Let's Share: The Berkley Blog

Those Who Share - The Velveteria

It's time for another installment of "Those Who Share".  This time we highlight Carl and Caren - proprietors of the Velveteria, authors of the newly released book: Black Velvet Masterpieces, and an all-around cool couple. 

We just got the book and it looks really sharp. It even has a velvety rich cover.  Ooh la la! They've put together a history of the velvet painting, a how-to section, and a great gallery of their collection featuring everything from religious icons to nekkid ladies. If you are in Portland you must go visit their museum, The Velveteria, to see some of the work for yourself. 

We've always been especially fond of the "Banditos" velvet painting genre. Good job Carl and Caren!

We actually own two velvet paintings.  One was a garage sale find from Ryan's mom - this intense wolf:

And the other is a Juanita original of a Pabst can:

The funny thing about this one is that one might assume that it's an homage in our house to Pabst when really I am quite a beer snob and I probably have one Pabst a year at most.  Generally I don't really drink any beer from a can.  I used to drink Guiness but then I learned about their non-vegan friendly isinglass processing so I cut myself off.  So, we consider this painting an homage to how awesome Juanita is!

Those who share - Handsome Furs

Something I'd like to do on this sharing blog is to highlight other artists/musicians/humans who create via sharing. There is just something so nice and inspiring about couples working together. The other night we went out to see the Handsome Furs (yes, that's two concerts in a week which is a record for us these days!). Not only are they an engaged duo band but they were literally sharing the drum machine at one point. So adorable.

Sorry those are a little blurry but considering we were in the balcony and I was zoomed in all the way I'd say they aren't too bad, actually.

[Also, please note that I was typing this a song by the married couple Mates of State came on my iTunes and it was immediately followed by the theme song from Batman, the TV show. That is really weird. I swear that kind of weird coincidence always happens to me. Or maybe I read into things too much.]