First Presbyterian Church - the Pipe Organ

Last week on Friday, a group of Portland Urban Sketchers was allowed special access to First Presbyterian Church. They are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the installation of their pipe organ with a year of organ music through their Celebration Works program and were interested in seeing sketches of the organ.

Our sketch group has only had one sketchcrawl at this location before; it was a decade ago and we sketched only from the outside. This time we not only went inside, we got a demo of how the pipe organ works and some historical backdrop as well. What an honor!  We'll be returning to this beautiful building for a future Saturday sketchcrawl and are grateful to our contacts at the Church that made this possible. 

For a last minute sketchcrawl on a week day, I was impressed with our great turnout! Thanks to everyone that made time to visit, and to those sketchers that shared their sketches with FPC afterwards.

The inside of the Church is full of warm wood tones and graceful arches and curves.  However, it's also full of interesting shapes that we may not understand well yet, like the pipes on the pipe organ! I got fairly confused in my one big sketch and can't wait to try again now that I have some ideas about how to approach this subject.

Thanks again to the folks at First Presbyterian for taking the time to invite us in and let us sketch!