Up-cycled Art Show by Jenny Rideout

Phew, almost there...

I'm having an art opening!  Thursday, October 29, 2015, 6:00-9:00 pm at Living Room Realty, 1401 N.E, Alberta, Portland, Oregon.  It's a beautiful space and I can hardly wait to see what my work says to me in this large, airy, bright space (as opposed to stacked up and otherwise crammed in my little studio).  Should be interesting.  More pictures and insightful ramblings to come once the show is in place.

Painting!

Upcycling all the time

Here's a painting I just finished.  It's also part of the reason I haven't posted for awhile because I've been busy, busy, busy working on a show of entirely up-cycled art.  It opens in October, more details to come.  Can't wait.

We staycated: Portland Spring Break= Play Time

Likewise Bar, Pips and Bounce, and Family LARPing with Boffers
  Okay, I realize that the title of this blog probably doesn't make any sense.  Don't worry though, I'm gonna break it down for you.  First off, sometimes your inner child needs a nice cocktail. Possibly while sitting on bleachers watching the world go by.  Perhaps said cocktail is mixed by a performance artist with little bar tending experience but who is highly skilled at portraying Garfield the cat. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Likewise Bar:http://www.kgw.com/story/features/2015/03/11/likewise-bar-portland/70148992/ .  I think this local news clip does a decent job of capturing this hard to put into words establishment.  Here's a view from the bleachers:

I met up with Renee there and we loved everything about it.  We're even saving up the $700.00 for their famous "Oregon Seafood Experience".  (Not really),(see video above)  But seriously, I'm really looking forward to a return visit.
  Another super fun bar with a twist is located quite near Likewise.  Pips and Bounce is Portland's premier ping pong pub (http://www.pipsandbounce.com ).  

You can rent tables in half hour increments. Minors are welcome.   They supply paddles and large buckets of balls.  Decadently, you can just let your balls fly willy nilly (how's THAT for a slogan?!) because they have a staff member go around occasionally and pick up all the fallen balls with a home made ball retrieval contraption.  All you have to do is flail around wildly with your deluxe paddle and nurse your beer.  If you have a hankering  to feel like you're in a Wes Anderson movie, this place is for you. 
  And finally, what ARE boffers? Short answer: foam swords.  Long answer: we were introduced to boffering through an elective my eleven year old was offered at school.  The kids had  to first construct their own swords out of PVC piping, clear tubing,  black foam pipe insulation, and duct tape.

 Then they learned sparring,  strategy, and following rules that are very much like fencing.  Needless to say, this was a huge hit at school  and with our family. Note our burgeoning home arsenal pictured at the left.  My guess is boffering grew out of the L.A.R.P-ing community. (That's Live Action Role Playing for the un-nerds and/or uncool folks out there.)  So naturally we gave it a shot:

Early awkward attempt at LARPing:
Interstella vs. Cowthulu

Mostly though, we enjoy the simplicity and strategy of sparring.  Despite the fact that this may look like fighting or maybe even violent, it doesn't feel like that at all.  It feels like PLAY.  Which it is.  We took our swords to a larger family gathering with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma, etc. and there was much laughing, giggling, and shrieking by 3 generations of folks.
  If you would like to learn more about this definitely check out the website of the Mountain and Rose Boffer Guild (http://www.mountainandrose.com).  These are the people who run the program at my daughter's school.  In true Portlandia style they offer classes, camps, and parties.  Now that has 50th birthday party written all over it:).

It's on.

 

Heart Rock

I may not be the warmest fuzziest person around but...

I found this heart shaped rock in the middle of the road.  It was a sign.  So I drew on it with a white Sharpie.

An Upcycled Medicine Bag, The Year of the Sheep, and Home Made Incense

Magic is most definitely afoot...

  So here's my latest: a medicine pouch made with upcycled materials.  Specifically, an old wool blanket, fabric scraps, and a sparkly rhinestone magnetic clasp I salvaged from a necklace I made last year.  Apparently driftwood is not the sturdiest media for jewelry making.  Here's the post I wrote about my former necklace:http://thedelightist.blogspot.com/2014/03/year-of-wood-horse-talisman.html. Long story short, I found a small piece of driftwood on a beach in Mexico with an "H" engraved into it by some sort of bug.

 It also had a hole in it that made it perfect for a necklace.  When I got home I saw that it was the beginning of the Year of the Wood Horse according to Chinese astrology.  Cool. The Universe is talking to me. Alrighty.  So I made my year of the wood horse necklace, tried to be all intentional and stuff, and promptly forgot about it all as the zillion things that happen in a year happened.    So here I am a year later, still not super interested in astrology but not against it either and I noticed a few articles showing up in my sphere on the Chinese astrological new year turning yet again. This year is the year of the Sheep.  Hmmmm, I thought excitedly, I wonder if I'll have another magical happening around this like last year? The funny thing is I said this to myself as I was working on these WOOL medicine pouches I have mostly been obsessed with  lately.  Yay!  I love the kind of magic you don't even know you're enacting until you're smack dab in the middle of it.  Which brings me to an even more amazing magic I am currently immersed in.

  Above is a picture of some of the potent ingredients I've chosen for this pouch.  I harvested the golden resin last weekend from a variety of pine trees in Central Oregon. (Sidenote: I love the energy and symbolism of this fragrant golden substance that the tree draws up from the earth and down from the sun to use to heal itself)   However, I did not gather the resin for my medicine pouch project, I gathered it for an incense project I got all hot and bothered to do back in December.  
  I love incense and I thought, "wouldn't it be cool and powerful to make my own incense with only local ingredients I harvest myself?"  I could easily make "loose" incense (the kind you just sprinkle raw resins and herbs on a piece of charcoal) but I really wanted to make cone or stick incense because I DON'T KNOW WHY.  Googling away I find out that the very very special bark that is used as the binding agent in this type of incense comes from a very very special tree that grows in Asia. Well bummer. There goes my idea of local incense.  Totes disappointed.  But wait, maybe if I could just find a picture of this tree I could find one around here that is similar and give that a shot.  So I managed to find the Latin name for this tree and googled up some photos.  You are never gonna believe this but it's the tree in our back yard!  I couldn't  believe my eyes at first so I called Rob over to take a look. Me: "Rob, what is this?"  Rob: "Hey, that's our tree."  No one has ever known what this tree is.  I've not seen one anywhere else.  It looks like a magnolia tree but it gets clusters of small white flowers in the Spring.  So anyhow, I still need to do some more research on how and when to harvest the bark.  I'm also still collecting other fragrant and potent items to put into my hyper local incense.  I will keep you posted on how this all goes.
  And here's one more important thing: this desire to make home made incense led to yet another inspired and magical idea around community and creativity.  But I'm not quite ready to share it YET.  Because A) This post is already getting too long for my taste and I need to get back to making stuff and B) I'm so deeply immersed in this magic, it's story is still unfolding as we speak.  Best to let it unfurl a little but longer.  I will keep you posted.  Meanwhile here's to a wild and wooly Year of the Sheep.  Cheers.