RACC Press Releases
August 12 , 2008
Picture Window
at the Portland Building
September 1-26, 2008
The Regional Arts & Culture Council presents the installation, Picture Window, by Portland artist Paula Rebsom in the Portland Building Installation Space, September 1-26, 2008. The Portland Building, located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue, is open to the public from 7am - 6pm, Monday through Friday.
From the artist’s sewing room, she can barely see the tip of Mt. Hood. But she can easily see two auto body shops, a law office, a roof of a nearby restaurant and the trash that accumulates behind their building, and another restaurant whose outdoor lights buzz throughout the night. Traffic sounds are ever present and backyard wildlife consists of crows and raccoons. Six blocks away is a glorious view of Mt. Hood, and the artist finds herself fantasizing what it would be like to have this idyllic view from her window while at the same time contemplating how people’s homes impact animals’ habitats.
For the Portland Building Installation Space, Rebsom is creating the idyllic view by mounting a large painted mural of Mt. Hood on the north and west walls of the space and placing a wooden house façade across the opening of the space. The viewer can view the majestic mountain by looking through the window. Wooden cutouts of trees will fill the space between the photomural and the house façade. Over the course of the first three weeks, the trees will slowly be replaced with wooden cutouts of coyotes, “an animal that continues to test our boundaries by thriving in the most unlikely of circumstances, within city limits,” Rebsom states. During the final week, a large format photograph of the installation will replace the “set”. The artist writes: “I am interested in how the viewer will respond to the photograph after having seen the physical props, which in my previous work have been abandons, recycled, or discarded.”
Background
Paula Rebsom earned her M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Oregon. She is a recipient of a 2007 Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission. Rebsom’s work explores the paradoxes of identity, including human/animal; male/female; and predator/prey relationships. Since graduating from the University of Oregon, she has exhibited her work at PSU’s Autzen Gallery, the Salem Art Association’s Bush Gallery and Pasture Park, Tilt Gallery and Project Space, and the Form/Space Atelier in Seattle.
Upcoming installations: Dan Senn, October 6 – 31; Gabe Shaughnessy, November 10 – December 5; all the art that fits (employee art exhibit), December 10 – January 9, 2009; Carolyn Matsumoto, January 19 – February 13; Robert McConaughy, February 23 – March 20.
A website that features images, proposals and statements of all installations featured in the space since 1994 can be found at www.racc.org/installationspace.
Through vision, leadership and service the Regional Arts
& Culture Council works to integrate arts and culture in all aspects of
community life.
####
Back to RACC Press Release page
View News Archives
Request RACC Press Releases via email. Contact: Mary Bauer, mbauer@racc.org
RACC Staff to Contact
Jeff Hawthorne
Director of Community Affairs
503.823.5258
jhawthorne@racc.org
Mary Bauer
Communications Associate
503.823.5426
mbauer@racc.org
| 
