Seeking Artist Guerilla Urban Campers

Want to join the Artopium Art Troupe? Want to travel around the world, throwing art and music festivals? Tired of your usual, boring life and want to do something exciting and different? Do you enjoy camping; ever want to do long distance and long term camping? Do you have an artistic craft that you would like to sell? Want to become a gypsy? Want to do something so unorthodox that your Mom will worry about you, your friends will think you've lost your mind (but secredtly admire you), and ultimately feel the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile? Contact me. Let's talk.

Visit RovingFestival.com for more info!

Back in Portland

Well, I've arrived back in portland about a week ago and already an amazing plethora of excitment has already unfolded before me. After being greeted by my friends at the train station, I was whisked away for pizza and beer at rocco's (somewhat of a tradition now) then lead on an adventure to the zoo and then to karaoke at a bar called "Gypsy" (how appropriate).

I've made a new guerilla urban camp in Washington Park, and it's definitely one of my better camps. There is plenty of head room, and the hammock keeps me off the wet ground. It's been raining a lot here in Portland, but I've actually found myself wishing it would rain harder so I can see my camp taken to its limits. There's no better feeling of satisfaction then to build your own temporary home then kick back inside it and watch it protect you from the elements.

I've also made quite a bit of head-way getting the Artopium Art Troupe up and running. I now have keen brochures that explain the function of the Troupe and I will be setting up meetings for the Troupe soon. There are already a few contenders for troupe positions, and it looks like I may be able to have a decent groupe together, at least for booth vending around the city, within a few weeks.

New Festival in the Works

OK Folks, the next festival you've all been waiting for is now in the beginning stages. I've definitely decided that it will be in Portland (bet you didn't see that one coming). I have a few ideas about the location, but I won't say exactly where at this stage in the planning. Let's just say I'm shooting for downtown somewhere.

And this one's going to be big! No joke. I've got a great theme in mind and I hope to bring in a lot of different, very cool organizations to help put on something truly grand. If space and funding are available there will be two stages, and a very large area for booths. I'm currently writing up the budget for all of this, so if you, or anyone you know, can give me good estimates for stage, sound and lighting, as well as promotional ad space, it would be appreciated.

It would be nice to think that I can put together the festival I see in my mind by the end of this summer, but for the next Artopium Roving Festival to really be on the next level I'm thinking I may go ahead and set the date for 2010. I know this is really far ahead for most artists to book, so I'm going to wait a little while longer before opening the festival sign up.

As always, the festival is for Artopium.com Artist Members, so if you want to participate in the next festival be sure to sign up and create your Artopium profile page. It's free to join and it's easy to use! To get booked just add your Artopium profie URL to your message when you contact us.

In any case, I'll be heading back to Portland within a month or so and once there I'll begin talking with the city council and various departments to wee what is possible. Once I get the green light We'll all have a lot of work to do, but it's going to be fun! If you are interested in volunteering to help or even to join the Artopium Art Troupe, we are always looking to increase our forces. Just check out RovingFestival.com for more info.

I'm in Glenwood Springs, Colorado!

Hey folks, I've gone home for the holidays.

My last few weeks in Portland were wet and a bit dreary, but I managed to stay dry by squatting in what I must say is the finest and most pristine squat I have ever had the privilege to squat in. About 8 of us were sleeping in a 5 bedroom, 4 story (including basement) mini-mansion that someone found as an abandoned foreclosure right near the PSU campus. Besides, my tent is on it's way out.

For Thanksgiving I traveled to Seattle with a very good friend, then left Portland via Amtrak to Glenwood. I'll be in Glenwood for a while, then Denver, then hopefully to Austin, Texas for a bit. I'll then be heading back towards Glenwood, then to Portland by sometime near March. Anyway, that's the plan.

It's been snowing a lot here since I've arrived. A good friend told me it snowed in Portland just recently, but I'll bet it's not much compared to the consistent flow of the white fluffy stuff here in Glenwood.

Halloween

Well, I'm still here in Portland. Things have slowed down a bit in the jewelry department. I attribute this to the change in the season as the plentiful North Western rain not only drives out a lot of the tourists but creates a different, and possibly macabre mindset in the locals. That isn't to say I haven't been having fun. Some of those whom I've met that have lived in Portland for a while have told me that you're not a real Portlander unless you get wet. I personally love the rain, so it isn't getting me down.

For Halloween I had the distinct pleasure of partying with a group of some brilliant musicians and beautiful gypsies that form three of Portland's finer bands; NIAYH (Stands for: Now Is All You Have, check out their music video), Def Kids, and Shelter Kids. They performed at Reed College which is supposedly known for "rich hippies", whatever that means.

Also, in the time since my last entry, I've been hard at work building a more permanent urban camping shelter as packing up all of my gear every morning has become a nuisance. It would be nice to have a place where I could store my belongings instead of carrying them around with me all day. So I've moved out of Washington Park and into the much larger Forest Park. After doing several survey trips through Forest Park, each trip taking two or more days, I found a nice secluded place at the very top of the hill. To give you an idea of what this means, you really need to visit Forest Park as it is almost entirely comprised of hills that would make San Fransico jealous. My entire effort to survey the park was to merely find a flat spot that could hold several people through the night, away from the mainstream trails. Since everything to either side of any trail through the park is at a 45 degree incline or more, the only spot I could find was at the very top. This, however, means a 6 mile hike up one of Portlands highest and steepest hills to find it, with 100 foot drops-to-your-death along most of the trail. You can also get there by car and about a 1 mile hike, so getting supplies and people to the camp isn't necessarily hard. Only if you are coming by bus or streetcar. I hope to get more people up there soon. It's very peaceful and a bit exciting at the same time. It isn't completely city noise free as I can still hear the freight boats loading an unloading cargo along the Willamete River, and a few nights ago a pack of coyote came near my camp and began howling!

Back in the City of Roses

Hello all! I just returned from the Oregon regional rainbow gathering held this year in the Ochoco National Forest just outside of Prineville. I got there near the end of the gathering and there were maybe 60 or 70 brothers and sisters present. It was nice, as it created a real sense of intimacy and closeness. I have to admit that there were no elders there and that there was a bit more drinking than you would normally see at a rainbow gathering, but it was made up for by the mad pirate "space bag" play on the last day, and the family vibe that was felt by everyone.

At the end of the gathering, we spent a day cleaning up the campgrounds, then 19 of us carrying our own packs packed up on to a blue bus (also referred to as the blue pirate bus) and headed back into Portland. When we arrived, there were many brothers who had never been to Portland before and I offered to give them a tour of the city and show them a kosher place to sleep. After terrorizing Old Town / Chinatown with our crazy hippie ways and meandering through Pioneer Square, we rode the MAX to Washington Park and slept in the bushes. It was great having family with me in Wash. Park, sharing food and good times.

The next morning was Saturday, so naturally we went to Saturday Market at the Skidmore Fountain MAX stop. Our group split up as a brother and myself stayed in the market to sell jewelry on the sidewalk and the rest went to go check out the city. We agreed to meet back at Pioneer Square at 5 PM. However, it wasn't long before this brother and I found ourselves on another journey entirely, say, through the looking glass, as a very kind brother in the market traded some l for one of my pendants. I packed up my jewelry and decided to see the City of Roses in a new light. I have been here a while. Why not follow this new brother through the city and see it through his eyes? So I did. And we both wandered through downtown, a bit aimlessly, as I was following him, you see? And our trip through downtown led us right to Pioneer Square, and just as we arrive, there's everyone else from camp, standing at the MAX stop, yelling at us to hurry over to them. As we dash up to the stop, MAX tickets are thrust into our hands, a MAX train arrives, and we tossed onto the train, almost all in one motion.

We're told "You're going to a party," although I'm still reeling from the fact that if we hadn't arrived precisely when we did we would not have seen anyone this evening, so it was meant to be that we should be going. An hour and a half MAX-plus-bus ride later we arrived in Forrest Grove to find ourselves at the McMenamins Grand Lodge. This has to be the grandest, largest, manor of an estate-mansion I have ever seen. It's three stories tall and hundreds of rooms big with an east and west wing, and sits on a many acre garden. As we begin to walk through we quickly notice the tent areas for the stage and band and all of the incredibly rich looking white folk everywhere. Then someone points out to me the compass the square and the G symbol over the main entrance and I quickly realize this is a Freemasonic lodge, a Freemasonic party. And here we are, standing on the outskirts of this very rich place and very rich party looking very dire, tired, dirty, worn down and very hippie. I mean, we just cam back from the regional, slept in the park, wandered downtown, and now we're here.

However, when the blue bus finally arrived, it was explained to me that the lodge used to be a Freemasonic "old people's home", but is now leased by the McMenamins as a hotel of sorts, with a spa, hot-tub area, and a bar called "The Doctors Office" in the basement hall.
Also in the basement were a series of restrooms with showers in them, so some of us naturally jumped in and got clean, and although our garb didn't fit in with the slacks and collard shirts of most of the others at the party, we quickly fixed that by stripping to our undies and sitting in the hot tub singing gypsy songs. We danced and rocked out to the band playing, and although I was a bit apprehensive about the type of people at the party, I found everyone to be accepting and kind.

Speaking of Freemasonic buildings, the Mcmenamins Grand Lodge isn't the only Freemasonic building near Portland no longer used by the Freemasons. A few blocks away from the Central Public Library is the largest Masonic Temple in Portland, built in 1921 as a recreation of King Soloman's Temple and for the purposed of housing all the branches of Freemasonry, including the Eastern Star, Kinghts Templer, et. al. it is now called the Mark Building and is used as the Portland Art Museum administrative offices. Noticing that Portland has many curiously no-longer-used freemasonic buildings, and that the predominant symbol of the city is the rose, I began to think of another secret society I know of that uses the rose as it's symbol: the Rosicrucians. Hmmmm.

Hempfest in Seattle

I just spent the last week in Seattle, Washington. The first weekend of which I spent at Hempfest, an amazingly huge festival of music, art and products for the purpose of marijuana anti-prohibition, and pro-legalization. I would have to say at least 30 to 40 thousand people attended throughout the day and witnessed the 3 stages of great, live bands, and the many booth vendors along the Seattle beach a few blocks down from Pike's Market.

To get to Seattle, my friends and I caught a ride using Craig's List ride-share category. We arrived at 2am and caught up with some friends who were dancing at a club party in Pioneer Square. Yes, both Seattle and Portland have a Pioneer Square, but they are quite different places to visit. We followed our friends directions, but alas we couldn't tell if anyone was home, so after crashing on the sidewalk in front of a "friend of a friend's" place, with a mild hangover the lot of us made our way to the festival.

Synchronistically, at the festival, I ran into several rainbow brothers and sisters whom I worked with at Milliways Kitchen during the Rainbow National, one of which let me stay in her backyard. Expecting to only stay for the weekend of the festival I missed my rideshare back to Portland and ended up staying an entire week. Luckily my friend Paul was there on business and let me stay in his hotel room. I'm lucky because Seattle is not as comfortable of a place to do urban camping as Portland. There aren't convenient parks to camp in, and even if there were the police don't seem as friendly about the idea.

One very cool place to go if you're ever in Seattle is Ballard. If there is anywhere I would try to urban camp in Seattle it would be the Ballard district, although I never did have to urban camp in Ballard as I met many people who were willing to let me stay at their place on their couch. You can meet lots of cool people at the Bergen Triangle Plaza at the center of Ballard, or at Mr. Spot's Chai House right next to the Triangle.