PDX – Dactyl Life

Last month I agreed to go on a missive mission of sorts. Through Twitter, I connected with a lady who sent me a postcard of an old UFO museum in Portland. She asked that I go check out the area, find out if it’s still there and report back. I need a good excuse to leave my apartment so I was quick to agree. The area is just blocks from my apartment so I took the opportunity to take a walk around Portland with my boyfriend. I think we walked about 5 miles total! It was pretty crazy and my hips hurt so bad by the time we got home. Totally worth it to shoot a roll of film!

This sign is where the UFO museum used to be. It’s now some sort of youth center that I don’t even believe is named Ace Apts. It’s a pretty neat sign though, huh?

The buildings in this city are so good. I have to stop myself from taking a picture of every building I come across.

Downtown! Well, kind of. Part of it! I wish we had cloudy days again.

A dactyl in the wild.

I don’t know if there is anything better than trees blooming. I wish they would look like that all the time!

I absolutely love bay windows! Every detail on this building is so spot on.

I also really love doors that aren’t common colors. Especially when the rest of the building and surrounding area is so drab.

The train station is so photogenic. I will never forget my first visit to Portland, arriving by train at Union Station. Seeing the station always brings back those memories. I had just turned 18; my mom bought me and my ex train tickets to see the city. Ever since that trip, I longed to live in Portland. Now I do and it’s pretty awesome.

On Tuesday, January 20th, I went to the first meeting of PDXCC, or Portland Correspondence Co-op. The meeting was held at the IPRC, and it was basically a letter writing social. It was so much fun! I was completely surprised to see how many people were there; there had to be at least 30 people! To be fair, I haven’t been to a lot of letter writing socials (okay, I’ve been to one) but I never imagined more than 10 people to show up to one. I guess it’s not that surprising, Portland is a city full of creative folks!

The meeting started out with a little speech by Niko, who started the PDXCC. It was a great introduction for the people who weren’t too familiar with mail art, and he also passed around some great examples of mail art and mail art books. After that, it was a free for all! I did more socializing than letter writing. I grabbed one of the passports to get my first official PDXCC artistamp, as well as a few other artistamps made by some of the attendees.

I shared a table with several people, most were collaging postcards. I ended up talking to a nice woman named Samantha for most of the evening. She is an avid letter writing but didn’t know much about mail art. I told her about my experience with mail art, and about the kind of things people send along in letters. I showed her the stationery I made, and gave her some suggestions on how to find some cool pen pals.

I’m so happy I went! I had a really hard time leaving my apartment (I always do) but knew that I was going to have some fun so I forced myself to get on my bike and head down. These will be monthly meetings, and the next one will be on February 17th. I’m hopefully going to have some time to make an artistamp for the event! One of the conditions of taking a passport is a the promise to make a stamp to distribute at a future event.