Help us clean house!  We’ll be having a floor sample sale THIS THURSDAY, from 6 – 9 pm at our Showroom with several of our lamp styles at up to 40% off.  Come get ‘em while they’re hot!

First Thursday Open House  //  May 2nd, 6 – 9 PM

Caravan Pacific Showroom
Lovejoy Activspace Building
1720 NW Lovejoy
Suite #120
Portland, OR 97209
*Entrance on NW 18th Street

It’s with some sadness that I announce that this Thursday will be our last Open House Event at the Showroom, we’re moving!  It’s been such a wonderful experience to have met so many makers and artists through the showroom and to be surrounded by their work every day.  It will be hard to leave the showroom behind, but I’m excited about the good things on the way:  I’ll be combining our Assembly and Manufacturing Studios at a larger space in NE Portland that is also home to friends and fellow makers Pigeon Toe Ceramics and Studio Olivine.

Our last artist has been one of my favorites since I moved Portland.  Renee Hartig paints beautiful canvases of the Oregon coast with layers of carefully mixed oil paints.  Inspired by trips to the mountains and coast, Renee credits Oregon’s natural beauty as one of the main influences in her work.  Her paintings are well-known through-out Portland and I’m honored to have a few of her newest works available in our Showroom through May.

Please come visit us for one last blast before we move!  Look forward to seeing you soon!

First Thursday Open House  //  May 2nd, 6 – 9 PM

Caravan Pacific Showroom
Lovejoy Activspace Building
1720 NW Lovejoy
Suite #120
Portland, OR 97209
*Entrance on NW 18th Street

My friend Nick Sario of Flotsam Furniture Design and I are delighted to be participating in this year’s Gathering of the Guilds Show at the Oregon Convention Center.

Each year, members of the Oregon Ceramic, Fiber, Glass, Metal and Wood-working Guilds gather (or rather, take over!) the Convention Center to display a phenomenal amount of work, talent and experience.  It’s one of the largest Guild shows in the country and hosts the work of several hundred artists and craftspeople.  Nick and I are excited to be participating with the Woodworkers Guild and looking forward to rubbing elbows with our fellow craftsmen.

Please come visit us this weekend in the Woodworking Section!

Gathering of the Guilds
April 26th, 27th and 28th
Oregon Convention Center
777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Portland, OR 97232

Thanks so much to Shelterrific for featuring us and our new Sullivan Table Lamp on their blog today.  As I was chatting with writer Nicole Curcio at my studio, I showed her the original prototype for the Sullivan (photo, left): a block of wood I had turned on the lathe.  The lathe is a fantastic wood-working tool and I really enjoy using it to create new shapes.  Much of the time, my designs are improvised on the spot with my gouges and some inspiration.  It’s a way of working that gives me some freedom as a designer, plus- I love turning!  There’s something really satisfying about carving away at a block of wood to arrive a beautiful shape.

Please check out Shelterrific for more posts on home decorating and cooking, they have a great recipe here.

To celebrate the release of our new Sullivan Table Lamp, we’re partnering with DPages - a Quarterly Online Design Magazine and Blog that highlights work and cutting-edge materials by today’s talented artists, architects and designers.  We’ll be sending the lucky winner a brand-new Sullivan Lamp in White + Walnut, fresh off the assembly floor.  Please check out the DPages blog for more information and a chance to win!

Many thanks to our friends at DPages for hosting the giveaway and for creating a great resource for those who appreciate modern design.  Good luck everyone!

We’re having a great Open House this Thursday!  Our newest lighting design, The Sullivan, will be on display (available on our website in mid-April) and we’ll have lots of other good stuff happening:  Woodturner Kevin Poest will be displaying some new work, including several lovely mini-vessels, we’ll have more prints by United Thread on display and Genki-Su will be offering an array of their fine Japanese drinking vinegars.

Caravan Pacific Showroom Address:
Lovejoy Activspace Building
1720 NW Lovejoy
Suite #120, Ground floor
Entrance on NW 18th Street

All items and artwork in the showroom are for sale.  Please inquire at info@caravan-pacific.com for pricing and delivery.

(Above:  Mini-vessels by Kevin Poest  ///   Genki-Su Japanese Drinking Vinegar in Yuzu Tangerine)

I’ve been meeting some really inspiring people in Portland lately, one of them is Damian Magista of Bee Local Honey.  Damian harvests honey from hives from Portland’s many neighborhoods to create artisinal honey with distinctive flavors.  The honey looks incredible and I love how he inspires whole communities to help him create his product.  Check out his great line of homegrown honey here:  www.beelocal.com

I’m really excited to introduce to you the next artists in our Showroom series:  Cyan Bott and Rebekah Scheer.

Both have a deep love of woodworking and use reclaimed cut-offs to create beautifully designed wooden canvases with geometric and industrial-edged patterns.

The artists will be at our Showroom this Thursday, March 7th for our next Open House.   Come kick back with us and celebrate some truly inspired art!  Keep reading for a hilarious and touching Q + A with the artists —>

Caravan Pacific Showroom
Open House:  Thursday, March 7th
6 – 9pm
Lovejoy Activspace Building
1720 NW Lovejoy
Suite #120, Ground floor
Entrance on NW 18th Ave.

Q+A with Cyan Bott and Rebekah Scheer

Years as an Artist:
1,000 combined.
Cyan:  Dog years. My parents were artists. I made my first Jasper Johns rip off when I was 7. But I never thought it was art then. I’m still not sure if I do.

Rebekah:  I also come from an ‘art’ family: my grandmother was an artist and family lore states that she strictly forbid my parents to dole out coloring books. Instead we got remnants of water color paper, Grandma Ilse’s old paint supplies, and nibs of conte crayons to mess about with. I started painting on canvas probably in junior high or early high school, but I also always messed around in my dad’s garage spaces… yes spaces plural. I am the daughter of a man with two garages.

When did you first start collaborating?
Cyan:  About 5 months ago.

Rebekah:  I started working at a restaurant where Cyan worked and found out that she’d also studied fiber and materials. I think we sort of secretly spied each others facebook pages until we figured out that we had a pretty similar aesthetic and that we were sort of “makers” in the same ways. I knew I liked her when she brought her drill into work one night to hang up a sign and muttered something about never trusting another man’s tools.

What is it about wood that speaks to you as an artistic material?
Cyan:  We both grew up in garages, shops, around wood workers; we were both inspired by those experiences. I think it was a natural progression to gravitate toward wood as a medium, and posses and innate love for it as a material.

Rebekah:  There’s something about the warmth that wood brings to a space, and the accessibility of it, plus it’s empowering to be able to build a useful, lasting object. I once heard the painter Lari Pittman talking about his innate tendency towards “fixing up”. Wether it was outfits for his pet chicken, the abandoned art of painting, or his California home, he feels drawn to fixing things up and ‘making pretty’. I think I sort of mash up that idea of “fixing up” with “making do” . You use what you got and you make it look good. I think wood lends itself quite readily to both those ideas… which leads into the next question: I kind of like the idea of making do with found wood and fixing it up into somethin’ nice.

What’s your favorite wood to work with?
Cyan:  Found wood, reclaimed CVG Fir, broken chairs.

Rebekah:  I also really like working with reclaimed wood. It comes with all kinds of charming flaws and character built right it. I’ve also started experimenting with hardwoods (due to my brief stint as Goby Walnut’s part time office girl) so right now I’m into black walnut.

Is there anyone or anything you’re influenced by?
Cyan:  Necessity. Function. Other artists. My ability to afford materials.

Rebekah:  Ditto. We’re both object junkies and have delightfully jam-packed homesteads. Right now, I’m super influenced by interiors/spaces/homes and the potential that a space has to influence the experiences that take place in and around it.

How do your surroundings affect your work?  Is there anything about living in Portland that inspires or challenges you?
Everything. We cull a lot of inspiration from the domestic sphere. A love for things found in the home, things that can be made for the home, even Portland’s relatively low cost of living is inspiring in that we (coming from SO Cal and the East coast) can finally afford the luxury of making a studio space, whereas that used to be the kitchen table.

Cyan:  Portland is at once beautiful and dreary; the chipped and faded facades it’s urban landscapes, the muted palate of the city, the woods, the rivers, that melancholy opaque grey light. I think for me the biggest challenge is that this city is so saturated with makers and part time waitresses, I feel a bit banal at times.

Rebekah:  The immediacy of nature in/around Portland is really inspiring. Feeling like a mammal on a planet  instead of a human in a city is good for the brain and all the other parts of you that need to function properly to be doing good work. I agree that it’s simultaneously inspiring and challenging that Portland is so saturated with artists. It’s like there’s a large art community, but also a thousand other people who could totally do your job if you just disappeared one winter into the mist of Forest Park.

Rebekah, how did working at Goby influence this project?

Rebekah:  I actually started working at Goby because I’d been spending time in the SAIC wood shop back in Chicago, right before I moved out to Portland. I had just learned how to turn wood and was using a bunch of really awesome tools, I think I just wanted access to all those tools again. The main benefit I got from Goby was learning things about wood: stuff about figure, quilting, spalting, and burl. I don’t have the constitution of an office girl so it wasn’t too long before I moved on, but I know more about wood than I did before, and it’s kinda fun to throw around the word chatoyance at a party.

What would you most like to create?
Cyan:  A house.

Rebekah:  Oh yeah, good answer. I’m also super into upholstery lately and have
been teaching myself how, through a string of little projects. I worked my
way up from kitchen chairs, to 60′s club chairs, to the bench seat of my
GMC, and just recently did a vintage office chair with the loveliest little
gold casters. Next I’d like to do a full blown arm chair and see how that
goes.

What’s the most challenging thing about creating this type of work?
C+ R:  Always wondering if the cute boys from the wood department will laugh.
That, and the splinters.

A big thank you to the wonderfully talented Leela Cyd who stopped by the showroom earlier this month to take my portrait for our website.  It’s been close to a year since I started my business and I feel so lucky to have landed in Portland.  Not only do I get the chance to meet people like Leela, who are as kind as they are talented, but there’s a creative energy in the air here that’s infectious and life-affirming.

Also, recently I’ve felt the need to start sharing a more personal perspective on my work and business here on this blog. I’m a private person and have always been a little shy of the blogosphere, but it was listening to this talk by Imogene + Willie that changed my mind about sharing my thoughts.   I feel that in building my business, I’m becoming part of a larger conversation about how we design and manufacture things in America.  There are a lot of small business owners spear-heading this movement, and I hope to be one of them.  I have a passion and curiosity when it comes to America’s manufacturing past and I hope that by sharing what I learn along the way, I can help build a better future.

If you’re interested in building on this conversation, please convo me on Twitter:  @caravanpacific

Also, please check out the Made In Portland section of Leela’s site for beautiful photography on local PDX makers.

Thanks!

It was such an honor to have our saucy Red Alberta Lamp mentioned in the February edition of Gray Magazine.  Even better was seeing some of our friends mentioned, congrats Woonwinkel and Style Garage!  I absolutely love this magazine for championing Northwest designers and introducing fresh takes on home design each month.   Check it out online or grab a copy at these fine places!