“The show features new paintings, collages, illustrations, comics, zines, sculptures, mobiles, and embroideries from some of this town’s most exciting artists - all of which happen to be female.”

Headlining the show are Bobbie Sue, Rikki Barney, Indgha Leigh, and Buket.

Also showing work:

Maura Arraj
Janina Bain
Heather Campbell
Ashby Collinson
Britney Crump
Sarah Gottesdiener
Aidan Koch
Kristie Louderbough
Carolyn Main
Dylan Meconis
Sarah Oleksyk
Jennifer Parks
Jeannie Lynn Paske
Catherine Peach
Rachel Richter
Morgan Ritter
Nubby Twiglet
Jen Wang
Julia Wertz… and more to be announced!

I am really excited at this opportunity! Please come down and celebrate all of the amazing work going on in the community.

aimless loving immanence by linda mcallister, chris gilliam, ryan tutmarc and me.

The other weekend Michael brought up this sweet/gross bag of kombucha mother! On one of my bad days I brewed up the gallon of green tea and mixed in the sugar and put it all into a jar labeled “lacy pancakes” I found in the mud room, plus the mother juice and the oversized symbiotic bacterium membrane (blech!). I pulled a handkerchief over the top and fastened it with a sparkly hairband. The last two weeks have shown some pretty disgusting happenings, as the tea leaves left over in the jar have morphed into Fantastic Planet-like creatures with webbed follicles and gooey spilling innards. The leaves spread out and gummed up, hanging mid way up the jar. It is really challenging my tolerance for totally disgusting science projects (as brewing your own Kombucha REALLY is). Today is the two week marker, so I tried a taste. It was incredible! sparkly and spritely like champagne and cider. It needs another week or so, because Michael told me to put in too much sugar (though it was a good guess dude). The new mother is thickening up nicely, and it’ll be fun to pull the two mothers apart to start two new batches of Kombucha! The fun is just exponentializing.

Today brought another exciting bit of accomplishment. I have been looking at films from the UW School of Communications from the mid 1950’s. This has included hilarious class films, parodies of variety shows and travel programs. I noticed in the two class projects digitized, that there were title cards for “KCTS Educational Television, Channel 9.” First I thought it was a joke, to make the show look legitimate like a lot of spoof shows do. I grew suspicious though, because hey, aren’t most public access shows totally BS??? Could this be the very inklings of the shoddy, often traumatizing and inspiring cable access programming we all watched as pre-teens??? I soon discovered that KCTS, Seattle’s first public television channel, started right here at the UW School of Communications! Not only that, but Milo Ryan, the professor initiating all of these class projects, was the first program director! So I just unearthed a wealth of public television’s legacy! I found some other amazing notes, but you’ll just have to wait for my first published EAD works to come out! Needless to say I am super proud of my badass archivist self! My next truly exciting task is to go through the entire collection of about 37 film reels, and inspect them, check for titles, make recommendations for preservation and rehousing, as well as figuring out an entirely new organizational system and snazzy title to give Milo his cred! Nerd up!

Things slowly grow better as I applied for my first ever GRANT to back-up my recent crush and utter fascination with Edward Tufte and the legacy of Information Aesthetics. Thanks to Nicolette Bromberg for her inspiration, hand-holding and patience! Also thanks to Laurel Evans for encouraging my very bad behavior at the office, as well as answering every question I have. I just can’t contain myself, it’s too much fun! All of my work at the archive has piqued my interests in how we do personal research and empower ourselves with exploration. Accessibility is a huge problem in our over-saturated world, and we need new ways to pick, choose, smell, feel and think! On that note I think I bombed my German test today…but at least I didn’t bomb it as bad as the last one! Improvement friends! Prost!

P.S. Thanks Michael and Daniel for coming up this weekend! I miss my portland Heart People! Hit me up! I’ll be home for Halloween! Watch for a jazzy Wizardress! Alexa: See you Saturday! I can’t wait for your cool party!

our last gasp of the summer months. before nathan starts a new job, before julie starts her eastern european journey, before michael starts his last quarter at school, before i move back to seattle–we celebrated our oregon.

the trip started early and cloudy. hitting the road at creeps and stops, we passed by river terraces in celilo of lava and sand. we entered at this time, the journey through time…acknowledgement of an epic journey. nathan told us a 3,800 year old sandal of woven sage was found in a cave near us, as well as 12 white trucks in a row (he counted).

we stopped off the side of the road and explored the sage brush. julie found a dead porcupine, which was promptly kissed and excavated. michael found a wee truck in a bush, nathan found a metal picture frame, and many bones.

in wasco (a ghost town) we found heterosexual love tags, and fantasized about god, the 6th warrior. i bought new shades for $3 (did i pay julie back?). we passed monkland, and hills we obsessed about, carved lines: animal tracks? erosion? water movement? we couldn’t figure it out. much was discussed as to the semantic difference between trash, rubbish and waste as julie’s desmond dekker tape rolled on (girls like sand-intensify).

as we rolled over the painted hills, past the mountain identifier, an opening came of rolling gold, as we listened to pyha vuori–slivers of blades could be seen swiping behind the big gold bumps. the wind farm! michael recorded the hum like a thousand planes as we gaped and shivered at the gate.

on closer to fossil, to condon, while michael read aloud the history of wasco and marie barnette cooper, the first female banker in the area. did we know? the scots used lichen for dying fabric? julie talked of the secret tattoo (i got clouds and the word gaia on my ankle later in the evening).

nathan: i hope i find a fossil
me: i hope i find myself
nathan: wo, that’d be weird, like on a ridge…and there you are

“favorite michael” taken by sir nathan hodges. all rights reserved.

when we travelled past the pine forest, to brian’s homestead, we climbed the little hills in a cold mist. michael and nathan explored the wondrous lichen while julie and i made rock friends. the boys found a deer bed under a juniper tree, and we all smelled it’s essence and laid around it. later nathan set up a fire in the wood stove as we listened to records (mix coming soon!). michael read a poem that struck us all:

fate
the lightning spoke one stormy night:
“o wretched sheep, i bring you light!”

the poor sheep cowering blindly back
had rump and and left side burned jet black

since then it’s spent its days in gloom;
why did that happen, and from whom?

by christian morgenstern

we sauna’d in brian’s little shack with wood stove along with a giant rock until i felt like fainting. time naked in the desert is precious. the next days consisted of long journeys into the hills finding volcanic remains, packs of deer, cows, bunnies and a great owl. the soundtrack of screetching hawks and fall songbirds were haunting.

the fossil bed trip came and we dug away behind the high school with tools given by resident identifyer karyn. metasequoia (the oregon fossil) were found, as we chipped away 30 million year old layers of a lake bed (see julie’s geologically sound blog on the experience). the road back was tough, i didn’t want to go. i read his dark materials furiously and peeked up at my friends, desperately trying to soak all the magic i could. the city was not wanted, even the truck stop at biggs was so frightening, though nestled in dramatic canyons. i began to get overwhelmed with the real life ahead, getting a phone call from my mom that my childhood dog, nova scotia retriever zephyr, might be dead before i got back home. it was extremely aching, the knowledge that these were among my last moments in oregon…

thanks to brian sharpe for letting us stay in his beautiful home! thanks to nathan hodges for his beautiful photography, immense lichen knowledge, fire building skills and explorative energy. thanks to julie noble for dropping bombs of knowledge and hilarity, sensitivity and adventure, and GAMES! thanks last to michael james bunsen for being so freaking cool in the desert.