Hasta La Ideas

Hot off a wild and somewhat windy weekend at Portland’s mini Maker Faire, Core77’s Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club is honored to have a visit from apparel aficianados, Rosemary Robinson and Britt Howard of the Portland Garment Factory, who we profiled last week on Core77 here.

Tonight’s talk starts at 6 at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!

Britt Howard and Rosemary Robinson
Portland Garment Factory: “Journey Through Apparel Design and Manufacturing in the USA”
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209
Tuesday, September 18th, 6PM PST

Discussing topics from materials sourcing, creating prototypes to testing the market, Britt and Rosemary will lead a talk on the rigors associated with starting a viable, domestically manufactured design or soft goods company. Covering many aspects from concept to market, they will explain the Portland Garment Factory ways and practices as well as touch on domestic manufacturing and retail outside of Portland.

Portland Garment Factory’s commitment to entirely vertically integrated design, development and manufacturing is unrivaled in the domestic apparel world. Clients have a unique experience working with PGF because they can be truly involved in every step of the “design to market” process. Working directly with the owners, patternmakers and seamstresses and watch as their creative visions come to life. The intimate relationships between designer and product is almost impossible to cultivate with other manufacturing facilities, domestic or offshore.

PGF’s primary clients range from high end fashion designers and soft goods developers to mass market institutions and commercial retailers. Items made at PGF have sold at Saks Fifth Avenue, Fred Segal and independent boutiques across the county. PGF has made garments for Target commercials, developed new styles with Nike, and produced items for the Cannes Film Festival.

Portland Garment Factory (PGF) is an independent, lady owned manufacturing company, established in Portland, Oregon in 2008. PGF takes pride in manufacturing quality apparel in the U.S.A, using traditional craftsmanship and sustainable business practices. PGF offers new and established brands high quality construction, pattern drafting, size grading, low minimum line production, materials sourcing, technical design and product design consultation.

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Core77’s Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club enthusiastically welcomes the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s resident code wrangler Libbey White. The talk starts at 6 at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!

Libbey White
OMSI: “Choose Your Own Adventure: Code in the Museum!”
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209
Tuesday, August 21st, 6PM PST

This talk will provide a behind-the-scenes look at making software for interactive exhibits in a science museum. Did you tune out at the word “software?” Well, come back. This will be a participatory, Choose Your Own Adventure event, complete with all the suspense and high-stakes drama you’ve come to expect from the CYOA empire. What tools will you use for the job? What jobs will you be asked to do? What crucial systems will malfunction? What diabolical bugs will surface? How will you harness the power of serial communication? What even IS serial communication? There’s only one way to find out. Don’t worry if you haven’t got a lick of technical knowledge. Come and find out how my biggest job fear went from “What if they ask me to do something I don’t know how to do?” to “What if they don’t?”

Libbey White has been the software developer at OMSI since late 2010. Besides interactive exhibits and web development, she’s most fond of data visualization, generative art, and Ruby. Past jobs have included fireworks seller, ranch cook, laundromat attendant, traveling software consultant, pizza cutter, brain researcher, and bookstore clerk, among others. She has a B.A. in biology and an M.F.A. in science & natural history filmmaking. When not writing code, she likes to make wild horse pudding, wear oversized hoodies, and imagine new projects.

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After a few delays kept us waiting, Core77’s Hand-Eye Supply is excited to at long last present Brian Mitchell of Delta Chop Shop and Hand-Eye Supply Catalog Subject to the Curiosity Club. The talk starts at 6PM (PST) at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!

Brian Mitchell
“Delta Chop Shop”
Tuesday, July 10th 6PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

Brian Mitchell’s talk will provide a detailed description of all the work that gets put into a bike at Delta Chop Shop. To demonstrate his work and process, he’ll bring in a DCS bike that was built from the ground up. At Delta Chop Shop only American made parts are used, and if none are available they’re made in the shop. No part of the bike build process is outsourced. The discussion will cover material choices and the processes and challenges associated with assembling all the small pieces that at the end become a finished product. DCS prides itself on creating unique pieces of art out of metal, rubber and leather. No two bikes are ever the same.

Motorcycles have always been in Brian Mitchell’s blood, particularly Harley Davidsons. The passion and interest was passed down from his grandfather at an early age and he bought his first Harley at the age of nineteen. A strong desire to learn how to customize and work on it followed. This led Brian to attend a HD technical school focused on early model, late model, and engine performance. After school Brian did a brief stint as a technician at a local Harley dealer.

It didn’t take long to find the technician job unfulfilling. Buying equipment and tools, Brian started building his own bikes and customizing bikes for customers. After several years of working out of the garage he took the next step and opened his own shop. Delta Chop Shop is named after the Mississippi Delta, Brian’s birthplace. The philosophy of the shop is simple: One at A Time, One of A Kind. Selling mass produced parts or cookie cutter bikes was never an option for Brian; every project is an opportunity for him to create a one off piece of art.

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Join us Tonight at the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club in lovely downtown Portland, Oregon as Sam Lanahan of Flextegrity expounds on his Buckminster Fuller inspired work with structural materials composed of icosahedral arrays!

Flextegrity “Innovations in Structural Optimization. Making things stronger and lighter- why geometry matters!”

Making load bearing materials- A new look at discontinuous compression continuous tension structures. The discussion will explore the structural and symmetrical integrity of the icosahedron and what it means to constrain the twelve degrees of freedom. From there we will weave omni-axial, omni-extensible arrays into virtually any form. We will explore the unique characteristics of the resulting arrays and potential applications.

I had the great good fortune as a young man to travel with Buckminster Fuller on a trip to Southeast Asia where he was the guest of many heads of State. His influence on me is immeasurable. Afterwards I spent two years exploring the geometry of geodesics and tensegrities with Joe Clinton at Union College. I earned a MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon, after which I founded a company with others that pioneered Geographic Information Systems applications for mobile data collection in the electric, cable, and telephone industries. Naturally, this work dovetailed nicely with my interest in spatial topologies. In 2004 I reinvigorated ‘Flextegrity’ by continuing my earlier explorations into the development of a ‘universal material.’ I now hold two patents and a third pending in structural optimized materials based on icosahedral arrays.

Tuesday, May 15th
6PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

Not in the greater Portland area? No problem! Join us live on our broadcast channel —the show begins at 6pm Pacific.

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Join us Tonight at the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club in lovely downtown Portland, Oregon as Tom Burkleaux of New Deal Distillery shares harrowing tales of his adventures in artisanal spirits!

Spirits as a Journey without a Map: Rediscovering Craft without Guidance, Musing of a Cranky Distiller

What does it means to discover a lost craft? Does it matter how we do things, or just the result?

A question answered in three parts:
1. What is an artisanal company?
2. Learning a new craft in the wilderness
3. Working with spirits

Tom became interested in spirits as a consumer in the 1990’s, when it was simply the ’90s, not yet a dream. In 2001, He wondered why couldn’t spirits be made here? In an attempt to answer this question, and driven by the joy of making things, He started New Deal Distillery. Licensed in 2004, New Deal was an early pioneer in craft distilling. It wasn’t until 2007, that other distilleries began to appear and help create what is now South East Portland’s Distillery Row. Now, in the last few years, the rest of the world has taken notice of Oregon as a center of artisan, small-batch spirits. Beside being a distiller, Tom’s been a few other things including student, machinist, postal worker, cook, soldier, ship yard worker, academic, barista, and programmer.

Tuesday, May 1st
6PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

Not in the greater Portland area? No problem! Join us live on our broadcast channel – the show begins at 6pm Pacific.

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