Papercraft Toucan by Portland based illustrator and designer, Rory Phillips.

Flickr | Twitter

//////

Discover more work by creatives we’ve featured, here.
If you have a Flickr, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Behance or Cargo account connect with us.

True to Pacific Northwest form, the creatives in Portland, Oregon are very supportive of each other. Events overlap, organizations collaborate, media collide and all are invited to participate.

I’m a graphic artist—I cut my teeth on book covers and layout but prefer illustrations and posters these days. My creative scene is informed by a wide swath of events, organizations and individuals across multiple disciplines, but I’ll stick to the designer-y side of things (mostly) for this post.

Salons

Just this past October, Tsilli Pines and Eric Hillerns organized a week of design events all over the city for the inaugural Design Week Portland. Presentations, workshops, film screenings, studio tours, portfolio reviews and other designer-y events abounded. Designers descended upon the events with a ferver I hadn’t seen before.

Pines also organizes CreativeMornings/Portland, a branch of the ever-growing, international, free morning talk series. Each month, the series inspires the city with presentations by designers, web developers, museum curators, podcast hosts, fabrication specialists, photographers and more. CreativeMornings/Portland is entering it’s second year, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Designspeaks, another speaking engagement, is Hillerns’ concept. At its peak, it was held quarterly to celebrate regional design and its rich history. Though held less often lately, it remains one of the best events to bump elbows with the Pacific Northwest’s most talented and thoughtful designers.

AIGA Portland helped launch Designspeaks. It has several programs of note, including Career Tools, Digital Dialogues, Portfolio Day and Studio Tours. My favorite, however, is dMob. It’s simply a monthly meetup at a bar, to network, boast or gripe about the biz. The informal setting is quick to build camaraderie.

WeMake also has two regular events of note: sketchXchange is a monthly night showcasing a designer/illustrator/artist’s process through their sketchbooks. It’s a vulnerable position for the presenter, but the intimate space and positive atmosphere eases any anxiety. The other recurring WeMake event I love is their workshop series. Field trips to a a leather studio, garment factory, screen printing house and custom bamboo laser cutter all piqued my interest. At each workshop, participants actually make something.

And finally there’s Show & Tell. Portland State University’s design program just keeps getting better. Hosted by Kate Bingaman Burt, Show & Tell is a weekly portfolio presentation and question-and-answer session with designers from all over. Sometimes the designer is local, sometimes they’re visiting for workshops, sometimes they’re presenting via Skype. Through this, PSU students gain access to some of the best minds in the field. And since it’s open to the public, so do I.

Sites

Headed up by Rory Sparks, Em Space Book Arts Center is a collective of letterpress and book artists. They offer membership to access all their equipment, host artists in residency and hold workshops on printing and binding. The world of letterpress fascinates me. I’ve been lucky enough to print a few pieces with Em Spacers, including Kyle Durrie of Moveable Type fame.

The Independent Publishing Resource Center is another printmaker’s studio. Besides workspace access, workshops and a gallery, the IPRC is home to a library of over 6,000 self-published and independently produced materials that are not otherwise represented in public libraries—comics, chap books, novels, catalogs, zines, artists’ books, and more.

ADX is a maker’s playland. As their website says, its membership-based community is equal parts workspace and incubator in a 10,000 square-foot facility. I don’t know how to explain this in just a line. Sometimes you sign up to use their facility and make a bike or giant sign or boat or whatever your next project is. Sometimes you contact the ADX folks to hook you up with a member to make your project for you. And sometimes you just go check out their gallery or take a workshop to learn a new trade. There are more ideas at ADX than rain in Portland.

Beyond those three, Portland Center Stage, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Craft and YU Contemporary all have a constant stream of interesting events, exhibits and performances throughout the year.

Oh, and it’s worth noting Andy Baio and Andy McMillan’s inaugural XOXO – an arts and technology festival celebrating disruptive creativity – lived up to the excitement and already has creatives in the tech world salivating for next year. And Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, having just completed it’s tenth year, takes over Portland for ten days each autumn for a convergence of contemporary performance and visual art.

Society

Whew. After all that, I like to keep tabs on what Portland designers and artists are up to. Some are contemporaries, some are folks I’ve had the pleasure to work with and some I just admire from my afar. They’re always working on exciting projects.

Here’s just a few of the locals I dig in no particular order, but who you should know: Carson Ellis, Aaron Draplin, Santiago Uceda, Meg Hunt, Always with Honor, Brooke Weeber, Adam Garcia, KeeganMeegan & Co., BT Livermore and Mary Kate McDevitt.

Find out more:
Website | Twitter

/////

My Creative Scene is an insight into different creative & cultural happenings in cities where our members and readers live. Browse through more insider guides here or contact us to write about the arts scene where you are.

Matt Pierce has been a builder and tinkerer for as long as he can remember. This curiosity – to see how things work, take them apart, customize and create new things – led him to start Wood&Faulk, a blog about projects and DIY. He tells us more here…

Wood&Faulk represent well-made, classic lifestyle items with the familiarity of objects your grandparents might have carried. Taking inspiration from the old and the new, the classics and the future classics, Wood&Faulk make items that are built to last with timeless Americana style.

Wood&Faulk started as a simple blog by Matt Pierce in 2010.  It began as a place to document projects, ideas and DIY. Derived from project experiments on the blog and items used in the workshop, Wood&Faulk has developed into a little company known for bags, belts, accessories and other objects inspired by its Oregon home and its Kansas roots.

“The quintessential Wood&Faulk project has to be the Official Campstool. It was first produced as a DIY project, and turned into a more refined piece for customers and friends.” says Pierce. “Have you seen modern-day camp stools? Your grandpa would be ashamed to see you using one!”

Another such project is the Wood&Faulk belts. They were originally created as a project on the blog about how leather wears-in according to the way the user wears it. More and more people requested them, and they were later introduced as a regular store item.

Matt Pierce was born and raised in the Midwestern state of Kansas. He grew up learning auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing and welding from his family and friends and has continued to build things his entire life. All of these trades came together when he was living in and working on refinishing his own houses in Kansas. The origin of the name Wood&Faulk harkens to streets in his old neighborhood – Woodrow Ave. and Faulkner Street. After selling the Woodrow Ave. home, he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he found an excellent community of DIY culture, building, making and design that continues to inspire.  Nowadays he spends his free-time refinishing a small 104 year-old house and a FJ62 Land Cruiser.

The majority of W&F products are made in the Beam&Anchor building, where my studio resides. We’re a little family with a painter, soap maker, treasure hunters, upholsters, cabinet and furniture makers, and a retail shop on the ground floor. It’s an amazing building that faces the Union Pacific train yard, under the Fremont bridge in Portland Oregon. The sound of trains, the tools roaring inside, some great music and the sun falling over the West Hills all make this place really amazing. I’m really fortunate to be in the building.

Find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

//////

‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

Founder Michael J DeMeo gives us an insight into No Thoughts Magazine.

No Thoughts Magazine is a photo book disguised as a magazine.  Founded in August of 2009 by Michael J DeMeo out of the dust of Portland, Oregon’s Sugar Gallery. DeMeo used his contacts as photo curator and began work on producing a magazine that would feature both new and established photo talent from around the world. In 2011 photographer Alyssa Noches joined No Thoughts as co-editor and art director.

No Thoughts Media is the publishing house expansion of the magazine that officially began in April of 2012. No Thoughts Media is aimed at producing high quality artist books and zines at affordable prices and are currently based out of Boston, Massachusetts.

No Thoughts has been featured at the Papier Gache Fanzine Festival in Paris, Offprint Festival in Paris, Une Petite Foret Zine Library in Middlesbrough England, Flash Forward Photo Fest 2012 in Boston, Independent Photography Festival in Melbourne Australia, the Portland Zine Symposium, Baltimore Book Fest, Even My Mum Can Make a Book event in Turkey, Indie Photobook Library in Washington DC, Booklet Art Zine Library in Japan, the Camera Club New York Annual Zine and Self-Published Book Fair, the Spring Zine Thing in Boston, Philadelphia Photo Arts Fair, Printmania event in Somerville MA and more.

No Thoughts has just produced their 8th issue.

No Thoughts Eight takes delight in the moments of everyday magic. Those occasions when life takes on a heightened significance. Rebellious, tender, surreal, or somber these are the moments that make an impression. Highlights from No Thoughts Eight include the legendary photographs of New York photographer Flo Fox, the striking portraits of Michael Stipe and Zach Galifianakis from Ray Lego, and the timeless beauty found in the work of Brad Elterman.

The rest of the No Thoughts contributors you have come to know with every issue are here too, producing solid new work: Michael Barolet, Aaron Feaver, David Richardson, Daniel Tepper, Megan McIsaac, Alexander Bergstrom, Alyssa Noches, and Michael J DeMeo. We are also proud to feature the work of photographers we love but have never published before such as Samuel Quinn, Eddy Pula, Ruth Swanson and Amanda Jasnowski.

All in all No Thoughts Eight offers 26 different photographers across 60 pages in stark black and white on 70lb smooth laser-white paper. Our cover is printed on 80lb glossy cover stock and features an image by the world famous Synchrodogs.

Truly a “photobook disguised as a magazine”, No Thoughts 8 continues to provide thoughtful work by both established and emerging photographers in a high quality but affordable package.

Where to find No Thoughts Magazine:
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter

//////

Find more zines we’ve featured here.