Descending Ashtray

Last weekend, Sarah and I embarked on a long-overdue reacquaintance with Portland’s organized art scene, taking in the Portland Art Museum, Art in the Pearl, and lastly, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in its new home in Portland’s North Park Blocks.

Bridging the divide between Portland’s Old Town and swanky Pearl District, Labor Day Weekend found the park crawling with artists and not-so-art-snobs. Art in the Pearl is a typical urban arts fair, drawing regional photographers, Marriot-quality paintings, and more recycled and rusty bits remade in chair, bench and clock form than you can shake a whittled stick at. You have to appreciate these artisans’ dedication - it can’t be easy to truck your work around from week to week, living under a white folding tent in unpredictable weather. But I am often turned off by their same-ness. I’ve seen these kinds of travelling shows in several cities, and the goods don’t change with the geo-coordinates. If, by stroke of luck, you see an original idea being shown/sold, you can bet that you will see three tents containing that idea the next year, and nine more the year after. At times, you get the sense that the vendors could be selling paintings or pork pies (whatever those are). The work lacks passion, and finesse.

So it was with extreme pleasure that Sarah and I found the “Craft in America” show at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. The first thing I saw when I walked in the door was a beautiful Nakashima bench, all live-edge walnut with dovetail mending a naturally-occurring check in the end grain. Straight maple spindles reach up out of the slab forming a back that just looks comfortable and yielding. A design so pure, so simple, that it would be impossible to recreate or commodify.

Turning my head, a Sam Maloof rocker whose entire form contained not a single straight line, all bandsawn curves smoothed to a buttery sheen from hours of rubbed oil. Unlike the Nakashima bench, the rocker looks complicated, a form that you can sense has been perfected over endless iterations, and a lifetime of dedication. But it looks right. No gaps, no rough spots from too-quick sanding. Incredible.

And that was just the woodwork.

Lovers of jewelry, pottery, and textiles will be picking their jaws up, too. The show, organized by a non-profit called “Craft in America, LLC” also includes a book and DVD produced in concert, so if you aren’t located nearby, you can still experience this wonderful survey of the best in American craft. I purchased the DVD at the show, and I’d highly recommend it.

Craft in America ends its Portland run at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts on September 23. The Museum is FREE to the public and not so large that it couldn’t be seen over a long Friday lunch, or savored on a Saturday afternoon.

Museum of Contemporary Crafts
724 NW Davis Street
Portland, Oregon
(503) 223.2654
Open Tuesday–Sunday 11 AM to 6 PM, Thursday 11 AM to 8 PM

Editor’s note: On my last trip of the spring (I hope), Sarah and I visited my sister and her husband in Boston, a trip we planned long before the string of weddings and work trips that have kept me away from this site and occupied for the last few months. Back (literally) to the drawing board soon, I promise.

Down the street from my sister’s North End apartment is the North Bennett Street School, a woodworking school I first became aware of in my copy of The Workshop, a book of tool porn I picked up a few years ago. Several months after I purchased the book, I visited my sister for the first time and happened to walk by. I’ve been thinking about getting inside ever since, and I finally had my chance last week. Head of Admissions Robert Delaney was kind enough to give Sarah and I a tour.

The North Bennett Street School was founded in 1885, designed to educate unskilled immigrants in trades including cabinetmaking and jewelry making. Today, it has expanded to include other disciplines, including violin/cello making, bookbinding, carpentry, and locksmithing, with a focus on real vocational training. The focus is not on presenting part-time workshops or classes for the hobbyist, but on training people to become full-time craftsmen and -women.

One thing they are known for instilling in all the furniture students is to always begin each project with a full-scale drawing, from leg length down to the last dovetail. The idea is that you work out a project’s unique challenges on paper, which is obviously a lot cheaper than Honduran Mahogany. I was pretty jealous of this student’s large drawing table.

Over the school’s 150+ year history, they’ve collected a lot of furniture, parts and pieces of which make up a large library of furniture components students can study, including Cabriole legs and even hardware like antique brass drawer pulls and hinges.

The curriculum taught is based in the techniques used by makers in 18th Century America, a time period that is viewed by the school as the pinnacle of furniture-making. Administrators are careful to emphasize that Bennett Street is not a design school, and do not choose this period for its aesthetics, but for its exemplary craft. They feel the techniques for furniture making used in that time period literally cannot get better, and facility with these techniques should allow graduates to create any style of furniture they choose, and do so with extremely high craftsmanship. As such, the aesthetics of a student’s work are not the most important aspect, but rather how well they demonstrate the skills used to build it. Hence this piece of student inlay, not pleasing to my visual tastes, but remarkably made:

While at the school, each student will build at least four pieces of furniture, beginning with a toolbox which will serve them at the school. Students design their own, within a set of guidelines, but wood and hardware selection provide a way for students to differentiate according to their own tastes. I really like the one on the left.

I doubt I will ever attend this school, although it looked incredible. Boston is a great town, but very expensive, and I’m just not sure I could give up our house, with its two-car garage shop. It did get me thinking about grad school again, though … being around a group of really passionate people working towards the same goals again sounds … well, great. We’ll see.

I finally read this book. When Dave and I were working on our collaborative sculpture he reminded me of this book by Kurt Vonnegut. Dave had given me a copy of it six years ago and signed the front of it with his 5×5. It was a good read about an artist who had all of the paint fall of his canvas’s. Worth checking and also inspiring in a humerous sort of way.

I just started reading this short book by Dostoyevsky and once again I am amazed by his writing. For some reason I can really relate to the characters that he creates. They seem to be closer to the truth as far as what they think and why they do the things that they do. There are also some interesting observations on the life of the struggling artist. I highly recommend reading it. (The Penguin Classics version translated by Jane Kentish is pretty good. Sometimes the translation can make or break a book.)

Another great short story is The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, it was what really got me hooked on Dostoyevsky.

I have always wanted to produce a really special book about my 5×5 project, one that explains both my story, and my imagined story surrounding this theme.

Here are some really creative artist books I saw today.

Kestrel Tools makes Traditional Northwest Coast Native American carving tools. I’d been interested in acquiring a crooked knife after reading Totem Pole Carving and found Kestrel’s web site via Google. My mom got me a gift certificate for Christmas, so I ordered two crooked knives (C-bend and E-bend), which should arrive in late January or early February (just in time for my birthday).

Apparently the maker is retiring in 2006, so I ordered an adze, too. Mine is the Sitka Gutter Adze (second from right).