After a few month's break, everyone's favorite Home Shopping Darling, Amanda Luna, is back at it with her charming series!

Do you have a fun video series you'd like to share with our community? Maybe a how-to video about crafty stuff, wellness practices, ways of thinking and living better? You playing your music or making your art? We'd love to share it! Email us!

For someone who doesn't really connect with nature much, I deserve a pat on my back for this one, not only for the trooping through the woods all weekend--bugs and snakes about--but also for the grace with which I handled the emotional intensity of the subject matter. For those of you who haven't been following, lookbook is inspired by my deceased mother who wore all white--or, being a nudist, often wore nothing at all!--all summer in the 120-degree heat of Central California, and who believed herself to be gifted with magical powers. It conjures up until-now repressed images of the books she read me (like the Time Life Series, which had a book dedicated to fairies, witches, sorcerers, elves, etc.), her art (like that famous image of Ophelia, anything by Maxfield Parish, and plenty of sensual images of semi-naked women underwater), as well as the painful part where I spent 4-6 weeks of my childhood summers being sent to summer camp so she could  have time for herself, her work, and her lovers.  I feel like we've really out done ourselves this time. In addition to for the first time explicitly using my mother and myself as the subject matter, where as past lookbooks have largely been efforts to reclaim places and practices of my traumatic past by way of putting pretty women--and "good" women--in ugly or "bad" contexts, therefor exerting a form of control over these places/practices that I did not have as a child or young adult when my autonomy was taken from me by victimizing adults.
Being able to talk about this and to end the silence via art and expression in a safe community of women and men really helps.

We are beginning to book models, photographers, production team members, and stylists for our upcoming lookbooks, and wanted to put the shout out to any fresh faces, fresh eyes, or fresh hands who'd like to come along, particularly if you're inspired by one concept more than others. We've got: (1) AUGUST = Medical/Minimal/Structural/Industrial, shot in and around Portland, inspired by my past hospital stays and intense procedural phobias, (2) SEPTEMBER = Pioneer Chic/Western Inspired, a 3-4 day shoot with locations on the way to and in to Eastern Oregon, including ghost towns, desert landscapes, the painted hills etc., inspired by my childhood fascination with gold rushers and cowboys, (3) OCTOBER = Black Magic/Mourning Time, shot in and around Portland, inspired by my mother's collection of Victorian Mourning Wear, her stint with The Church of Satan, and her time in the voodoo haven of Louisiana voodoo culture, (4) NOVEMBER = Monochromatic, shot against colorful walls or with studio backdrops in and around Portland with everyone wearing the same colors, inspired by my inherited need to obsessively organize everything combined with the Collecting the Collectors photographic art show by Carlie Armstrong, and (5) DECEMBER = Party Time, in and around Portland, with all shots representative of some form of party, inspired by a desire to overcome my life-long aversion to parties, which stems from the nature of my childhood trauma. Sound interesting? Want to be involved? We'd love to have you in any capacity. Just email us!

For the second post in our new Golden Rule Guest Stars portrait series, we are pleased to put the spotlight on Blake Thompson and Palma Corral as The Illusionists. Palma and Blake curate Praxis, a monthly experiment in collaborative art and philosophy at Place PDX, one of the mall galleries Palma and Gabe Flores curate. In addition to greatly appreciating Palma's grounding support during my installation of I Knew You Part 1 (Dear James) and my recent I Know You Are But What Am I audience participatory sand painting performances, she has been instrumental in keeping Golden Rule alive by always prioritizing purchases with us when on the rare occasion that cash flow allows. For this we are eternally grateful. Blake and Palma are hosting a Praxis event on Wednesday, June 22nd at 6:30 p.m. featuring Victor Maldonado and Alex Rauch.

The goal of our new Guest Stars Series is to highlight the personalities and projects of members of the Golden Rule community who are perhaps a bit peripheral to our business operations, maybe not so much at the foreground, not so much in the space or on the blog on a regular basis, but who are still very much a part of our backbone. Likewise, we are casting these good sirs and madames as members of our own little carnivale troupe, putting them in our more costume-y/rare/fragile/too strange for the racks clothes that, just like the guest stars themselves, might be lurking around in the background, maybe not getting the airtime in the space or on the blog that some of the more commercially appealing clothes get. If you're a behind-the-scenes Golden Rule supporter (customers count, too) please email us if you'd like to be a part of our Guest Stars series!

Golden Rule turned one this month. I took a birthday bath to think about whether we want to turn two. Ambivalence is the word that best describes my feelings on the matter. On one hand, I would love to jump ship and focus on my own art practice (which in a way, I suppose, Golden Rule is). On the other hand, I feel the creativity and community building we've been doing deserves a bit of a longer run and I think the originality of our business/marketing/curatorial practices have the potential to at some point prove commercially viable. Beyond that, I'm really invested in our tentative art programming for the rest of the 2011 year, so . . .

 . . . I've made the decision that the show must go on in our current location for sure in July for Lahaina Alcantara's photography, at least through August for Gary Wiseman's installations, and likely through September for Shawn Creeden's embroideries. Beyond that we've booked Travis Beardsley for October, Carlie Armstrong for November, and Emily Counts and Emily Nachiason for December. The September-December programming will display just as well, if not better, in our old garage gallery. We are still accepting submissions for the 2012 year, so if you're interested, see our proposal guidelines.

Thanks to everyone who came out last Friday for the opening for Snowcones by Tess Bidelspach and Viola Brown, two artists from Project Grow who are doing some fascinating fiber arts work. Check out Tess' clothes here, or stop by the space to see them in the flesh. And while you're at it, contribute to our snow cone themed mural and the collaborative window piece!

Rebecca Peel, our lovely model with downturned lips and downturned eyes, has a show up now at Worksound that will be pretty eerie for anyone who's been paying attention to our March and April lookbooks. She's filled an entire room with laptop tracings of her facebook photos, many of which were taken by yours truly. It is SO EFFING EERIE to see one's photos drawn!

While you're at Worksound, make sure to check out the large-scale works by Nim Wunnan, our solo artist for March 2011.

June's going to be a pretty exciting month here at Golden Rule. We're featuring two Project Grow fiber arts creatives, Tess Bidelspach and Viola Brown, we'll be inviting the public in to paint a collaborative mural with "snow cones" as the theme (per the artists' request), and we're going "theme off" in favor of summer wear and any and all locally designed fashion we can find.

Wanna join in? If you've got any no longer useful to you green, blue or black water-based art supplies, we're taking donations for mural making! If not, stop by 12-6 and paint a snow cone! Also, if you're a local designer at any stage in your practice, we're actively seeking one-off apparel and accessory pieces for our June showcase of local design work, so please email us!

This month Kara Jean Caldwell is shooting our June 2011 Lookbook featuring designs by Tess Bidelspach. A sneak peak:

Yowzers! We can't wait to see all the images and boy are we excited to not have to edit them this month. Yay for a break!

Two great reasons to head to the coast next weekend: (1) Portland psuedo-ex-pat Liz Haley (she's moved to the beach and we're SO envious) is having a show with Nikki McClure and Sophia Pfaff-Shalmiyev at the Cannon Beach Art Gallery which ends May 30th, so there's not much time left to see it, and (2) The Girabaldi House, where we shot our April 2011 Oregon Coast Lookbook, is a wonderful and affordable place to stay during your visit. Tell Carol and Eugene we sent you. They're rad.

Moral of the story, if you're going to be ditching out on our monthly 40% off sale AND our First Annual Community Appreciation Party next weekend, we hope you'll be at the coast enjoying the sun, Liz's beautiful artwork, the comfy beds and yummy foods at The Girabaldi House, and maybe even doing a little thrifting and antiquing up and down the 101.  If you are ready to hit the road and want some suggestions of places to score, please shoot us an email for some recommendations!

This most recent First Friday opening was so sorely unattended on account of the YU opening of the PVCA Archives and the Mercury Fashion show. We had fun, though, and only went through three bottles of wine, which at least reduced our overhead!

If you didn't get a chance to make it out for the opening, please stop by any day of the week to see our GIANT collaborative paintings by Violet Aveline and Matt DelBello. And don't forget to check out our awesome new collection of fashion and fun!