how i prePARE for SHARE

I can't believe SHARE is coming up on a year already. If you don't know, SHARE is a bi-monthly event in Portland that brings together a group of artists - different every time but often with returning guests - to create in a shared space. Create in every possible realm. They have writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, dancers, actors... any creative discipline that can be contained in one studio loft (or sometimes spilling out into the hall).

This Saturday, SHARE will be having its First Anniversary Show - a night of exhibits and readings and even a bit of SHARE's usual program--in which artists are given a prompt and then set to doing their art for a specified period of time, and finally they share their work. Pieces created there on the spot during the event will even be put up for silent auction. It promises to be a night of rampant artistry!



I've been to two SHARE events, and if I had more time, I'd be going to them all. The first one I attended was SHARE number two, and the prompt that night was temporary. As a writer, I allowed myself to run all rampant artist with that word and that concept, and then when I finally got down to business, I wrote a short prose poem about a spot of sun on a bed. I'll be reading the piece as part of the festivities at the anniversary event, but I also did a little homemade book-making in order to include it in the art exhibit.

Since the piece is about bedclothes, I decided to make the pages of the book out of sheet. A pillowcase, actually, which I cut up...



and then I arranged the story around the printed flowers.


I made a cover using board and more pillowcase. And stitched the pages together and into a paper encasement that I could glue up against the inner lining of the cover, like in a real book...


Then cursed a bit because it wasn't working right, and I couldn't get it to open and close correctly. Then I was cutting new paper and getting the needle and thread going again. When I finally had the science figured out satisfactorily, it turned out nice. It will be on exhibit Saturday night along with a lot of amazing, creative pieces of art spawned during this last year of SHARE.

When I work on the less thinky parts of art, like cutting and measuring, I like to throw on some music or a movie I know really well for some background noise. Here is who presided over my work that night:





SHARE is the brainchild of Portland writers Kathleen Lane and Margaret Malone. The SHARE First Anniversary Show goes from 6 to 10 this Saturday night at the Goldsmith Building in Old Town. NW 5th and Couch.