Please join visual artist Nate Orton, and poets Chris Ashby and James Yeary for the recent releases of the long running series MY DAY. This celebration will include a performance of #27 Hoyt Arboretum and #25 East PDX to 82nd, incorporating live drawing and readings of the books.
MY DAY started with Nate Orton after he moved to Portland from rural Idaho a decade ago. He was frustrated with how large his new city felt to him, as he was familiar with every square inch of his previous town. He figured creating a visual catalog of Xeroxed ink drawings of places and events throughout Portland would help him become acclimated to the city. It worked. MY DAY on the MAX was completed as an edition of 35 copies and sold in local book stores and during his gallery shows.
Later, Idahoan, longtime friend and collaborator, Chris Ashby joined to write for MY DAY on the Burnside Bridge and MY DAY at the Lloyd Center adding a collaborative and specifically place based poetic to the project. Around this time yet another Idaho transplant, friend and writer, James Yeary joined to help create MY DAY at Chopsticks Karaoke Bar.
Later James and Nate decided to walk across the Portland metro in several legs and document the experience in installments. The first walk was across Gresham, the second across Portland, the third across Beaverton, and so on. The two have plans to reach the Pacific Ocean soon.
Nearly 30 issues later, Nate creates MY DAY books solo, with Chris, with James, or with Chris and James together. Over the years MY DAY has successfully evolved yet successfully stayed the same thanks to its core creative family, aesthetics, and ideals.
Also, please join us for the release of Sam Lohmann’s new chapbook from Couch Press, Day Use Area, which gathers poems from the past four years, mostly about movies, music, capitalism, weather, friendship, detectives, and the undead. Other recent publications are Unless As Stone Is (eth press, 2014), The Long Face (Editions Plane, 2013), and Stand on this picnic bench and look north (Publication Studio, 2011). Sam edits the poetry zine Peaches and Bats, and co-edits Airfoil chapbooks with David Abel. He lives in Portland with his family and works as a librarian.
Nate Orton is a Visual Artist who regularly shows in commercial and university galleries across the West-coast. He is the creator of the long-running self-published book series MY DAY, a visual and literary chronicle of places in and around Portland, OR as well as the greater Northwest. Nate also teaches adult and youth drawing and printmaking at the Multnomah Arts Center.
Chris Ashby is a poet, essayist, and musician. He is also the editor and publisher of Couch Press, which can be found at http://couchpress.tumblr.com. He frequently collaborates with Nate on his My DAY series, occasionally assisting in publishing the books and organizing events. His most recent books are the collaborative serial poem Who Killed My Chicken with James Yeary (Great Fainting Spells, 2013) and After Language: Volume 1 (Couch Press, 2013). Chris lives in Portland and works in the forests and grasslands of the western United States.
James Yeary is the publisher of c_L books, which recently published Takeaway, a collaboration between Ted Greenwald and Kit Robinson. James is also the editor and distributor of an occasional monthly poetry newsletter, of which record can be found at creepoflight.com. He is a member of the Spare Room Collective. Hanks Loose Gravel published his 10th Spectral Cannon in Spring 2013.