After a fantastic week helping an insightful group of students craft their own cinematic moments for Marylhurst University's Show:Tell Workshop (a workshop to support the efforts of teen artists and writers), I decided to treat myself with a viewing of Terence Malick's The Tree of Life. 

In my mind, Malick is the most important film maker in the world today. The Tree of Life does nothing to refute this. . .

To watch this film is to know the feeling of participating in a miracle. It is the finest film I've ever seen, and might be one of the most ambitious art works created in a very long time.

I would suggest that if you are to see no other film for the next five years then tonight, without hesitancy, go out, buy a ticket, and be a witness. . .

I guess if you're inclined to believe the LA Times or the Travel Channel website, then the place to visit in Portland is Voodoo Doughnuts. You see travelers in the Portland airport carrying the tell-tale pink boxes in lieu of actual carry-on luggage. In fact, while sitting at JFK airport in New York two weeks ago I saw a box of Voodoo being lovingly nudged through a disgruntled throng of morning commuters. And while I think Voodoo might say something truthful about Portland culture, I suspect it doesn't actually say much that is essential about Portland. 

If you want the essential Portland destination then I would refer you to SCRAP.

SCRAP sells recycled bits of detritus that its received as donations. While that may sound like countless other non-profit retail outlets you can think of, the big difference is that SCRAP sells its stuff (for lack of a better word) at ridiculously low prices. It's goal is to put art fodder in the hands of the masses, and it succeeds admirably. The clientele is actually eclectic, not just hipster-eccentric (although they find their way there too). I've watched people in SCRAP find objects that they immediately love— maybe they love them for their potential to be something else, or maybe they just love them for their living room. SCRAP appeals to the thrifty, the creative, and the curious: all of which are part of the spiritual core of Portland. When I buy things at SCRAP I linger over them and revisit them and treat them like the bits of treasure that they are, and I can do that without ever suffering from acid reflux on their behalf. 

Yesterday, SCRAP had an entire bin of 11" x 14" fiber and RC prints (in black and white as well as color) that a photographer had relinquished from his archives. Undoubtedly he'd gone digital. While many of the prints were product shots or early-90's big-hair studio lighting stock photography there were a few quieter gems: a muzzy black cat pawing across a linoleum wasteland, and a flock of birds creating a cloud of punctuation in the sky. Each cost a dollar. 

In a small tub next to them there was a small stack of images labeled MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY. I picked out half a dozen and then happily plunked down my two quarters. It intrigues me that in a digital world some of the finest and cheapest images I've encountered in months are printed on paper using very expensive imaging equipment. Obviously, that is a bit of circumstantial irony, which carries a lot more bite in Portland than fabricated irony.

What sort of art might you expect to find in a three-story, ten bedroom, luxury beach house get-a-way? In one word: plenty. Here's a partial inventory of the works on display in one such house along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. . .

• a poly-chromed balsa wood tug boat balancing precariously on two wooden balls and missing at least five tires
  
• one abstract acrylic painting photographed and printed on board with an umber orange sky and cream scumbled ground separated by a blue line leaking blood down the left side of the composition (the upper right corner of the sky also pierced and bleeding towards land)— all coated with a pebbly application of gel medium and floating in open black frame
  
• two teapot sized ceramic shells with milky smooth cavities
  
• Photoshopped mono print triptych of palm tree crowns matted in a frame meant to emulate the texture of a palm trunk
  
• mounted print of gel medium rendered palm tree stoically saluting a white nothingness bordered in a distressed Venetian frieze of botanical shapes
  
• black glass planter with torn sheets of gold leaf entombed below the surface
  
• 4' canvas print of a painting showing a Tuscan village tucked among rolling hills: with real paint highlights applied on top to emphasize sun washed roof lines and flowery fields
  
• earthenware jellybean-shaped vase with black nipple
  
• two cast plastic Florentine roundels with antique bronze finish in similarly finished frames (like ficticious spoila from the ceiling of an Old World ballroom; very opulent)
  
• black and gold paper collage with cardboard bits arranged in gridded pattern before painted with gold and mounted on a generous expanse of black paper (signed in gold pen with pink marble mat and bronzed frame)
  
• botanical watercolor reproduction of a lemon yellow tropical flower with the artist's signature mostly obscured by off-center and crooked maroon mat
  
• three poly-chromed ceramic fish on wooden plinths
  
• ceramic cast of a wicker basket with dark brown undertone accented with rubbed gold paint on high points (and gold glitter on bottom of the interior)
  
• two white serving trays displayed on end with primary and secondary color stripes framing a center image of a schooner and white beach lounge chair in the shoals, respectively
  
• two inkjet printouts of Roman planters with ripped edges (the edges painted black) floating over carved styrofoam blocks painted to resemble stone, all of which sits atop gloss black corrugated card stock in a shadowbox with gray marbled mats and burnished white gold frames