Crowds & scones at First Friday

Congress Street, its galleries and restaurants were jam packed with art walkers on Friday. Adam and I made our way up to the Arts District around 7 pm, and had to elbow our way through the crowds to catch a glimpse of the art. We stopped in at Whitney Art Works, the ICA at MECA, Aucocisco and the PACA gallery at the PDD.

The biggest crowds were at SPACE, where Tod Seelie's eclectic documentary photographs filled the gallery. There were so many people there it was nearly impossible to get in or out of the door.

Just up the street a ways, we encountered a strange bit of performance art.

A group of artists had commandeered the Gorham Savings Bank ATM to the great amusement of passers-by.

Here's our friend Karl, who played guitar inside this sidewalk-side bubble. The posters you can see taped to the window said the artists were performing "The Ancient Art of Sonku." Which, according to the same posters, uses "a combination of triadic words accompanied by music" in order "to evoke a hypnotic trance, a hallucinatory artistic state in which the viewer becomes melded with recurrent descriptions of a vision or theme, in this case, walking through the streets of Portland." Considering the mention of hallucinatory states, you'd think more people would have been all over the free baked goods being offered inside.

Finally, my husband (at right) couldn't resist the sugary temptation and ventured inside. He got a scone. Turns out the goodies weren't filled with magic mushrooms, but instead baked the traditional way by the folks at Standard Baking Company. It's a good thing too, since the First Friday Art Walk sights are plenty trippy even without the the addition of mind-altering desserts.