Suggestions for/Ode to that perfectly elegant, minimalist, and youthfully romantic friend

I LOVE YOU KERSTI !!!

Mamma Andersson & Jockum Nordstrom: Who Is Sleeping on My Pillow. She was the first one to introduce me to the work of Mamma Andersson with the beautiful About a Girl painting, so it's only natural that this book would be on this list. "Designed by the artists' son and conceived as part monograph, part artists' book and part personal archive, Who Is Sleeping on My Pillow showcases Andersson and Nordstrom's work from the late 1980s to the present day in over 200 full-color plates. Alongside these, it also includes family snapshots and source materials, texts by Paolo Colombo and Anders Kruger, a poem by Stig Claesson and an interview with Nordstrom by Marcel Dzama." ($ 75)

Patti Smith's Just Kids. Someone recently told me this book would make me want to move to New York, so hopefully it will inspire her to stay there and create a special world out of all the superficial madness. ($ 16)

Moon calendar by Rendij. Spiritual in a simple and elegant way, hmmm... sounds familiar. ($ 15)

Run Away Wrap by plainMADE. For the future walks around Antwerp at night, merino to stay warm, silk to stay soft. ($ 115)

Ceramic Jars by Eliza Fernand. One for the Earl Grey tea, one for the eucalyptus bundle by the window sill. ($ 30/$ 50 pair)

Hunter/Gatherer(er) leather and metal necklace, again for the minimalist chic. ($ 65)

Ourson, bear cub marshmallows covered in chocolate. I have watched her eat 10 of these in a row! (¢ 50)

Men With Broken Hearts, the best country tape mix.
How could he not be? ($ 3)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATIONALE!

Suggestions for Her

Oh you know she deserves it!

Sophie Calle. Close to 500 pages dedicated to the French artist, this is a must-have for any fan. ($ 79)

Maske by Phyllis Galembo. Mind blowing photographs of traditional masqueraders and carnival characters from Western Africa and Haiti. ($ 45)

eat.shop paris, preferably with a ticket to France somewhere hidden within the pages. ($ 14.95)

French kitchen towels, in red, blue, or orange stripes. (2 for $ 15)

Ceramic jewelry by artist Emily Counts. Be sure to stop in to see her beautiful collection of one-of-a-kind necklaces. ($ 65-90)

Deep Geode sculpture by Eliza Fernand. Already all sparkly on the inside, this is without a doubt the most perfect secret place for that engagement ring. ($ 170)

Wallet from Ampersand AS Apostrophe's Aztec line, the ladies are all going gaga over these prints. ($ 168-275)

Fun stocking stuffers: old rose exfoliating Marseille soap ($ 14), OLO Nationale 6/7 scent and argan hair tonic ($ 30 each), rose bonbons from Flavigny ($ 4), leather pencil/make up case from France ($ 22-25).

Holiday Hours:
Daily, 11-7
Christmas Eve, 11-3
Christmas Day, closed

Limited edition Claudia Brown print

CLAUDIA BROWN
Psychedelic Doily
2010
Ink on watercolor paper
Hand drawn and silkscreened by the artist
15” X 15 “
$ 100 (edition of 50)

Email nationale.portland@gmail.com for further information...

Suggestions for Him

We love our guys and have been thinking about all the gifts they might like this holiday season.

The Good Rain, fascinating non-fiction narrative about our beautiful Pacific Northwest region. Will make you want to visit all these places. I'm currently reading & loving it, and I already know where I'm going in 2011: Victoria, BC! ($ 14.95)

Lapham's Quarterly, this new issue just came out and is all about Celebrity. Not so much our modern celebrities, but more of an account of fame throughout the ages and from all different cultures. This should be a winner with dads and brainy boyfriends. ($ 15)

Simple, traditional Marseille soap. This bar has been getting the job done since the Middle Ages. To this day, it is still dried in the sun and hand cut in one of the very few authentic factories left in Marseille. ($ 8/300gr)

Erastus scent from OLO. With the smell of fresh tobacco as its first note, Erastus is a favorite of smokers and quitters alike.
($ 40/9ml)

Open, the autobiography of Andre Agassi... Yup! A lot of customers have been quite confused upon seeing this book at Nationale, but honestly, it was my favorite read of 2010. I was especially enthralled by his account of early childhood champion training, although it was also fun to get an insider view of the tennis world later on in the book. ($ 15.95)

Raymond Carver, A Writer's Life comes highly recommended from Ty, my boyfriend, an avid reader and huge Carver fan. One of two books I can't wait to read. ($ 20)

Great stocking stuffers for cooks and gourmands: pork rillettes ($5), Guérande sea salt ($ 6/$ 8), Suchard dark chocolate rock with hazelnuts. ($ 2.5)

The Greatest greeting card from San Francisco's Yellow Owl Workshop ($ 4.50). You really are....

USED LPs

We just got a ton of used LPs in! Leonard Cohen, Thermals, out of print Lightning Bolt, Bonnie Prince Billy, Talkdemonic, etc. Lots of country too! ($3-20)

NEEVEL / ERDENBERGER

Openness Is a State of Blinds and so we invite you to view this new piece by David Neevel and Max Erdenberger 24/7 for the next few months. The sculpture will be active during business hours, passive when closed, and sure to confuse even the wisest.

Lapham's Quarterly: new issue Celebrity!

The new Lapham is here, and at last we can read about Celebrity without all the guilty feelings. This is the second issue we carry from Lapham, we still have a couple copies of The City, and at only $15 for so much reading material it will make the perfect present this holiday season.

"France’s Louis XIV was the first modern-era king to recognize that image mattered more than actual accomplishment. Battlefield triumphs were each depicted immediately on engravings, which could be quickly and cheaply duplicated and disseminated. He built Versailles, which served as the model for all the other courts of Europe, and insisted that Israel Silvestre, designer and engraver to the king, produce high-quality books with images of “all his palaces, royal houses, the most beautiful views and aspects of his gardens, public assemblies, carousels, and outskirts of cities.” Louis was the original king of poses, announcing his status as Sun King in the performance of a ballet when he was fourteen years old, and maintaining power explicitly as a kind of performance art centred around his personality. Celebrity culture was born in the middle of his orgy of conspicuous consumption as he mastered the ability to project his personality through stuff. The king’s preference for champagne made it the beverage, his love of diamonds made them the most precious jewel, fashion began to change with the seasons according to his taste, French replaced Latin as the global language because it was his language."

January 2011: Delaney Allen

On view January 5th - 30th, 2011
Opening reception First Friday January 7th, 6pm/9pm
Artist talk Wednesday January 26th 2011, 7pm

In Visibility marks Allen's first solo exhibition at Nationale. In the vein of early pictorialists, Allen obscures the archetype of photography as documentation through the synthesis of abstract and found imagery. The pieces’ muted palette and painterly depictions of ethereal occurrences such as rainbows, clouds and water thus disobey easy interpretation and allow Allen to investigate the presumed certainty of sight.

Born in Fort Worth, TX, Delaney Allen recently received his MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s visual studies program. Allen’s photographs have been shown nationally and internationally and have also been featured in a number of print publications including Nylon Magazine and Italy’s Carpaccio Magazine. In addition, he has self-published two books of work. The most recent, Between Here And There (2010), combines imagery and emails to both recount and elaborate the disintegration of a long-distance relationship. Allen currently lives and works out of Portland, OR.

This Friday: Regional Design event!

Stop by tomorrow night from 6 to 9pm and you will be rewarded with New Deal Distillery drinks. Thank you to these awesome folks for their donation. We're feeling warmer already!

Friday's Regional event: Hunter Gatherer(er)

I first met Seattle's Ashley Helvey of Hunter Gather(er) when she did a felting workshop this spring at Luce, Giovanna Parolari and John Taboda's event space up the street. I've been following her blogs diligently ever since and was so happy when she agreed to participate in our regional design event this Friday. Alas she won't be able to come down to Portland, but her crazy beautiful necklaces are here already. And at $65, they sure are a steal!

Friday's Regional Design event: Jessica Park

Friday's event at Nationale mark the Portland launch of Ampersand AS Apostrophe's Aztec line. To celebrate, Jessica Park's designs will be 25% off all night.

A native of Detroit, now a Seattle-based designer, 27 year old Jessica Park made her first bag out of sheer captivation by a material possessing quality appeal, history, and the look of something conventional dying to be transformed in a truly unconventional way. Soon after, Ampersand AS Apostrophe, a high-end line of over-the-shoulder bags that double as clutches and are made from 100-year-old mail carrying duffels, was launched.

About Aztec:

Ampersand as Apostrophe has been diligently working on a new piece aimed to jump start your heart and your entire wardrobe. The Aztec parcel bag’s graphically structural print along side its hide & pebbled leather combo works double duty to create a rough-smooth phenomenon that simultaneously offsets and compliments a multitude of ensembles. The Aztec was designed to capture the soulful bravehearted bohemian in us all. The kicker is that in a split second this especially malleable bag morphs into the elegantly tough piece that is stylish, covetable, and surprisingly easy to wear.

Friday's Regional Design event: Anna Weber

Nationale has been carrying Anna Weber's bead necklaces ever since her solo show last fall. I love these new seasonal colors and am so happy Anna could be part of our regional design event tomorrow night.

Friday's Regional Design event: plainMADE

We are starting to gear up for tomorrow night's fantastic event at the 811 E Burnside mall. These knits just in from Chelsea Heffner of plainMADE include oversized Future Ex-boyfriend sweaters, Northern Lights cowls (my favorite is in midnight blue & black), as well as Run Away wraps. And yes, of course these make me think of Kanye West. But what doesn't these days?

New sculptures by Eliza Fernand

In town for her show at galleryHOMELAND tomorrow night, Eliza Fernand stopped by this morning with these amazing new sculptures. That little purple Deep Geode is sure to make someone very happy come Christmas.

Night shopping, this friday

NATIONALE presents a night of regional design Friday, December 10th, 2010 (6/9pm). Alongside the many independent boutiques of the 811 East Burnside mall, we will be open late that night celebrating the Portland launch of Jessica Park’s Aztec line (AMPERSAND AS APOSTROPHE), as well as offering new jewelry from Anna Weber and Seattle designer Ashley Helvey (HUNTER GATHERER(ER)). In addition, Chelsea Heffner, who charmed us this summer with her plainMADE knitted dresses, will showcase her winter collection of super secret hiding hoods & gigantic wraps and get us all in the holiday spirit.

Our carefully chosen selection of perfect gifts should also come as a life saver to many panicked husbands and last minute shoppers. And to make things even easier, we're offering a gift registry in the shop all month. So come by soon to fill in that letter to Santa.

Our last exhibit of 2010 closes in style

Bring on the tears, the smiles, the stares, the awkward, the boring, the vulnerable, the sweet, the uncomfortable, the heartbreaking. Kathleen Keogh & Rikki Rothenberg you did it all, and all over again.

Thank you Jae Choi (and all your readers)...

Poems

In the Root Now Opened
Clatsop County
Doctrine (read by Joel Statz)
Return of the Shantyman (read by Rikki Rothenberg)
Interview with the Fishwife (read by Jaclyn Delorey)
Echolocation (read by Liz Harris)
I Wasn’t Expecting Company (read by Steve Schroeder)
Inventory: Stockboy and Caliper
Harry Houdini

TONIGHT AT 7PM

In support of her exhibit For Begüm which closes tonight, multi-disciplinary artist Rikki Rothenberg invited fellow dancer Kathleen Keogh and local writer Jae Choi to share an evening of performance as part of Nationale’s membership program. Please join us Sunday December 5th at 7pm and experience this special event with us. In our efforts to continue offering affordable, intimate, and often challenging performances, we are asking for a $3 donation. Events are free for our members. Please visit our website for more information.

More books in

We wanted to get this in the shop even before Patti Smith received the prestigious National Book Award for Nonfiction this month. And like the above drawing by the fantastic Kate Bingaman Burt states, I indeed "CAN'T WAIT TO READ THIS".
Full Patti Smith interview HERE.
Just Kids, Patti Smith (Ecco, $ 16)

Today, today

Morning sunshine & For Begüm...
We love today so much we'll be here until 9pm!

Simply stunning

Nationale is now carrying Maske by Phyllis Galembo (Hardcover, Boot LTD, $45). Phyllis Galembo’s interest in the masquerade traditions of Africa and its diaspora began twenty five years ago, with her first visit to Nigeria. Since then, she has travelled widely in west and central Africa, and regularly to Haiti, making portraits that document and describe the transformative power of the mask. Her subjects are participants in masquerade events, both traditional African ceremonies and contemporary fancy dress and carnival, all of whom use costume, body paint and masks to create mythic characters – sometimes entertaining and humorous, often dark and frightening, and always powerful and thrilling. Titled after the Haitian Kreyòl word for mask, Maske is the first comprehensive collection of these portraits.

Read the review in the British Journal of Photography HERE

Liz Harris: Drawings + DVD book release

Divide is a book of drawings and an accompanying video by Liz Harris. Harris' visual work runs in parallel to her music as Grouper, and often times overlaps into the same vision. Divide maps out dense organic patterns, passages filled to the edges with overgrowth and fractured geometry. Minimal strokes are taken to maximal repetitions to form complex mazes in high contrast. Other images float in space like hex symbols from prehistory, portals to some other place & time. The accompanying video (with soundtrack) of black & white Rorschach voids should be familiar to anyone who has seen a recent Grouper show.

We will proudly host the Portland release party for Divide on Sunday December 12th at 6pm. To see more of Harris' work, please visit her page on our website.

Book is 7" by 7", 60 pages, soft cover with a color cover & black and white images. DVDR is all regions. Edition of 500.
(Root Strata, $45)