Art Auction this Sunday, Feb 13, at Switchyard Studios

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Switchyard Studios presents ‘Drawing on our Community’
An art auction event funding the establishment of the Switchyard Community Gallery.

Sunday, February 13th, 6-10 pm
6- 9 pm Silent Auction with Live Acoustic Music Entertainment
9-10 pm Live Auction, Emcee La Sergio presiding
Switchyard Studios, 109 SE Salmon #101
Free All Ages Event

Throughout January and February Switchyard Studios artists and collaborators draw on the theme of the loving and vital interdependent relationship within an arts community, and then auction the drawings to create a dynamic new space for the community.

Sunday February 13th in the Switchyard Gallery collaborative and individual pieces will be sold in a silent and live auction and given away in a drawing. Entertainment and refreshments will abound. La Sergio will preside as Master of Ceremonies. Performances by Billy Von Raven and others.

Proceeds will fund the construction of the Switchyard Gallery walls and the laying of an earthen floor in the Switchyard Gallery and Community space.

Participant member artists (The trains in our yard): Aiden Koch, Amelia Pillow, Amie Legette, Amira Mednick, Casey Burkhart, Courtney Keene, Curtis Williams of North Star Bags, Damon Ayers, David Knox, Emily Jones, Gabe Weiss, Heather MacKenzie, Jaik Faulk, Jeremy Davis, Johanna Robinson, Joshua Klyber, Kati Green, Katie Simpson Spain, Katie Todd, Lindsay DeArmond, Michelle Erickson, Michele Maule, Molly Jochem, Natalie Jenkins, Nicholas Bottman, Paul Maziar, Rachael Sabin, Rebecca Shelly, River Darensbourg, RJ Beus, Rochelle Koivunen, Ruth Hoffheimer, Sarah Hendrickson, Sarah Mikenis, Sarah K Small, Susan Sullivan, Virginia Driscoll.

Community Collaborators: Emily Nachison, Esther Yan, Michael Endo, River Darensbourg and others.

Portland artist Rochelle Koivunen founded Switchyard Studios in November 2008, which she now co-directs with Heather MacKenzie and Katie Simpson Spain. Switchyard provides affordable arts community work and exhibition space within a 10,000 square foot warehouse on the railroad tracks in industrial SE Portland. Switchyard contains a community workshop, the Switchyard Gallery, the individual spaces of over 35 artists and has served more than 60 artists in the past two years.

The mission of Switchyard Gallery is to be a community resource providing exhibition and event space, education, and mentoring to artists of diverse levels of experience, philosophies, walks of life, abilities, and identities. The Gallery, once completed, will invite Portland curators, artists, activists and educators to collaborate with each other in creating a dynamic exhibition roster. The political, emotional, theoretical, abstract and critical needs of the greater Portland community will be met by a curatorial focus on consciousness-raising and community-building installations, events/happenings and workshops. The Switchyard Gallery will be based on collective business and decision-making models and will collaborate with artists in the process of creating, publicizing and documenting exhibitions.

Switchyard n a railroad yard or terminal in which railroad cars are moved between tracks and trains are assembled and disassembled.

http://www.katiespain.com/Katie_Spain/switchyard

art studio dream (the lab within the switch)

hey there pilgrims, princesses, park rangers, papermakers, pharmacists, postal workers, plumbers, psychiatrists, & all of you other people;

last night i had a crazy dream about my old art studio. i usually don’t remember my dreams, so when i do i know they’re pieces of art. and, as this is an art blog, here it is!

the studio was in old town, portland. we called it ‘the lab’ and it’d been an art studio for at least 10 years before we were evacuated due to fire code violations preexisting our tenure there. collaboraroty, laboratory, art den, hotspot of awesome. it was gorgeous. i was there for a year and a half maybe. by the time we moved i had my own porch (fire escape). look up oregon casket llc. maybe you’ll see pictures. it was a casket factory about 100 years ago. aah, i may have old photos on this blog somewhere way back. or on my facebook page, which you can probably see, as i am practicing being shameless.

i moved to my current studio, the switchyard, from the lab with 10 other artists. we rented the new space raw, 2 years ago and built it up. look it up on flickr, there are some really good pictures of poetry readings that happen there.

anyhow, my dream was about breaking in there and working on art! at first i did it at night, but realized i could only in the daytime because there was no electricity. it’s hard to paint in the dark. when i was working there i had dreams about it being a huge labyrinthine haunted house (each ghost with a room of it’s own). this dream referenced some of those ghost rooms. it also had other bits that physically didn’t exist in the space. like a back loading dock thing with fire escape action (easy to break in and do guerilla painting projects), that looked a lot like the space on top of the broken freight elevator… stacked with old wood and signs and cardboard and rats. and in this dream there was a really nice white cat with a skin condition who showed me how to get in without a key (it may have been a mangey ghost). there were also other artists working there, in the shadows, in daylight hours. there were other situations too, it was a long dream, but you get the gist.

i told this dream to roro, who also manages switchyard, and managed the lab. and she told me that i am carrying the mantle of the old studio space into its current incarnation. as i am managing the studio business quite a bit now.

yes it is true. i am the lab within the switch.

that’s all for now. i’m going to try to figure out how to get letters of recommendation for grad schools. i was way too shy in college and now it’s biting me in the ass!

ah well, something will happen, and hopefully it will be good.

xoxo,
k

yay! new studio!

hi folks, i’m excited, today is a studio day!

here are a couple of photos of my new studio. it’s not done being organized, but it’s getting there.

it’s so exciting! just looking at the photos makes me itchy for artwork!

i’m going to get going and work on the pieces in these photos.

best,

kathleen morrisey simpson spain

so excited!!!!

hi folks!

it’s been a bit since i posted anything, i’ve been distracted by cranberries, mashed potato, cashew ‘cheesecake’, and things like that. but now that it’s black friday, and i don’t want to buy anything, i’m getting ready for the next fun things.

o i am so excited about tomorrow!!!!!!!
the event at HELD is  going to rock! please come see my work and if ya want i will even teach you how to make plastic bags into yarn! OMG!

i hope to see you soon, in between 4 and 7 tomorrow evening, saturday november 28th, 2009, at HELD (3033 NE Alberta, in Portland). it’s going to be so much fun!

ok, i am going to eat things now…

yay!!!!!

ps i am going to move my studio over like 3 spaces, within the same studio warehouse of fabulousness, Switchyard, and i will post updates about that as it happens. so far i’ve just been organizing a little, and packing up small things into the only boxes i have. it’s only like a 20 foot move, but i still need some of that packing magic to happen so it’ll go smoothly.

fun times!