Artwork by Alice Neel

Is “crone” a bad word?  My mother thinks so, but I’ve met a lot of other women who find the word empowering.  It is a word that has ties to traditions of goddess worship - and guys, I’m not talking about that Pamela Anderson poster you have in your dorm room.  Tradition had it that women faced three stages in life, maiden, mother and crone.  This is, of course, one better than what men were offered, as the XY chromasome goes in a straight line from boys to men.  In celebration of March’s Women’s History Month (shouldn’t that be Herstory?) Utrecht Portland is seeking submissions for work by mature women.  There is no particular theme, we are simply interested in knowing what kind of images women are creating after they’ve created families and careers, etc.  For more information email heather at utrechtgallery@gmail.com.

Cold encaustic is one of those oxymoronic words, like cold fusion in physics, or jumbo shrimp and military intelligence.  The word encaustic means, literally, to burn in or heat with an iron, so it does seem contradictory to suggest that one can execute an encaustic painting without applying heat.  But if a painting looks like encaustic, and behaves like encaustic, then is it not encaustic, even without the heat?  One should remember that any oil painting dries by “burning in”, as oils dry by a chemical oxidation.  Fire is simply rapid oxidation accompanied by heat and flame, and anyone who has piled up oily rags until they burst into flame from spontaneous combustion understands that straight oils also dry by burning in. 

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Carved Maple by Kelly McCarty

What do humans and trees have in common?  DNA, for one thing.  And while for humans, it may be true that beauty is only skin deep, for trees it is just the opposite - beauty lies beneath the bark.  I once lived on 40 acres of rural property North of Bellingham, Washington, in a house with two wood stoves and two chainsaws.  When you chop a couple cords of wood for winter, you quickly learn that the tree sections where the trunk splits into two branches represents the hardest wood to split, and those sections tend to get set aside.  As these sections accumulated I noticed that they had a definite appearance of a torso.  The really interesting thing was that they seemed to have clear gender associations as well - some were definitely female and others male, with a few trans-gender trees thrown in as well!  When carved these sections reveal some similar traits with their distant human cousins.  The outer layers of wood, over what would be the hips, were soft and fleshy.  As you carve inward, toward the base of what would be our lower spine, the wood becomes much harder and denser, and areas of complex grain structure correlate to areas of human biological complexity.   It is some of the easiest carving I’ve ever done, as the form truly fell out of the material.  What does this mean?  My guess, not being a genetic biologist, would be that there are snippets of DNA which are shared by both humans and trees, and that the information coding that instructs a tree to branch out is related to the coding that tells our cells to grow two legs out of one trunk.  The bottom line (pun intended) is that there is always much to learn from the process of creating art!

Currently on view at Utrecht Portland is a 25 year retrospective of work by artist and store manager, Kelly McCarty.  This show runs through December.

If you have technical questions about art supplies for us at Utrecht Portland, feel free to ask! If we can’t find an answer for you, we’ll make one up that sounds really convincing.  (Not really, that’s just to show we have a sense of humor!) 

Hello, my name is Kelly McCarty I am the manager of Utrecht’s Portland store, located in the heart of the Pearl district, near most of the major art galleries and the Museum of Contemporary Craft.  I have been working at Utrecht for almost four years, starting out as a part time associate, becoming manager a year and a half ago.  We have some of the most experienced art associates you will find, and we pride ourselves on being your source for trusted information about art materials.

I have been an artist now for a quarter of a century, taking my first art class as an undergraduate at Pacific Lutheran University in 1981.  I have over six years of experience as an art retailer, have owned my own art gallery in La Conner, Washington, was represented by the Lucia Douglas Gallery in Bellingham, Washington, and have shown my work at dozens of alternative venues in Washington and Oregon.  I am a painter and sculptor, but I couldn’t draw my way out of a closet!

We are located at 1122 NW Everett Street, just a couple blocks northwest of Powell’s bookstore.  Utrecht Portland is a full service art supplies store carrying products from hundreds of national brands.  Utrecht is also a manufacturer, and we have been making oil and acrylic paints in our Brooklyn, New York factory since the 1950’s.  Some of the great abstract expressionist work you’ve seen in museums was done with Utrecht paint!  Professional artists today still know Utrecht as a brand that means quality at a great price – if you haven’t tried Utrecht paint then come by and ask for a sample so you can experience the quality of Utrecht paints yourself.

Every associate at Utrecht Portland is a working artist (ok, we’ve got one poet).  Our senior associate, Daniel “Frank” Giacometti has over 19 years of experience with Utrecht -and the best last name in the art business.  He and his brother used to run our New York store, and visiting artists still come in and ask for Frank because of his excellent customer service.  Our A.M.1 and resident poet, Dana, has 9 years of customer service experience and handles our special orders.  If you need something unique, she will help you get it.  Eva and Kimber are working artists who have both been featured recently in the art publication Portland Modern, and Nishiki is a PSU art grad and another working artist who regularly shows in Portland.  Heather, Nick and Alex are our student associates who all get straight A’s in art material knowledge.

At Portland Utrecht, we help everyone from Portland’s top professional artists, architects and art instructors to beginners and hobbyists.  It doesn’t matter what your skill level is, what we care about is art, and we can help you achieve your dreams and visions.  Ask anyone - at Utrecht we take the time to teach you about art materials and we share our knowledge and experience so that your art can become the best it can be.  That’s why we’ve become known as “The Trusted Resource™.”

Please come visit us soon, we’d love to see you!