cumbersome multiples

Cumbersome (adjective): Fiddly Labor. Multiples (adjective): Many Steps

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Day 2 at Museum of Contemporary Craft: Samiya Bashir print from her poem Coronagraphy

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Day one: Residency at Museum of Contemporary Craft. Samiya Bashir print edition of 10. Available for sale at the Shop

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John Henry Tweet: Words used to suppress dissent

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Dress rehearsal: Laws of the Blackbody Samiya Bashir poems as part of Poetry Press Week

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Samiya Bashir's poetry is in the house. Prepping for @poetrypressweek performance with Samiya and her talented players at Disjecta in Portland December 5 from 7-9. 

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home from DO Lectures USA. sorting through johnhenrytweets prints and a fair amount of laundry. unpacking takes a long time. inspired by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, Adele Stafford of Voices of Industry and Rich Hill of Ticla and the frisbee styling of Happy Brother Chipper Bro Bell. A host of quiet voices, great laughter and crushy crushes. delicious food by Eduardo Garcia and his merry pranksters and Campovida's enduring landscape. 

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how a certain 6 year old describes the experience of riding without training wheels. what is your strange joy?

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happy may day!

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coming out of hibernation. dreaming with first graders in portland, oregon. downloaded a city map of heritage trees and took the class to visit some of the ancestors (just blocks from school). wow! give each kid a map and the world changes. we came back to recently planted trees on the playground and they hung their beautiful messages (a little bit higher in the tree this year!) discovered that the old tags are starting to decompose and melt into the earth.

maps. scale. cycles. wishes are for the world. become a tree dreamer www.tree-dreams.org

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BILLIE HOLIDAY       On those last records her voice sounds almost gone— cracking, breaking—but hitting notes wasn't the point. She was after the bones of beauty not the flesh.  It was far too late for anything else. She sang what must happen, what has, the death of gardenias, the abyss that the abyss falls into.  It all scraped along her phrases, extracting the horrible meat hiding inside simple words, in the space between each word, between each note. And she broke our hearts until they could break no more, then broke them one more time just to make sure we got the point. Art isn't on the surface, not some decoration like frosting, like a flower in your hair— it's like a silk bag of pulverized crystal, glinting, sharp, able to cut in any direction. Her voice filled every room in our minds and showed how empty each was, how desolate the wind blowing through them and yet with sticks and stones, castoffs, garage sale losers she furnished each one with a shattered gritty beauty just before she took it all away.  —   Vern Rutsala

Rest in peace, Vern.             

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great, smart read by Namita Wiggers movingthings. http://brooklynrail.org/t/9565

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ILLAHEE LECTURE SERIES: Marina Zurkow spoke last night about her latest project in development “Sampan Super Chai,” which is a collaboration with Portland-based The Last Attempt at Greatness. The new project is an examination of Portland’s terroir: collecting, analyzing, and processing the substrate, waters, biota and anthropogenic artifacts of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Dark Ecology refers to the intersection of human-made systems with other systems.

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Why do you make things?

Peter Korn spoke about his book: "Why We Make Things and Why it Matters: The Education of a Craftsman" @craftmuseum. 

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tweets from PAM

Friday night, John Henry set up at the Portland Art Museum alongside  "Feast and Famine" , a show curated by Mary Weaver Chapin. Artist Michelle Swinehart created an event that brought together the show's curator, Chef Cory Shreiber, and a group of artists to discuss food — particularly the potato — with a table full of museum visitors. We distilled a series of broadsides from the event  and had a chance to taste Cory's delicious Potatoes Anna and Potato Salad.

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wooden type, furniture, gamblin pnca watershed grey ink, brayer, apron, press…think we are ready to turn a corner at PAM into our studio for the evening. john henry is printing as part of Feast and Famine: An Eating Experience tonight only — we will be set up just outside of the sold out event. It is $5 after 5 tonight at the Museum, come by!

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violence meets beauty

My Tree Dreams pal has returned from a journey  to South Africa. She described violence meets beauty and her phrase has been rolling around in my head ever since.

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one glorious poet. two cases of wooden type. a portable proofing press. ink. brayer. a little sweat and the help of an iPhone. @johnhenrytweets still standing. thanks RACC, PNCA & MoCC and thank you Joy Harjo