Greetings from Portland, Oregon! I do love this city… everything is in bloom right now. The trees are exploding with color. What’s not to love? Thanks to Grace for giving me a week to ramble on about this and that on design*sponge. And I do ramble… but in a good way.

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I am posting on a dreary cloudy Monday after a weekend of freakish but pleasing near 80 degree weather. Gotta love the Pacific Northwest and all its moodiness. This morning I hopped into my car, put Chemical Brothers “Surface to Air” on the iPod, and drove to Stumptown Coffee downtown to see the art show there by Ryan Jacob Smith, Niles Armstrong and Israel Lund. Or as I like to call them, the “they have the coolest names” club. The show is fantastic in the space. I especially love Ryan’s shelf of coffee cups, cassette tapes and record album, etc., situated just above the dj stand.

I had a long time to take it all in while waiting for my latte. Sorry if the images are a little blurry… I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so I was blurry too. And I picked up the latest copy of “Gastronomica” while I was at it. Love that mag. The layout, the photography… everything.

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Speaking of magazines, I just discovered (and got a subscription to) The Walrus, a magazine out of Toronto, Canada. Canada’s “magazine of the year”, in fact. It is chock full of amazing articles and fiction, but even more intriguing was the artwork slipped onto the pages, like this illustration by one of my faves, Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch. They are all artworks based on seemingly completely random songs. Brilliant. If I’m wrong about that, I’m sure someone will let me know.

Definitely worth checking out. You can download a full version of the mag for perusal on the subscriptions page, which is incredible in itself. I can’t wait to get my first issue!

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And what’s a Monday morning without a new art purchase? I try to buy art online with the money I make from my own online art sales, and I hadn’t bought anything yet since my last one. My way of giving back the love. I bought this painting from Rachel Salomon this morning off her web site, titled “front”. But the story behind it makes it even more desirable. In Rachel’s words:

“the story behind the piece is that it is an old polygamist house in Midway, Utah. (i am from utah). one day i was wandering around and saw this really intriguing house and spontaneously rang the doorbell and befriended the crazy guy that lived there. He showed me all around and the house was full of Mormon traditional furniture, and these amazing portraits that you could by back in Pioneer days. Upon purchasing the painting the artist would fill in the empty face with that of your wife. So there was a bit of an oddness about those you can imagine. I was fascinated with the house because, like Utah itself, it is so cleaned up on the outside, formal and even a bit dainty, and when you enter you encounter craziness. (the owner’s friend kept bats in the freezer, and told me I could paint at their house if I wore a tiny maid’s outfit.)”

Best story behind an art piece. Ever.

She also shared with me some wonderful fabric she had created for a show and would love to use it for something… If anyone out there wants to collaborate with Rachel on this, please do! I would love an overstuffed wingback chair covered in this fabric. I would love anything covered in this fabric.

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Another art piece I purchased over the weekend is by my friend Bishop Lennon. I went with her on Friday to help set up a show at a sweet kid’s shop called “Spoiled Rotten” in West Linn, OR, and I just had to have this one from her alphabet works. “Y”? Because me like you, yeti. That curious grin he’s sporting just makes me smile.

More tomorrow! See you then.

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