Got my list checked off....now it's time to play!

Hey Beautiful People!

I know I've been a remiss bloger lately - it isn't often that I don't post for over a week! But you'll be glad to hear that the huge list of things I had to do this month. Let's see....what was it again? RACC grant application. Check. Show proposal submitted to one more venue? Check. Visits with my dad, Christian's dad and sister, and his mom and other sister, and my mom? Check, check, check, check. Installed show in Corvallis? Check. Took a class to brush up on my Dreamweaver skills, and then worked countless hours on the website for my new business, although it's still got a wee bit of fine tuning before it's an official check off this list. Gotta give kudos to Christian here for his enormous help to me, from the design to html coding, to figuring out how to get the durn shopping cart to work. And last but not least, I did a speaking engagement for the Portland Female Executives group at the Museum of Contemporary Craft? Well, that's a big old check!

I have done many public speaking engagements, and really love getting those opportunities because I really deal with the public so little. The cards you see in the above image are the notes I made for myself to remind me of what to say, but thankfully I didn't need to refer to them much. I think public talks are so much better when you're not reading, but I like this colored card format because it outlines my talking points and makes it easier for me to memorize.Last week's talk was really fun - I have been supporting myself from my artwork for 18 years and definitely believe that art and business are great bedfellows. I had no idea how this was going to go over, since my usual subjects are wide-eyed artist types. Who knows how it would go over with a bunch of REAL businesswomen?

Well, they seemed to really have fun - even got into my hands-on activity where I asked all 60 of these business professionals to get up out of their seats and grab some kiddie scissors and make their assigned body parts so we could assemble some exquisite corpse bodies. It's my way of showing how to be spontaneous and creative and it was a real blast. I had to run off at the end to have one final sup with Christian's family before they left, but I did make contact with so many nice women while I was there, which may lead me to two more speaking engagements in the future.

Before the engagement I ran into TJ Norris downstairs who was there checking in on his M_US_EUM installation there, which is part of the collaborations exhibition for Art in the Pearl this weekend. I was really glad to get to see it since I'm off to Chicago for the holiday weekend. Wheeeee - I can't wait! It was a great show with pieces by many of my friends. I really loved TJ's collaboration with Scott Wayne Indiana - quite a contrast from the rest of the mostly object-oriented works. I wish I had a picture to show you of the sweet collaboration between my friends Deb Stoner and Fred Soelzer called B-52. If you're in the Portland area, Art in the Pearl is happening this weekend in the north Park Blocks and this collaborations show is upstairs in the museum.

I do have this image of a trumpet made by Dave Monette and my friend Tami Dean - they have been collaborating for years on these amazing instruments that have been commissioned by the likes of Wynton Marsalis. There was an interesting article in the Oregonian last week about a recent project they did together that will be sent down to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. You can read the article by clicking here. Monette does the manufacturing of the horn and Dean makes it beautiful with her pieced elements and set stones. They are incredibly gorgeous. I ran a lecture series when I was a student at Oregon College of Art and Craft and got them to come speak - would love to go visit his studio some day.

Okay - I'm finishing up this blog entry as I sit at Gate D9, where in a matter of minutes, Christian and I will board a plane for Chicago. Can't wait to have a great holiday weekend that will surely be packed with art activities worthy of some blog entries for you, dear reader. I'm especially excited to see a show of Niki de Saint Phalle's work, which I have been a big fan of for years. I'll leave you with this word of wisdom from Twyla Tharp about multitasking. I haven't done it myself, but I told the Portland Female Executives that I plan to put it on my big list of things to do someday. HoSounds pretty good right now.

Plecia Nearctica swarm moving south in Willamette Valley!

I haven't been to Corvallis in years. I always been particularly fond of that choice of a town's name because it translates from Latin to "heart of the valley." (My other favorite town name in Oregon is Sweethome.) I have spent most of my life living on one end or the other of the Willamette Valley, as well as passing through pretty much all points in between.

I was asked to show my work in a three-person exhibition at Art Centric, which I mentioned a few blog entries ago was once known as the Corvallis Arts Center, and one of the first places to support my artwork when I was a young woman, barely old enough to buy alcohol legally, but brazen enough to start my first real business making porcelain beads. It was nice to hear from Hester Coucke, who was one of the ones gave me some hope to keep making my living from my artwork those 18 years ago.

The title of this show is "More Than One View." Every year in Corvallis, they hold a show in partnership with the Benton County Historical Society's quilt show called "Quilt County." As Hester describes her reasons for choosing these three artists: "This show offers quilting 'with a twist' as only one artist works in fiber, while another is a painter and the other a sculptor. Their work follows the same premise as quilting, making one unified whole out of many elements, and some of these elements are individual independent pieces."

I love this idea. I want to work with it some more. I have been thinking about pattern ever since seeing the Camouflage show at the Portland Art Museum last weekend, particularly the work by Damien Hirst using butterfly wings to simulate stained glass in a church's windows. I know there's more ideas behind that particular piece, but it got me thinking not only about repetitive patterns, but also about the craft connection to stained glass.

So as I was driving down the highway this morning, I thought about the interior of the building I was to install my work in--it's an old church that was renovated into a nonprofit art gallery almost 50 years ago. I considered working with pattern today, but decided it was too big a challenge with so many differently shaped elements. At least it's too big for today. I will ponder it for a future project because I want it to put some real thought into it.

I integrated the elements of the Vertical Garden installation from 2004 into my 'sWarm installation last year when it debuted at the Fuller Craft Museum. My second showing of the lovebugs at the Museum of Contemporary Craft omitted the garden element. This time, I wanted to do something new. I started with the looping flight pattern, since that seems like an imperative design element to me. The garden came in as round dots. I was thinking at one point that the lovebugs were like a conversation and the gardens like the punctuation. Here's a film I took of the entire completed installation:


Yeah, I know it's kinda funny having a piano in there. I had known that before the show, I might have considered getting someone to play something appropriate at the opening. Maybe they already plan live music--I don't know. I won't be able to attend because I will have just returned from Chicago and my agenda is so full that the four hours in the car in transit is enough of a deterrent. For any of you dear readers who want to be my proxy, you can find out the details about the September 5 opening at the website for Art Centric by clicking here.

ps. The title of this blog refers to the scientific name for the actual bug that inspired my 'sWarm installation, but it's also a little nod to a publication I have admired (mostly from afar) for years - The Weekly World News. This tabloid went beyond the nasty true and false gossip of most magazines of its kind and just flat out made up all their content. They recently stopped the presses, so the world will be missing out on it weekly Elvis sightings and alien abductions. I just heard a great interview with one of the writers on NPR's Talk of the Nation and he said that nearly every day, he'd come home work sore from laughing all day long. Wow. Now THAT's a job!

dreams can come true....

Hey Beautiful People! I am here to give a brief entry, as promised, not only because it's my duty as a blogger to keep my public happy and informed, but also because I happened to partake in some art events last weekend that I know you'll want to know about. As I mentioned, my sweetie Christian's family was in town for the weekend. We went to the Portland Art Museum yesterday and saw some great shows--the Rembrandt survey was pretty good, although I was more interested in the Delft ware and one amazing silver chalice than the paintings. Their small group of pieces on the theme of camoflage was pretty cool too. We didn't get to spend enough time in the Wes Mills show that's part of the Apex series, but I plan to return for that. But the show that really knocked my socks off was the works on paper by Leonard Baskin.

I am starting to really fall in love with the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for the Graphic Arts - which is located in the basement of the Portland Art Museum. I blogged a few months ago about the wonderful drawing show they had in the spring. This was an enlightening journey into the prints and drawings of a real master of line. I kept thinking about my friend, sculptor Tom Hill, who is also a master of line, and am going to send him the little catalog the museum was giving out.

The show is a mix of portraiture--of himself and those who influenced him like William Blake or Velasquez or leftist political figures like Eugene Debs. I really loved the series that included this one - it's so nice to see how such simple gestures can say so much about the body - and I also love the grotesqueness of this series of half animal half human forms. I could see how he must have influenced so many in his heyday in the 1950's and 1960's - I'm thinking of some more popular illustrators here-- Edward Gorey, Ralph Steadman in particular.

After leaving the museum, we walked over to the Keller Fountain, which I realized I have never given the praise it truly deserves. Christian's father Wayne, remembered seeing the model of this fountain years ago when he was at UCLA. It's apparently modeled after the Sierra Mountains, and Wayne has recently completed the Sierra Club's list of 100 hikes in the Sierra Mountains so there was a double reason to go.

I have known the name Keller for some time, but was enlightened on this day about the reasons why his name was given to so many local landmarks. Ira Keller was one of the people responsible for the development of Portland in the mid 1950's. He made a personal commitment to spend at least a quarter of his time performing civic duties, and many of the institutions he founded or influenced are still big players in this city today, such as the PDC and OHSU.

We then took a stroll over to Voodoo Doughnuts to give Wayne and Christian's sister Niki a real insider's look at Portland. Yay - I got to do something from my dream list I wistfully blogged about last time! I was psyching myself up to be a little more adventurous this time, but it was slim pickings for crazy doughnuts. Apparently the counter person was also doing double duty as the decorator, so I guess it wasn't my day to try the Tang and marshmallow doughnut. I got the cream filled chocolate topped one you saw at the beginning of this blog entry. Niki is shown above modeling a doughnut that was called something about the Blazers. Below is Christian who's enjoying a snowball blabetty blah - can't remember that name either. Give me a break. I'm working overtime these days! Speaking of which, I have to get back to work. Tomorrow is another blog-worthy event - installing a show in Corvallis - stay tuned!

One Perfect Day in Portland.

Hey Beautiful People! It's gonna be a sparse few weeks--I can't believe how much I have to accomplish in the next fourteen days. This includes, but is not limited to: designing and creating a website for my new business venture before the ad comes out in the New Yorker Magazine in 10 days, a turnover in the rental of my apartment upstairs, finishing up one grant application and submitting one show proposal, giving a talk at the Museum of Contemporary Craft to a women's business group, installing a show in Corvallis, and trying to squeeze in a few errant orders that have straggled in lately. I promise I will check in here every now and then with some art-related theme, but I'll make it up to you big time when I'm in Chicago for Labor Day Weekend.

Today I have decided to blog about some of my favorite things to do in Portland. This was initially inspired by the impending visits from my sweetheart's family (which is another part of my agenda for the next 2 weeks) but maybe just a wee bit wishful thinking that I actually could do some of these things. All work and no play.....how does that phrase go? I'm conveniently forgetting it at the moment. I prefer to invoke my philosophy that I'd much rather be too busy than not busy enough.

I am going to conveniently arrange my list in a format that might enable someone to actually do them all in one day. One big day, of course, but a nonstop, action-filled adventure that will fill you with heartwarming memories for years to come.

First stop on my list is a visit to Voodoo Doughnut. This is a pretty amazing Portland icon that took over the role as the unofficial "Keep Portland Weird" committee when the quirky tourist mecca Church of Elvis closed its doors. This place makes some of the most unusual doughnuts you'll ever find, such as this actual Voodoo Doughnut, impaled by a pretzel stick. Other varieties depict bodily organs, some are topped with breakfast cereals, there's one with Tang and mini marshmallows, another one called "dirt," and then, for the purist doughnut eaters like me, the classics like Old Fashioned, Glazed, some with jimmies, and Maple Bars.

I'm really not a huge doughnut fan, due to a series of unfortunate childhood experiences where I was forced at gunpoint to eat them on an empty stomach in the back of a Volkswagon Rabbit at the beginning of a weekly 90 minute drive to Florence, Oregon while listening to Ray Stevens' Greatest Hits. Okay, yeah, I was exaggerating a little there--I still have a soft spot in my heart for Ray Stevens and if I could put my hands on that album, it would send me to the Pearly Gates of Goofy Greats.

But I digress.....

So what time is it....10am? Perfect! Time to get a day pass on the Max Line, Portland's light rail system. I suggest you take the blue line train roundtrip between downtown Portland and Hillsboro - which has some really great public art by regional artists at every single stop, as well as giving a really nice view of the Portland metro area and the way it can move so easily between rural and urban environments. One stop not to miss is the Washington Park/Zoo. This is the deepest train station in the United States (and second deepest in the world!) and they have the giant core sample on display to prove it!

Another stop that I love to get out for is the Hawthorn Farm stop, where there's a cool sound art installation. Get out of the train, and hang out for a bit because you have to be there to experience this public art piece by Patrick Zentz, who translated the local topography into musical scores that are conducted or activated by wind and train movement. When the train crosses past the nearby wetlands, the tone bars emit this quiet bell sound. There's also a set of speakers that project the sounds of local frogs, birds and insects. Reminds me of the Wave Organ, one of my favorite San Francisco haunts.

So that should take you a few hours. Grab a quick bite (since you've got low blood sugar after eating all those doughnuts and going on the train) and stretch your legs on the Vera Katz Esplanade. This is a paved river loop that was completed in the past 5 years or so that is one of my favorite inner-city walks of all time. You stroll past at least 3 of our lovely bridges, and many nice perspectives on our small city. You can access it from downtown by just walking down towards the river, or by car there's usually parking just north of the Hawthorn bridge on the east side.

By now you've worked up an appetite and are ready for a little rest. I suggest you head to one of our movie theater pubs, which I think is so quintissentially Portland. Pictured here is the Bagdad, where my father saw Psycho when it was first released and then had to walk home in the dark alone. Of course they didn't serve alcohol at that time, or maybe it would have enhanced his experience for the better or perhaps for the worse. We have at least 5 places around Portland that show a second-run movie (which means it's out of the mainstream theaters but not quite on DVD yet) for a mere $3 and they removed every other row of seats and replaced it with a table so you can eat pizza and drink pitchers of beer 'till your heart's content. My personal favorite theater to do this is the Laurelhurst, at NE 28th and Burnside.

I'm hoping you're ready to walk again because our last stop is More Everyday Sunshine, a public art project by Harrell Fletcher. This is a series of motion sensors that trigger a spotlight to slowly turn on, focused on some random object along the route of the Streetcars. It's really a sweet after-dark event to take this walk and slow down to observe this thoughtful project. To read more about it, click here. When you're done, you might want to go back to Voodoo Doughnut for dessert. They're open 24 hours, dontcha know?

what the flock?

Here's a little update on my demo at the Museum of Contemporary Craft last weekend. MCC asked me to be part of a Saturday series of artist demos in "The Lab"--their multimedia room upstairs that also serves as a lecture room and, during the current "Craft in America" show, has a perpetual screening of the PBS documentary that begat the exhibition. All of the invited artists, which also includes Greg Wilbur, Charissa Brock, and Dale Larsen, do a demo for three hours on successive weekends. Practically everything I do in my studio is not conducive to public demonstration because it's either too toxic, too messy, requires too much protective gear that would make talking to the audience near impossible. There was one thing that I could do though--show the world how I get that crazy fuzz on my pieces. And so that's what I did.

As I mentioned in the last blog entry, I made eight big flower forms for my demo. I pushed two tables together and made one huge display, with the flowers at one end along with my promotional postcards and the ad I used at the beginning of this blog entry. I found it in a "Mechanics Illustrated" magazine from the 1950's and have it on the wall in my studio. I have got to track down the original manual someday - this ad is a gem. I especially love the list of things you can flock, which includes turntables, lamps, shoes, and automobile dashboards. Someday I want to find the official Flok-Kraft manual - it must be in a used bookstore somewhere in the country, dontcha think?

So it wasn't standing room only, but there definitely was a steady influx of curious people. It's so exciting to see the new museum get the attendance they weren't attracting in the old Corbett Street location. I for one am glad to have an easier commute. This family was really great - I had my sketchbook out to show the drawings I did as an exercise before I made the sculptures. I posted this image in the last blog entry. I like to draw in a rapid fashion--I say "faster than I can think" because that spontenaiety gets me more interesting drawings that something I labor over. Then when I'm in the studio, I try to work in the same way, and don't look back at my drawings while I'm working. It just kills it. I've probably mentioned this in a blog before, but it bears repeating.

Here's me in action, applying a layer of flocking on my piece with a tool I lovingly call the "sexy motherflocker." It's a metal thingamajig that looks like a DDT sprayer from the 1950's. I don't see it on the website for the flocking supplier any more, so I suspect they're selling more of the units that hook up to your air compressor. I consider that newer model every so often when I get a new round of promotional materials, but there's still something so charming about my analog model. I can't imagine the compressor model does a better job - just reduces the motor skills required. I'd rather flex my flocking muscles to show off around the art nerds.

I not only had an assistant provided by the museum (Liz, who took most of these pictures) as well as the glorious Lisa Platt, the education and program manager at the museum, was also helpful in getting me what I needed to do my presentation. Among a few other things, I asked if she could make a sign that said "don't touch" to keep curious hands from touching my freshly flocked pieces. Then somehow, I amended my request to this phrase, derived from the "touching harms the art" signs that I see all over craft museums. Metalsmith Rebecca Scheer and MCC curator Namita Wiggers are putting a show together for the museum about non-precious jewelry that's titled after that catchy phrase as well--"touching warms the heart"--I'm sure I'll blog about it this winter when it sees the light of day because I have a hunch it'll be a great show.

One really great surprise was the attendance of Hester Coucke, the director of Art Centric, a nonprofit art center in Corvallis where I'll be showing my 'sWarm and Vertical Garden shows in yet another incarnation, which will be installed next week. I have made my living from my artwork for over 18 years, and Hester was one of the first supporters of my earlier work, back when Art Centric was called the Corvallis Art Center. I primarily dealt via the post office in those days, so I never met Hester, but we have come into contact again this year since my 'sWarm show was at the Museum of Contemporary Craft last winter. It was fantastic having her there-she's a really cool, interesting woman as it turns out! Funny how you can have a longtime professional relationship that never connects. Then again, I was a different kind of artist in those days...in many ways at least. More shy at least. Imagine that.

Stop laughing.

Okay....I think it's time to go. I actually have one more blog entry I want to start tonight. I'll probably post it tomorrow sometime. Stay tuned, dear readers!

flock and talk

Sometimes I just want to make something in my studio that's purely about design. Leave all the concepts behind for a little bit and just make shapes that make me happy. This week was one of those times--it started with inspiration from two sources:

It all began when I saw these great figures by Alexander Girard that were on the homepage for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Christian and I are going there in a few weeks, and I was checking in to see what was going on at one of my absolutely-MUST-do attractions in the Windy City. I love the design, and was thinking about them in context of a new mortgage-paying venture I'll embark on in the next few weeks. Maybe I'll blog about it sometime.

Then, I saw this article in the paper about a woman who designed this simple flower image that Ikea picked up and has reportedly sold 36.000 posters through them. Wow. I don't really see my work in that type of reproductive context, but I love hearing art business success stories, and sometimes I find a zenlike platitude in working in multiples. I also liked this particular image and couldn't stop thinking about how it would look in my style and 3-d.

So the next thing that happened was that I had to figure out what to do for my demo tomorrow at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. I knew I wanted to demonstrate flocking, but what to flock? With these silly posies dancing in my head, I just decided to play with form in my studio this week. Here are some drawings i did to get me going. The first image is from my camping trip, and the numbers on the edge are Scrabble© scores and that's a wine stain. (My word options increase exponentially when there's a glass of wine nearby. I try not to mess with science under these circumstances so I comply.)



I don't usually like to show unfinished work unless it's in the bare wood phase, but I love the stage these are in right now. Here's a little teaser, but I'm not gonna reveal all 8 pieces yet. I know I'll also like them when they've got some flocked accents on them as well. So.....check these images out and if you're in the area, come on by the Museum of Contemporary Craft tomorrow to see me flock and talk from 1-4pm. I will update the blog later with images of the finished pieces to give you something to look forward to. I haven't forgotten that I also promised you a blog entry about their currrent show, so it'll be a double duty excursion. Have a great weekend! I've got a date tonight with a sexy slice of Key Lime Pie and a bourbon chaser. Yowsa!

it's not easy being orange

One of my loyal Bunny with an Artblog readers (care to expose yourself? You know who you are!) and I have been having an ongoing conversation for years about orange. He is a personal fan of the color, but has a hard time selling it in his gallery because most of his clientelle is abhorred by the idea of having that particular hue as part of their own personal decorating palette.

Well, I guess that technically this is a mostly white piece, but I just got this photo from Elisa Bongfeldt, a metalsmith I met way back in 2001 at the ACC Baltimore show. We have been trading work over the years, and recently Elisa chose this wall piece to complete a barter deal that's been a few years in the making. She wanted me to see how she paired it with this great photo by Natalie Cartright, a recent graduate of California College of the Arts. I love it - not only the colors, but the arm gesture is somehow fitting.

As I mentioned before, I have a few pieces I really love that Elisa made. One is this ring with inset pearls that reminds me of a gun barrel. Another is a sweet little ring that makes a flower form out of little sterling tube pieces. I wore it with a simple art deco-ish circle pattern necklace, also made by Elisa, when I was invited to the White House a few years back when the Oregon Arts Commission asked me to make an ornament for the Nation's Most Important Christmas tree. ( Just kidding about that. My mom's is the nation's Most Important Christmas Tree.) You can see more of Elisa's work by clicking here. I have a ton to do today so I've gotta split. Sayonara, sweethearts!

p.s.

Oh...and while we're on the subject of family, I wanted to give a special shout out to my step-brother Mathias Craig, whose nonprofit org blueEnergy was one of CNN's "heroes" last week! Mathias and his then-girlfriend-now-wife Lorelei used to come help me do the ACC Baltimore shows back in the day when he was at MIT (and she at Georgetown) so there's even an art connection for the blog! I was out of town when the national tv spot on CNN aired, but was happy to catch it today on the web. Sniffle - I'm so proud! BlueEnergy's mission is to build wind turbines and solar-powered energy sources in Nicaragua to enable impoverished communities a way to get cheap power, create jobs, and make some extra income by selling natural energy. How cool is that? Click here to see the CNN spot or here to go to the blueEnergy website. If you're feeling financially flush this month, I'm sure they'd appreciate a donation, or if you're looking for working vacation options, they're taking volunteers to help them on their valiant mission.

Roughing it, Pfeiferstyle

Hey Beautiful People! Well, I am back to the ol' grind again - not that blogging is the worst thing I have to do, but I gotta say it was kind of nice to be away from any form of technology for five days. I was at my annual camping trip to Sparks Lake with my dad and his entourage, as well as Christian, my friend Shannon, and her son Ezra. We had a very relaxing time, as usual, and in fact, I'm hoping to regain my normal energy levels as soon as possible. There is a ton of work on my plate at the moment and I had a hard time getting any one thing accomplished today, as it seemed that everything needed a little bit of attention.

Because this is an artblog, I think it's high time I talked about one of my favorite creative people again: my dad. You dear readers may remember my blog entry from last fall when he came to Portland to help me put a big picture window in my studio. Well that's definitely one of my favorite things to do with my dad, but another is to go camping with him. I grew up in Oregon, and a big memory of my childhood is the time spent hiking and camping in the Cascade Range in the center of this fine state. My parents led a group of families on a week-long backpacking trip that was certainly character-building, to say the least. My friend Shannon, who I blogged about last week, was one of the people who came on these trips, and I was thrilled that she was along for this one for old time's sake.

When I was a kid, we pretty much roughed it--my memories include lugging a 35 pound backpack down Opie Dilldock Pass, drinking Tang made with lake water and eating tasty freeze dried foods, and my body could tolerate a week of sleeping atop a wee piece of dense foam. Now, my dad has converted camping into an art form, starting with the beautiful kayaks he built that transport us from the parking lot to the far end of the lake. I think he's built about a dozen of these in the past 20 years, each improving on the last design. These kayaks are big and wide and you can stuff all kinds of gear inside as well as lashing stuff on top like ice chests to keep the fresh food cold.

Dad is all about the comfort food (and beverages) on this trip, and knows the importance of a functional kitchen to make it all happen. I took some pictures of this because I knew you had to see it to believe it. This is a camp table that he added wings onto so that we could have a two-burner stove off to one side, a wood cutting board on the other side, storage for pots and pans below, and essential cooking utensils hanging above. On the backside are more hanging pegs, and there's even more cooking tools that live in a box nearby.

Overhead is a big tarp so we can cook in all weather conditions. In the past few years we've been fortunate enough to not have any rain dampen our parade, but honestly, I love the tarp because it gives me a break from the sun. It's wonderful, but also kind of exhausting being out in the sunshine so intensely-- I spend most of my time either sitting on the lakeshore or on a boat in the water and both options are much more exposed than my normal day to day existence. You don't notice it because of the cool breeze, but I got my summer tan on in a big bad way in just five short days despite being slathered in SPF30 sunscreen the entire time!

I'm not done multitasking for the day--gotta get one of these things checked off the list! But I will tell you one other art-related story first. We all trade off cooking meals for the group, and mine was chicken fajitas. I was trying to figure out what to do for dessert and remembered my Spongebob Squarepants pinata that used to grace my living room wall. I bought it at a Mexican grocery store in my neighborhood and always loved its handmade charm. Well, it was time to give Spongebob the ol' Homeland Security treatment, and where better to do it than the lovely Deschutes National Forest? I filled it at Lippman's Party Supply with stuff you really need in the wilderness- candy necklaces, pirate eye patches, temporary tattoos, a whoopee cushion, gliders, parachuters, and little plastic compasses. You can thank Christian for the picture of Spongebob's sad fate - my second memory card in one month gave up the ghost. Sheesh! I couldn't resist bringing the maimed pinata back home for some reason--he's sitting on my living room couch right now licking his wounds.