where'd that wall come from?

Whee! Seattle was fun. A little gray but overall really super. Saw some neat art, and some stuff that bored me.

I remember being told the bus leaves at 7:00am so my alarm went off at 5:30 and I was up by 6:00 and out the door at 6:35 or so. I was at PNCA and on the bus at 6:50. And no one was there. Justin was the next to show at around 7:00. Jason sat across from me and said something about 7:30. As the hour moved on more and more people showed up and I learned with great disappointment that Diana would not be there and we would be leaving at 8:00am.

The bus ride up was very...interesting. The combination of Jason next to me and Sean and Forest behind me lead me to overhear some really awesome guy-talk. They spent about 20 minutes calling Craig repeatedly asking for the definition of a term. They passed forward a note to a group of MFA girls and they got a note back. I'm not sure which was more vulgar and crude. Both notes were awesome.

The rain was horrendous leaving Portland but it cleared up bright and blue as we got to Seattle around 10:30.

We pulled into the UW to visit the Henry Gallery. Both when we arrived and when we left there were hordes of similar looking people coming and going on campus. I like PNCA because the people are really original and look different every day. Seattle University people, blimey...so boring!

The curator for the show at the Henry told us a little about the show and we were left to wander for a bit. There was some nice photography and a cool stop motion video of a guy traveling through a city laying on his stomach. Some of it was a little underwhelming but still well put together. There was a Kim Jones exhibit downstairs and outside of the rat army installation it seemed to be the same thing over and over again (this wood stick harness strapped to his back).

From there we went out for a much needed lunch. We wandered a group and slowly peeled off into littler eating groups. Craig, Nicolai(Nikolai?), Nicole, a nice guy whose name I didn't get, and I ate at "Yummy Bites". I had a teriyaki chicken wrap. It was indeed a Yummy Bite. Or maybe it was "Tasty Bites". Anywhoo, it was a very filling lunch.

Next stop was the Frye. A really well designed gallery, but with poor lighting on its important pieces. Some of the lighting cast really unfortunate shadows. Also they put a glare on some of the paintings which made them hard to appreciate up close.

The main exhibit was "Hug" by Patricia Piccinini. Disturbed all hell out of me. Wonderful sculpture of some really detailed and creepy half-naked mole rat critters. And the videos were none too sane either. I did love the fact the show combined a great variety of mediums and pieces and didn't limit itself to being just the sculptures. A nice variety is pleasing to more people, except I don't think most people would like "Hug".

The gift shop was severely lacking.

From the Frye we slowly made our way down to this architecture bookstore on 1st. Everything was $10 overpriced. Sure the copics were tempting, as was the toothpaste cap but overall it was a massive quantity of books I had no interest in. Except for the marine life diagram books and street fashion compilations (I would have bought something had they be $10 cheaper). Matt, Andy and I decided to walk around the block because the store was boring. The store was one block away from Pike's Place Market so we went down to there. Along the way I ditched Matt and Andy and went looking for a friend, and found him!

Lucky for me, Llyw was on break so we walked and talked for a wee bit before my bus took me away.

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving break (and Winter). It has been so long since I have seen family and friends. Traveling to and from Portland/Washington in one day is doable, but very tiring. It isn't really a bad ride; sure a few hours but once the Portland I-5 traffic backs up you are practically to Goose Hollow as it is. People are busy, I know I am.

We went to Western Bridge next, which I thought was going to be a bridge and not a building. As far as installations go, I actually enjoyed these ones. Except for the light clicking on and off for all eternity. And the constantly replaced melting ice cube. The fake snow falling on a Porsche was pretty and very majestic. Andy gave me a fake push towards it. There was also a 40 photo step by step of a block of wood being cut into a young mans head, an old mans head, a skull and then abstracted and then finally nothing. Symbolizing the decomposition and destruction and whatnot. They also had a cube of the wood carvings and saw dust collected from the photo series.

We were led into a room with a smoke machine and a slow moving light beam casting through the smoke onto the wall. It was very cool and we got to stand inside the circle of light and break the light beam up with our hands. Very sweet stuff going on there. I tried to exit the light area to the other side and found out very quickly there was a wall there. I was moving from a crouch position upon my exit so the extra upwards momentum combined with the wall bump caused me to fall backwards quite humiliatingly. I didn't mind getting laughed at and one of the super nice MFA's said she thought there wasn't a wall there either. I took some non flash photos of the scene and we all wandered through the gallery space.

At 6:30 we boarded and began the long ride home. I dozed for about an hour and then sat next to Matt and chatted with him, Andy, Craig, Nicole and the redheaded MFA dude for a bit.

Got back to PNCA at 9:00ish and rode my bike through the misting Portland night. I got home earlier than I normally do on Friday nights (regularly movie nights). I was expecting to be back by 11:00pm.

Visiting Seattle makes me so glad I choose Portland.