RACC Blog

PORTLAND, ORE – The Regional Arts & Culture Council is pleased to present the 2nd annual Día de los Muertos installation at the Portland Building beginning October 28th and running through November 4th. This year the display has been organized by muralist Rodolfo Serna. Known for his large collaborative mural projects, Serna is working with young artists from the Boys & Girls Club to create large scale images on the walls while members of Portland’s Mexica Tiahui Aztec Dance Group set up traditionalofrendas (altar) in the center of the exhibition space adjacent to the Portland Building lobby. The Día de los Muertos holiday is focused on commemorating ancestors, family, and friends that have died, and serves to remind us the natural part death plays in the cycle of life. The holiday originated in Mexico, but has expanded over time and is now celebrated throughout the U.S. and beyond.

“This installation is a tradition we bring from across the border that has been part of the indigenous cultures there for thousands of years…we see this as a day and night of reconnecting with our ancestors, the Mexica people; every year we set up an alter in a community space where we can all gather and celebrate.”

– Rodolfo Serna

About the Artists:  Rodolfo Serna is a muralist who works in the tradition of his ancestors, he sees the arts as a way of bringing balance and confidence to people’s lives. Serna has created over 30 youth-collaborative murals in greater Portland, joining forces with numerous service organizations, educational institutions, and local businesses in the process. For the last 10 years Serna has worked extensively with at-risk and homeless youth communities in Portland. Mexica Tiahui is a traditional Aztec dance circle established over 10 years ago in Oregon with the mission of continuing the traditions, ceremonies, and culture related to Mexican indigenous roots. The organization carries its educational commitment to communities in the Northwest with the goal of lifting consciousness by focusing on the importance of retaining cultural heritage.

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday. The Día de los Muertos installation runs from October 28th through November 4th.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.

PORTLAND, ORE — The public is invited to attend a free party in celebration of Portlandia’s 30th birthday onThursday, October 8th from noon-1:30pm at The Standard Insurance Plaza across from the Portland Building, 1120 SW 5th Avenue.

Portlandia, designed and constructed by Raymond Kaskey, is made of hammered copper sheeting about the thickness of a dime formed around a steel armature. She took three years to complete and is one-third the size of the Statue of Liberty, the only larger statue of this kind in the nation. The sculpture was funded through the city’s percent-for-art requirement related to the construction of The Portland Building. The building’s architect, Michael Graves, had suggested a statue of Lady Commerce (from Portland’s City Seal) as part of his design for the building; Kaskey won the $198,000 commission and named the sculpture “Portlandia.”  

Upon her completion in 1985, Portlandia was shipped across the country by rail, from Maryland to Oregon, in eight pieces. After being reassembled in a local shipyard, she rode by river barge and truck to her final destination, welcomed by 10,000 Portland residents along the riverbank, streets, and bridges. 

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, Arts Commissioner Nick Fish, and former mayor Bud Clark will be on hand to help RACC celebrate. Rose High Bear from Wisdom of the Elders will provide a Native blessing, and Storm Large will sing “Happy Birthday” to the copper goddess with students from Chapman Elementary School. Other festivities include games, photo opportunities and ‘80s music. Refreshments will be served. 

“Thirty years ago, Mayor Bud Clark paddled down the Willamette to welcome Portlandia to the City of Roses,” said Commissioner Nick Fish. “I’m proud to join Bud, the great Storm Large, my Council colleagues, the Regional Arts & Culture Council family, and the community to wish our copper goddess happy birthday.”

Portlandia’s 30th birthday party is presented by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, which maintains the city’s public art collection, and is sponsored in part by The Standard and Cupcake Jones.

PORTLAND, ORE – The Anthropocene: a term increasingly used to describe a new epoch in which human activity exerts significant influence on global environmental conditions.

This allegorical apothecary installation by artist Deanna Pindell presents a summons to reconsider our heretofore casual relationship with our mortal existence on the planet. Can the looming climate and environmental crisis we appear to be headed for be cured by self-reflection, personal responsibility, and widespread cultural change? To help explore where we stand as a species with the environment that sustains us, Pindell will present viewers with a set of riddles written on the walls of the Portland Building Installation Space. Clues for these riddles come in the form of over 100 mason jars mounted on shelves. Each jar contains a relic, or some form of physical artifact that references a single environmental choice our society has decided to make, consciously or unconsciously—a jar full of genetically modified corn seeds, a tiny bird skull, coupons from Walmart. The riddles and their enigmatic clues are crafted to provoke us into directly considering these decisions, and whether or not, taken together, they accumulate into environmental disaster.

• Who was number 316? (clue – a jar that contains an ear tag for a “factory cow.”)
• How to kill an albatross?  (a jar with spent shotgun cartridge wads consumed by sea birds.)
• Several slender hopes for the future? (a jar containing organic heritage squash seeds.)

The project will include an intimate journal visitors can examine and add their own comments to while seated in a comfortable vintage chair. Attentive journal readers will also discover a set of answers to the riddles, short poetic essays, and technical information on the jar specimens.

About the Artist: Deanna Pindell practices permaculture with a plethora of critters and conifers in Port Hadlock, Washington. A graduate of the Interdisciplinary Art M.F.A. program at Goddard College, she is the veteran of numerous public art projects and exhibitions throughout the US. She currently teaches at Olympic College in Bremerton, and was the Environmental Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2012.

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.  Apothecary for the Anthropocene opens September 28th and runs through October 23rd, 2015.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.

PORTLAND, ORE – Andy Behrle’s installation, from there to here, is an arresting visual exploration of Portland’s water system. The artist has gathered and combined into a single composition, digital video footage from the origins of Portland’s drinking water in the Bull Run Watershed and the open storage reservoirs at Mount Tabor Park. In its simplest form this project celebrates the purity of the watershed and the ingenuity of the delivery system for this amazing natural resource. 

The Bull Run Watershed, which provides 85% of Portland’s drinking water, is 26 miles east of downtown, but it can be considered as much a part of the city as any park, street, river, or building. With the system’s inception over 120 years ago, waterborne illnesses and disease were almost completely eradicated, and today the water continues to flow freely to quench the thirst of nearly one million Portland Water Bureau customers.

Beyond trumpeting the wonders of the water system,  from there to here is an investigation into what a place is, how location plays a part in that determination, and how two places can be so interconnected physically as to be indistinguishable when separated. In essence, the watershed is captured and displaced into thousands of miles of pipes and tubes before filling bathtubs, bottles, toilets, and everything at the end of a pipe throughout the city.

At the Installation Space, two digital projectors will shine images of water captured from the open reservoirs in Mount Tabor Park and from the Bull Run Watershed. The projected light, ultimately bound to intersect and illuminate the gallery wall in the back of the space, passes through sheer fabric scrims on its way, causing images to float in space just off of the gallery floor. A map of the watershed and the city’s water delivery infrastructure also intercepts light and overlays a shadow of the system on the moving images dancing and intersecting on the back wall.

On this journey, light has been captured, displaced, filtered, and reflected. Locations trade places,  here is illuminated with light from there, what originates from the right moves to left, while left moves to the right. The images shot on location in the watershed are transposed onto the city and the footage collected in the city is transposed onto the watershed. They are separate, but become one. They were there and are now here.

About the Artist: Andy Behrle lives and works in Zillah, Washington and has shown and lectured on his work widely in the Northwest and greater U.S.  He received his MFA in sculpture from Arizona State University, Tempe, and holds a BA in Philosophy and Religion and Studio Art from Elmira College in Elmira, New York. Behrle was the Artist-in Residence at Tulane University’s A Studio in the Woods program in 2012, and this fall will commence a residency at the Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle; he has also been selected to serve as the Visiting Artist for Pacific University’s Art Experiment Workshop in 2016. 

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.  from there to here opens August 24th  and runs through September 18th, 2015.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.

PORTLAND, ORE — On July 15, the RACC board of directors approved funding for two new Public Art Mural projects: $13,500 for seven murals in partnership with Forest for the Trees Northwest, and $14,250 for a mural in partnership with the Wattles Boys & Girls Club in SE Portland.

• Forest for the Trees Northwest Murals: 

This year marks the third year of the Forest for the Trees Northwest (FFTT) event that brings together approximately 30 local and international artists for one week in August to paint large and small scale murals in Portland. FFTT’s goals are to improve the visual landscape of the city through quality artwork and provide opportunities to the creative community to participate in establishing Portland’s evolving visual identity. Painting will occur during the week of August 24^th.  Panel discussions will be part of the 2015 event and are scheduled for September, October and November at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.  For more information, visit forestforthetreesnw.com

Locations & artists: The FFTT murals partially funded by RACC will be in seven locations and include the following artists: Rustam Qbic; Gage Hamilton; Spencer Keeton Cunningham; Jaque Fragua; Michael Reeder; Low Bros; Troy Lovegates and Paige Wright; and Andrew Hem.  

• Wattle Boys & Girls Club Mural: 

The Boys & Girls Club (BGCP) facility in the Lents Neighborhood will feature a 90’W x 25’H mural created in collaboration between youth from BGCP, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO), as well as gang-affected youth from Latino Network and Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center, Inc. (POIC). The design  weaves the communities’ strengths into a cohesive composition and showcases the strength of our differences and interdependence. A community-wide celebration will be part of the unveiling event.

Location & artists: The mural will be on the east facing wall of the Wattle Boys & Girls Club, 9330 SE Harold with artist Rodolfo Serna as lead, assisted by Jesus Torralba.  

In addition, several other RACC-funded murals have been recently completed or are still in progress:

• Artists Eatcho and Jeremy Nichols are collaborating on a 20’H x 95’W mural for the Black United Fund at 2828 NE Alberta Street. The mural portrays black women leaders (Coretta Scott King, Ruby Bridges, Ruby Dee, Angela Davis and Maya Angelou) against a background of Jeremy Nichols’ energetic landscape. (Funding: $11,350.)
• Gary Hirsch has been feverishly working on completing four Big Bot murals in SE Portland. Each site poses a question and the photos and answers can be shared by visiting #botjoy and #botpdx on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The interactive “street art experiment” is designed for visitors and residents to share their inspirations, motivations and ideas. Visit one or all of them. More information at botjoy.com. (Funding: $5,390.)
  • The Relationship Wall, 3050 SE Division
  • The Dreams Wall, 1006 SE Salmon
  • The Joy Wall, 1205 SE Stark Ave
  • The Curiosity Wall, 1037 SE Ash (late August/early September)
• Souther Salazar recently completed a mural for the Creamery Building at 240 SE 2^nd Avenue. The 13’4”H x 11’W mural is an abstract interpretation of an energetic nucleus reflecting the diverse energy and activity of the Central Eastside Industrial District. (Funding: $3,713.)
• AriseRawk put the finishing touches on Love, Peace and Unity, a mural for Brentwood Park in SE Portland that was designed and painted in collaboration with students during Spring 2015 as part of their Camp Fire Columbia Middle School program at Lane MS. (Funding: $1,500)

The City of Portland’s Public Art Murals Program is administered by RACC as part of its Public Art Program. The program provides funding for murals that reflect diversity in style and media and encourages artists from diverse backgrounds and range of experience to apply. All building owners must sign an Art Easement form that will be recorded with Multnomah County. Murals approved through this program become part of the City’s public art collection for as long as an Art Easement remains in effect. Visit racc.org/murals or racc.org/public-art/mural-program.   

PORTLAND, ORE – Joshua Pew and Molly Eno believe that the construct of human organization is structured around a rather over-evolved sense of importance and power. As a wry comment on such, they will create a single large sculpture for the exhibition space in the Portland Building lobby—a handmade, life sized, stuffed gorilla-esque figure on an ersatz, but deftly crafted, plywood throne. Bored with Power sums up the feeling the pair have towards governments, corporations, and the general state of the Western world.

“As a team, Molly and I are playing to our strengths—much of her work involves using fiber and making animal forms, while mine is in wood construction. The use of fiber and plywood are intentional as symbols as well, both of which are considered more for utilitarian purposes than aesthetic. We hope that this elevates the feeling of approachability in the piece as well as curiosity and a sense of amusement.” –Joshua Pew

About the Artists:  Molly Eno currently lives and works as a fiber artist in Portland. Her work deals with the psychological through animal totems using soft sculpture. While at Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) Molly provided technical support for both the Fiber Studio and the Ceramics Studio and was awarded the President’s Scholarship and the Jean Vollum Scholarship.

Inspired by the philosophies of William Morris and the work of Joseph Albers, Portland artist/designer Joshua Pew’s work ranges from woodworking to weaving and 2-D design. His process focuses on simplifying forms found in nature to function as analogies for people. In addition to projects like Bored with Power, he has completed multiple commercial furniture commissions as well. Both Joshua and Molly received their BFAs from OCAC this year.

About the Installation Space:  Each year the Portland Building Installation Space series reserves several exhibition opportunities for students engaged in creative study at the university level. The format and presentation requirements for the “student” installations are identical to those for established professional artists, the Regional Arts & Culture Council created this separate eligibility category to help introduce emerging talents to the world of public art. 

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.  Bored with Power opens July 20th and runs through August 14th, 2015.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.
 

PORTLAND, ORE — Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education, recently honored 31 of the most outstanding public art projects in the country last year, including three projects from Portland administered by the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC).  The awards were announced in Chicago, Illinois on June 11 and were chosen from more than 300 works completed in 2014.

The honored projects include:

• This All Happened More or Less by Crystal Schenk and Shelby Davison SE Division Street
• Westmoreland Nature Play, in which artist  Adam Kuby worked with Greenworks Landscape Architects
• The Rippling Wall by artist David Franklin at Portland Fire Station 21
  

  The Rippling Wall

All 31 public art works that received honors can be seen here. The awards were selected by AFTA’s Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review program, the only national program that recognizes the nation’s most compelling public art.

Westmoreland Nature Play

“The best of public art can challenge, delight, educate and illuminate. Most of all, public art creates a sense of civic vitality in the cities, towns, and communities we inhabit and visit,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “As these selections illustrate, public art has the power to enhance our lives on a scale that little else can. I congratulate the artists and commissioning groups for these community treasures, and I look forward to honoring more great works in the years to come.”

The Public Art Network (PAN), a program of Americans for the Arts, is designed to provide services to the diverse field of public art and to develop strategies and tools to improve communities through public art. The network’s constituents are public art professionals, visual artists, design professionals, and communities and organizations planning public art projects and programs.

Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education in America. With offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City, it has a record of more than 50 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. Additional information is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.