Keeping Portland Weird

It has been a very full and exhausting week. The Movable Book Society 8^th Biennial Conference was a great success. Movable book artists and fans from across the globe gathered in Portland, Oregon for three days of presentations, parties and pop-ups! Portland turned out to be the perfect location for this year’s assembly. The city is delightful, with free and easy transportation, great shops and restaurants spotted along the simple grid street layout, and a funky overall vibe from the locals. We felt right at home.

There is too much info for one post so I thought I would break it down and share some details from the first day.

Our conference kicked off with a talk given by the talented book artist, Colette Fu . I have been a fan of her work for a number of years and was blown away at the subtly and depth of the narratives that exist in her one-of-a-kind paper engineered artist books. Dressed in traditional Yunnan Province style clothing, Colette detailed her process of documenting the 25 ethic minorities of her mother’s hometown in China. By combining her striking color photography with massive pop-up spreads, Colette brought a distant people to the forefront of our consciousness.

She went on to describe her process of creating a series of large format pop-ups of various spooky locations in Philadelphia and a series of collaged photographic pops that focused on beauty, materialism and the colon. At the conclusion of the evening, when our dinner plates were cleared away and the Portland skyline twinkled at us from our perch atop the Hilton Hotel, Colette shared with us a charming collection of commercial advertising that she recently collaborated on for the Children’s Medical Center. Check out Colette Fu’s website to view the 30 second commercials and videos of her other work and learn more about this up and coming pop-up artist.

- Kyle Olmon