A Photo Essay

Recap

I apologize for being a delinquent and not posting anything about my trip yet. Because so much time has passed, I have decided to give you the short story, in pictures, blog-style.  I have provided links for anything I think you may (or may not) want to look into. I assure you, it's all good stuff. Aside from the few exciting happenings documented below, I have spent the past three weeks relentlessly applying for jobs (thus far to no avail), practicing guitar, sitting at Peet's drinking iced tea, searching non-stop on craigslist, feeding cats, drawing blind contours, and trying to figure out why the buses here stop running so darn early. As most of you know, my friend and fellow artist, Matthew Mosher is heading out as well, and will be arriving tomorrow, one week late, after surviving an awful fever. I am excited to have someone from Boston around, as I don't quite understand all this West Coast friendliness and politeness. 

Also, If you haven't received mail from me yet, I apologize...it's on its way! I can provide you an address to send postcards, letters, care packages, presents, cash, checks, and money orders to upon request. 

 

Here we go...

I Feel a Painting Coming On...

After a very uncomfortable first 5 hours of my trip stuck sitting between two people, one of whom would not put the armrest (my armrest!) down, Karma cut me a break and gave me a row to myself and a window seat for the second, much shorter, leg of my flight. These are some pictures that I took out of the window of the plane leaving Salt Lake city. Upon arriving in Portland, we flew over Mt. Hood, which is possibly the biggest mountain I've ever seen. It's about an hour drive away from the city, but you can see it towering over the skyline on a clear day, and it's so large that it looks much closer. 

Also if anyone can tell me what the pink part in the lake is, or what those green circles are, I would greatly appreciate it...

Mt. Hood

Coastin' with Conor

I moved to Oregon only knowing two people, one of them being my friend Conor from Explo, who is from Bend, OR, which is a few hours south of Portland. He was nice enough to come up to the city to visit me my first weekend and drove me to the coast so that I could see the Pacific (which I'd only seen once before in San Diego).  We went to Cannon Beach, a Cape Cod-esque beachside community with shops, galleries and restaurants and after eating salt water taffy and chocolate covered gummy bears, we walked along the beach where we saw Haystack Rock, which is the third biggest monolith IN THE WORLD!

Haystack Rock

Me, looking windburned. 

T:BA08

A lot of stuff goes on in Portland this time of year, and I was lucky enough to accidentally arrive the week of both MusicFest NW and the Time Based Arts Festival (T:BA08). For the Festival, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art converted an old plastics warehouse into "The Works"- a gallery, performance space, bar, coffee shop, and beer garden complete with a second bar and burrito cart. My friend David Knowles was a volunteer, and invited me to see the Parenthetical Girls, a Portland-based pop band, perform there. The space was incredible and the band played their new album, Entanglements, in its entirety, complete with a 20 piece chamber orchestra. It was gorgeous, and I recommend you give them a listen or see them live (albeit without the orchestra) if you get the chance. 

The beer garden. 

First set without the orchestra. 

The following week I saw another event at The Works called Occurrence, a night of video, music, comedy, long-winded monologues, beat boxing, and creepy performances, hosted by Reggie Watts. 

Night Drives and Local Music 

So for those of you who don't have the pleasure of knowing him, this is David Knowles:

A friend from Explo, and a Portland native, David knows about lots of obscure happenings and has been kind enough to invite me to some of them. Also, he cooks a mean omelette. One night, he suggested we go see a show a mile and a half from Portland, in a barn in the woods near the ocean. I agreed, and after we drove through pitch black desolation, we arrived to find ourselves the only people present who were not in or with the bands. The two ensembles played alternating songs in a true battle of the bands fashion. I'm not sure who won, but for sure, both bands were totally out of control as evidenced by the following photos:

It was exceptionally dark in there...

These drummers were ridiculous!

Some other adventures with David have included seeing Battles for free via MusicFest NW at the Wonder Ballroom, Gaycation and Musee Mecanique's "Hold This Ghost" CD release party (AMAZING-LOOK THEM UP) at The Holocene, Slavoj Zizek's appearance Powell's to discuss his new book, Violence, T:BA08 (as documented above), very long walks in NW Portland, and lots and lots of breakfast food (which is growing on me). 

Three Days of Gifts

So as you may know, I am staying with my friend and studiomate Aaron's parents at their house in SW. The first two weeks were spent house/cat sitting while they were away exploring the Nordic region. The cats, Jane and Moby, and I were doing okay, and Moby decided that since were were all such good friends, he would bring me presents:

On the first Day of Presents, Moby brought me this live, although terrified and possibly injured bird. I managed to get it out of his mouth and tried feeding it a cracker to no avail (I guess I'm not a bird person!) It couldn't fly or stand, but was trying to flap around. Luckily the neighbor was able to take it in and nurse it back to health. 

On the second Day of Presents I awoke to the sound of hissing and banging, and came down to the kitchen to find this gigantic creature trying desperately to fly through the skylights. Apparently, my Bird Whisperer skills were sharper on day two, as I was able to coax him out with a broom, and he flew off to perch on the recycling bin, where he sat for about half an hour, panting and stunned. 

He was a pretty good looking bird, anyway.

On the third Day of Presents, my favorite day, I walked upstairs to find this dead rat lying outside of my bedroom door. I was grateful that Moby had decided to kill this present first. 

Other Notes

Here are a few things that I have found and taken pictures of over the past few weeks:

Cool graffiti on a wall downtown. This wraps around two sides of the building.

Antlers in the middle of town.

Parking lot? This appeared to be an annual event where Oregonians block off a street downtown, roll out sod, and make a temporary park in the parking spaces on the road to raise money for something having to do with parks. Clever. 

Inspirational graffiti on the ground on Alberta Street.