Oaks

image via holocenemusic.com

Oh, Ethan Rose. We nicknamed our city after you. We planted a flower for you. Because you are one of the reasons we want to listen to the next music, because someone as relentlessly innovative (in the very most subtle ways) as you might be making it. Gertrude Stein was wrong when she said “rose is a rose is a rose.” Meeting you, she’d need to differentiate, delineate. She’d obviously never heard Oaks, your lush new album (unlike any other) crafted by capturing and layering the many and varied sounds of the Wurlitzer organ at the Oaks Park skate rink, another Portland Treasure. Hear here.

Holocene and PICA know a good thing when they hear it. They’ll host the coming out party for Oaks they call “Skate Night” Tuesday night from 8-10 PM at Oaks Park Skate Rink where everyone but you, we imagine, will skate and skate while you manipulate the live and once-live sounds of the mighty Wurlitzer.

Oh, Pigeon Toe Ceramics!

Loving these little pieces from Pigeon Toe Ceramics, a new project by Portland-based graphic designer Lisa Hough (Finishing School Design). You can be the first kid on your block to have these porcelain wheelthrown pieces which beg to be grouped in ivory tableaux. Find these and others at Lisa’s Etsy shop at PigeonToeCeramics.etsy.com.

first noted on Design District.

What Are You Doing Tomorrow?

image via Music Mavericks

We’re reading 100 Poems by 100 Poets with Spare Room at Gallery Homeland in the Ford Building (2505 SE 11th) . Actually, we’re just reading one of the 100 but who’s counting: “Just” by composer and sound poet Charles Amirkhanian. That’s a four minute sound composition, but the whole thing could last up to five hours! That’s right, five hours of allstars poems by Hugo Ball, Robert Creeley, Jackson Mac Low, Frank O’Hara, Gertrude Stein, Lew Welch, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky among many others.

This marathon celebration of the 100th reading in the Spare Room series (that’s seven good years of presenting experimental writing in Portland) goes down tomorrow, Sunday, January 25 starting at 2:00 PM and ending when the 100th poem is read. Free admission.

A Little Bird Told Me: Sale at Oblation

bird in the woods card by by old school stationers

You already know that Portland is a letterpress haven. One bright node in the letterpress map of a city dotted with dozens of little studios, is Oblation Papers and Press (516 NW 12th). The custom stationery, notes, and business cards that come out of Oblation…not to mention wedding invitations…are stunning. The retail store in the Pearl is stocked floor-to-ceiling with paper goods from a zillion studios alongside Oblation’s own:

Through the end of January, you’ll find locally made cards and notes at 15% off from studios including: KeeganMeegan Press, Old School Stationers, Arugula Press, Proletariat Press, Egg Press, Green Pagoda, and more. Living as we do in a wash of pixels, we have ambitions to be the kind of people who write personal notes in green ink on fine notecards.

Motorcycle notecards by proletariat press

Almost Dead: Deadline for Cut&Paste Imminent

Design live, on stage, in front of judge/jury and a crowd of hundreds of your peers at Cut&Paste…but no pressure.

January 23 is the last day to submit your portfolio for the 2D, 3D, or Motion Design competitions at the Portland version of the Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament 2009 to be held Saturday, March 7 at the Portland Art Museum (1219 SW Park Ave).