Portland's reputation for being obsessed with all things vegan, eco-friendly, organic, fair-trade, and other socially conscious buzzwords is so widespread it spawned a television show called Portlandia. What gets lost in the hilarious program, though, are the people who are affected by this new wave of businesses. The combination of these two narratives—the city's commitment to being green and those negatively affected by it—is the subject of the latest soap project by local artist Hayley Bauske.
The line of soaps from Bauske are individually made, so each one is entirely one-of-a-kind and collectible. From the look of the samples on the website, each bar of soap holds a figurine in it. The soaps are, in Portland tradition, very well made. They are vegan, fair-trade, organic and made with coconut oil, palm oil, safflower oil, glycerin, and soybean oil for conditioning. However, the figurines entrapped in their organically-made confines carry a message. "The brown people are being pushed out to the suburbs by [the city's fame] and being replaced with businesses that preserve health/beauty for the transplants mostly," Bauske told us via email. "Thus we have my Homies, stuck in it."
This isn't the first time Bauske has put a clever spin on what's going on in the world. She took on lighter fare before with the idea that you can put Sriracha on anything. The result was a T-shirt with an all-over print of the bottle.
Bauske will dedicate a gallery to the soap in November. In the meantime, order your very own bar on Bauske's website now.
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