Yes, there is a retiree in me aching to break free.

For months I’ve been needing something, I know not what. Between succumbing to an Oregon seasonal depression and working too much online, I’ve felt really disconnected from everything I love. Also, after a year and a half of being a new momma, I’m ready to try something new. So I’m taking a beginner’s quilting class at Greenbaum’s Quilted Forest.

Today I shirked my work commitments and spent three hours picking out the fabrics for my first quilt. I have to say it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. The colors! The fabrics! The challenge of challenging yourself not to get all matchy matchy! I worked with Sally, who guided me with patience, humor and dynamism through the process. The image here is a general paste-up  of what one pieced section of the quilt will look like.

Being a Lancaster County girl at heart, I’m already all too familiar with the Log Cabin design, which as far as I can tell was created by a pretty unimaginative labyrinth builder. Most of the log cabins I’ve encountered have been of the black and magenta and blue Amish palette variety.

But I am also the kind of person who categorically rejects the country aesthetic. Just not me. Luckily, I’m learning there is a whole subculture of crazy quilters out here in the West who are designing and making stuff that could just as easily hang in the MoMa. Is that an exaggeration? Yes. The MoMa is not ready to work with this kind of crazy. It feels like Frank Stella having tea with Roy Lichtenstein.

Given a good fabric store and a couple of hours, my head just might explode for the possibilities. So I thought of some people I would like to send love to in the form of a handmade quilt, winnowed that list down to one, and tried to pick some colors and patterns that would resonate for this special friend.

A couple of clues: fairytale forest, batik tropical prints, fruit, theater and nature all in one.

Does it work? Will the finished product feel a little too mustardy green? Will it matter that I haven’t sewn anything since I was about 17, the time I made a skirt that ended above my butt cheeks? (by accident of course).

I don’t know. But I’m starting to feel that all I ever do is tell stories. This I want to spin some I can cuddle up under.

I am deliriously happy this morning.

I just watched the transformation of my friend Jessica Ramey’s garage into a DIY studio, where she will be holding crafting workshops and being all-around amazing.

The best thing about DIY has always been the spirit of innovation, the sheer chaotic abundance of the world of Etsy, products produced by people, crafts made by hand and designed by a single person. Gifts that don’t feel fabricated by machine in China. When Martha Stewart Omnimedia picks up on your trend, you know you’ve got a populist movement made mainstream.

But! It is still possible to seek out your domestic mavens a little closer to home.

Take my friend Jessica, of the Northwest Nest blog.

You might also know her as the genius behind the Salem Zine Project.

Jessica just launched this studio in her home and is holding an open house on Sunday October 10 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. (contact her for details on where this is happening) to introduce people to the studio’s series of workshops and events.

Some days I have the feeling that Jessica is the only person doing anything within a 20-mile radius.

I don’t want to insult all of your cultural producers out there, but seriously, is there anything this woman can’t do? Or hasn’t done in the past month?

She is making me feel like a lazy, do-nothing schlubb. And I am loving her more for it every day.

If I can add… I might also be in love with her husband — and with the image of a boring space for cars being co-opted for  a different kind of travel.

Creative travel!

I had to giggle a bit a while back when I got lumped into Salem’s new creative class, but that got me thinking. An influx of new creative folks into Salem’s affordable, sometimes charming, often grubby Northeast city section? Is there any legitimacy to that?

There is!

I’ve always held that stuff happens in Salem — it’s just laughlingly under-the-radar. Well… something is definitely afoot in the Northeast Salem neighborhoods.

All it took was one party at my friend the poet’s house (also in NE Salem) to determine that there are a lot of us small-housers out here milking the city for its historic properties and living large on a tiny footprint. In addition to me, my sculptor of a husband and my baby Dash, a.k.a. The Next Alexander Calder, we have:

Michael Chasar, a Poet with an Penchant for Pop

Stephanie Lenox, editor of Blood Orange Review, a well-received online literary mag

William Bragg, photographer - or you might know him as a champion for the underpriveleged

Jonathan Bucci, multimedia artist, and his writer wife, Rachel Bucci

Any more you can think of? Whom have I forgotten? Whom haven’t I met yet?

As far as I know, all of the people listed here have been in Salem for five years or less. Yay for new blood — and for E.B. White quotes that can lend themselves to cities other than New York.

You were probably among the hundreds who gathered at a retooled space on Commercial Street last Friday to celebrate the opening of Clockwork’s Cafe and Cultural Center, a project dreamed up by Ryan Rogers and his merry men (and women) of Culture Shock.

I wasn’t.

I was throwing together dinner while preparing Dash for his oh so early 7 p.m. bedtime. But I heard it was a great party and I knew I had to get down there soon to see what’s brewing.

For one, Stumptown! Perhaps the best development for us coffee-addicted snooty sippers, the cafe is serving the country’s best coffee. Stumptown doesn’t let just any old coffee place serve its roasts. From what I hear from Ryan, they  interview you. Clockworks must have been deemed worthy because I’m sipping some Indonesian varietal at this very moment.

As you can tell from the pictures, Clockworks isn’t your garden variety cafe that’s been thrown together with no concept. Opening as it does, just as the Steampunk aesthetic is reaching the mainstream, it’s got a clock fixture and found art sensibility that hasn’t been done well (if at all) in Salem before.

Clockworks is a nonprofit, and as such, it will be offering a wide program of events. I’d be tempted to say something for everyone, but I kind of throw up a little in my mouth everytime I read that, so I’ll just say that I might even want to offer my own writing class in its rocking spaces.

Some things one might do at Clockworks:

• Take a class (perhaps even by yours truly, more on that to come) at C4 Academy
• Give a class (Salem creatives, contact Christy Seehey, 503-399-7076)
• Learn how to dance
• Rock out, slam towards, puppet over, laugh in on the Clockworks stage (seen above)
• Make out in the huge barrel at the back of the main room
• Let your kids play in the kids space in the mezzanine
• Cut some digital audio once the sound room is finished
• Find some space to clear your head in the little writing nook
• Hang with friends in the (actually very cool) lounging area
• Read a book in a pillow-laden bathtub (to come!)

Something for everyone? (Blech! Sorry…) Perhaps not. There’s definitely nothing for the Keep Salem Lame-r’s here, but they’ll just stay at home anyway.

When was the last time you strolled the galleries of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, on the Willamette University campus? Last month? A few years back? Never? Seriously? You’ve never even BEEN there? There’s one major world-class art museum in this town and you haven’t shown your ugly mug there since you’ve been in Salem?

My fugly mug was there last week — and let its toothy smile tell you it’s time to revisit Hallie Ford.

In fact, get thee to Hallie Ford tomorrow night for the opening of the museum’s new rotating permanent collection. If you’ve read my column this month, you know that I think the revamp of the old gallery spaces there is a knockout. But maybe I’m just blowing hot air? (I’m not). Decide for yourself. It’s not often there is not-to-be-missed public opening of a revamped gallery featuring new works by some of Oregon’s most important artists.

For a primer on the new exhibition, called “On the Edge” (insert more specific subtitle here), read Professor Roger Hall’s shakedown on Pacific Northwest Art here.

And to mingle with the hoi-est of polloi, or maybe just some really engaged and interesting Salemites interested in art, you might want to go to the public opening, tomorrow night, 5-8 p.m.

I hope there’s wine and cheese, but if not, I’ll settle for another chance to look at Robert Hess’s “Passage.”

I’ve discovered the perfect superhero for my early Pacific Northwest mornings. His name is Too Much Coffee Man, and I’m in love.

I met the creator of the legend, Portland-based comic book artist Shannon Wheeler, in the comics section of Wordstock yesterday.

I had given over my Saturday to geeking out on new books, local presses, author readings and nerdy book girl gifts at the event, still happening today up at the Portland Convention Center. But I never expected I might fulfill one of my lifelong goals, which was to find a comic that spoke specifically to me.

Some comics I have tried to achieve this dream:

Promethea. (Never really got attached).

Y: The Last Man.  (Came pretty darn close).

Ghost World.  (Too young for me, even when I was teenager myself).

But now I have it.

The man, the myth, TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN!

I have a strong suspicion that I like this comic based on my own substance addiction. I also wasn’t surprised to learn that Mr. Wheeler started this comic about 20 years ago as a joke, never really anticipating the kind of loyalty he would amass from legions of coffee drinkers.

When Too Much Coffee Man ignores his phone, shuffles around his to-do list and bolsters himself for every new adventure with a giant cup of coffee, it stirs my heart in the most familiar of ways.

But what I really love is his attitude towards the world. Too Much Coffee Man is a bit of an existentialist. He spends a lot of time sitting in an old, worn-out lounge chair. And he embarks on his adventures with a willful and obvious need to get back to that chair and his coffee pot, who is its own character in the strip.

I could never date Too Much Coffee Man. He’s got a coffee cup for a head and wears red long underwear with a flap in the back. He doesn’t seem to have a job, and ewwwww… he smokes.

You don’t need to tell me that my new superhero isn’t really a hero at all.

But I love that he is out there — a character embodiment of what it feels like to sit in the morning and drink a cup of coffee — a little lazy, a little contemplative, a little reluctant about taking on the day, a little annoyed by having to finish the cup.

Inspiration: I could make that, and I just might.

Perspiration: I would have to work very hard and a long time to afford that.

Mediation: I will have to convince my husband that we need this $500 original portrait of an Edward Gorey-esque Cookie Monster.

Then there is a fourth group of artists that leaves me flummoxed and my digital camera’s flash card empty,  artists that are so good at what they does that I feel uncomfortable taking a photograph of their work.  Generally these are people doing something so remarkable and so unique that I couldn’t for the life of me duplicate it — ever.

And I want it — oh so bad.

Melissa Stiles is one of those people.

A Portland-based former architect who decided to stay at home with her children and create structural jewelry that might add some really nice lines to my face, Stiles probably had the sexiest stand at the fair. She had a display of scores of sound jewelry designs, every single piece of which I would wear.

Here are a few other fine stand-outs that were really great, but perhaps not so stellar as to induce me into an art-viewer’s stupor:

Kevin Eslinger – I want your Cookie Monster! And not just the $30 print, but the $500 original!

Rachel Austin — I want one of your luminescent map paintings!

And more than anything else, Vicki Banks, I desperately want your $1,300 bronze scarecrow! I look at this woman’s work and it is imminently clear that she is someone who really sees the world.

Also, I would like a scallop-edged forest green medieval-looking bathrobe that makes me feel like Cate Blanchette in Elizabeth. But I need the size large to actually be large enough to fit me.

I’ve been a lover of art fairs since I was a 17-year-old brooding would-be ceramic artist, undiscovered, unimpressed, oh so unhappy. I like to think I spent the best days of my youth attending the art fairs in Lancaster County, Mt. Gretna, PA, and later in Des Moines, dreaming of a life of traveling from fair to fair, hawking my wares to support my process.

Later, after interviewing quite a few major American craft artists, it became clear to me that I never would have survived the schedule of producing and selling, producing and selling.

These days I’m more of a watcher than a judger. And I can’t wait for the chance to take in all of the stands at the Salem Art Fair and Festival, which is happening this weekend. When we moved to Salem, any mention of this event was like a happy little footnote to all of our conversations:

“Well, we do have a great art fair…”

I’ll be the judge of that.

I mean, I’ll keep my eyes open.

What I’m looking forward to most:

Ken Peterson’s cheeky sculptures
Figuring out the genre distinctions of “cottage crafts”
Marina Teraud’s fantasy prints
Melanie Habets femme-tastic fashions
The sensuous lines of La Chaussee blown glass

And of course, discovery, discovery, DISCOVERY!

I almost didn’t make it to First Wednesday last week — Salem’s attempt to get people out in the streets and experiencing downtown. You see, I go downtown all the time. I shop there. I wander there. I look at things and I buy things. Regularly. So it takes something extra special to lure me away from my home on an evening when I am tired and cranky and just wanting to eat a big piece of pie and chalk life up to one more sacrificed to hard labor at my computer.

But I got an email from a little bird — let’s call her Rachel — telling me about an art exhibition going on at an otherwise empty historic bank right downtown, called Project Space. It is the Salem Art Association’s project to give temporary downtown space to visual artists before the building is leased, and it’s a knockout.

Art + downtown + repurposed historic building + just a modicum of nudging = Flaneur Emily, unexpectedly out-and-about with her obliging friend Karen.

Until now, I’ve been slightly underwhelmed by the visual art offerings here in town. I’ve frequented the Hallie Ford Art Museum and have stopped into Bush Barn Art Center, but nothing has really stoked my fires until I stepped into the bank. There, I found, among other delights, a papery explosion of texture and metaphor (see pic above) that extends the images of a record-keeping bank into the public space of those waiting in line to speak to a cashier — kind of a cheeky comment on a burgeoning paperless society (get your statements sent by email and save US money!).

There was a roomful of works by Paula Portinga Booth, whose slightly jarring collages could be called whimsical if the images weren’t so completely incongruous.

And I spoke with the artist Corinne Lumis Dietz, who told me a story about how her family used to gather at a lake in Michigan many decades ago. Years later they gathered there again and picked horsetails. Her father is holding them here. The painting is obviously from a photograph — but that’s part of the charm, isn’t it? The chance to view your father through the memory of a photograph and the memory of a memory itself?

And just look at the view of the entire, messy exhibition from above. It’s what I imagined an office building would look like if fairies snuck in at night and told us what they think of our lives.

The artists get space for their projects for a three-week spread. You know what that means — more next month!

The retrospective exhibition of works by mixed media artist Robert McCauley, currently on view at Willamette University’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art, doesn’t sound that impressive, or really that inventive, on paper:

“Rapids and Pools”

“Robert McCauley is a Mt. Vernon, Washington artist who explores the 19th century notion of “Manifest Destiny” and its impact on the indigenous cultures and environment of the western United States through paintings, drawings, installations, and mixed media works. Organized by Director John Olbrantz, the exhibition features 24 works from public and private collections in Washington, California, Idaho, and Illinois.”

But then again, that’s why it’s mixed media. You really have to get down to the three small university galleries to get the full effect of Mr. McCauley’s big f-u to 19th century’s more destructive values.

Take, for example, the work pictured here, called “Missionary Gifts” (1994), consisting of  stacked boxes labeled with things like “English language and names” and “conceptions of wealth.” It would be just another ironic commentary on how modern societies reinterpret the cultural values of the past if it weren’t so graceful in its execution — with each box closed snug and packed primly on top of the next as if by the hands of a Methodist minister himself.

The entire collection is like this — fiercely provocative and funny in a really satisfying, intelligent way. But it also struck me as a deeply personal body of work, one that never strays too far into autobiography to be inaccessible.  One work in the center gallery was particularly haunting, capturing the murky depths of stormy lake where four of the artist’s friends once drowned.

But my favorite remains “A Brief History of Monochromatic Painting.” McCauley believes that the roots of abstraction existed in nature long before artist discovered them. He points this out, convincingly, in a portrait of a polar bear whose multi-hued “white” fur is boxed out to create a mini-abstract portrait of its own.

Or as McCauley says it:

“If not careful, one could be examining the color white with a magnifying glass unaware of the general proximity to the polar bear.”

I love it.

Tucked in one corner of the southeast gallery, almost hidden from plain view, the curators have also displayed one of the more stirring and honest artist’s statements that I’ve read. Mr. McCauley is clearly no fan of the gobbledygook masquerading as erudition that many artists try to pass off as a statement.

While some of the placard phrases in the exhibition come across as a tad pedantic, I can say I’ve rarely felt a visual artist speaking so directly at me through words as well as his art.

TIP: THE MUSEUM IS FREE ON TUESDAYS! I suggest that everyone working near the museum take next Tuesday and visit the exhibition during the lunch break. Who needs food when art can sustain you.