Anahata Katkin

Powerful thinking

Thanks to the incredibly curated blog, Fly Girls, who originally shared these photo's,  I've had these images as on hand inspiration for a few months.  Studio Too Good created these fashion sets with such amazing forward thinking.  Faye Toogood captured a natural idea and made it come to life.  Tranforming an idea into a reality doesn't usually go as planned.  I imagine the success of these concepts had to be so rewarding.  As we at PAPAYA! think of various ways to reinvent tradeshow displays, retail environments etc, designer/ artist's such as TooGood are fantastic living models of ideal experimentation.  I'm inspired!

What can I say...

 

Just back from a quick and fun little trip to Portland over the Holiday weekend.  I had the chance to catch up with painter, Flora Bowley who we are currently working with to develop a new collection of her works from PAPAYA! that will be available next fall.
Visiting her studio is always a breathtaking experience.  She just returned from a three month adventure through Bali, Thailand and Cambodia.  She produced oodles of amazing paintings while away and her studio is full of her tropical, travel inspired works.  
Von and I had so much good food and I was tempted to load up eats for bringing back to town with me.  (We can't eat at the same three haunts anymore!)  We even loved our yummy cheese burgers from the Egyptian food cart at 2 am! Who'd a thunk!  I couldn't resist a snap shot of Von in front of the Mayan painted food truck.  I forget how far he is from his natural Mayan country origins of Belize sometimes.  The "Inspire" picture up there is from a raw foods trolley-cart off Alberta St.  A street car...Called INSPIRE!  How cute.
 And a fabulous highlight was a trippy wonderland of beautiful treasures Ms. Flora showed us on Mississippi St.  FLUTTER has carved themselves an incredible retail gallery of vintage and new items.  It's hard to describe if you haven't been.  Part vintage Hong Kong, part taxidermy goth, part Holly Hobby- entirely fabulous!  Also stumbled upon COMPOUND Gallery  (soon after running from a homeless junkie man trying to attack us with a guitar-sheesh!) I was thrilled with my thrifty prints and originals from their lovely gallery store.  One from Zack Johnsen who has a show currently at Compound. And this wonderful little, canvas original from Gakiya...
Thank You Portland for coming to life  especially over the past decade in such a colorful and delicious way!  I loved every minute of it!