My Strange Day

I have been pretty busy lately, so much so that I decided that last Saturday was going to be all about the art. In a good way, it ended up being one of those days that just isn’t quite normal (but still yielded some good pictures)

Part I – Cats and Graffiti

Since I needed to get some shooting done for this month’s Portland Grid Project grid, I headed out early. I thought I knew where I was going, but I kept running into dead ends across three neighborhoods. I took a wrong turn and for a while, I think I was illegally trespassing in a industrial facility. Once I found my way out of that, I found myself in a weird residential area with a lot of cats. I accidently stumbled into the Feral Cat Cove, a combination skate park/feral cat sanctuary. There I met Jerry, who feeds the cats each morning and generally keeps an eye out for them. We had a great conversation and now I’m trying to figure out how to help out here.

Part II – The Mausoleum

By mid-morning, I had figured out where I was supposed to be. I was going to cover several areas of the grid. Unfortunately, I got sucked into the mausoleum for a couple of hours. Oddly enough, I’ve never actually been in a mausoleum and was fascinated/weirded out by the silent rows of ashes and a public space simultaneously completely devoid and completely full of humans.

Part III – On the Theme of Death

Out of the mausoleum, there were more grim images on the same theme, including a tidy, liquor filled roadside memorial. In a graveyard, I watched as three crows and a vulture appeared to be in conversation about how to fairly split a dead rabbit.

Part IV – The Personal Milestone

I spent so much time playing around the graveyard and environs that I frittered away the morning and midday. My next stop was Hi Books in downtown Portland. Hi specializes in photo books and zines and heavily supports women and LGBTQ artists. I stopped by to say Hi! and take a picture of my book on a real bookshelf, in a real bookstore. I wish this were commonplace, but I’m not yet so jaded that it isn’t still deliciously weird to see my work on display.