Motel Gallery in Portland has a new website- looks great and showcases their artists nicely.

I had a chance to see their gallery first hand this weekend, took another short run down to Portland. Motel is very smart, one room is a gallery, another is their retail section with objects made by a lot of the artist they show. Sweet items but not teeth rotting cute stuff, the show up right now is charming.

I also had a chance to poke my head into a few other galleries with out pushing my luck too much (I was traveling with a short-attention-span sidekick). The favorite visit of the day was to PDX, to see Marie Watt’s Blanket Stories. What you don’t see on the website are her bronze (I’m assuming) cast works, which are most impressive. She was in the gallery when we were there touching up the large one. I enjoyed the color work in her “drawings” as well.
Also stopped into Pulliam Deffenbaugh which had a watercolor show up and then drove out to Savage Art Resources to see their group show The Bambi Effect. They have a Carlee Fernandez piece in the show: (Rabbit With Tangerines). She was just exhibiting up in Seattle just last month, I laughed thinking she must have an animal piece in every port up and down the west coast. There were other nature themed pieces in the gallery as well, thus the theme.
Lastly we tried to locate the highly recommended Haze Gallery to no luck, my sense of direction and a poor map did not help. Their website is down as well, so I’ll just have to imagine we missed a good show.

So now I’ve made the rounds somewhat of Portland twice in one month, and haven’t been out in Seattle at all. Portland is fun to visit. There is definitely a vibe there, a mixture of thrift store culture and enthusiasm that used to exist in Seattle, which is now gone. People keep saying Portland is like Seattle was ten years ago. Not exactly true but I can see where the sentiment comes from. I find it more like a bizarre twin city that I never quite knew with similar qualities (similar weather!) that has grown into its own being.

Good food to be had there as well, and a nice scenic drive.