12 Hours in Seattle

Since I'm cleaning house, photographically speaking, i figured it's time to put up the last of the West Coast trip pictures.  After the lovely week spent visiting Portland and the rugged Washington Coast, we headed off to Whistler, Canada for a week of mountain biking camp.  I was too busy trying not to die to take many pictures of Whistler, and none of them are really worth posting here.  We ended our trip with a day in Seattle.

She Bravely Turned Her Tail and Fled

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of my all-time favorite movies and certainly one of the most hilariously quotable (It's just a flesh wound!!...Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!)  Generally speaking, I find a lot of Monty Python movie scenes to be applicable to life's funnier/stranger moments.  This little ditty gets hummed a lot when I just can't face the addition anymore (or at any other time I'm feeling less than heroic in the face of adversity/heights, which is not infrequent):


I have discovered that the best way to deal with construction woes is to bravely turn away and flee.  Preferably to a hotel with daily maid service.  Given that this strategy is out of the budget, I have found an even better place to escape:  I call it "Chez BFF."  Chez BFF is a Bi-College establishment run by two of the best hosts (and coolest people generally) on the planet.  Yes, a visit to Chez BFF does require flying to Dallas.  But once there, I get waited on hand and foot:  BFF makes me chai before I go to work - and puts it in a thermal mug to go!  They chauffeur me to and from the office!  There are always smoked almonds to nibble on and champagne to sip!  They plan social outings and take care of all details for me!  They give free guided tours and make dinner reservations!  They shuttle me to and from the airport!  She can handle all medical emergencies and prescribe drugs when necessary!  He knows all the best bike trails!  Best of all, they are really fun, funny, insanely smart people who just make life better when they're around.  A trip to Chez BFF is my new Addition Coping Strategem #2 (#1 - Denial).

Other than the sublime, world's best service one finds at Chez BFF, there is also the house.  If your dream house is in a shambles or otherwise beyond your reach, it's great when you have unfettered (and free!) access to another one, especially when you and Chez BFF's owners have pretty much the same taste in art and architecture.  Here are a few (low-quality) photos that still don't do it justice:

All the benefits of mid-century modern design without any of the technical limitations.  I love the openness of the floorplan and the endless windows, how it brings the outside in as Uncle Frank (as Wright is known in my mother's household) would have wanted. It's light, airy, minimalist:  perfect.  Well, almost - that last picture goes to show you that every house has its conundrums:  that chandelier hangs over a 3-story gap in the stairwell, so changing the bulb will require significant acrobatic feats.My last visit to Chez BFF also involved a trip to the Nasher Sculpture Center, which is now one of my favorite art galleries in the world.  Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, the building itself is a work of art.

As i am really bad at keeping track of artist sponsors and collectors generally (i can barely keep the artists themselves straight), i don't know  much about Raymond Nasher, the founder, other than that he was obviously obscenely wealthy and had impeccable taste in art.  There wasn't a piece in there that didn't capture my interest and imagination.  As an added bonus, all of the explanations of the pieces were quite informative without the usual imperious pedantry one often finds all too often at MOMA or the Met or even the Hirshhorn Gallery, the kind that induce much eye-rolling and occasionally a gag reflex.

I love sculpture, perhaps more than other traditional art forms, because of its tangible nature and three-dimensional presence.  Paintings can certainly move me and i can get lost in Van Gogh's Eglise d'Auvers-sur-Oise for a half-hour, easily (it happens every time i go).  But there is something about an object jutting out in space that compels me to move about, to see all the angles, to imagine the feel of the clay that became the mold, the tiny taps of the hammer on the chisel that carved the marble, or to mentally reconstruct the welding, sanding, and balancing that brought the piece together.

I've included a few of my favorites at the Nasher below, but you can get an amazing virtual visit to the Gallery at their website.  First, two gorgeous pieces from Mark di Suvero:  Eviva Amore and For W.B. Yeats.

As preface, I have a thing for Cor-ten steel.  Between an architect mother and a welder father, it's a material I've been playing on or around for as long as I can remember.  The color and texture of it gets me for reasons I cannot articulate, really, other than that I appreciate the intricate variation in the texture and coloration of it.  I would love to incorporate Cor-ten into our own project, but the cost of it has impeded its use as a bamboo container/retaining wall at the end of the lot.  So far, anyway.

But back to the art, here's the explanation from the Nasher on these pieces: Mark di Suvero's monumental steel sculptures expand to architectural scale the constructivist explorations begun by Pablo Picasso, Julio González, and David Smith in the first half of the 20th century. With beams thrusting outward from a central core, Eviva Amore (Long Live Love) is an exclamation of passion in raw, weathered steel. The 22,000 pound structure spans 47 feet. Welded and bolted together, its carefully balanced, cantilevered elements give the sculpture both an industrial quality and elegant grace. 

I agree - it does soar against the sky with incredible grace.  I find it reminiscent of my childhood Tinkertoys; i love how it looks so simple, but the balancing act is fairly complex.  There is a fantastic interview with di Suvero here.  For W.B. Yeats is a reference to the last line in Yeats' 1920 poem Among School Children, "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" The guide states: "di Suvero reflects upon the artistic challenge of conveying feeling through form.  Much like the fluid, expressive motion of dance, the sculpture balances two elements that rock and pivot on a central point.  Despite its size, this kinetic iron assemblage of curves and angles, solids and voids cultivates an intimacy with its viewers, its capacity to twirl or sway enticing one's movement around the object."  As it was still when we came upon it, I gave it a forceful yet surreptitious shove and watched it turn slowly, the shadows of the piece shifting in the afternoon light.  It did make me think of dancing and i wanted desperately to take it home with me.  Since i can't do that, if anyone wants to know what I'd like for Christmas, here it is: http://ce.corcoran.edu/course/SL2250/Introduction-to-Metal-Sculpture - Section A, please, and i'm happy to just audit.  If genetics have anything to do with it, this just might be my artistic calling.  Plus, i love blowtorches (doesn't everyone, really?)

Next favorite:  Richard Serra's My Curves Are Not Mad.  This thing is spectacular, and i had recently fallen in love with a piece (5 of them, actually) he did in Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park called Wake.  Here, the viewer is invited to walk between the two curves, which compresses and tilts the space around you, providing interesting slants of light and shifts of perspective.  Actually, the experience of walking through My Curves Are Not Mad reminded me of the sensation I got walking through the Siq in Petra, Jordan.  It's also a favorite trick of Uncle Frank, who routinely has tiny entry vestibules and hallways in his houses that then open into a great room or even just a bigger bedroom with a higher ceiling - the whole intention of the design is to create a physical and subsequently subtle emotional drama of compression and then release.

Okay, moving on: Joan Miro's Moonbird, Magdalena Abakanowicz' Bronze Crowd (another piece where walking through the sculpture is key to understanding it), Henry Moore's Working Model for Three Piece No. 3, Vertabrae, and Aristide Maillol's La Nuit (see explanations here, here, here, and here)

Regarding La Nuit, my friend, the Structure of Cities major (who thus had lots of art history course requirements), was narrating from the brochure and paused after reading the description, cocked his head thoughtfully and said, "I thought she just looked really bummed."  This still cracks me up.

One of the most unique "pieces" was James Turrel's "skyscape" called Tending, (Blue), which can only be described as a sort of meditative experience.  The photos don't begin to capture it so I didn't put any up - but check it out here.

Well, you've all probably had enough of the art tour now, so I'll just give you a quick view of some of my other faves from the Gallery.  A prize (batch of homemade gelato, perhaps?) goes to the first person who correctly identifies the artist and title of all the following: 

The art tour was the end of my visit to Chez BFF, unfortunately, but the escape did much to restore my sanity and serenity, enabling me to face the dragons chez nous.

Bread and Roses

After saving up a year's worth of vacation (and home improvement injuries to body and soul), I have finally taken a real vacation - three whole weeks off! (You'll never see an American strike over having to work a few extra years, good little drones that we are!) This long absence is in part why there has been no news on the home front; in solidarity with the French, who I can't help but love for being one of the last populations willing to hold its entire society hostage to fight for a culture of leisure, and also with the perhaps more noble and certainly more justified textile workers of the 1900s whose protests are immortalized in poem and my Bryn Mawr class song, I have gone on strike. My life shall not be sweated from birth until life closes - give me bread, but give me roses!!

And so, even though I've been home a month now, I'm still (mostly) on home improvement strike and instead of amusing you with my latest construction calamity, I am taking you, fair reader(s?), on a tour of my new favorite U.S. city - Portland, Oregon - also known as The City of Roses, and home to amazing food, excellent beer, stellar design, sustainable living, and, most importantly, the company of near and dear friends. There is also, apparently, a stubborn libertarian nudist streak (we saw bumper stickers lauding the joys of naked hiking, jogging, and biking in our few days there), which only adds to its charm from a visitor's perspective. In short, despite the weather, I would put Portland ahead of even New Orleans as what America can be when we take the best of what the world has come up with and make it uniquely ours.

In many respects, Portland shares a similar feel to DC - it is based on the confluence of the Willamette (Will-AH-mette, by the way) and Columbia Rivers, upstream of the Pacific Ocean by a couple of hours. Portland proper has about 500,000 residents, but the greater area is about 2.2 million people, which is a lot bigger than I had thought. The city itself is superbly planned, with incredible public transit (free to all in the main 3-mile downtown area, and each rail car and bus equipped with bike hooks/racks) and bike lanes everywhere (I give the Portlanders extra kudos for biking in all that rain). There is not only recycling but also city-wide composting. Portland is the U.S.' most sustainable city and one of the top 10 in the world (some say #1, some say #2, but to be totally fair, I think Freiburg, Germany has been wrongly dismissed in the lists - not only can you basically not have a car in certain neighborhoods, but not even Portland has laws limiting how much heat can leak from your house). Green space abounds throughout the city, with Forest Park, the largest wilderness city park in the U.S., covering 5,000 acres, and the lovely Washington Park, perched on a hill overlooking the city and home to the International Rose Test Garden. Apparently all that rain makes for good rose growing. I agree:

Can't you just smell these? White roses have been my lifelong favorite, although after seeing the beauty and smelling the most perfectly delicate perfume - an almost half rose/half lavender scent - of the pale purply-pink ones below, I think there is at least a tie. There were so many unique and interesting specimens, it was hard to pick a favorite.

In addition to the amazing Test Garden, there is also the most lovely Chinese garden I have ever come across, the Lan Su Chinese Garden right in the middle of downtown. I am a huge fan of Japanese gardens and had never really seen a formal Chinese garden, but there are lots of similarities:

In general, P-town has a pretty funky artsy industrial feel to the place, and they've done a lot to revive old warehouses. Everywhere you go, there seems to be either cool art and/or great design.

Portland also has an incredible music scene whose sound seems to match the weather. If i'd included a soundtrack to this post, it would feature The Shins, The Decemberists, Blitzen Trapper, and my very beloved M. Ward. Also, keep your eyes open for the debut of Aquavit! Our friend's band practice space is perhaps the coolest one ever, housed in a former industrial warehouse and complete with center stage free for any of the bands to use for concerts, and guitar strings in the vending machine:

Then there's the food and the beer. Portland has nearly 30 microbreweries, the best pinot noir in the country, and generally has fabulous food everywhere. Best of all were the prices, which were usually the equivalent of taco night in Alexandria, no matter how nice the place. (This might have something to do with Portland's 25% unemployment rate.) The city also has a burgeoning foodcart scene, complete with every kind of food you can think of, even if it wasn't one you thought of actually eating:

But the pies at this place looked pretty awesome:

They even best DC with having one of a handful of US Teuscher chocolate boutiques (one of my desert island foods is a Teuscher champagne truffle)...

But as usual, they were closed at an absurdly early hour (i have a growing collection of photos of closed Teuscher stores). I guess the Swiss keep Bahnhofstrasse operating hours, no matter where in the world they are.

If you're into Asian food & architecture and keep late hours, Biwa is a dream come true. Kobe beef sliders with sake and seaweed salad at 11pm. It's also housed in some sort of architecture school, so even the bathrooms are uber cool.

While technically outside of Portland, I also have to say that the best wood-fired pizza I have ever had was at Solstice Wood Fire Cafe in Bingen, WA. You may not have thought blackberries, mascarpone, and prosciutto belonged on pizza, but you would be oh so very wrong.

There was also quite the taco scene, much to the delight of my spouse, who is planning to apply for the Head Lab Researcher/Taste Tester position here. If he gets it, I expect we'll become a bi-coastal couple:

And then, there is Broder, home to the best bloody mary on the planet, made with fine Danish aquavit and homemade pickled vegetables instead of a celery stick. I asked for the recipe, but given their total silence, I'd say it's a trade secret.

Although perhaps my favorite meal of all was the lovely breakfast our friends made for us at their beautiful bungalow apartment in Irvington, complete with home-grown tomatoes:

As well as being a great city, Portland is surrounded by natural beauty, including the Columbia Gorge, where the two rivers cleave the Cascade mountains into a swath of cliffs and waterfalls, and which was one of the last stops for Lewis and Clark in their nearly 3 year ordeal/exploration of the United States. Multnomah Falls, the most famous of the string of waterfalls along the Gorge, is the second highest in the U.S. at 620'.

Bridal Veil Falls is another really famous fall in the Gorge:

But the clear favorite was Latourelle Falls, whose scale and colors defy explanation.

What is amazing is the scale - here is a shot with the guys waving from behind the falls (the two red dots):

After I returned to work, I was walking down a hall in a distant part of the building, and passed a framed poster for National Public Lands Day that has probably hung on the wall since the 1990s, and suddenly realized that it was almost this very shot.

Sadly, four days in Portland just isn't nearly enough time to take it all in. As it is, we missed Pine State Biscuits by 30 minutes. But that's okay; aside from the best reason to visit (two of our favorite people on the planet), it's always good to save something for the next time.

(Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Western Exploration, where we hit the San Juan Islands, the Olympic National Park, and Whistler, Canada. As soon as I sort through the 700 photos, I'll get a few up on the blog.)