A couple of months ago Andrea Frampton contacted us about volunteering with Golden Rule. She was, at the time, living in New York, planning a move to Portland, and looking for a like-minded community to belong to upon her arrival. Given her many talents--photography and writing being pretty close to the top of a very long list--and her aspirations towards making new friends in Portland, we decided to sign her up to write and photograph a series of community profiles about the folks involved in Golden Rule. Our hope was that our readers and customers would get a more in-depth understanding of the personalities and productive forces of the amazing people who are working behind the scenes--and on the front lines--to keep our organization going strong. And, of course, that Andrea would make new friends. Andrea's first profile is with Delphine Bedient, a long-standing member of our community who helped us move our flat-files, was our solo artist for September 2011, and continues to volunteer and to sell her zines, art, and handmade greeting cards in the space. Click below to read more!

   
1. You hail from Nebraska; what’s your hometown like, and what brought you to Portland?

I am from Lincoln, which is the capital of Nebraska.  Lincoln is a pleasant place to grow up.  I was lucky enough to go to an arts focus high school which in some ways resembled a tiny liberal arts college and laid foundations for many of my current interests.  I had the opportunity to travel somewhat extensively with my parents as a child and thus grew up excited about living in new places.  Lincoln is nice, but not a place I wanted to call home permanently.  I left Nebraska in 2006 to attend Lewis & Clark College, where I spent two years before realizing I wasn't happy there.  I transferred to Portland State mostly because I didn't want to leave Portland, but I ended up really liking it there. 

 2. What initially drew you to printmaking and painting as mediums?

When I first thought about art as a real possibility in my life, it was in early high school when I took my first printmaking class at a community art center.  I met some really fantastic people in that class and it inspired me to start my first sketchbook.  I guess the positive experience of that class always stayed with me and made me feel good about printmaking.  I got away from it for a while as Lewis & Clark didn't have the facilities for it, but now it is one of my main working mediums. 

As far as painting goes, I started experimenting with that in high school as well.  I continued painting through my time at Lewis & Clark, but got increasingly bored with it.  I eventually stopped painting altogether, fed up with the formalist attitudes surrounding the medium and unsure of how to push beyond what I was doing to find something I was really excited about.  Currently I suppose one could call my coffee drawings "paintings" but I feel that if anything, they have the look of paintings but do not share the same process. 

3.  Are there features to your body of work that you find to be unifying, be they thematic, aesthetic, or otherwise?

Thematically speaking, I work a lot with the ideas of documentation, ritual, and memory.  I like to see how I can visually document actions such as the breaking of a piece of glass, and the passage of time, such as with my coffee drawings (where I poured the dregs of my cup of coffee onto a piece of paper daily).  I also use my artworks to reflect on memories and things that have been kicking around in my head for awhile.  Lately I have also been making a fair amount of process-based works.  Aesthetically I use natural mediums and fibers.  I like the lines that are created by hanging things with string. 

4. You’ve recently started working more with color. What have been some of your favorite color experiments thus far?

I have been working on some minimalist pieces with layered colors that have turned out to have surprising visual depth.  Working with color is something I haven't done in earnest for a while so I wasn't expecting much success.  I am also doing a photography series documenting colors and capturing the pigments of natural mediums by dyeing paper with them.  All three are interesting perspectives on the same thing. 

5. Is your working environment important to you? What would your ideal workspace be like and why?

Personal environment is very important.  I feel that it directly affects my emotional state and sometimes my willingness to get work done.  I live alone and have no separate workspace, thus my studio apartment is also my art studio.  It can really be a love-hate relationship.  It's nice to be able to spread out sometimes, but if my studio is messy, I feel messy.  Though it's that endearing kind of mess where you are the only one who knows exactly where to find that one blue ballpoint pen or whatever.  An organized mess, I guess it's called. 

 6.Can you share a little bit about any current projects or shows that you’re working on?

I am currently pouring most of my energy into an exhibition called LIBRARY that will be opening soon in a space called Field Work (http://hellofieldwork.tumblr.com/).  It is basically a temporary library assembled through an open call for submissions.  Materials curated from the contributors' collections will be on display and available for perusal during open hours.  The exhibition will be open daily from 12 to 6 pm from March 1st to March 7th.  There's also going to be an open house on Saturday, March 5th from 5 to 9 pm.

7. I am amazed by your collection of all kinds of bits and bobs and information. What got you started as a collector, cataloguer, and documenter?
 
I had lots of collections as a child.  I kept most of them in carefully labeled shoe boxes in my closet.  I think part of it was due to a general attraction to beautiful things.  I dug long grocery receipts out of the trash (to my mother's chagrin) because I liked the way they looked.  Perhaps sentimental value was another.  I remember having a vast collection of cabbage patch dolls.  I made clothing for them out of socks and money for them out of green construction paper and houses for them out of cardboard boxes.  Once I had reappropriated these objects for the dolls, they suddenly became special.  My parents would come into my room and try to clean up by picking up these little green strips of paper and I'd try to get on their case about throwing away thousands of doll dollars. 

8. What prompted you to start your zine, Peep? How has Peep changed since its start in 2008, and where do you hope to see it in the future?

A couple friends of mine back in Nebraska had started a zine themselves awhile before this.  I always enjoyed reading theirs and was disappointed when they dropped the whole project soon after they started.  I decided that I would try my hand at it and see what happened, determined to make whatever resulted last.  When I first started publishing Peep I didn't know much about zines and I was pretty cautious.  I looked up many many definitions of the word 'zine' and chose a name very carefully.  I used to do calls for submissions and publish people's poetry, but then I realized that I didn't like any of the poetry I was publishing and started putting more things of my own into it.  It has come to serve as a sort of mental catch-all.  Whatever is on my mind is what goes into the zine.  I am also fond of the idea of zines as very cheap conceptual art. 

Peep is something I have always enjoyed making.  I am excited to see where it goes in the future.  I think it will survive in some way because I am not too afraid to change and experiment with it.  It served as my platform when I was just starting to meet people in town.  It really helped to be able to list something that I did that I was proud of.  Even now it still functions as a link to Portland's amazing zine community.  

9. What’s your routine like?

My routine these days is kind of a non-routine, at least in some ways.  There's certain things I do every day like drink a cup of coffee, take a shower, and take the bus somewhere, but beyond that it gets kind of unpredictable.  I work nights as a restaurant busser so I'm not much of a morning person (though I still feel like I'm wasting the day if I sleep past noon).  I have certain haunts, but routine seems to be eluding me lately.   

10. Coffee or tea (for drinking, not art)?

Coffee and tea both have their respective places.  Black coffee is a fixture in my life, though I take care to keep my regular consumption level to one cup.  It's one of those things I never want to have to stop drinking because I drink too much.  Earl grey and green tea are also old favorites. 

 11. How did you meet Wynde and start working with Golden Rule?

I met Wynde through my old roommate.  We hung out some, but then lost touch for a while.  We started talking again around the time that I had found some flat files for cheap on craigslist.  As I have no vehicle, Wynde offered to help me haul them and ended up buying two more for Golden Rule.  That's also when she told me about the store and its concept and offered to let me show. 

 12. What roles have you taken on at Golden Rule, and what keeps you involved as a member of the Golden Rule community?

I primarily got involved with Golden Rule because of my show there in September 2010.  I have also worked weekly shifts there, however my school and work schedules combined have prevented me from being much of a shop girl.  I consign my zines and hand-printed cards and most recently modeled for the February 2011 lookbook shoot. 

13. You’re a fan of vintage clothing; why do you choose to wear vintage, and what is the relationship between your art and your personal style?

I started wearing vintage because I found myself being more drawn towards the vintage styles, finding them visually attractive, while simultaneously being repelled by the lack of interesting shopping options in Nebraska.  When I moved to Portland I retained these tastes and simply developed them more.  Additionally, I am continuously fascinated by clothes (and objects in general) that have a history. 

Being an introvert I often felt overshadowed by others growing up and so I see the development of my personal style as an intersection between my aesthetic tastes and my desire to be noticed.  Now I see my personal style as something I can play around with, similar to making art.  However, there are differences.  By dressing I am actively choosing how to represent myself, whereas when making artwork, the work is not always directly about me. 

14. Where can people find out more about you, your art and your current projects, and where can they purchase your zine? Will you be at Golden Rule any time soon?

The best way to see what I'm up to is to read my blog:  http://mademoiselledelphine.blogspot.com
Some of my zines and cards are available at Golden Rule, but most everything is available through my Etsy shop:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/missdelphine