Portland - Finale
On our last day in Portland we mantained a full program, but ended up wishing we had more time to include even more of the Portland community. Who knows, maybe we’ll have cause to return before too long?
One organization that we connected with that we would love to work with in the future was PEAR (program: education, art, recreation), a mentoring program for homeless youth from ages 14 - 24. We spoke with Beth Burns and Pipa Arend about youth homelessness in Portland and the importance of their gallery and visiting artist program.(MP3)
As we were finishing up that interview, Stephanie Snyder of Reed College’s Cooley gallery arrived. Cooley Gallery provided extensive logistical support for the Ghosttown project that we were here to help kick off. We talked about her work with Red76 and her ideas for future work that challenges traditional ideas of how to occupy a gallery space. At the end Sam Gould joined us briefly to discuss these ideas in relation to Ghosttown.(MP3)
After we finished talking to Stephanie, Jonathon from Indymedia Portland arrived and talked about their web radio programming and took our wireless mic onto the street outside the store front. (MP3)
Michael also talked for a bit with Laura Baldwin from the Portland public Defender’s office (MP3) before a different Laura and her husband Alan showed up from Dignity Village, and shared some stories about how their journey from homelessness began in the very neighborhood we were broadcasting from.(MP3)
We finished out the evening and the broadcast in Portland with a conversation with our host Sam Gould about his recent “Incident Report” about a hat traded for a piano…. and a brief mention of “The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art”.(MP3)
We had a wonderful time in Portland and met lots of fun people… we even recorded more stuff than we quite knew what to do with. Come back soon and you should find more pictures and a whole mess of sound files.
Many thanks to our hosts in Portland…. Red76… and all the kind folks from Mostlandia, too.(MP3)