Portland State Magazine Fall 2011

ABOVE LEFT: Bullseye Glass Company is the epicenter of Portland's kiln-formed glass industry. Photo by Jerome Hart and courtesy of Bullseye Glass. ABOVE RIGHT: At least a dozen hatmakers call Portland home, but in her downtown studio, milliner Dayna Pinkham creates high-fashion hats sought nationwide. Photo by Ruthanne Annaloro. 2005, is so dedicated to the art of coffee chat he offers regular castings where customers can sip coffee samples side by side, much like wine tastings. Artisan businesses have found a welcome home in Portland due to its relatively low start-up costs, still-cheap rencs, and a consumer base chat shares similar values. Affordability and access to hops are part of what has made Port– land, with its 38 microbreweries, home to the largest per capita concencration of microbrew establishments for any metro area worldwide. Focusing incensely on locally sourced, artisan products has apparently left Portland ripe for humor. The city's love for all things local hie pop culture chis year in Portlandia, an IFC comedy series. One skit gently mocks earnest "locavores" who not only wane to know if the chicken on the menu is free range, but how and where it lived. TO TH OSE who would scoff at the long-term economic viability of artisan vocations, Heying has a ready answer. The so-called real economy? These days, chat looks like 10 percenc unemploy– ment and mega-corporations outsourc– ing jobs overseas. As Heying asks, "How sustainable is that economy?" Plus, a locally based economy doesn't have to be a closed loop shut off from the increasingly globalized market, Hey– ing says. 1hanks to the Internet, local goods made by small businesses can find customers and distributors anywhere. Chris King Precision Components, which makes bicycle pares, has built an incernational cliencele through its website. 1here's no way to cell how the 21st-century artisan world will evolve. Heying is quick to acknowledge that the industrial economy isn't disappearing. However, he sees immense potential in these still-early seeps toward an alternate economy. The book is "a manifesto for the artisan economy as a path of resistance in a globalizing world," he writes. "Something is happening here. The evidence cannot be ignored." ■ Su Yim, a graduate assistant in the PSU Office ofUniversity Communications, wrote "Operation: Go to School" in the winter 2011 Portland Scace Magazine. FALL 2011 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 13