Yessiree! I remember when Chris Haberman asked me to curate the space he’s responsible for artifying at Olympic Mills [OM]. He said something to the effect of - “It’s 20,000 square feet of space. Think you can fill it?!?”

“Yessiree!” said I.

That was almost a year ago, so I put the awareness of that commitment on the shelf for a bit - to-be-handled-later.

Sometime after that, Miss Laura Nestler from Yelp.com approached me about an idea she had for a recycle art project that would explore how new technologies, say the internet and resources like Yelp.com, replace technologies preceeding them, like paper phone books.

I sent out a call, attracted about 15 artists to the project, and Laura and I threw a party to kick it off at my gallery with the artists and about 50 of her top-posting Yelpers. It was the first event at my gallery where there was a co-producer [Laura and Yelp], and sponsors [Dry Soda, Bend Distillery]. And it was a blast [for proof see the smiling people below at the kick-off party in the WAG gallery ].

Lovely Yelpers at the kick-off party for the PHONE BOOK MASH-UP

We called that project the PHONE BOOK MASHUP. Check out the project blog: CLICK HERE

Well, fast forward a couple of months. It was time to take the curation of the OM space off the shelf. I brainstormed with my “creative team”, and we came up with the idea of having an exhibition exploring evolution - human evolution, that is - with an eye to sustainability, survival, reuse/recycling - and including any and all art forms we could to explore the idea. We called it rdEVOLUTION.

My little logo for the 2-month long exhibition.

The timing of the MASHUP was the same as rdEVOLUTION’s exhibition time frame, and the themes were compatible, so it made sense to mash them. And now here we are - 3 weeks out from what’s shaping up to be an INCREDIBLE opening, with AMAZING art, YUMMY nibbles and drinks provided by our sponsors.

We’re calling the opening event the MASH UP BASH!!! And it all happens Friday, September 5th. There’s a private event from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. to co-mingle (and thank!) the artists, top Yelpers, our sponsors and volunteers - and then the doors open to anyone and everyone interested in seeing what I believe will be an amazing and moving exhibit.

Here’s a picture of the postcard for the event:

Join Us at the Mash Up Bash on Fri. Sept. 5th, 6-8:00 p.m.

And here are the logos of our wonderful drink sponsors:

And our food sponsor, and after-party destination:

503.228.5050 | 333 NW 13th Ave. Portland, OR 97209

Of course, if you click on the logos you’ll be swept away to their websites. In another browser window though so you don’t lose your place here…

And to close this ever so brief post, here’s one of the Phone Book entries…created by the talented Gregory Dickson. Here’s the crazy thing about this piece - each of those little rectangles he’s used to make this beautiful quilt design is from one of 4 phone books he used for this project. Check out his blog entry on the Mashup Blogsite: CLICK HERE

"518.716.215.503", ©2008 Gregory Dickson. Acrylic, gloss medium and phone book pages on canvas. 40" x 40" x 1¼"

More to come…

A.

August 19th, 2008 | Tags: Adrienne Fritze, art, art installation, art party, Chris Haberman, devolution, EVOLUTION, Gregory Dickson, Laura Nestler, Olympic Mills, phone book, Rachel FK Novak, rdEVOLUTION, revolution, Working Artists, Yelping | Category: Phone Book Mashup, Yummy Eats and Drinks, rdEVOLUTION | Leave a comment