Oh, hey there. Long time no see. Let's recap this thing numerical list style!
1. Remember Chicago? We were there two weeks ago? Well, it was awesome. It looked like this:
2. We decided two weeks is long enough to be back home so we're off to Washington, DC tomorrow for Crafty Bastards on Saturday. Why not come visit us if you live in the greater DC area? We're debuting two animals at the show who will make their way to Etsy upon our return. They are very stubborn and won't have it any other way.
The only time Ryan and I have been in DC together was in 2002. It looked like this:
It was the Fourth of July and we were paddle boating outside the Jefferson Memorial. One of us was wearing a Transformers hat. Does it get more American than that? [Side note: Looking through my DC photo album, and at these photos above, I realize that I am a much better photographer than I was seven years ago. I am looking forward to proving this to President Obama.]
3. It so happens that at the exact same time as Crafty Bastards, but all the way back on our west coast, Ryan is part of a group show called, "A Murder Of Crows" at the Gallery in Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles. That's this Saturday (October 3rd). Unless we master the arts of cloning and teleportation in the next 96 hours, we won't be there but Ryan's art is represented alongside such art luminaries as Julianna Swaney and Steve Weissman. Each artist had to represent a group of animals based on an alphabetical venery assignment. Ryan had the task of "A Dray Of Squirrels". Would you like a sneak preview? Okay, here goes:
That reminds me - If you didn't get a chance to take a look at Ryan's recent collection of "Champion Festival" art, check it out here.
We're home from the California tour! We're still working on the re-entry to regular life so until we can get a proper update together, feel free to make up your own story from these preview photos:
Obviously it's not easy to sum up a week's adventures in New York City because it's taken me almost a week to write anything about it. Suffice to say, we love New York and if it wasn't for this whole pesky desire to have more than one bedroom, a yard, and no trash on our property... Oh wait, I found a discarded crockpot in our wildflower patch last week. Strike that last one. I guess we'll just stay in Portland for now.
Here is the edited NYC daily diary recap:
We called numbers for Polish instructions we couldn't understand
Ryan found his dream graffiti
We got the cutest bill in the entire world
"Seven happy blueberry"! (Or maybe this was only cute because our table had consumed seven of these happy blueberries.)
We battled rain without an umbrella thinking we were tough Portlanders but really we just kind of looked like soaked rats.
Went to Renegade with our friends Bossanova Baby and Arcane Arts and had beautiful weather and amazing crowds.
Thanks to all the awesome shoppers who came by! We can't wait to do the Los Angeles and San Francisco Renegades next month. [More Renegade photos here]
Went to the Natural History Museum
which gave us lots of inspiration for the future and I also found my new favorite animal ever:
(too bad it existed millions of years ago).
And then on the way home we got stuck at the airport for five hours and didn't get home until 3am west coast time. I slept for 85% of the next day.
Oh yes, one other thing you might be interested in from our visit to Chinatown. We got our auras photographed! Check. It. Out.
As you can plainly see, we're both really busy but we have success coming our way and I have a pain below my waist (which is obviously that stupid knee that I hurt a couple months ago).
Okay, that was definitely a really abbreviated version of the trip but it will have to do for now. I need to make room for lots more announcements in the upcoming days! If you'd like to see more photos of the entire trip, though, please go here.
A full bottle of sunscreen later and we're home from Nevada. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to need a blanket at night. The entire trip was basically a non-stop collection of lakes, kicks, and sci-fi. It was really great to see how much beauty Nevada had to offer outside of smokey casinos and Dudes on the strip in Vegas. It turns out Nevada is quite a lovely place to visit.
Somehow we managed to go to four different lakes, three of which I stood in and one of which we swam in.
1. Lake Tahoe
2. Walker Lake
3. Lake Mead
I'll give you three chances to guess the one we swam in. I'll give you a hint - it might be the one that looks closest to raw sewage. Yummy! To Lake Mead's credit, it was very windy and dusty that day. From a long view, it almost looks like we were bathing in the Mediterranean.
I have never been to the Mediterranean but I can only assume that in parts of it there are are pyramid type rock formations and certainly some dust.
I am crippled by an internal struggle to define my favorite body of water type. Most days I can't decide between lakes and the ocean but then there's all those rivers to consider. And what of the ponds? And the puddles? Crud...I just found this list too. Now I'm even more confused.
Anyhoo, back in Nevada [the 36th state to enter the Union, in case you were wondering], we also collected photos of my brother, Peter, karate kicking all over the place. Not only did it provide photographic entertainment, but it must have also improved his flexibility.
As I'm sure you noticed, the lakes and kicking sometimes intersected providing us with double the excitement. No husbands were harmed in the creating of these images.
When we met up with my other brother, Joe, in Las Vegas, the kicking died down and a new sci-fi streak started up. First of all, Joe is working on his Masters in Engineering focusing on solar energy at UNLV. We got a tour of the research lab and despite the fact that we were looking at some of the most cutting edge solar energy technology in the country, I couldn't help but think it looked a little bit like 1950s sci-fi.
vs.
I have a confession to make. I looked really hard for actual clips from 1950s science fiction but it yielded no accurate results. These are both images of real life science from the 50s. I'm hoping you'll understand my point and not think me too much of a fraud.
In addition this this real-world science lesson, we finally got to see Star Trek. I tried so hard not to get psyched out by the fact that the entire world loves this movie but it turned out unnecessary because it was SOAWESOME! I don't want to leak any spoilers, but these things might have something to do with the plot:
But seriously, that bottom image is actually from the Pinball Museum in Las Vegas. It's really more of an arcade than a museum because you can play any of the games. It's just so happens that many of the games date back decades and decades. I started out taking photos of the cool ones until I realized that they were all blowing my mind with their art and engineering. I was mostly wrapped up in the one called "Who Dunnit" which is a murder mystery game wrapped into the pinball proceedings. Genius!
I never did solve the riddle of how Elton John and Ted Nugent both scored their own machines, however.
If you went to that Museum link and scrolled to the bottom, you might notice that it is actually located in a stripmall. If you went to Vegas and drove around you would realize that EVERYTHING IS IN A STRIP MALL! It's so strange! You feel like you're driving on a treadmill where the scenery keeps recycling itself but actually it's thousands upon thousands of strip malls.
If you'd like to continue with a self-guided photo tour, check out my Flickr.
If you'd like to see one of the greatest advances in video technology, see below.
Coming soon: results of the animal vote and preparations for Renegade Brooklyn...
Let's Share just got super high-tech! I'm writing this post from our phone en route from Reno to Las Vegas. The space age is here!
I can't say that we would necessarily travel to these exotic locales on a regular vacation, but I just happen to have a brother in each city. So far we've walked into Lake Tahoe, visited a marshland bird refuge, given high fives to a giant prospector, and played roulette with a feathered hair gentleman. Nevada is doing us right.
Seeing as how I have no idea what this post is going to look like, I think I'll call it here. We'll be home next week with the results of the animal vote and a report on the vegan donuts and the pinball museum in Vegas.
(Sorry that Lake Tahoe photo is a little underwhelming. We'll have better views when we have regular computer access!)
The anniversary escape to the wilderness was a success!
I'm excited that I finally get to share my anniversary present to Ryan:
The "X" (that's ten to you Romans and a kiss to you letter-writers) is a vintage sign letter from 26 Olive Street. The piece de resistance below is an original by Ian Dingman (you may recall we also have this piece by him too).
First of all, if you have ever stared and Ryan and I from behind, this is almost identical. I'm even one inch taller than him! Second of all, we celebrate our dating anniversary starting from a night we camped out on the roof of his old carport watching the stars and such. Can you believe that I didn't commission this? Could this piece be any more perfect? EEEEIII! Thanks, Ian, for cosmically intercepting our anniversary vibes and getting it down on paper before I even thought of it!
Meanwhile at the cabin and surroundings:
And yes, in case you were wondering, we did end up seeing one lonely otter. Observe my CSI photographic evidence:
Using my expert sharpening software, I am able to get a closer look at our river friend:
This weekend we are going to make strides to finally update ye olde shoppe. A couple new animals should be coming as well as some originals and other prints. Just too late for your Valentine's needs! Wow, could we be any worse at marketing?
Part of the reason for our recent slow down is the fact that we both got a dose of the crud that's been going around. Does anyone else, couples especially, notice that when you get sick - seemingly of the same thing, that it effects you totally differently? Ryan is always all congestion and I am always all sore throat. In fact, our friend Airam made the astute realization that I currently sound like everyone's favorite case worker to the afterlife stars.
Actually, I think I might sound a bit more like Beetlejuice himself.
All this sickness kind of took away the relaxing feeling we got from a few days at the beach last weekend. The weather was crazy amazing and Ryan got to relieve some stress while I got to enjoy some photography again.
More photos can be found here, if you are so inclined, including one of my new best friend. I call him Tony.
This weekend we play the role of jet-setters and head down to LA for the opening of Ryan's new show, "Natural Selection", at the Tin Lark Gallery. This is a joint show with the excellent Wes Younie (also from Portland!). Actually, we've haven't met him yet so maybe we should call him Wesley. Then, perhaps after Saturday we'll be on a Wes, Ry, and Lu basis. Who knows what kind of crazy things can happen in LA.
Here is a bigger sneak peak at the show: This one is called "A Romp In The Courtyard"
All the pieces take place in and around the Ryan Berkley imagined "Oddwood Gardens". It's a good place to visit.
And, oh yeah, speaking of crazy, the next morning we have to fly back up to Portland to do the extremely jumbo sized holiday Crafty Wonderland! Our flight gets in about 9am and the show starts at 11am. No problem, right?
There are going to be sooo many great artists and crafty types there that we should be able to keep our eyes open the entire eight hours. If not, feel free to come by and poke us.
Our next-door booth neighbors are our friends Bossanova Baby and Kspell Jewelry so we're sandwiched in between all kinds of good stuff. You should really see it for yourself.
I also believe we promised you a viewing of Ryan's piece in the Wood Pushers show. Witness:
"Mervin Of The Cosmic Underbrush"!
A few photos from the opening can be found in and around here.
Lastly, Urban Craft Uprising was really really fun last weekend. We were both fighting off some sickness stuff so it all seemed a bit of a blur but we met some lovely people and scored a bunch of cool stuff we can't show you because it might be your Christmas present.
It's all worth it when you get to meet customers like this:
Well, we've been back from L.A. for a week but on the night we came home (on the EXACT one year anniversary of our Etsy shop) we found our computer wouldn't turn on. It was, in fact, dead. It did not make us feel good or sleep well. We spent the next two days in a technological frenzy of purchasing, transferring, and jerry-rigging our operation. [Side note - according to Urban Dictionary this also means we "did a MacGyver on it".]
Now we're back in business with a new crazy-fast computer and we vaguely remember that L.A. was really fun.
Felt Club was the great kind of hectic and we met all sorts of artistic types we've been admiring from afar. Jenny Ryan did an amazing job of putting it all together. I think she deserves a trophy.
The one on the left is for you, Jenny. The one on the right I won last year for speed skating.
Another was Jill Bliss and Saelee Oh, Nicholas Bohac, and Matthew Rodriguez at Tin Lark. (We'll be back in LA next month because Ryan has a show opening here too! More on that soon...)
[This is Jill's installation]
We tried to get vegan ice cream at Scoops but apparently being vegan is wicked popular and they were sold out.
We jumped waves at Venice Beach
And then Ryan entered the seventh dimension
These and more can be found on your friendly local Flickr site, if you are so inclined.
We've been back from Chicago for a few days but we're still trying to get settled in. Our house is seriously more thrashed than it's ever been because we had to go right into working when we got home. Yikes. It reminds us of coming straight home from Renegade Brooklyn when we had to move immediately upon our return. Except this time we're not moving and it still feels just as chaotic. What's with that?
Renegade Chicago, as you may have heard, was insanely wet. Chicago had the most rain it's ever had in recorded history EVER last Saturday. Yeah, that's right. The Great America theme park even closed down and parts of Chicago were being evacuated but Renegade went on. Extreme!
Thank you times a trillion to all the awesome Chicago shoppers who came out despite getting completely water logged. In the mornings we were so reluctant to even leave the house because we basically looked like this
but the continued enthusiasm towards Ryan's art throughout the day made it so much easier to bear thanks to awesome people like these:
As you may recall, we endured scary thunderstorms in Brooklyn so our Renegade weather experience so far as been 0 for 2. We think it's pretty funny that we didn't even go to the Renegade on our coast (in San Francisco) where it actually took place inside. Luckily our final three sales of the year: Felt Club, Urban Craft Uprising (we hope!), and Crafty Wonderland will all be indoors. Yay! It was pretty cool though when a full moon made an appearance at the end of the second night. We're going to try to remember the whole thing looking more like this:
Other than Renegade (we'll show you more of our purchases and other cool vendors in the second installment of this series) we spent some time wandering the streets and, of course, taking our obligatory photos in the Millennium Park reflective jellybean.
We got in some good friend time too. Our Portland pals Adrienne and Aaron sold at Renegade and we also met up with one of Ryan's high school friends (from California)
and one of my high school friends (from Virginia)
.
It was this big meeting point in the middle which was interesting - like three different versions of our lives coming together. Except, now that I think about it, those two above never actually did meet each other. Thanks to Max for teaching Ryan about fan brushes and extra special thanks to Sarah & Patrick for the lovely accommodations and for driving us all over the place!!!
Another big highlight was that we hit our goal of visiting the vegetarian/vegan Chicago Diner and somehow we actually managed to go TWICE! Once for dinner and once for breakfast. Delish.
I guess I don't have photos of the food - just the snazzy sign.
More photos can be found on my Flickr here if you happen to be interested.
Coming tomorrow...a special Chicago edition of Action Figure Friday. Stay tuned!
