Welcome To Our Hellscape! PDX

Tiny T-Shirts Laughing at A Tiny Orange Man!

We simply wanted to embrace his ugliness and stupidity wrap it in our own people power and turn it into something beatiful, a positive moment. If Portland was a Hellscape as he said, well we wanted to welcome the world to our Hellscape.

A big shoutout to everyone who showed up and supported our tiny act of resistance. An especially warm welcome to @heycandace a real live travel influencer who saw our efforts online and decided she wanted to join us, even though she had never met us. I was truly touched by her kind spirit. Its been awhile since this all happened but I wanted it preserved here in my tiny adventure stories. Likely you’ll see a few more stories that go back a ways and are out of order. As you know, a lot has been happening in the last few years.

So, yes, he made a proclamation that our city was a hellscape and needed the National Guard to get it inline…. classic Fascist. Working downtown both walking around and riding the bus there was no evidence of any craziness in Portland. That is Portland Oregon. You may know us for our frogs, although it actually started with the chicken man, and before you heard about any of that very ordinary people, like us, gathered in community, creating art, sharing stories, laughing and telling the tiny man to fuck off in our own little way. I got to witness the hearing out here deciding whether or not we needed the national guard. Ironically, it was a judge he handpicked who pretty much made fun of him in the hearing and refused to bow down to fascism! And when he tested her ruling by sending the California national guard up here, her response made it crystal clear that her ruling stands for all of the states, just in case for some reason he didn’t get it. What a moment! To get to see brave, real people stand up to a narcisistic bully.

Back ot our art night…..To hold this event I simply gathered donations for paints (Thank you members from Indivisible D2), collected a few supplies from my own studio, collected old throw away Tshirts and canvas, and told folks to join me at ADX studios to make handmade promotional tshirts that spoke to everything we loved about Portland. From here this grew into a regular meeting where different folks would come and go and create art together. Sometimes I had some techniques to share, or someone else did. Sometimes people came with their own projects. Food and Drinks simply showed up. It was very much a mutual aid project. And it was very fun to laugh, create and play together.

What was unexpected was the warm reception from everyone. Everyone shared what had been very difficult from them in the last years going all the way back to the pandemic. One person shared she never leaves her home but appreciated a chance to connect with people again in a safe environment. All levels of art and artists showed up, and I’d like to think a little healing was experienced by all. When I get it together in Minneapolis I plan on doing something similar. Stay tuned.