Most everybody has their own shopping circuit in the Pearl District, one of Portland’s most-vibrant arts districts. Bounded by the Willamette River on the north, N.W. Burnside on the south, N.W. Broadway on the east and I-405 on the west, the live-work-play neighborhood covers more than a mile, so it’s easy to not stray from what you know. To get beyond our usual haunts, we turned the minimalist in us loose in search of all things clean-lined.
Are you living without stools beneath the eating bar in your kitchen because you can’t decide between the LEM Piston or the Emeco navy stool? Wondering whether armrests are a must-have or an amenity to jettison? We asked a furniture maker and three designers to demystify how to end up with the right kitchen seating for your aesthetic, your space and your family. So practice saying, “Please be seated!”
Only a frenemy would put you up in a typical guest room. You know, the one with the lamp you can’t read by and the decades-old mattress with the ditchlike dip in the middle. How to be a Hostess with the Mostest to your overnight pals? Oregon Home asked two interior designers, a home-couture seamstress and a designer-builder for the elements you need to end up with a stylish retreat.
Turning 50 this spring was more than a daylong celebration for mixed-media artist Katherine Mead. To commemorate her milestone birthday, the Lake Oswego, Ore., artist spent the previous year creating 50 new works of art, which she unveiled at a show she called “50 at 50” in the gallery space of a Northwest Portland architecture firm in August.
David Piper is a man of many identities.
By day, as an associate at SRG Partnership Inc. in Portland, the architect juggles the design and building of commercial structures such as a hospital in Honolulu. By evening, he is husband to his architect-wife, a daddy to their 3½-year-old son and, once he heads down to his basement studio, the potter behind David N. Piper Ceramics.
In the mid-1980s, a corporate downsizing at U.S. Bank and a diagnosis that one of her three daughters had Rett Syndrome, a degenerative neurological disorder, led Sally Sellers to leave behind computer programming work and take up quilting contemporary textiles.
Forget finding a hot date via the ads in the back of your favorite magazine: Dean Mook found a profession he’s still crazy about—blacksmithing—while perusing the ads in the back of Mother Earth 35 years ago.
Got a small fortune wrapped up in vinyl records that you want to enjoy hearing throughout your house? Want to recharge yourself in your favorite outdoor living area enjoying both the sound of the birds and the bebop hits of the Bird? Well, remove your earbuds and listen up! Oregon Home asked three in-home audio professionals to fill us in on what makes for an audiophile’s dream residential sound system.
Grab some earplugs to protect your hearing when the whistle-blowing trains roll by, turn up your testosterone dial to keep aggressive contractors in their souped-up trucks from cutting you off and head for this lively design district in Portland where everything from paint to fine furniture to balloons for your next THANKS FOR WORKING ON OUR REMODEL bash awaits!
Most couture designers end up with a garment only after months of sketching, pattern-making, fabric-cutting, sewing, fitting and embellishing with ribbons and beads. Not painter Sue Lau. She takes brushes loaded with thinned-down acrylics to canvases topped with archival tissue paper to create her dresses, each of which captures the essence of a place such as Paris or Barcelona.
