A picture perfect holiday market...and so much more

A large crowd arrives early for the NW Marine Art Works open studios event, which continues tomorrow

There were about 400 people lined up Saturday for the 10 a.m. opening of the annual NW Marine Art Works Open Studios and Holiday Market. That’s 400 more than lined up last year at opening time. And by noon Saturday, the line leading to 2516 NW 29th Ave. was two blocks long just to see what the roughly 80 local artists and makers were selling.

This year, organizers heavily publicized the market, thus the crowds. If you didn’t make it Saturday, you can visit Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Event details can be found at NW Marine Art Works. Photos and videos by Walden Kirsch.

Drew Laughery peeks through one of his fanciful handmade paper masks. Thin steel wire holds together these intricately shaped flowers. The wire then hooks on the wearer’s ears or when not being worn, the mask can hang delicately on a wall like an airy bouquet. Laughery is actually a big guy, but when he works, he has to cut these dainty paper flowers as meticulously as possible. He uses a sharp-tipped sewing scissors, tasseling at times to make the slenderest of petals. See more of his work at drewlaughery.com

With her tufting gun blasting away, soft-spoken Felicia Murray begins her latest doodle, a series of multicolored intertwining swirls. Murray describes her work as “painting with yarn.” And she has produced both colorful tactile abstracts and landscapes that hang in hospitals and hotels. Her inspiration is nature and she says “the ebb and flow of life.” Private collectors have commissioned her work. The Nike World Headquarters even boasts a Felicia Murray crafted swoosh. See more of her work at feliciajmurray.com

It may not be all that new anymore, but us Luddites have to see 3D printing to believe it. Danny Han set up a demonstration that was on autopilot to show how it works (see video below). Han is a product designer who works in his own Portland studio, where he uses plant-based polymers made from corn and tapioca to construct sustainable 3D lamps, housewares and decorations. Some designs are whimsical, some more pragmatic, but one thing is for sure, these plant-based polymers will one day – a long time from now – break down and return to Mother Earth. See more of his work at honeyandivy.com

Ceramics, jewelry, woolly bowls, photography, paintings, fiber art, paper art and a lot more were also on display at the former NW Marine Iron Works building. Quartets and violinists sang and played while it seemed everyone in Portland flooded into the place where they once machined parts for the maritime industry, including the Exxon Valdez and some of the largest public works projects in the U.S. and the world: the Bonneville Dam, the Aswan Dam and the Brooklyn Bridge. Those patterns used by machinists in the casting process — you can see them hanging on the wall above — are a kind of art of their own and adorn some of the walls in the building that now houses the artists and makers.