Thursday, July 23, 2009

Liquid Courage and your own Personal Artmail

Mary Lou Zeek might have the local art market cornered on charm. Her latest is an interactive installation at Project Space II in the Livesley Building.

All she invites you to do is make a collaged postcard and to address it to someone other than yourself. It's art superfood - the blueberry of creativity and the gift economy, bite-sized and refreshing.

For more on Project Space II, see "Banking on Art" at DSS and the Project Space II blog.

Just down the block is the Conference Center with the Mayor's Annual Oregon Series. Unfortunately they haven't updated the website for the third show - it's stuck in 2008.

Here are the pieces by Louis Bunce and Harry Widman. (More Bunce here.)

The Widman piece, "The Dream," was apparently lost. It had been hanging in Council chambers, but then disappeared. Bonnie Hull offers a sweet quest story about its finding.

The Salem collection leaves me underwhelmed. It's too much of blocky, earth-tones from the 70s. I mean, there's even a big macrame hanging! It's provincial and minor. Where the Hallie Ford collection offers pieces by the same artists, the Ford's pieces are superior.

Tomorrow, on Friday, the Salem Creative Network is sponsoring a pub crawl. The idea is great, but the schedule looks a little ambitious and bibulous. Will Salem's cliques and cultures mix? Only one way to find out!

Project Space will be open until 7pm on Friday. I recommend downing a quick beer, and with the slightest of buzzes, amble over to Project Space and let your imagination run free. Make that collaged postcard, send it to someone with whom you'd like to share your creativity, and make the world just a tiny bit sweeter.

1 comment:

  1. The LiveArt! booth at the Oregon Country Fair did a similar "Postcards from the Future" project. We addressed a postcard to ourselves, then traded it for a random stranger's addressed postcard to collage and add a positive message to. They will mail the collaged postcards six months from now, after we've forgotten all about them. Something to look forward to in December!

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