One more view of Running Horses, Tom Hardy, 1986, Bronze SW 6th and Madison, part of the Public Art on the TriMet MAX Green Line

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While looking for more public art photos to feature, I came across this one of Running Horses. I took it on Feb. 20, 2009. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why the sun was shining like this and that flowering tree is blooming, plus the bloom on that shorter plant--I think it is a camellia--in February?

Confusing. So I've looked back at my blog and found a completely dry photo that I took on Feb.5, another one where a lady's sitting outside at an ice cream place, bundled up in her coat, but it's sunny, no rain. So, February 2009 must have been a less wet month than I would have thought, with enough sunshine and warmth to bring on the blooms.

Public Art on the TriMet MAX Green Line: Running Horses, Tom Hardy, 1986, Bronze SW 6th and Madison

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I took these four photos on October 5, 2009, because this sculpture fascinated me. I found online that the Running Horses sculpture originally stood on the SW 6th Avenue side of Pioneer Courthouse Square, near the gate from the former Portland Hotel. I found one photo of the sculpture, taken in 2005, when it was still there. I like where it is now much better.
 

After I crossed the street, I took this photo as I walked north on the west side of SW 6th.
 

Then I stopped and took this one before continuing northward to catch my homebound bus.
 

A bonus sculpture, Hilda Morris's Ring of Time, the onion ring-shaped artwork across SW 6th Avenue at the Standard Building.

Constellation, three sculptures by Tad Savinar, 2000, Bronze -- No. 1, Isolated Molecule for a Good Neighborhood

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Constellation: Isolated Molecule for a Good Neighborhood. From the plaque at the park: "These three sculptures are a visual representation of the connections between our civic gardens and our neighborhoods, and of the pivotal role we have as stewards of those relationships." This project was funded by the City of Portland's Percent for Art Program, administered by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

First, photos of the atoms in the molecule, followed by a wide shot of the sculpture in Holladay Park, NE 11th Avenue & Holladay Street. At the end of the post you'll find historical information about the park and more details about the sculptures, from the City of Portland. I took these photos November 6, 2010.
 

Milk carton.
 

Milk carton and school building, front view.
 

School building, back view.
 

Garden spade and house, back view.
 

House, front view.
 

Family. Has something been broken off in the center of this group of figures? It's the turquoise color showing at the top of those structures that makes me wonder.
 

The entire sculpture, not the best angle for seeing it clearly, what with the nearby tree trunks being almost the same color. And I missed a few of the atoms: An enlarged structure of a molecule featuring atoms in the shape of a garden tool, a milk carton, a coffee mug, a bagel, a house, a school, a family, and trees --all the things that make a good neighborhood. Now I have a reason to go there again someday and take a longer look, see what else I can photograph.

Historical Information This park is named after Benjamin Holladay (1819-1887), known to many as "a sharpster, a con man, and a rake." He stirred things up wherever he went and was a bit of a dandy, dressing like a riverboat gambler. He was said to be "wholly destitute of fixed principles of honesty, morality, or common decency." In 1868 Holladay sold his stage coach business in California to Wells Fargo and moved to Portland to get involved in the railroad business. His goal was to build a rail line to California along the east side of the Willamette River. In order to do so, he spent a total of $55,000 in bribe money to help secure his company's endorsement. He also built two large hotels in the area where the park bearing his name is now located. Known as an extravagant spender, Holladay owned numerous mansions on both coasts and had over extended himself financially. He lost his railroad in 1876, and died in Portland in 1887.

Commissioned by the Lloyd Corporation and Pacific Power & Light in 1964, a concrete fountain featuring music and lights was installed in the park. Designed by Jack Stuhl, assisted by Ted Widing and Phillips Electrical, the musical fountain was favorite gathering place for park visitors. It was replaced in 2000, in conjunction with a major renovation of the park, by a spouting fountain designed by Tim Clemen and Murase Associates.

Three cast-bronze sculptures by artist Tad Savinar were added to the park as a percent-for-art project in 2000. Entitled Constellation, the project illustrates the connection between the personal front yard garden and the civic park garden through three distinct elements: a vase of cut flowers, an abstract molecule containing elements of a good neighborhood, and the figure of a home gardener, shears in hand. The objects in the molecule were selected by the Sullivan Gulch Neighborhood Association and the gardener was modeled after Carolyn Marks, a longtime neighborhood activist.

Public Art - a vivid mural on the corner of NE Grand Avenue and NE Broadway Street

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I took this photo on Saturday, April 27, while waiting for the Portland Streetcar so that I could go to the Farmers Market at Portland State--I decided to take the scenic route on it instead of a couple of buses. I got off the streetcar for a quick stop at Walgreens, looking for a wristwatch. They don't sell wristwatches at Walgreens! Gosh! Anyway, while I waited for the next streetcar, I finally got to take a photo of this mural. Next time maybe I'll have enough time to walk across the street and try to get one without parked vehicles covering up a bit of the lower border.

Naturally I'm curious about the subject of the mural, so I went Googling.

Found on another photographer's Flickr: Sponsors of this mural are the Portland-Mutare Sister City Association and Africa Aids Response. It was hand painted by the people of Portland in 2007. It is located at NE 6th & Broadway.

Also found on the Internet:

• Hope is Vital, 2007 Artworks: Mural (painted) 
•  Artists Matt Bellingham, Heidi Schultz 
• Collection City of Portland and Multnomah County Public Art Collection courtesy of the Regional Arts & Culture Council Materials 
• Latex paint on concrete 
• Dates: Installed, 2007 
• Description: This mural's purpose is to create global solidarity and educate the Portland community about Portland's sister city, Mutare, Zimbabwe, and humanitarian efforts there. Underneath the inspiring message, "Hope is Vital," the sun shines on a yellow medical clinic Portland helped build for its sister city. In a show of support, persons from both Portland and Mutare hold hands, dance, and drum to celebrate life, above the text "it takes a planet to save a village."

Seen from the Portland Streetcar

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Public art #1, wide shot from MLK, looking east at the recently installed public art on the corners of SE Grand and SE Hawthorne--to the right--and SE Grand and SE Madison--to the left. The art is the brown metal structures through which you can see the sky.



Public art #2, close up of public art at SE Grand and SE Hawthorne, seen from MLK. It's supposed to make the viewer think of a building which used to stand here.



Public art #3, close up of public art at SE Grand and SE Madison, seen from MLK. I have to admit that I find the public art in Portland rewarding, and this new one very near where I work has grown on me until I now enjoy looking at it from all sides. What you're seeing in these photos is the public art at Hawthorne Boulevard. See below what I found on the Internet about it.

Information found about this public art online:

Inversion: Plus Minus (below) is a set of towering site-specific sculptures created by artists/architects Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio. Using weathered steel angle iron, the artists are presenting “ghosts” of former buildings at two similar sites along SE Grand Avenue. One site, at Hawthorne Boulevard, will feature a matrix of metal that almost appears as a solid building. . . . In the artists’ words, “The sculptures reference the outer shells of ordinary industrial buildings found in the Central Eastside Industrial Area like those that once existed on the project sites.”

Seen outside the Rose Garden Arena, after the game

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I took this photo Saturday, January 19, after the basketball game. The Milwaukee Bucks won, not us. However, I am a fan, no matter what. 

We don't normally have fog like this, so I am happy to have had the opportunity to take a few photos out in it. Looking southwest towards the Willamette River and downtown Portland, you cannot see the Steel Bridge or the grain elevators--much less the lights of downtown--the fog's that thick. 

Bits I discovered online about the sculpture. 

• The Little Prince, by Ilan Averbuch. Copper and steel, 1995. 
• The Little Prince is a partially buried copper crown located at the south end of the arena in the Rose Quarter. It is a piece about imagination, desires and aspirations, conquests and struggles. It is the job of the viewer to create the story that goes along with the crown. Is it a victory and position of honor waiting to be claimed, or is there another story? Only the viewer can say.
• Ilan's inspiration for this piece was the "Little Prince" by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, in particular, the first chapter where he talks about his drawing of a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant being misunderstood as a hat.
• Ilan Averbuch's "Little Prince" and the Portland Trailblazer's Rose Garden Arena. Portland, Oregon . . . legend has it that the crown will be stood upright when the Blazers with their next championship.
• The Little Prince, 1995, is a gigantic fallen crown, an image of a ruin of ancient majesty, of one-time splendor, and a version of another recurring theme in Averbuch’s work: the obsolescence of the monumental, former monuments in the soil, like ancient relics.
• The Little Prince (Ilan Averbuch, 1996) is a copper crown, standing 15 feet tall in front of the Rose Garden. Inspired by the French children's story by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, the artist asks that you use your imagination to think of a story behind the crown. The crown is resting on its side perhaps waiting as a prize to be claimed or as a symbol of a triumph to come.

Here's another view of it. It's on a bit of an elevation from street level, the height of which is well-represented here by its juxtaposition with the bottom windows of that double-decker bus from Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub which is in downtown PDX. Another photo of "The Little Prince" that I took on October 16, 2010. And one more, with a part of the Rose Garden Arena visible on the other side of it.

Waiting, with Loyalty, #2

I noticed just this much visible of the waiting dog. I couldn't resist taking a photo of what I felt represented a fine slice of life. I love how the dog could care less about that nearby orange and red fire hydrant.


A few minutes later, the dog's man came out and they walked north on SW 6th Avenue, downtown Portland.

About the Green Line MAX public art on the Transit Mall which you can see most of there between the woman with the red bag and the man with the black backpack:

Continuation, 2009
ARTIST
Michihiro Kosuge
LOCATION
On 6th Avenue, between Columbia and Clay streets
DESCRIPTION
With the five sculptures that make up Continuation, Michihiro Kosuge reused red granite from an earlier sculpture and fountain installation on the Portland Mall. To create relationships between the sculptures while allowing each one to stand on its own, the artist sculpted pieces with interconnecting visual elements that include repetition, tension and stability.

Out and about with Milton and Kay, Tuesday, August 23

Up early, coffee and protein drink, and then to the bus for a ride north of the apartment to try out the Cadillac Cafe on NE Broadway. I found it on the Internet and thought it looked worth a shot, plus it was near a Goodwill that we didn't make on Monday, one we could walk to after brunch.


While we waited across the street from the Lloyd Center, a great big shopping center, to transfer to our third and final bus for the trip, this hard-working young woman road through the intersection on her Soup Cycle.


We boarded the bus, and on the way to NE Broadway, I took this photo of another busy bicyclist.

Here you see my glass of orange juice, Milton's omelette, and my breakfast. Kay got the same thing I did, but with fried eggs. I forgot to take a photo of her plate. I did get two photos of the Cadillac that has its own special space inside the cafe.



We walked to the Goodwill after we ate, then walked over to the Barnes & Noble at Lloyd Center so that Milton and Kay could look for a DVD, "Oregon Splendor," that they'd watched with friends at home. They wanted their own copy to take back to Mississippi with them. There was one copy of it in the store. On the way to Lloyd Center we walked by this sculpture, "In the Tree Tops" by Margarita Leon.


After we left the shopping center, we walked south to the MAX stop so that we could get on board and ride to catch MAX Yellow Line at the Rose Garden and then ride north to Lombard where we boarded a bus that we rode to St. Johns. We got off there and walked a couple of blocks so that we could see the St. Johns Bridge. It's a beautiful bridge.


Soon we retraced our route, bus back to MAX and got off downtown so that we could make our way to the 30th floor of the Big Pink and hopefully get to sit at the windows in the bar at the Portland City Grill where we planned to have something to drink and a little snack to tide us over until supper time. From the MAX car, I took this photo of an art car at a service station. It's a hoot!


Speaking of art, here is a photo of two of the cairns on NW 5th Avenue which are part of the public art that one finds here and there along the MAX lines. I took it from inside the MAX car.

Here's what the TriMet pamphlet has to say about the Cairns:

Christine Bourdette, Cairns, 2008 Silver ledgestone, NW 5th and 6th between Irving and Glisan
My inspiration for Cairns came from the man- made stacks of stones that have historically served as landmarks for navigation, memorials, rituals and commemorative markers all over the world. Travelers on cross-country hiking trails traditionally add stones to cairns as they pass, resulting in animated and sometimes precarious stacks of rocks and pebbles. This evidence of our comings and goings, often in rather comical human form, signify safety and reassurance in the wilderness. In the urban wilderness, finding one’s way through the various stages of hurry-up-and- wait is just as significant. I am fascinated with all the ways my fellow citizens and I learn how to navigate our surroundings. My specific intention for these stacked stone forms was to mark the path to the light rail stations as well as to celebrate points of arrival and departure.
Masonry: Cliff Townsend Masonry, Inc. Oregon City, OR

Oh, before I forget. We got a table at the windows. Come back tomorrow for the views!

A. E. Doyle's Bank of California Building, 1924

On the corner of SW 6th and SW Stark, stands another of my favorite downtown Portland buildings. I'm partial to Portland's prolific architect of yesteryear, A. E. Doyle.

Huge windows. Tiny pedestrians, in relation to the huge windows. Notice the public art? It's part of the Transit Mall's collection.


Notice the Benson bubbler, to the right between the public art and the tree?


The Z marks the transit stop near that corner.


You'll see this same intricate light fixture on a different Doyle building.


From Wikipedia, but I need to add that the sign on the building is not for The Bidwell & Company. It says Three Kings. I couldn't find anything about Three Kings, Portland, at that address. Anyone know anything?

The Bank of California Building or also The Bidwell & Company Building, is a historic two-story building in downtown Portland, Oregon. Since 1978, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is currently vacant.

This location was the site of the first Portland Central Library, which moved to its present site in the early 1920s. The Bank of California saw the lot as fit to build a Portland branch and hired local notable architect A.E. Doyle to design it. Doyle's chief designer Charles K. Green had traveled abroad to study Greco-roman architectural forms in the 1910s. The result of his research resulted in three Italianate buildings, of which the Bank of California Building was the first. The others were the Chicago/Italianate Pacific Building and the Public Service Building, an early skyscraper. The exterior lights on the Public Services Building are of the same design of those on the Bank of California Building.

The Bank of California remained at this site for 50 years until moving a couple of blocks west to the Union Bank of California Tower. The building underwent an intensive renovation in 2000.

Public Art on the Portland Mall

The renovated transit mall downtown includes lots of sculpture, some new, some that was there before the renovation. I've been taking photos of some of it, as I come upon it while walking either on SW 5th or SW 6th Avenues.

This is part of the original collection. I took the photo on June 22, 2009, thus the bright sunshine and the green leaves on the trees.

Located on SW 5th, between SW Ash and SW Pine, "Untitled," by John Killmaster, 1977. It is made from Cor-ten steel and porcelain enamel.

Delta Park/Vanport Station: PCPA Tour Guides' tour of MAX Yellow Line Public Art Ends Here

Please scroll to the bottom to see the the dahlia today, Tahiti Sunrise.

From the PCPA Volunteer Newsletter, August, 2009:
Delta Park/Vanport station remembers the historic town of Vanport that flooding destroyed in 1948. Valerie Otani said Vanport was the 2nd largest city in Oregon at the time and contained distinct ethnic communities (including many displaced Japanese displaced from internment camps after WWII). When the levy broke it allowed a 20 foot wall of water to completely destroy the town. The hand railings were casts of various
“found” objects: bottles, coins, trinkets and other objects. Below the station are metal sculptures set in the ground reminiscent of the roofs of the houses that were literally floating in the flood water. Interestingly, Ms. Otani said they had difficulty including the name “Vanport” in the station title. TriMet usually requires the station be named for an existing place--and there is no Vanport in existence now. But they wanted people to remember it and know where it existed. Delta Park is now a raceway located on the abandoned Vanport streets.

About the handrail, facts from TriMet: A bronze railing features cast artifacts from the Chinookan culture, Vanport and the Portland International Raceway.
Sections of the handrail:

See Daisy Duck?




















Here's the story of the artifacts that inspired the handrail for artist Linda Wysong:
From "Eugene Register-Guard," March 5, 2002:
The city of Vanport was wiped out by the flooding Columbia River 54 years ago. But pieces of it keep surfacing--in the form of household belongings once owned by residents.
Armed with a screwdriver and a shovel, Terri Johnson probes the mud on the flood plain north of Portland where Vanport once stood. Rainfall brings personal objects to the survace.
Artifacts she has found over the years include fingernail polish, marbles, dentures, a rifle bullet, a sealed jar of jam, a shot glass, perfume, a toy Greyhound bus, tea cups and a prescription container that says "Economy Drug, Vanport."
On a recent day, Johnson jabbed a screwdriver into the soil. There was a "Clink." She pulls out a milky shard, probably from a cold cream jar.
"I go by the sound," she said.
Vanport vanished at 4:17 p.m. on May 30, 1948, when a makeshift dike tumbled apart. A wall of water from the swollen Columbia River plowed into buildings, homes and cars.
Records say about 15 people died. Survivors have said they believe that scores of others vanished. More than 18,000 residents became homeless.
Johnson, 58, has spare time to prod for artifacts since she moved to the former Vanport acreage 14 years ago with her husband, Fred Johnson, 60, a retired city of Portland sewer and forestry worker.
The Johnsons serve as caretakers for Portland International Raceway, which stands where part of Vanport used to be.
The former Vanport acreage--a flood plain known today as West Delta Park--now cradles the Heron Lakes Golf Course, the Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center and the raceway wetlands where Terri Johnson roams.
On a recent day, Johnson strolled the bus-length concrete slab.
The slab once served as the foundation for Vanport's movie theater which, on the afternoon the city ended, had been alive with popcorn and candy and children and a double-bill of films that included the "Wreck of the Hesperus."
"I would like to see a plaque here," Johnson said. "'In memory of Vanport survivors and those who have passed, and who were lost in the floods.'"
Among the survivors is Ed Washington, 65, until recently a Metro councilor.
Washington was a youngster when the ceiling-high wave washed away his family's home. Until the dike gave way, Washington recalls, many residents had figured that the season's rising waters might simply dampen floors. He says he imagined you'd just walk back in and sweep it out.
"There was no sweeping out," he says. "Our lives were swept away."

The dahlia today, the Tahiti Sunrise, from Swan Island Dahlias, Canby, Oregon

More of the PCPA Tour Guides tour of public art on the MAX Yellow Line

At the end of the Yellow Line, we followed our guide Valerie Otani off the MAX at the Expo Center Station. This particular public art is mainly Valerie's. Facts from TriMet's Web site.


Valerie Otani addresses the theme of Japanese relocation during World War II at the site of the 1942 Portland Assembly Center.Traditional Japanese timber gates strung with metal "internee ID tags" mark station entrances. Vintage news articles are etched in steel and wrapped around the gate legs.


Bronze trunks provide seating on the platforms.


Community maps feature the floor plan of the converted livestock exhibition hall and a copy of the exclusion order.


Info from the PCPA Volunteers Newsletter:

Expo Center station was perhaps the most meaningful of our trip. Valerie Otani was the artist and she designed large timber gates reminiscent of those found in Asia. The gates reflect a transition, or an entrance, or beginning. The Expo Center was historically a livestock yard, but was converted into a temporary WWII internment center for those of Japanese descent.

At the top of the large gate are 4000 metal tags in commemoration of the 4000 internees located there. The tags resemble the ID tags required for all Japanese to wear.




The base of each gate is wrapped in metal to protect its wooden structure – since this is art for the public and must be able to withstand public use. Some metal wrappings are etched with actual newspaper accounts of the time of internment which are shocking (and saddening) to our eyes.






Ms. Otani is of Japanese descent and told us of her family’s story. Her immediate family lived in California and they were interned there. Her grandfather had lived in Hawaii for 30 years before the night of Pearl Harbor when he, and other leaders in the Japanese community, were arrested. He returned to Japan after the war and never saw his U.S. family again.