The materials provided the inspiration for Kelly Keigwin’s mixed-media collection, “Picking Up the Pieces.” Keigwin went through her garage and found scrap plexiglass and wood. She started asking herself what those recycled odds and ends might become.
The result is a series of pieces using the plexiglass mounted on wood almost as a frame for layered text and images from old magazines, as well as photos from her own collection and those of family and friends.
“It’s all about layering and taking away. You see different parts of different images. Some images you see through,” said Keigwin, a 42-year-old Vancouver artist who’s also taking classes at Clark College.
“Picking Up the Pieces” is on display through the end of the month at Angst Gallery in Vancouver. The pièce de résistance is a triptych self-portrait, tentatively titled “All of Me.” In this piece, Keigwin’s body is composed of images of family, friends and things that comprise her past. Around her head float images of things she thinks about.
“Just different stuff that kind of makes up who I am today and how I see the world,” she said.
Chef crosses the country to help launch new restaurant
Daniel Robayo moved from Virginia to Washougal in September to take a job as chef at the Thai-fusion restaurant Atrium Lounge, which opened Dec. 17 in downtown Vancouver.
He hopes the restaurant will give diners a reason to stay north of the Columbia River.
Restaurant co-owner Peter Johnson of Vancouver said Robayo responded to a Craistlist ad.
Robayo, 29, left his job at Millie’s Diner, a nationally renowned restaurant in Richmond, Va., to become a part of what he described as the greater-Portland-area’s up-and-coming food scene.
“I realized all the product I was ordering was coming from the Pacific Northwest,” Robayo said. “I decided to go where the food is.”
He’s already connected with a mushroom forager to supply the restaurant, and hopes to use the Vancouver Farmer’s Market as a supplier when it opens for the season.
“I actually believe what comes from the Earth brings people together,” Robayo said.
Production heads downriver
When Ridgefield resident Lou Pallotta closed his long-running production of “Who Stole My Dead Husband?” last spring at Madison’s Grill in Portland, he knew it wasn’t the end for his popular dinner theater show.
“We knew there would be a future with this,” he said. “We just don’t know what it looks like yet.”
Pallotta, 58, thought about restarting the production after the holiday season. He considered taking it on the road to casinos throughout the Pacific Northwest.
But “Who Stole My Dead Husband?” will remain a Portland fixture for at least another three months. Pallotta will bring the production back later this month and stage it through March aboard the Portland Spirit. The ship will travel along the Willamette River while patrons eat a four-course meal and watch the production, which looks at Pallotta’s life growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Pallotta expects to use the ship as a prop in the production; it will stop several times throughout the night to let characters aboard, for example.
“I like the challenge of something different,” he said. “Different is exciting and creative.”
Bits ’n’ Pieces appears Mondays and Fridays. If you have a story you’d like to share, call Features Editor Elisa Williams, 360-735-4561, or e-mail elisa.williams@columbian.com.
