more adventures in architecture!

I grew up in Eugene, Oregon--a college town about 100 miles south of Portland. It was a great place to grow up, but the older I got, the more I wanted to be part of a larger art and demographically diverse community. So I moved, as many do, up the Willamette River to Portland, which is also known as "the Best European city in the U.S." Oh, don't get me started...I could rave about Portland for days. I seem to go back to Eugene less and less, which is unfortunate because I still have family and many dear friends there. But still, I often feel like so little has changed physically when I drive around my hometown. Well, not so this time. Eugene now is home to a brand new ($76million) federal courthouse, and it's definitely the most exciting piece of architecture I've seen in the entire state since this woman made a building in Albany with 50 gallon drums and spray foam.

The courthouse was named for Oregon's grooviest politician, Wayne Morse. Oh is that my Eugene roots speaking there? Well let me tell you: I grew up knowing his name because my parents had a--I kid you not--da-glo psychedelic campaign poster hanging up on the wall in our house. Morse was one of our senators in the 1960's, if you haven't figured that out already. Actually, his story is more interesting than that: he was first elected to the Senate as a Republican in the mid 1940's. When President Eisenhower selected Nixon as his running mate, Morse left the party and briefly became an Independent, before settling in with the Democrats in 1955. A few years later, he was one of only 2 senators to vote against funding for the Vietnam war, and was an outspoken critic of US involvement there throughout.

So, the Wayne Lyman Morse Federal Courthouse was designed by architecht Thom Mayne, who won the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2005. He used the idea of flowing ribbons when pitching the design, and I really love that metaphor not only because it's beautiful, but also because the courthouse was built near the banks of the aforementioned Willamette River, which ribbons its way up the western half of the state. I first spent some time walking around the exterior of the building on this sunny and slightly balmy post-Christmas day. The building has only been open to the general public for the past few weeks.

You enter the building on an elevated "second" level, which is partly designed after early American courthouses, and partly to protect the building from a McVey-style bombing like we saw in Oklahoma City years back. The ascent is nice - whether you choose to use the stairs or the ramp -- and this adds a real sense of importance to the experience of the building.


The materials on the outside, steel, glass, concrete, are carried through on the inside. But the cool colors are offset by some really fantastic artwork chosen for the three floors of the building. Since you start on the second floor, I'll start there too with the first thing that caught my eye--this piece by one of my favorite Portland artists, Sean Healy. (You may recall I raved about his show at Elizabeth Leach Gallery last fall.) Well since he works in resin and glass, his art translates beautifully into public projects. The first one I ever saw was in Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, This project is a lot more sophisticated, and I honestly don't know if I'd've pegged it as his if I didn't know already.

What Healy did for this project, titled "Jury Pool" was to ask over 100 random Oregonians what their favorite color and favorite place in Oregon was. He then did a portrait of that person on the chosen color dot, with latitudinal coordiates etched into the clear glass nearby. I really love the way this piece reads from a distance, and yet the various textures and colors of the glass and the individual portraits give you something to linger on at closer range. On the wall nearby is a map of the state with all of the favorite place coordinates marked by colored dots.

I then walked down the stairs to the lower level where the administrative offices are for the building. The center of the building near the staircase opens up to all levels, bringing natural light in from above. I really love the way there are architectural elements that carry your eye upward here, as well as reminding you of the basic materials and forms used in the entire building.

Here, there is a nice series of pinhole photographs by Kristen Timken. They were digitally blown up into huge prints, so they're kind of fuzzy and dreamy. I think it's a nice blend of old and new photographic technology. Apparently she traveled more than 1500 miles around the seven counties that make up the Courts' Southern District of Oregon taking pictures, and then chose these five.

Around the corner is a model of the building with a little recap of its design process. This is standard I know, but I really liked that it was here. I remember when the Experience Music Project was built in Seattle. I was surprised at the outrage I heard from people, saying it was ugly. Made me wonder what they said when the Space Needle was erected? Anyhow, I was sure that there was some factions in Eugene who felt similarly shocked at this challenging new building. Well, that wasn't too hard to find - their free weekly actually was collecting nicknames and the list so far included:
The Steel Trap
The Federal Diner
Psycho-Toaster
U.S. Trailer Court
Fort Hogan
The Obstacle
The Aircraft Carrier
The Gort-House (from the Day the Earth Stood Still)
and EPCOT which stands for "Extreme Pork Costing Our Taxpayers."

Sigh......

Onward.

I ascended the staircase to the top floor to see the last piece of artwork - by former British but now New York artist Matthew Ritchie. This was the largest art installation in the building-- three different sections of enlarged sketches of the Willamette River and region and diagrams of written law, which were printed on lenticular light boxes, so they moved as you walked past. There is already a huge amount of natural light on this level due to the large windows revealing an outdoor courtyard and a view of the river valley beyond, but these three large pieces really give some nice continuity to the floor as you walk around. It was a great day to be there for me--the courts weren't in session because of the holiday, so I was basically alone getting a private tour. I really appreciated it when seeing these beautiful pieces by Ritchie.

There was, however, a big drawback to being there during the holiday recess--I would have loved to have been able to get a peek at the courtrooms. I could look into the windows a bit, but I wanted to get in there. I found this image on the internet, which I'd seen previously, so I kind of knew what I was missing which made it all the more disappointing. I think it's interesting that Mayne moved away from the cool-feeling materials and gave these rooms some warmth with the natural wood. Perhaps he was attempting to soften the space where the hardest emotions are felt in this building.

Ritchie also created a steel piece that filled a lot of the courtyard on this level-- an abstracted map of the Willamette called "Stare Decisis." This is a legal term that means to "stand by that which is decided." Ritchie was making a link between the laws of humans and the laws of nature here.

According to a recent article in the Oregonian, there were a lot of compromises made when this building was designed. Mayne wanted to etch the bill of rights into the building's exterior. Good thing that one didn't happen! He also wanted to build a footbridge over the busy road outside to link to downtown, which would have been pretty great. And finally, he wanted a big reflecting pool on the rooftop where Ritchie's steel piece now sits. These things were scrapped due to the cost. But still, this building is a great success, and worth a visit if you're ever in that area.

Okay....tomorrow I do the very last little thing on the Bresler project and pack it off to ship to Maryland. I have been taking pictures and will eventually get them here and tell you a little more about it. Take care and happy new year, dear readers!

behind the scenes at OMSI

Hey Beautiful People!

This bunny has a little catching up to do on this here blog of mine - First stop, OMSI. For those of you not living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, you may not know that this acronym stands for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They have been around since 1941 and reportedly are one of the top ten science museums in the country. Wow - I've been going there since I was a kid, so I guess I thought all science museums were this good. OMSI has the largest planetarium in the Northwest. It also has an Omnimax theater. And if that's not enough, they even have a decommissioned navy submarine submerged in the banks of the Willamette River that you can not only go in, but I just saw on their website that you can arrange to have a sleepover there! Wow! Maybe I should add that to my list of 40 things to do!

I went there last week because, as I mentioned fairly recently I believe, my friend Johnny Mac works there and he invited me to come visit the shop where he works. Johnny works with the "behind the scenes" team creating and/or repairing the displays that are a part of their permanent and traveling exhibits. We were having a conversation at a party recently and he mentioned that they have a lot of nice quality plywood scraps that get tossed regularly. He was always looking for artists who might be able to use it. It was perfect timing because I was thinking about doing some more sandpaper vessels but didn't want to have to buy a whole sheet of plywood to do it.

I know Johnny because he and his wife Madoka Ito are artists. They made an awesome collaborative piece last year that was in an art show I organized for the spring art festival that happens in my neighborhood each year. It was a kinetic piece - you turned a crank and all of these gears go around and around. In a little window above, there is an image of clouds in the sky moving by, which were painted on a disk that turns when the crank is cranked. Following me here? Anyhow, you soon see a little brown thing start to enter the picture, which turns out to be a corn dog. Just as you figure out it's a corn dog, a bell dings and it quickly disappears from the scene. Madoka's paintings are usually a little more serious, as you can see on her website, but she has this corn dog thing going that cracks me up. I really want one of the corn dog t-shirts.

I got the grand tour of the workshop when I went to claim my plywood scraps last week. Wow - what a great place to work! There are about 12-15 people working there, I believe, and there's a ton of equipment so you could basically make anything your little heart desires there. Here's an example of one of the displays they made here. It's basically the size of one million one dollar bills. I say basically because some nerdy visitor to the museum figured out that it wasn't quite right. Jeez, dude, you gotta wreck it for the rest of us, dontcha??? I don't think that's why it's back in the warehouse though--if I were OMSI, I'd just cover my ears and start singing loudly. It's probably either here to be repaired or maybe it's part of one of their traveling exhibits getting ready to go to another science museum.

Walking through the warehouse was great - there's tons of crates holding exhibits that are waiting to travel, but it's also an elephant's graveyard of cool things. I ran into an old friend there - the Visible Woman. This was one of my favorite exhibits at OMSI when I was a kid -- I even had the model at home. She was in the warehouse getting new LED lights or something. Anyhow, it's a life-sized model of a skinless woman so you can see all her veins and organs and bones. Love it!!!

Then we look at a box marked "touchy feely brain" that's full of a bunch of molds and models of brains they made for a past exhibit. Then Johnny shows me this box that has a carefully wrapped half of a real human brain inside. He left it in the bag because apparently it really smells foul. But wow cooooool!!! It's yellowish! I have designated that my body parts are donated to be used for transplants after I die....maybe I should request that they're given to OMSI.

Here's a box of gears that they make with their cad machine- there are all sorts of cool spare parts around that people can reuse. I loved seeing how it was all organized - the label on this box says "make it move." It's such a creative environment and I love the humor that usually goes along with the territory. I also really love seeing the problem solving process involved when you have to figure out how to make something work practically and aesthetically and yet be durable enough to withstand the aggressive kids whose parents bring them to OMSI rather than put them on meds.

This is a large mold for casting fake tree bark. They made a stump, needed a believable surface for the outside, so they just made this big casting of a tree. I did a lot of mold making when I was in art school, so I love this kind of thing.



Here are some large acorns they cast out of some sort of silicone. I think these go with the big Richard Scarry exhibit they had that's about to travel. They even bounce!



In the machine shop, someone's project was to figure out how to make a ball keep itself in motion, rolling itself up and down these hills. I'm sure they wake up every morning wishing they didn't have to go to work. Ha! I loved all of the tools in here, including this wonderful tealy blue lathe. All of these brightly colored tools reminded me of David Ellsworth's carousel of a band saw I blogged about last summer.

Some of these tools were so old they had wonderful safety signs painted onto them.

So here's the plywood bin I got to choose from. So nice. I will have to make a trip to the big abrasives store and do some shopping soon! I also grabbed a few pieces of brown vinyl cast with simulated wood grain from their plastic scrap bin. I'll figure out something to do with them someday I'm sure. Stay tuned for a few more blog entries this week. I'm probably going to finish up the Bresler project tomorrow, and I visited the new courthouse in Eugene while I was down there for Christmas and that's a beauty to behold, certainly blogworthy. And if that's not enough, I'm starting on a "loose ends" entry following up on many things I covered in the last 7 months of blogging. That will be posted sometime around the new year. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me this week, eh?

blogout!

Hey Beautiful People! Well, we're having a big ol' windstorm here in Portland. I'm staying in for the evening, watching the Walnut tree that covers most of my property bob and sway in the wind, hoping it won't decide to go horizontal on my house or studio tonight. Wheeee!

The power went out just after 5, which was a bummer because I really wanted to hear the news tonight. Well, no worry - I can just make up my own news. Although I really wanted to hear the rebroadcast of Fresh Air because she was playing an old interview with Peter Boyle who died last week. He was part of one of my all-time best movie moments where he was playing the Frankenstein monster in Mel Brooks' best movie ever Young Frankenstein - and he and Gene Wilder (Dr. Frankenstein) did this routine to the song "Puttin' on the Ritz" that cracks me up just to think about it. The comic timing is so excellent. Well....I know I can hear it on the web tomorrow.

I thought I'd feel really lonely during a power outage, but it has been quite a nice evening. I used to light candles every single night, but somehow got out of the habit. Well, I found this treasure trove of candles tonight just begging to be lit - I bought a huge bag of tea lights at IKEA years ago and so it seemed perfect to relight my house with them. I chose to mostly light the nook, where I have been reading and writing for the past few hours.

Thank whoever's-up-there-looking-out-for-me that I have a gas stove. I made myself a really nice soup with my homemade chicken broth and potatoes and veggies for dinner just like I normally would on a night at home alone. I was worried that the house would cool down fast, but fortunately this is a warm storm - the outside temperature as I type is 51.1 degrees fahrenheit and that's pretty good for 8:49pm on a mid-December evening in Oregon. I'm sure that some local broadcaster out there has given this storm a dorky name like "the Pineapple Express December 2006 Portlandapalooza" or something along those lines.

So I was just thinking that it's kind of a dry spell for art blogging so maybe I would make up for it by writing about some more of my favorite art objects in my home. It's not like I haven't been making anything--the commission I'm working on is not really in an interesting place to talk about yet -- just wait a week and I'll let you in on that again.

The piece that inspired this blog is in the bottom left of this picture. It's a piece I bought at Sunshine Grocery in Eugene shortly after I got my first cell phone. It still makes me laugh when I look at that bunny clutching the giant phone. I guess it's kind of personal - I never thought I'd want a cell phone - it's kind of like being in this blackout tonight and remembering how nice it is to have candles and quiet. Anyhow, the only reason I even have a cell phone is because my mom and her partner put me on their plan because I was the only kid without one. Now, to be honest, I have realized that it's a really good thing to be able to have a phone when you really really need it, but most of the time, I use the cell phone because of the convenience of the size fitting into my pocket when I use the headset, and I can hear in this phone better than my landline. Okay...that's probably more information than you need to know, but still, the bunny clutching the cellphone is one of the art pieces that I know I will cherish for years to come. Also noteworthy in this picture is the flowers I bought last week and the candle lantern my daddy bought me when I was in college that I normally use for camping but was great to have tonight! He had it ingraved "Daddy's Little Girl" which he used to sing to me when I was a baby and apparently I would cry when he did, which I would take back in a minute if I could because it makes me smile when he does it now.

Okay - now we're in the living room. I have a big bookshelf that has about 20 cube spaces--some of which are books, and some of which are little art groupings. From a distance, it's sorta like a Mondrian painting. Here are a few of the art spaces. In this one, you see on the right, a kinetic piece by Tomas Savrda who I met at ACC Baltimore. This is a devil doll thing that spins around. I have another piece by him that I love even more that you will see in a short bit. On the left is a found object piece I put together - the bottom is some rusty plumbing part that I always thought looked like a shoulders and neck. I put a turned ball I found at Goodwill on top of it many years ago. Still love it.

Another cube display is this trio, recently completed with my first pegboard piece that Liam Flynn and I made last summer. In the forefront on the left is a felt piece made by another dear friend Junko Iijima which she graciously presented to me as a housewarming gift a few years ago. I love it!!!!! On the right is this piece I've had for years - a funny creature, indeed, but the surface of it is really wonderful - a super crazed glaze that isn't rough when you handle it. And handling it is the point--the artist (don't remember her name any more) figured out some way to make the bits fired inside really resonate when you shake it. Do you remember those "charm balls" that were popular in the 80's? They were steel and made this amazing sound when you shook them? Well, maybe you didn't have the luck I did to grow up in Eugene, Oregon for most of your life, but anyhow, when you shake this turd-like object, it emits the most beautiful sound. Isn't that a nice metaphor for life, I ask you?

Ready for another little art trio? Thank you for saying "YES!" In the back left is a vase made by a gal who went to art school at the same time I did. She was German, but that's all I remember. Arthur - do you remember? We did a trade for this really cool ring I cast that was a bunny with springs for ears. Anyhow, she was really talented and I loved this piece. I also got a dish that is in my kitchen that I didn't photograph tonight but will someday probably most likely put on the blog. It's actually a much better piece than this one. If somebody who has never written to me before writes me then I will post that image. But for now, it's just this cool vase that I still love. On the right is my self-releasing mold, which I am so happy to have back in the fold. In the foreground is a plane that my grandfather used. I have a few of his tools out in my shop, but this one needs to be seen.

Okay, onto the next cubicle. This teapot was made by Chris Gum, a really great potter I knew in Eugene who sadly passed away a few years ago. This was one of the best pieces I ever saw of his - a really sweet teapot. I am so glad I have it. In the front is the only one of my sandpaper vessels from the ITE residency that didn't sell. I am so glad that I got to keep one! I have been thinking about that work lately and found a great supply of plywood - surplus from my friend Johnny Mac who does displays for OMSI- and want to peruse the vaults at my favorite local sanding supply store in Portland: Palm Abrasives. I think there's more to this concept that I need to explore.

In the kitchen, my windowsill is full of happiness. The birds were made by my dear friend Tom Hill. I love love love them. In between are some dried lychees that Junko got me because the shapes reminded her of my work. I was delighted when they dried so well. I have a few wishbones drying in the light there too. Waiting to be wished upon. Any takers?

The top sill is the work of one of my favorite ceramic artists Annabeth Rosen. One summer I was at Haystack assisting a metals workshop and she was teaching the clay workshop. I saw her lecture just before my thesis year and something she said about her working process really resonated in me - I used to work the same way in clay when I worked with clay. I will have to dig out that set of photos, but one summer almost 20 years ago, I was really into raku. I had taken a workshop with Paulus Behrenson at Penland and fell in love with a story he told me. He said that he was teaching a class on pinchpots and he had a frustrated student. The boy felt that he could not make a vessel from a ball of clay. He was so angry that he took the ball of clay and hit it on his knee while excaiming.................

(oh joy, the power just went back on)

..........."I CAN'T MAKE A POT OUT OF THIS CLAY!" And then Paulus looked down and told the boy that he had just, indeed, made a pot from the clay when he slammed it repeatedly on his knee, a vessel was formed by the impression that he smashed with every word of that sentence. I loved this story and made many vessels in the same spirit, letting the shape of my fingers make the outside form. I know that this sort of thinking translated into my love of spontaneous form, and Annabeth Rosen definitely helped remind me of that at a pivotal point in my career. In her slide show, she had images of her studio which was this huge warehouse space and she had literally filled it with ceramic forms that she had made in that rapid succession. Most of them cracked so badly when drying that she let that be the elimination process. I totally fell in love with that idea, and it greatly influenced my ideas about the benefits of trying to work "faster than you can think" to let the real work evolve.

She made these tiny mugs and sold them in the auction at the end of our session. I bought them and really love them because they both remind me of her work, and they remind me of Haystack, which is one of my favorite places on the planet. Have you been there? You should go. One of the reasons it's so special is the director Stuart Kestenbaum, who is such an amazing poet and man. Plus, it's on the most beautiful place to be in the summertime besides Oregon, which is the coast of Maine. If you're lucky, you'll be there when the pirate ship replica floats by. Or you'll be there on the fourth of July, where I felt like I was plunged back into the 1950's again when I saw the local parade. Well, mostly the '50's. That was up until the Haystack entry passed by. Reality check. Woo hoo - hey - over here girl - come back to the 20th century!!!! (Yes, it was 1999, dear reader.)

Last entry--you thought I'd forget, didn't you? The other piece by Tomas Savrda which is so ingenious - it's a screw-top cap that has been converted into this little crank device that sticks the tongue in and out as you turn the handle. So nice. It is so tiny, and yet is one of my very favorite pieces of art that I own. See? Size isn't everything!!????!!!

Okay...the power is back on and so I will post this and trot off to beddy bye. I'll leave some more of my worldly possessions to blog about on another housebound night.

Love you like a pig loves corn,
Hilary

art like a ninja!

Hey Beautiful People! My friend Ian recently told me that Wednesday, December 6 was officially "Creep Like a Ninja Day." Well, I could only do that for a few hours, but I did attend a few art related events on my own last week in the spirit of that holiday. It's great to go to things with your friends, but sometimes it's really really great to go on your own because you can sneak in and out on your schedule, linger and talk to people you run into without feeling like anyone is waiting for you, and basically do whatever you want. Like a ninja....you dig? Well okay, sorta more like a ninja who lives in a small metropolitan community in the Western United States with great cultural events happening on a regular basis and I'm not wearing black but my new blue faux shearling jacket but light blue is the new black as far as I'm concerned, so that's just how it is.

Dig it.

I remember the days not too long ago when Portland only had about a dozen artist lectures a year and basically everyone came because we were desparate to hear what they had to say. Now it seems that there's at least one lecture in town every week, and I usually have to choose what to hear, if I can even make it. One of my favorite Portland artists Harrell Fletcher, has started a Monday night lecture series at Portland State University where he teaches. This is year two of the series, and he's gotten sponsorship from not only PSU, but PICA, Reed College, PNCA, Lewis and Clark College, and The Affair At The Jupiter. This is a good thing because he brings in folks from outside the Portland area and if I remember correctly, someone came in from overseas last year. Don't ask me to name names here because it's not gonna happen.

The lecture I attended was that of James Lavadour, one of Oregon's most respected painters who lives in eastern Oregon on the Umatilla Indian reservation. I had heard that he was a really amazing person from another artist, Marie Watt, and so I wanted to go see for myself what he had to say. Lavadour is primarily a landscape painter, but don't stop reading here. His paintings are incredibly well crafted - he's a self-taught artist who skillfully blends abstraction and realism in his reflections of the land that he has lived on for the past 55 years. He shows at my favorite Portland gallery, PDX, so that oughta say something.

As an artist, I really appreciated this lecture. He talked about a lot of things that I hold near and dear to my heart, quoting him here: "...the connection between the ways walking conditioned my body movements and the way my body governed my hand when I painted. Links between muscle and memory, place and identity became the basis of my art." I love hearing other artists talk about the physical state you are in while creating and I believe that if you can find a way to engage the audience with the importance of that and how it manifests itself into the finished concrete object, that's a good thing.

I also really loved hearing that he often reworks unsold paintings that come back to his studio after a show. I do this too and it always makes me feel a little naughty. If I liked it enough to give it to a gallery to sell, why am I wanting to mess with it again later? Does that mean that my judgment was off before? Seeing someone with a little more of the confidence that comes with age talk about this was good to hear.

My second art experience this week was attending the First Thursday openings. There weren't any shows I was particularly longing to see, but I like to visit my usual haunts. I stopped briefly in Pulliam Deff and PDX, but wasn't particularly interested in those shows. I did like the piece in the PDX Window Project by Molly Vidor called "My Space" which was a really wonderful textured painting of the cosmos. Around the corner, Leach Gallery was closed because they were showing at the Art Basel Miami show. Laaaaaaaame! They have a group collage show that I'm wanting to see so I guess I'll have to venture downtown again someday but the holiday shoppers may be enough of a deterrent to let it go altogether. Bah humbug!

Then I went across the street to Blackfish, a cooperative gallery that my friend Gina manages. They had two interesting installations - one by Theresa Redinger called: The Tent Show: an installation of the American Dream under 100 pounds. She basically recreated her childhood home into a tent, accompanied with some accessories, all made from the kinds of fabrics usually associated with camping like polarfleece, netting, and ripstop nylon. Since my work touches lightly on environmental issues, I appreciated her offering of an alternative "American Dream." I was just sending out press releases this past week for my installations next month and started with this phrase: "An installation is an environment which invites viewers to suspend their beliefs about the order of things in the world so that they can see it through an artist's eyes." This was definitely the case here--there's a nice trend nowadays of art that's almost giddy with optimism. I grew up backpacking in the Cascade Mountains, so this show spoke to me. Apparently she's going to do a talk and performance piece on December 30 where she will dismantle the entire show and pack it into the back of her bicycle trailer and ride away. Nice.

The other show at Blackfish was really fun too, although I didn't hear much about the conceptual end that interested me. Still, it was good eye candy--no pun intended! It was an installation by a local artist who's not a member of this gallery named John Larsen, titled "Public Display of Affection." He apparently had decided that all of his shows had really dark or sad themes so he wanted to do a piece that was about bliss. It reminded me of the first scenes inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory--there were flowers made from halved Jawbreakers and a little house made from Jolly Rancher candies.

Went into Beppu Wiarda Gallery, which I usually am not particularly interested in, but my dad sent me an image of work by Liza Jones in the current show, and since I was walking by, I decided to stop in. There were prints of boats, mostly they seemed a little corny, but there were a few that really caught my eye like this one of the prows of boats. I liked that it became abstract, whereas most of the other work was pretty straightforward albeit fantastical images. She's obviously skilled - the craftsmanship was excellent. I have been wanting to take printmaking classes for a few years now and this one gave me some inspiration.

Checked out a few other galleries before concluding my evening at a brand new gallery called Quality Pictures. This was definitely the best thing I saw all night - this gallery shows contemporary and emerging photographic artists and the work was really fantastic. There were two shows there - one was a group show called "POW! - Portraits of Women." It had some heavy hitters like Cindy Sherman and Larry Sultan in there, but a lot of people I didn't know...not that I know a whole hell of a lot about photography, but it was a great mix of very good work.

In the back room was a solo show by Chris Verene - photographs that were elaborate, hilarious, wonderfully composed, and very colorful. This is his "Self Esteem" series, with scenes of cots in gyms, a dance party, nurses and a pregnant teen. I don't even know what to say about them except it made my night. I'll leave you with some images to ponder, dear reader. Catch you on the flip side.