clumsygirl: art + craft + tomfoolery

Yesterday I spent some time going around the Alberta Street neighborhood, getting local businesses to put up posters for the upcoming Scrap event, Iron Artist*. I've been volunteering at Scrap most Thursdays, and have managed to embroil myself in the Iron Artist preparations. Scrap is an amazing place. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who has a crafty streak. All the materials are donated. All but three people (at the director level) are volunteers. The money goes to further education and promotion of reuse/recycle ideas. I watched yesterday as a bike camp** came in and all the kids were allowed to pick out two scrappy items to take and attatch to their bikes, while the coordinator told the kids why we try to recylce and what Scrap does. It was pretty rad. The building has some of the old Iron Artist pieces attached to walls and ceilings, and the kids roamed around exclaiming over all the bits and doodads.

A neighbor has donated use of their empty lot for the last few years, to hold Iron Artist. This year, I'm in charge of the lot-cleanup. We're going to be meeting from 5pm-9pm on Wed, Aug 15th to clean out the lot in preparation. Hands-on-Portland is arranging a local business to send volunteers, but I wanted to let all of you know that you are more than welcome to come help. It's going to be a lot of weed pulling, sweeping and dumpsterizing. The more the merrier, you know. If anyone wants some swags of butterfly bush blooms, there's a ton onsite, and we're going to be cutting them all down. So, come one, come all. Come help prep for a really cool, Ptown-original event.

* Often described as Iron Chef meets Junkyard Wars, Iron Artist is a sculpture competition in which ten teams of artists receive exactly the same materials and have three hours to build a sculpture based on a theme that is announced at the start of the event.
** Bike Camp. Is that not the coolest? They ride around Ptown and discover all the cool places you can go on bike. They have picnic lunches and learn about bike safety as well. Neat.