My Friend Sandra Miller

This morning I found my beautiful friend Sandy in my booth at the Portland Saturday Market! What a great treat! She took pictures of my work while she was there (THANK YOU SANDY!!!) and wrote a most wonderful blog entry about it.

Check it out here

The Naito Legacy Fountain

The fountain at the Portland Saturday Market is finished! The site was completely open, no construction fences, just open spaces. We are celebrating the completion of this whole new site for the next two weekends!! This weekend: great bands and artist demos... Next weekend: vendor party!

Today was such a pleasure watching the little kids play. It got pretty hot out in the sun, so the babies were down to their soggy diapers, and they were the cutest site ever!!!

The Naito Legacy fountain is really beautiful and creative, it seems to circulate between a few different styles of spray/pool and the kids simply love it. Sometimes they can run thru a tunnel of water arcs, then these arcs get shorter and are the perfect height to get little 3-4yr olds right in the head so they squeal and dance with delight... then the fountain will fill and the kids can run around in 3 or 4 inches of water (the rest of the time its just a flat fountain with the squirting water)... this ever changing fountain is really fun. Its a total hit, completely crowded with squealing happy kids all day long. Here's a little video from earlier this week when the fountain was officially opened. I wish I could have been there for this ceremony!

Bill Naito Legacy Fountain

As a vendor at the Portland Saturday Market, I must say that I really do love our new home. I can't say THANK YOU loud enough! Its truly beautiful and I believe that it honors the artists that sell their work at the market, as well as the history behind the site, the people and the creative legacy of Portland Saturday Market. There is so much detail in the site and the work being done to the buildings in the area. Its really incredible to me to see the city honor its history. Old Town Portland is being graced with some serious positive changes, its great to have a front row seat!

Fly Fishing in Oregon

Pictured is a mobile created in collaboration with Jan Christine - one of our LeJa creations.
Fish are swimming in the mobile, its gorgeous (if I say so myself).

My father is a fly-fisherman. He lives in NC and each Christmas when I am trying to think of a gift to send him other than some more glass art of mine (which is probably what he would prefer) I stumble upon a book on Amazon called "Fly Fishing in Oregon" and I think
"Oooh what a great gift for Dad, he could read and get tempted to visit and go fly fishing in Oregon". You see, NC and OR happen to be some of the best states for fly fishing, so I sent him the book. Evidently I did this 3 times.

3 times. The exact same book every time. Yep. Each time I have no recollection that I had already sent this "great gift" and finally I was informed and some of the books were returned. Sheesh. Each time I honestly thought it was the best idea ever!
Heres a picture of my Dad scopin' a good spot while on a hike in NC.

How I digress though, these fish in the mobile look like trout to me. Trout are the type of fish that my Dad catches (and releases - he simply likes the process). Jan outdid herself as usual with her carving skills. The reeds and bubbles make the mobile very 3 dimensional to me. I love it. Hope you do to.

Amazing Camera Give-Away

Want to win this camera? Say Yes Please!

http://photofocus.com/2009/08/21/win-a-canon-5dmkii/

Check it out - twit about it and enter to win. It is for real - a Canon 5DMKII (and its not me who is giving this away, check out the link for more info)

Heat Wave #2

Sometimes I feel like I am playing catch-up (and not necessarily winning!).

It just seems insane sometimes... making... selling... shipping... making some more... realizing I'm out of certain things that I can't make more in time for the weekend... shipping some more... realizing I am shipping the last of my inventory of certain things... realizing I won't be able to make more till next week... making some more... selling some more...

I am going thru one of those weeks where I would like to complete AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. And then it got hot again. wtf

The Portland Saturday Market is having a big to-do this weekend. All the construction is finally finished and we will once again have a stage with music and a functioning water fountain and so forth... our advertising co-ordinator Reid has out-done himself with full page color ads in all the local papers, spots on TV and the radio, I feel like everywhere I turn there is an ad to tell people to come down to the PSM for our "grand opening" to celebrate the new site.
I am doing artist demonstrations on Saturday and I've recruited my assistant friend Aimee to come work the booth with me. I am hoping for huge crowds and (crossing my fingers) good sales! So this week has been all about production. Trying to make and package as much work as possible... the thought being if I am swamped with a zillion customers at least I will have work to sell them and hopefully I can make the best of this opportunity!

Unfortunately it got hot again this week. Fortunately it seems short lived and the temps are already headed back down. But the thermometer registered over 100 at my house yesturday and damn that is hot for Portland (didn't we already have a sufficient heat wave for one summer!!). This heat makes me a little loopy and less productive. I went to see Julie and Julia yesturday afternoon to break up the heat. It was great. Then I got back to working :)

Orchid Plate

This orchid plate that Jan and I made is simply gorgeous, if I say so myself :)

It was difficult for me to capture on film... the plate is clear glass, the orchid within it has a deep red flower that sparkles in the sun, and the stem is a lovely chalky green. Jan really outdid herself with this carving (all our printed plates are made with Jan's hand illustrated carved linoleum blocks).
The story behind this carving (because everything has a story!)...

the story goes that a gal came down to the Portland Saturday Market and got to talking to Jan about doing an illustration of an orchid. She came back later that day with a small orchid in a glass Pom cup (you know the ones with the lids that the Pom company no longer bottles their tea in - I love those cups, I would buy the tea just to accumulate the cups, but I digress!) and she wrote down care instructions for Jan in her journal.

The market is full of fun little encounters like this, great stories behind every little piece of art...
Anyhow, this is the carving that she ended up creating from her illustrations. I love it. And it looks quite luscious trapped in glass, especially in this glossy metallic red.
I really struggled to get a good photograph though... so instead you get this whole smorgishboard! There are many aspects the camera simply refused to capture (especially with my lack of camera skillz)... the color of the flower, the delicious saturation of the stem and leaves... ah well, I tried. Come by the market to check it out in person if you'd like! :)

Pictures of Glass Mobiles

I want to share pictures of some of the projects I've finished for this week...
This first mobile (its three pictures of the same mobile in the picture above) is a fun unique creation I made using a few pieces that I made a while back. The "circles within circles" look was something that I thought about doing so I experimented a little, it was a PITA so I simply put the experiments in a drawer and figured they'd come in handy. Sure enough, a friend from the Aquila Glass studio asked if I could make a unique wedding present for friends of hers and these discs came to mind. I paired them with some other bright colored circles and voila - I really like how it turned out. I knew they would be part of sweet mobile one day.

The next 3 pictures are of a different mobile. I thought it would be fun to show some of the photography I do for custom mobiles. This first picture simply shows what the wall looked like before I took the prints off the wall for the "white wall" photo-shoot. I took the picture because I liked how it looked :) The top print is a wonderful hand-illustrated panoramic, very quirky and extremely detailed, the middle print is a Portland bridge photo by Verone Flood and the bottom print is a piece done by my brother featuring our friend Alex DJing at a party from back when I was in college.

then the "white wall" photo (prints taken down)

and then this last shot is the discs used in the mobile