Art Crawl in Portland Saturday Night

Went to play in Portland Saturday night, one of our favorite playgrounds. After an unusually pleasant visit with our son in St. Helens, Oregon, Saturday afternoon, we wandered to Portland towards our final destination, The Alberta Rose Theater for an eight o'clock show.  We stopped at a cute little vegetarian grocery store called Cherry Sprout Produce. We've wanted to stop in many times, but hadn't found the time yet.  Since we were pretty early we stopped in and picked up some wonderful produce as well as a couple seedlings for the garden, a couple fava bean plants, jerusalem artichokes, and some spicy herb blends for herb hill. We found the theater, parked the car, and took a walk in search of food for our camera as well as our bellies.  We stopped in a a Thai restaurant and enjoyed a wonderful vegan meal. Then we wandered around enjoying the paintings, sculptures, and wonderful creations all around us. I do love this part of Portland, it's so full of art everywhere you look.  There was a life size piñata type sculpture of a mermaid on top of one of the coolers of the Cherry Sprout.  A creation of one of the nearby artists.

We met this lovely lady, Laura Stokes, on our Baja Beach Daze trip in 2009.   She was one of the people who got on in San Francisco,  we spent ten wonderful days traveling through California and most of Baja. We spent five days camping at a private beach on the Sea of Cortez, a little north of La Paz. She and her partner travel the world performing their art. We've been looking forward to seeing her performance for sometime.

Last night we finally had the pleasure of seeing this awesome show.  Not one person left that theater wishing they had done something else last night.  The theater was full and there was an enthusiastic standing ovation at the end. There were no words spoken during this performance,  but strong messages about ourselves in this busy, stressful world came through quite clear. Laura and her partner are absolutely impressive as they demonstrated the ability to control every muscle in their bodies.  This is an event I highly recommend if the The Ricochet Project comes to a city near you.  They've been in Seattle a couple times in the past two years, but we haven't been able to make it. Check out this trailer for a sample of some of her expressive art.

I added a little art to our house this weekend too.  My friend Melanie of Oregon Grape Stitch just finished a pair of brightly colored curtains I just couldn't leave hanging in her store.  They made a quick appearance as tablecloths at the potluck, then  we hung them where Kaylee sleeps, she's going to love them.  She also likes the rainbow colors like her grandma.  The room I hung them in is lit by the sunshine in the morning.  At at certain time, it's usually too bright.  The colors in these curtains filtered the sun and brought in the light in a different way. When I came in this morning, I was greeted by a bright, cheery room.