Gallery hopping tonight in Portland we came across the Elizabeth Leach Gallery featuring the fabulous quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. I had the chance to talk with a fabulously-dressed woman named Lucy Mingo who is one of the famous quilters in Gee’s Bend who was attending the exhibit tonight. Gee’s Bend is the isolated little town in rural Alabama that time forgot…but then the art world discovered when they tapped the local talent to national stardom in a touring exhibit of their work.

The show went to the Whitney Museum in New York, the DeYoung in San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (among others) and their quilts were hailed as “some of the most miraculous works of art America has produced.” You can read more about their quilting here. Lucy is on the right. She 78 and the mother of 10 children. Her daughter made her jacket. I don’t know the name of the woman on the left – she’s another quilter whose work isn’t exhibited in this show. The quilt behind them is for sale for a cool $14,000. Go girl!

** O N W A R D I N T O T H E P E A R L and the T R U E essence of Portland…

The Pearl is a neighborhood in the NW quadrant of Portland, once a warehouse district. Now it’s expensive high-rise condos, BMWs, trendy shops, galleries, specialty stores featuring Eco Luxuries…

Kids play in a fountain in Portland – wow, where else in America can you play in a fountain without being hauled into the county jail in your wet t-shirt? Here a fountain is an urban swim hole.

Later on we met artist Terence Healy who has a fascination with Barbi dolls, Jesus and Godzilla…and if you have kept up with this blog, you’ve come to know that these three are my personal holy trinity.

Take a closer look at that Barbi. Now you can see Terence’s wonderfully twisted sense of humor. Give ‘em a hand!

Then we passed a couple of queens eating cupcakes they had gotten at Cupcake Jones. Portlanders love their cupcakes and are willing to part with $3.25 for one of the tasty little cakes in paper. But eating them with a fork is purely The Pearl.

We ended the evening at the Roxy Diner on Stark. The Roxy is a 24-hour greasy spoon catering to drag queens and drunk people stumbling in from the bars after closing. Needless to say, the Roxy is NOT in the Pearl.

Jesus with neon halo completed my evening…

After 3 years, I finally got to see Kimberly Dark – the woman who wrote the intro to my book. She’s my neighbor in Hawaii, the one whose view was blocked when I built my house. Of course there’s more to her than her newly obstructed view. Click on her name to read more. We met in Portland and went to the Pied Cow for dessert where she was asked very kindly to take her feet off the table. Kimberly is the one on the right.

Within my darkest night
You kindled a fire
That never died away

I took the little blond German boy who taught my heart to sing, to the airport today. He returns to Germany for the summer.

Here’s a little film I made of our last night together. I couldn’t finish it. I’m sorry it was just too painful.

The music is by Jon Anderson. The piano bar was at the Portland City Grill on the 30th floor of the US Bank building. One should always say goodbye in high places. Sebastian and I will reunite in Tucson at the end of August. The time between now and then has a lot to teach me.

Happy trails, Snow Pea.

I Thought of You

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea,
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

— Sara Teasdale

Took a road trip to Mt. Hood today and passed some of Oregon’s quirky towns. Sebastian doing his Boring pole dance:

Back to Andrew Adams’ house through his eerie hallway. You know I love a good eerie hallway – it’s so Stanley Kubrick.

Andrew has a strange and wonderful art collection. This is one of his own pieces he made from Barbi doll heads. He went to the Goodwill bins where it’s the last stop for junk before the landfill and ripped the heads off the dolls and bought them by the pound…

Portland. Green. Goofy. Weird. Soft. Sweet. My favorite American city. Too bad the weather sucks.

Mikey, Paul and Sebastian at the Last Thursday Alberta street fair…

Mt. Hood from Trillium Lake today…

I was inspired to shoot black and white in the forest up the Columbia River Gorge today. Why? Because I thought the green of the forest was overwhelming…just too green. The green was distracting from the patterns of light and the leaf structures I wanted to capture, so I cut out the color and focused on the play of light and the textures. I purposely underexposed them to make the shadows black. I was pleased with the results.

FYI – people often ask what camera I use. It’s a slightly beat up, 2 year old Panasonic Lumix TZ3 7 megapixel, compact camera. Yes, it’s a compact – but a high-end compact. I bought it for the glass – a Leica wide angle (28mm equivalent) lens. At the time that was the widest angle in a compact. Now you can find them in 24 and 25 mm by Lumix.

I’m salivating over a new camera but it’s a bit pricey for me and out of stock at the moment: the Lumix LX3 which sports a 24 mm f2.0 Leica lens which is remarkably sharp and undistorted, shoots in RAW or JPG formats, HD video and can be thrown in my pocket. I’m hoping to scare up the money for this before my next big health care trip to Thailand.

I love the sensors on SLRs but honestly, 4 pounds of camera in my pocket doesn’t thrill me. I love the Lumix compacts b/c they deliver pretty extraordinary quality photos and are about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

ONE THING I must say…I know this sounds arrogant and uppity and all…BUT…photography really is only minimally about the equipment. Photography, like sex is about what you DO with your equipment. MY ADVICE to budding photographers:

1. Start shooting in black and white – do it for a year before you add back in color. This will teach you the fundamentals of light, contrast and composition without the punch of color.
2. Slow down. Take time to compose your pictures. Get into your imagery and obsess about it. Stay in one place until you’ve got the best possible photo you can get.
3. Study the masters who worked before the digital era began.

Sebastian on Belmont Street in front of the Laughing Planet restaurant at 10 pm on the first pleasant evening we’ve had. That deep blue sky at 10 pm is the ESSENCE of Portland.

We made it to Portland. Everything is cool, green and as expected, we haven’t seen the sun for more than an hour in 3 days. Sebastian thinks he could live here and not get homesick for Germany. If I were to live here, I think I would need to get a job at a tanning salon to get my vitamin D lest I get rickets.

Finishing up our tour of California, Sebastian, Jean and I spent a whole day chasing the wind through the coastal ranges full of flowers and wild grasses.

See the video here:

Jean at Orr Hot Springs…

Tonight, the overnight train from San Francisco. Mt. Shasta for breakfast in the diner car. Portland just before dinner.

…San Francisco weren’t so damn expensive, cold and windy,
If only California wasn’t over-taxed, and bankrupt…

Hey, we’d live here. For now it’s a great place to visit at sunset when the full moon is rising over the Golden Gate. Ahhh…

I was always a fan…

Farmer’s Market…

All purpose spray found on Olvera Street in old-town Los Angeles…

Some career advice for young actors…

Next stop San Francisco.

A very touching and historic testimony was given by Shirley Tan today in the Senate Judiciary Committee…

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO

The Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), S. 424/H.R. 1024, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to sponsor their foreign-born permanent partners for legal residence in the U.S.

Please call your congress people now and tell them you want the Uniting American Families Act!!