By Laura Grimes
“Am I sleepy yet? Not a chance. Sleep is for sissies.”
The Pantsless Brother continues his Sleep-Is-Not-an-Option Tour in chasing Vermeer paintings all over Europe. If you missed my first gobsmacked installment, check it out here. (That’s not hyperbole talkin’.)
He’s on a mission to see all 34 (some say 36) Vermeers that can be [...]
By Bob Hicks
So it’s happened. Oregon’s House of Representatives has officially endorsed the Code of the West, a business opportunity ridin’ hard out of the hills of Texas into the hearts of legislators from Cheyenne to Salem. A trademarked moral compass, as it were, ready-made for tryin’ times. Keep ‘er simple. Keep ‘er pure. And [...]
By Laura Grimes
It started innocently enough. A simple email from The Pantsless Brother last year pointed out that a Vermeer painting owned by Queen Elizabeth II would be on rare public view in London this spring. The last sentence: “We have to go back.”
I laughed. He was always being funny. As [...]
Brian Feulner/The Oregonian
By Bob Hicks
Art Scatter regulars may recall Mr. Scatter’s adventures with the East Creek Anagama Kiln in the Coast Range foothills outside of Willamina, where he attended a firing earlier this month at the invitation of Nils Lou, the noted potter and teacher who’s been doing these firings since 1985. Mr. Scatter told [...]
By Bob Hicks
The Oregonian’s Kelly House reports on Oregon Live that Sunday’s two-show Japanese disaster benefit at the Aladdin Theatre has raised about $250,000 for Mercy Corps‘ relief efforts. Congratulations to organizer Stephen Marc Beaudoin, Aladdin general manager Tom Sessa, all of the performers, and the 1,300 people who bought tickets for the sold-out shows. [...]
Japanese American storefront, 1942. Dorothea Lange
By Bob Hicks
In 1935 Sinclair Lewis published his novel It Can’t Happen Here, about the Hitler-style takeover of the United States by a power-grabbing populist president. The book’s title was satiric. Lewis meant that it very much could happen here, and if we didn’t pay attention, it just might.
On February [...]
By Laura Grimes
Today the blog takes a moment of silence. Richard Vincent Grimes passed away 20 years ago today, but that’s not really the day I’m honoring. I’m remembering instead a quiet moment I shared with my dad nine months after he died.
By Bob Hicks
A few Friday hot links to go with your early-weekend bagel and eggs:
Leave ‘em hanging: In this morning’s A&E section of The Oregonian I reviewed Laurie Herrick: Weaving Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the new show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Herrick was a prominent loom weaver in Portland beginning in the late [...]
The benefit events for Japan earthquake and tsunami relief keep coming. This just in from Charles Hartman at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in the Pearl District:
ART FOR JAPAN
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, Augen Gallery, Froelick Gallery, PDX Contemporary Art, Pulliam Gallery and Nazraeli Press invite you to please join us for [...]
By Bob Hicks
While Mrs. Scatter is off in the creeping undergrowth of the northern rainforest hunting gnomes, Mr. Scatter is sitting at home pondering the plausibility of the electric bicycle.
Nay, nay, not just a bicycle. An electric three-wheeler, with neat little wire basket in the rear, a vehicle fit for the odd grocery trek and [...]