PDXtreme!

Hi friends! I miss you a lot and am so happy to see what your big shiny minds have been working on.

I'm in Portland with J&Z, C&C, and until last week, Travis, having just finished my first-ever show at Appendix. Team C&C crafted ingenious structures to hang my thesis along the fairyland alley leading up the the gallery. The pieces really liked being outside and had a lot more room to breath than in Zilkha (though the desert got a little swallowed by Portland's OTC verdant plant life). I also showed three smaller pieces I've been working on since I got here in the garage/gallery. Since it was during the huge Last Thursday art festival that happens in this neighborhood, hundreds of people came through to see! Really rad Portland Artblog OpenWidePDX also posted beautiful pictures of the show (they have older Appendix shows up too).

A couple lessons learned: First is know your price. A lady asked about buying one of the big ones, I didn't have an answer at the time and while I've emailed her since I would have had a better shot of selling if I'd been ready. Second lesson is be friendly to anyone who asks about your work and have lots of conversations - you never know what someone has in mind or what they're working on. One couple wants to rent some for a big queer farm wedding! Third, some people are creepy creepsters. Don't talk to the rich looking dude with fancy sneakers unless you're ready for (far too many) texts like "so, do u get coffee with future patrons?"


Now I'm excited for new projects. For the past month I've been using discarded drawings started in CT as the bottom layer for some new, smaller pieces. These have been a way to explore Portland while bridging/burying the lingering traces of CT landscape in my mind /dealing with the general experience of transition. Smaller scale also has let me explore a more rapid transition from illustration to abstract mark (thanks to Cara for helping articulate this). Next for 2D I'm thinking about a series of night pieces drippy with material.

The Appendix July show is already exciting. We're collaborating with a very talented and interesting group of Portland artists. We're going to take over abandoned spaces along Alberta St with installations, projections, and performance. I'm working with J&Z's friend Maggie Casey who I'm pretty in awe of. She makes beautiful string-suspension-frozen-moment textile creations. We're going to one of Portland's lush deserts this Friday to see what we can see together, probably toward an veiled-and-layered fabric installation in an unused lot between two walls, one sky-blue aluminum and one sand-textured, patchy beige.

Oh, and Cara made me a website!

I love you all a lot.
-elizabeth