Our friends at SpaceCraft: Mission to Arts, an emerging nonprofit here in Portland, are making an AMAZING GIANT MURAL on the Albina Yard building! Make a donation to help them succeed!
We just got our first delivery of books by Raven Art Studios and we are SO excited.
Out Here is a gorgeous photographic and poetic view of the Steens Mountain area of Oregon, with photographs by Roger Dorband and poems and drawings by Ursula LeGuin. It’s so, so beautiful. It’s $35 and all our copies are AUTOGRAPHED! Ursula LeGuin is nominated for the Oregon Book Award for Out Here!
Blue Moon Over Thurman Street, also a collaboration between LeGuin/Dorband, is a poem to Thurman Street in Portland. Written and photographed in the mid-1980s, it captures the spirit of a place as a microcosm of the whole: of history and change within a city, and within the country. The photographs are stunning (and feature some awesome 80s fashion), and are accompanied by writing, interviews, poems, and reflections by LeGuin. Amazing. Also autographed, and we have four of the last copies in existence—it’s almost out of print, and won’t be reprinted. $25.
The Rogue, Portrait of a River, by Roger Dorband, is a photographic journey down the Rogue River, documenting all its changes along the way. Dorband narrates it with poetic musing on his own connections to, and emotions around, this river and its wildness as well as its use by people. A lush, beautiful book.
Come and get ‘em!!! These books are soooo lovely. ALL ARE AUTOGRAPHED. Did I mention that?
This building was on the corner of N. Russell and Williams near the shop, back when it was all part of the city of Albina. It was torn out when the whole neighborhood was gutted to build the convention center, freeway, and hospital.
Urban renewal, eesh.
Only a handful of buildings still attest to what the neighborhood once was—ours, and the two across the street; one just up from us (all boarded up now; it’s part of a steel plant), and others scattered here and there. When the I-5 went in over 400 homes were torn down in our neighborhood. So sad.
Oh, and a shout-out where a shout-out is due: Murray found this picture for me; I stumbled across it once during late-night historical research and couldn’t find it again. I believe it was called the Cook building, but would love to get confirmation on that!
