists, Celebrations, Family photos, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Uncategorized

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Artists, birthdays, gardens, quilting, Quilts

In Like a Lion today…hail, wind, pouring rain…but a happy day nonetheless. The first Tuesday of the month is quilt group and today we went out to Lynda’s where everything is about sewing…the flower bed…

and the dog (“Buttons”)…everything…in a good way.

Show and tell included Lynda’s new quilt made from a pattern called “Smitten”

but my personal favorite was a vintage quilt top Eve brought out, given to her by a friend who just didn’t know what to do with it…his mother had made it…

Eve (very happily from my point of view) is going to hand quilt it…

and then on to lunch with two artist friends…to eat and then to discuss the recent review of the Edvard Munch show in the New Yorker…fascinating to talk about work, intention, working in a series vs. “one-offs” the creative life as an antidote to a variety of things…so good that next month we’re going to do it again with the topic being the painter Charles Birchfield and how we can draw dramatic oak trees outside the window…

the lunch was a feast for the eye and tummy…”Israeli elk meatballs” (we did ponder where in Israel the elks actually live…?) and polenta…yum…

cauliflower and tea…

and then the garden…bursting…

and then…around here…it’s birthday month. Of my 3 sibs and me, three of us have March birthdays…my adorable sister-in-law has a March birthday…friends from near and far (Happy Birthday Larry and Nan and Patrick and David and Sara and Jerrod and Kathy and Dick!)

but the milestone birthday is Emma’s. She will soon be 21, which is hard to believe for some of us…

…she’s a star…always has been…

and though I think this will make her squirm, she has grown into a smart, talented, funny and beautiful woman…Happy Birthday Emma…I love you!

Another Hospital Disaster…Urban Logging

28 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Garden

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Blind School Site, Cutler City, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Missions Street, urban logging"

As long as we’ve lived in Salem the darned hospital has been destroying, burning, and now logging land for more buildings, more parking. The original hospital was in a residential neighborhood, near the university…a neighborhood we aspired to live in BUT, by the time we could buy a house, the neighborhood was gone for parking lots mostly. A few of the oldest houses in Salem were used as practice burns by the fire department. Then the absolutely lovely little Bush School was torn down for parking.

Next the beautiful and graceful 1920’s brick Building that housed the Blind School was razed. The other day I noticed the chain link fence going up and a few days later the ominous blue plastic to hide the activities. The several acre property is now an urban logging site with the plans to remove all but about 5 trees from this beautiful site…next to an historic neighborhood, an historic garden, across from Bush’s Pasture Park. Sigh….if you love historic structures, old trees, history and the continuity of the built environment, Salem can be a disappointing place to live.

One neighbor created a shrine to the first cut tree.

Putting the Garden to Bed

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Art World, Garden, Modern Life, Studio, Uncategorized

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Compost, Fall garden clean-up, new studio, newspaper mulch

There is no doubt about it…it’s fall. Chilly mornings, clear bright sun, a little rain…a good season here in the Northwest…BUT, time to put the garden to bed. We’ve been weeding, pruning, tossing stuff in the garden bin like crazy…

…though in one little corner the geraniums and begonias seem blissfully unaware…

Today, very early, came the three yards of compost which, thankfully, Bill will spread on the garden after he does some more weeding…it was fun though…

and this year we’re trying the newspaper-under-the compost to keep the horrible yellow violet-ish weeds out of the herb garden…

(It reminded R of the papier mache mountains he made for his Lionel train, back in the day…)

And by the time I got home from uke class…voila!

Just enough time to move into my new studio space…

and welcome my first visitor…

The Wave Crest

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Beach, Celebrations, Ephemera, Family photos, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Preservation, Roger Hull

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Archives, Art, Artists, Cannon Beach, coastal inns, Ernie Hood, Hank Johnson, Jim Smith, Linda Janke, Louis Bunce, Portland Jazz history, The Way Out Club, Wave Crest Inn, Way Out band

Last weekend we stayed at the wonderful Wave Crest in Cannon Beach, being lovers of the authentic Oregon experience, and it was fun. When owner (Daryl)Hank Johnson was a Portlander (curator at the Washington Park Rose Garden) he often stayed at the Wave Crest, and then just up and bought it from his retiring friends in 2000. He moved to Cannon Beach full time in 2003 and became an innkeeper. I like the Wave Crest because, though authentically coastal Oregon (it was built in the 1920’s), it has the same feel as Wisconsin lake houses of my youth… We were in room #6 (one of the few with it’s own bathroom)…

the kitchen is a warm and friendly place…

and the new deck is gorgeous…

Hank built the “Tea House”…site of a recent wedding…

I found this in one of the bookcases…

On Saturday night Hank made a terrific anniversary salmon dinner for us (he doesn’t serve dinner, but does provide coffee tea and yummy pastries), Rex and Diane, and Linda and Peter…

The wave Crest has no phones, no TV, but it DOES have a piano…and is only two blocks from the beach…a beach which has THIS view…

(Wave Crest Inn, 4008 South Hemlock, PO Box 292, Cannon Beach, 503-436-2842…a good place for total escape…! Think about it…)

We said goodbye to Hank Sunday morning, AFTER we all went for an authentic American Legion breakfast (no kidding, it was fab…these little crispy thin Swedish pancakes…yum)

and took note of the beautiful single climbing rose by the front door, a rose called “Leda” that I’m now on the lookout for…

As it turned out, our trip to Cannon Beach last weekend it wasn’t ONLY our anniversary weekend, but also a working trip. R has started researching Portland painter Louis Bunce (1907-1983) in earnest, and had a chance to interview Laurel Hood of Cannon Beach. Laurel’s Dad Ernie Hood and her late husband Jim Smith played in a jazz band called The Way Out and they played in the early 1960’s in a club called The Way Out Club under the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland. In 1961 Hood and Smith with painter Bunce made a pilot TV show with the premise that painters and poets and jazz musicians could all create together…and it contains fantastic footage of Bunce painting to the cool tunes of The Way Out. Laurel brought along her copy and she and R watched it on TV with Laurel identifying all the players, and giving her remembrance of the band, of the scene, of Louis. It was fascinating. (Laurel said the club folded because they couldn’t get a liquor license and the club couldn’t financially make it on soft drinks and burgers…)

and when Laurel took off to work in her wine shop, R and Linda Janke sorted through a box of her family’s papers. Her grandparents Dr. Vernon and Ruth Douglas were very involved in Salem life and the beginnings of the Salem Art Association, and her aunt Stella Douglas was an Oregon artist/painter/print maker.

Rex and Diane drove us up to the beautiful Ecola Park for a view where we noted there were some Portlanders around someplace

We headed to Astoria in time to see the absolutely PACKED farmer’s market in full swing (the cruise ships were in port…) and grab some street food for lunch…

and then headed to Portland to position ourselves for Monday, now known as Sidney-Day…and this week the birthday of Sidney’s Dad. Happy Birthday Zach.

Hydrangea House

18 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Court Street, Garden, Just visual, Modern Life, Quilting, Uncategorized

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hydrangeas, Quilts, summer day

Once we thought of calling our house “Hydrangea House” but we gave it up, though we didn’t give up hydrangeas. This morning early I made the rounds to see how everybody was doing, noting that early morning light is harsher on the plants, photographically speaking, than later on…but still, they look good…big blue and little blue…