My Friend Mari's Garden

It's actually my friends Mari and Andrew's garden in West Seattle. And I should have shown you photos of it weeks ago. I took these photos on May 28. The day was very bright, and I still haven't found the manual for my camera, so I don't know how to adjust the exposure. I hope to go back to their garden and take better photos later this summer. Anyway.

Andrew's a sculptor. He made all the containers in their garden out of scraps of steel that he welded together. They are my favorite containers in the whole world.



Andrew also designed the concrete forms for the patio area. It's not finished yet, but there's going to be a fountain and a fireplace.



I want an orange hose too. It looks great against this freshly blue-painted wall.



Bronze fennel.





One of Andrew's many sculptures. They're often military and/or industrial looking (though Andrew himself seems like a pretty pacifistic guy).









Andrew likes to sculpt guns and artillery out of rebar and wire. I'm not sure if I'm getting these terms right. My vocabulary does not extend very far into machinery and weaponry.



In fact, he has a whole arsenal of stuff like this.

Rich Art's Art Yard in Centralia, Washington

Southwest Washington is full of weirdos and cranks.

Maybe there's something in the water. They all used to live near Trojan Nuclear Power Plant on the Oregon side of the Columbia. I remember going on school field trips here as a kid. We were taught that nuclear power was "clean, safe, and efficient."

It's now decommissioned and the cooling tower is gone, but the whole operation was just up this little road, off Highway 30.



OK, onto I-5 now. At milepost 62 in Washington, you pass the ugly-ass Gospodor Monument Park, a local weirdo's "elaborate tribute to Mother Teresa, Native Americans and victims of the Holocaust."



A bit farther north in Chehalis, Al Hamilton, the cranky Uncle Sam billboard guy, is complaining about something or other.

"Is Virginia Tech an 'unarmed victim zone'?"



And up in Centralia, wonderful weirdo Rich Art continues to fill his yard with sculptures made out of styrofoam packing material and other found objects.



He tells us he likes to keep his yard open for visitors from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend because it's a goal he's set for himself.



















At this point, I got the feeling that Rich Art was a Robert Crumb fan.

















Creche.





OK, need to get back on the road again. A couple more shots of Centralia.





Then farmland.

Chemical Wedding Backpack

A year or two ago, I saw this stunning handbag in Andaluz over in Columbia City.



Because I don't like to carry handbags, I didn't buy it, but I did obsess over it. I must have talked about it a lot, because later on, my husband returned to Andaluz to buy it for me (to shut me up?), but someone else had snapped it up.

I looked up the designers, Jon and Tracy Haaland of Chemical Wedding, online, and I found out that they're local. (South Enders, in fact!) I sent them some fan mail, asking about store locations, and continued to admire their industrial-yet-organic, goth-meets-western (and sometimes sinister, and always gorgeous) designs whenever I'd see them in shops around Seattle and Portland.

I mean, seriously, folks. Look at the work they're doing. There is nothing else like this around, is there?



But I continued to resist their charms until a recent upload to their blog put me over the edge:



Then I knew I had to have one of their bags. But I still wanted a backpack. And when I first e-mailed them a year or so ago, they sounded open to the idea of custom work. So I sent them another message:

Hi, there. I love your bags, though I pretty much exclusively carry a backpack, as I hate having to carry something around. ... Do you think you might be able to adapt one of your styles to the form of a small, slender backpack (16 in. x 11 in.)?

Tracy responded very enthusiastically:

We would love to make a backpack for you! ... We have never made a backpack but would love to give it a try.

I then sent a 600-word manifesto on backpack usability, which it seems that they actually read, bless their hearts. And within two weeks of my original e-mail about wanting a backpack, it was done!

They invited us over to their lovely home studio just south of Georgetown, and welcomed us with bourbon cocktails. Old Crow with apple-pear juice, on the rocks. These are my kind of people.





I was honored that we were the first customers ever to see their basement studio. And that's a privilege that I won't be sharing much of here, since I was feeling like it would be too presumptuous of me to ask to take photos of it. Besides, I was kind of overwhelmed by the quality of their handiwork.

But after the bourbon kicked in and we were upstairs again, I asked to take some shots of their cool stuff.

You can't really see it, but on the top shelf of this curio cabinet, there's a bottle of Old Crow (Jon's liquor of choice) signed by Maakies creator Tony Millionaire. Dook dook!



Puppy!



Kitty!





Tracy explained a little about the inspiration for their name, a 400-year-old Rosicrucian allegory about alchemic transformation.



And the backpack? I couldn't be more pleased with it. Here's a shot of it in Smarty Pants, later in the day.



And here's a photo that Jon took of me wearing it in their backyard. If you can get past how badly I need a haircut (I still only go to Dirty Little Secret in Portland), you may notice how perfectly it fits me. Nice work, Chemical Wedding! And thanks so much, Jon and Tracy. You'll be hearing from me after Jon takes his cobbling class and announces that he's going to start making custom boots!

First Thursday Last Night

"Pioneer Square is the neighborhood where Seattle, Washington was founded in 1852, following a brief six month settlement at Alki Point." It's home to lots of art galleries. Apparently it used to be home to lots of dry goods shops.



I love this fountain.



Cartons of beer?



We head to 619 Western, a building that houses lots of small studios.



"Much of the neighborhood is on landfill... a major earthquake damaged some of the buildings."







On Chuck's advice, we came here to see Kate Protage's work.



I really like this one.



The work seems to get weirder as you go upstairs.





Do you wonder what's on display in the Viewmaster?



Creepy fetuses in jars.



Mr. Peanut always hogs all the blow.



At this point we're all drunk enough to pile into the ancient elevator (and re-enact the final scene of The Blair Witch Project).



In homage to Kate's cityscapes, I take photos of city lights on the way home.







Reader, I bought it.