Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

I saw this phrase today on a tattoo when I was in line at Rite Aid. It was inscribed on a tombstone on the back of someone's arm. It's a phrase originally coined by Kurt Vonnegut, but also the perfect description of my day today.

I installed my new work at The Gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, just moments before their big opening extravaganza this weekend. Won't you join us? Click here for the entire schedule of events, and if you're too far away to attend, I'm sure to blog about it. I have seen the space in all its incarnations from the late 20th Century--from its inception as Daisy Kingdom which sold all the trims and holiday accoutrement you could ever want, to the transformation into the DeSoto Building. Just seeing the name "Museum of Contemporary Craft" on the steel and mahogany reception desk was exciting--as I've blogged many times before, this is an institution that has been a part of my life, all my life, and it's great to see them grow up. I feel like the proud 40-year-old parent of a 70- year old! Don't do the math on that one or it'll make me look like a hussy!

I got to walk around a little bit and have a tiny peek at the Craft in America exhibition that will inaugurate the museum. Rising above the rubble was one of George Nakashima's signature benches. (Click here to read my blog entry about visiting his house last summer during the ITE Residency.) Apparently this was the first day that the construction crews weren't there and I'm glad I missed that mayhem. They were apparently behind schedule and the MCC folks had to get in there to get ready for the opening event, and rumor has it that nobody was particularly fond of the compromised situation. With less than two days to go, all hands were on deck to get the place ready, including the entire staff, and many volunteers. Charles Froelick even pitched in by sending one of his staff members over to help, which I thought was a nice way to establish good neighborly relations.

Speaking of which, I always forget to mention that this weekend will also be the opening for the other galleries in the DeSoto Building, including Froelick, Augen, and Blue Sky (and Nine) Galleries, and Charles A. Hartman Fine Art. DK Row's article in tomorrow's edition of the Oregonian backs up the aforementioned kindness I witnessed from Froelick, but also gives a great history of what made the DeSoto building come together, so I encourage you to read that too. In fact, this article completely makes me feel validated for all the giddy enthusiasm I've been feeling for the past year since I heard about this project.

So....anyhow, I took the work over that I'd been pouring my little heart and soul into for the last few months. I was given a few areas to play with and decide to do two different things with each. A few years ago I developed a body of work called "cumulate" that traveled from the Indianapolis to San Francisco to Portland. How fitting, because the work was an installation of cloud-like clusters of similarly colored sculptures. I loved that show mostly because moving it from venue to venue was really exciting--that particular work was so adaptable to various site-specific locations.

I decided to make four small clouds for The Gallery, and opted for a paler palette than usual. Maybe I'm being influenced by all this minimalist work I've been seeing lately! I actually had been thinking more directly about that in the past weekend after my gallery visits with TJ and am eager to work on some new clouds soon. Here's the ones I put up today - four small clusters of no more than ten individual pieces. I don't know what's going to end up sharing that wall below, and hope it won't crowd me too much!

The other portion of the gallery that I'm using is this space near the sales desk. This work is derived from a past installation as well, called Kharshouf. A big thing in my work is to incorporate them into the existing architecture, and in this case I had a new challenge: the security system. See that black semisphere? That's the camera that catches bad guys who want to bad things, and I had to make sure my artwork didn't get in the way of justice. I sorta liked working around the function of the building in this way, and it gave me a few new ideas today for potential installations that don't have to work around the functions of a craft gallery like here. I am happy that I can exist in both worlds.

I'll also have some of the pedestal pieces I showed in earlier blog entries here, but you'll have to go see them in person. Today's blog entry is just about the installation work. Oh, well, and it's also about my evening event.......but first, I'll tell you about this curious image you see here. It's my minimalist still life I took of my installation residue whilst installing my pieces today.

I ended my evening at Roller Derby Bingo. As you know, I had tried to coerce Kristin Shiga into going since we had attended one of the aforeblogmentioned Rose City Rollers Tournaments, but I didn't even mention it to her today because I knew it wasn't gonna happen. Maybe she will live vicariously through my recounting. I probably would have benefited from a night home to work on a grant I'm trying to have ready for review next week, or maybe working on the backyard ambience for a very special gathering that will take place next weekend, but but in a moment of divine inspiration, I called my dear dear friend Davis today and asked if he had plans. He did not, and we went together to Vita Cafe for Siren Nation's fundraising event.

I hate to say it, but I never eat at Vita Cafe. It's in my hood, and I used to regularly dine at their sister venue Paradox on Belmont Street when I first moved to the lovely town. The problem I have with Vita is that their menu grosses me out. I'm all for vegetarian or vegan eating, but I'm more in support of the way places like Greens or the Farm Cafe do it where I don't even think about all the glorious dead animals I'm missing. When I see a menu that's laced with the words "tempeh" or "seitan" or "fakin," I go for the bathroom. Well, that's not a problem here because in some sadistic parallel universe type of art/craft world punishment, Vita Cafe happens to have the best permanent collection of internationally reknowned artwork in the entire Alberta Arts District. Here's an image I took in the bathroom with a print by Howard Finster, who you may recognize as the artist on one of the Talking Heads' last albums before they self-destructed. Not to reduce his entire oeuvre to an album cover, but those of you who recognize his name know the rest of the story.

In the main dining room are many large pieces by Boris Bally, someone who I have admired in the craft field for many years. Bally, in addition to being a really nice person, is a great example of an artist who can make great work on many levels. He was trained in the slaughterhouses of Swiss metalsmithing, which basically means that they cut off your left hand and put a digital caliper prosthetic in its place. In other words, he knows how to make the most traditional and technical metal work you'll ever see, which is one step away from being a human machine.

But Bally mostly is known for his ingenious use of used traffic signs. He worked out some sort of deal with the State of Pennsylvania and beyond that he gets to use their rejected road signs and he built a business making ornamental bowls and furniture out of them. I happen to own a few birdhouses he made out of license plates, something that has been knocked off umpteen times. I first encountered him at a metals conference and he was a breath of fresh air amongst all the other academic hoo haw. Not that I don't enjoy that too, but I really love that Bally is respected by all parties involved. Knowing someone like him has crossed over into both worlds of serious one-of-a-kind work and production work has really been an inspiration for me.

My personal story with Boris Bally deserves to be told. I loved his work, and during a time of personal economic boom, I bought a piece from him. I remember choosing the piece really carefully - and picked out that one in particular because it was from an era of traffic signs that you don't see any more. Well, long story short, it got lost in the mail and I was underinsured and oversad about it.

A few years later, I ran into Boris at a conference and told him my sad story. He said he'd send me a new piece. I didn't know him very well, so I was probably polite and said no, this isn't your problem, and promptly forgot about it. A little over a year later, when I was going through a big breakup, he sent me an email out of the blue asking for my mailing address. I obliged, and he sent me a new piece, which was sooooooo sweet. But the real gift was when I told him a little bit about what I was going through at the time, in an effort to tell him how much his gesture meant to me. He wrote back that he had been in a relationship, like me, that he had fought to keep. And, like me, he had lost it, but he didn't realize at the time that it was the best gift of his life. He went on to meet someone who was much more suited to him and it had made all the difference. I kept that note he sent me on my refrigerator and it really helped me get through some of the hardest months of my life. See? That's exactly why I do things like send cookies to complete strangers.

Thank you Boris.

Okay.....I can't end on that melancholy note. My life rocks right now and I swear I had to go through all that crap to get to the cream. But I won't bore you with that story--I have to tell you about Roller Derby Bingo! By a weird only-in-Portland-it's-a-small-world-after-all-one-degree-of-separation-twist-of-fate, we ended up sharing a table with my friend Peggy who works at the Copy Center at Camera Graphics in Portland. She does the best quality printing jobs for me--I swear if you want something done right, go to her. But she's also a hip chick too and it was fun to hang out with her, since we always say we will and never do. You know how that goes.

So Peggy has this heart monitor on for three days because she's had an arythmia problem and it needs to be watched. Excellent time to play Roller Derby Bingo, I say! And miracle of all miracles, she wins! This sounds like an after school special, doesn't it? But no.....this is an after school special the way John Waters would have made it.

Let me tell you why. The first Bingo round was the normal one row across win kind of Bingo. Then it was that you had to have your Bingo tiles make an X across the board (which I mistakenly thought I had gotten and did a public booty dance before realizing that I was missing a tile. Oops! Well, the emcees loved it!) The next round was to get all the outer spaces on your board filled, in other words, a Giant O.

Peggy was working two boards at once. I didn't really notice why but she kept requesting that they pick "B9" and I wanted that too, among one or two others to make my Giant O. They soon called B9 and it didn't take long to figure out that Peggy was playing two cards at once and that both had won on that B9 space. See? After School Special meets John Waters about bubbly girl on heart monitor double winning a big O at Roller Derby Bingo? Hello? Can it get any better than that???? I missed capturing the actual moment on my camera, but she happily posed for this reenactment of the big win. It's so gloriously goofy that I will say I prefer it to an in-the-moment shot. Peggy got two prizes - a pair of thigh-high rainbow socks AND a set of wildlife facts cards! Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!