Maritime Museum, Waterfront Park #PDX #mixedmedia

Cat and Toes, in Space

Middle Pillar #meditation #illustration

Mixed media illustration for an animated infographic

River View Cemetery #watercolor #pdx

Or was I in Greenwood Hill Cemetery? Looking at the map again now, I'm not really sure.

The goal was to work in River View Cemetery, but we approached from the south. So I might've actually been in Greenwood Hill. This was one of my driving lessons. Mixed media study, started March 28, 2017. 

Glyph Arts Space & Cafe

This is from a sketch I started (pencil only) 6/13/2015 with the Meetup Group: Portland Coffee & Sketch Club. The cafe is already dead, of course. It was really cool! The tables were all art display cases & there were pieces hanging on the walls. There was a poetry wall at the entrance, full of little niches where you could place pieces of paper you'd scribbled some prose or just blather on. 

I should join that group again sometime! I haven't gone to any Meetups since I moved to The Hill. Got an email from one of the organizers inviting me to join last Sunday, but didn't see it until too late & was busy already. If I can plot a highway free course to the next one, I'll make it a driving practice.

I'm not surprised that place closed, even if it was awesome

Because of media hype, I'm not the only person duped into a case of Portland specific over-optimism. I talked to one of the owners, a woman, who was really nice and also recently divorced. I'm not sure what stage of that opening a cafe started in, but... She let me leave a prominently displayed stack of my pet portrait cards, which led to absolutely nothing, lol. Yep. I'm one of them too.

According to a bunch of old Gawker articles, Fred Armison is / has been a skeevy kind of asshole, a douche canoe success of a hipster. I remember him saying on some interview (maybe comedians in coffee) that Portland is a place people open improbable businesses that survive. He's part of the media problem, the big myth. Even some places that seemed probable have already bit the dust since I've been here.

Portland is NOT a place where it's easier to make a go of your creative dreams. I just got lucky. I'm in a place, at least for now, where I can return to a place of creativity I was at in art school and then go way further. I'm finally an artist! But when I do get work it's hardly ever for a local client. In this I'm not alone either. I talked to another expat New Yorker early on here. I forget what exactly he did for a living but he said his clients were mostly from back east. Around here, people want to pay you with a cup of coffee. He wasn't wrong... And there was another lady I met in the South Park Blocks while walking Henry. She was a freelance copy editor. I'd love to work down there, she said, gesturing toward the Pearl, but there are NO JOBS.