PORTLAND, ORE –  Artist Pepe Moscoso, known for his photography, collage and assemblage work, brings his talent for combining mediums to the Portland Building in October with a site-specific Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) installation in the lobby exhibition space. 

As many already know, the Día de los Muertos holiday is focused on commemorating family and friends that have died and acknowledging 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. Moscoso has worked on a regular basis with the Miracle Theatre Group on their stunning Día de los Muertos ofrendas (altars) and RACC is pleased to be able to present his work in the Portland Building.

“Day of the Dead altars are built during the “Día de los Muertos” holiday to honor the lives of those who have passed away. They are often quite beautiful creations, constructed with food offerings as well as things that the person enjoyed during their lives. It is believed that the spirits consume the essence and the aroma of the foods that are offered to them. It is a symbolic construction derived from a set of beliefs combining the pre-Hispanic ideologies, the worldview of Mesoamerican cultures, and the religious European beliefs of Abrahamic character brought by the Spanish conquistadores and missionaries.

“The altar of the Portland Building commemorates  characters, leaders, and visionaries who made ​​their mark in Portland, Oregon. This altar recognizes the work of: Harvey Scott, George Baker, Edgar Kaiser, James C. Hawthorne, John Heard Couch, Abigail Scott Duniway, and William Sumio Naito.”

            – Pepe Moscoso

About the Artist:  Born in León, Guanajuato, México, Pepe Moscoso lives and works in Portland. His interest in photography and collage are born of a desire to transmit and show his way of seeing the world. Pepe is the founder of FusionArte, a Portland based organization committed to promoting Latin American arts and culture. He also hosts a popular radio program on KBOO (90.7 FM in Portland) that focuses on art and culture and presents music in a variety of genres and languages. His installation at the Portland Building opens on October 20th and runs through the end of October. To see more work by Moscoso visit www.theblindinsect.com 

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in down-town Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.

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 Saturday, November 8, 2014, RACC will host a free workshop to help local artists and other community members learn how to organize, fund and navigate two different approaches to creating murals in the City of Portland.

Presenters include Gage Hamilton, an organizer of Forest for the Trees Northwest—a public art mural project that brought twenty artists together in August to paint murals—and Robin Corbo, a local artist known for her skill at organizing and creating community murals. Peggy Kendellen, Manager of RACC’s Public Art Murals Program, and Doug Strickler from the City’s Bureau of Development Services will also be on hand to help participants navigate the two options available for creating an exterior mural on a wall in Portland.  

The workshop is free and open to artists, property owners, business owners, and community/neighborhood association members. To sign up, email publicartmurals@racc.org with the subject heading “Public Murals Workshop” and include contact information in the text of the email.

Date:  Saturday, November 8, 2014
Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon
Place: Rosewood Initiative, 16126 SE Stark Street, Portland
 
 

PORTLAND, ORE — The Regional Arts & Culture Council is now accepting applications for mural funding through its Public Art Murals Program. Applications are due the first Wednesday of every month through June 2015.

There are two routes to creating a community mural in Portland:

(1)The Public Art Murals Program is funded by the City of Portland and administered by the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC). This program provides up to $15,000 in matching funds for murals that are diverse in style and media. Students enrolled in an art program at a degree granting institution are eligible for up to $2,500 in matching funds. Artists, curators, neighborhood associations, citizen-based groups, and private developers are all eligible to apply. RACC especially encourages proposals from under-represented communities in order to ensure that the diversity of our region is reflected in our programs. There is no application fee. 

For a project to qualify for RACC approval, property owners are required to provide a signed/notarized Art Easement that is recorded with Multnomah County. Murals approved through this program become part of the City’s public art collection for as long as the Art Easement remains in effect. 

Application forms and guidelines are available at racc.org/public-art/mural-program. Proposals must be submitted by 5:00PM on the first Wednesday of every month. RACC’s review and approval process takes 4-6 weeks, and all proposals are reviewed by the Public Art Murals Program Committee, whose members include artists, arts advocates and other creative professionals. For more information, contact Peggy Kendellen, public art manager, at 503.823.4196 or pkendellen@racc.org.

On Saturday, November 8 from 10:00 am to noon, RACC will offer a free workshop to help artists understand the mural application process at the Rosewood Initiative, 16126 SE Stark St. For more information and to RSVP, contact Peggy Kendellen, public art manager, at 503.823.4196 or kendellen@racc.org.   

Since its inception in 2005, RACC’s mural program has provided funding for over 50 murals. All of them can be viewed on RACC’s website.

(2) Another route for painting a mural in the City of Portland is through the city’s Original Art Mural Permit,which has different requirements and a fee of $50. Funding is not available through the City’s permitting process. Visit portlandoregon.gov/bds/50737  for more information.

PORTLAND, ORE – The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) is seeking artwork — paintings, prints, drawings, photographs or three-dimensional wall pieces — to purchase for the Portable Works Collection.  Professional artists from Oregon and Washington are invited to apply, and the focus of this purchase will be to add work by artists are not currently represented, or are under-represented, in the collection.

Multnomah County and the City of Portland have built a collection of two and three-dimensional artworks that are administered and managed by RACC. More than 1,000 artworks, representing hundreds of Northwest artists, are regularly rotated throughout publicly accessible spaces in County and City buildings. The collection strives to reflect a diversity of populations, artistic disciplines and points of view. Images from the collection can be searched online.

One location that will be of particular focus for this purchase will be the Multnomah County Southeast Health Center, which was recently renovated. Some of the purchased works will be placed in the waiting area and the hallways leading to exam rooms.

Artists who are interested in learning more can attend a free information session on Thursday, September 25th from 4:00-6:00PM at RACC (411 NW Park Avenue, Suite 101).  Contact Ahmed Yusuf at info@racc.org to reserve a spot. 
 

PORTLAND, ORE — While researching the history of art installations at the Portland Building (the program dates back to 1994 and has presented over 130 exhibitions in the gallery space adjacent to the building lobby) artist Yoonhee Choi was intrigued by the fact that the walls of the gallery are covered with hundreds of layers of paint. Choi began to wonder what these layers might look like if displayed in cross-section. As her idea developed, she considered how she might mine the archeological stratigraphy in a manner that would get visitors thinking, in profound terms, about all those past art installations:

“When I heard there were hundreds layers of paint under the surface of the wall, a wonderful, evocative sectional image of those paints instantly came across my mind reminding me of archeological stratigraphy. I was excited by the idea of selectively revealing this history and of using the concealed strata of paint to inspire the creation of a new topographical landscape within the space that explores the condensed scale and time of human interventions: 20 years of history within millimeters of wall surface.”

Choi will mark her own installation by applying a fresh top-coat of gray paint before cutting into the walls to reveal the history concealed within the strata. By systematically excavating (with utility knives and carving tools) and formally presenting the “unearthed” layers in a museum case, and on a specially built display wall, she’ll create a wordless homage to all the artists before her who have labored earnestly at the site in the name of art.

About the Artist:  A resident of Portland, Oregon, Yoonhee Choi studied at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts after receiving a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University and a Bachelor of Engineering in City Planning from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. Her projects, which range from small collages to room-sized installations, express multiple scales of spatial experience as they explore the potential of the unexpected materials she uses.

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in down-town Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday. The exhibition will open September 15 and run through October 10.

A Conversation with the Artist: Friday, September 19th from 4pm – 5pm; Yoonhee Choi will be on-site at the Portland Building to discuss STRATAscape.

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 – Ritual 660’, a deftly crafted installation by artist Abigail McNamara, engages the observer’s aesthetic senses while it asks us to contemplate a largely unconsidered aspect of our workday world. McNamara’s installation, which opens August 11th at the Portland Building, employs a floor to ceiling wall of string—each strand coated with beeswax and pigment—to elegantly graph the pedestrian traffic at one of the city’s busiest downtown building complexes.

“The patterns of the working world are carefully constructed. We follow the familiar pathways of prescribed norms—nine to five, Monday through Friday, one hour for lunch. The masses move together along this framework. I am examining this strict human-made structure to reveal the organic forms which underlie it.”

Each string in Ritual, 660’ represents a single minute of a day at the Portland Building. From 7:00 am to 6:00 pm on June 29, 2014, McNamara observed all of the comings and goings through the building’s entrance. To give form to her findings, she devised the floor to ceiling string-graph and waxed the individual strands to indicate the size of the flow both in and out of the doors. Those entering were indicated above a knot in the string, thoseexiting were indicated below the knot; colored form was placed within the strings to expose the shape of the daily migration.

McNamara sees her installation as a way to comment on the organic patterns and forms that can be derived from our daily lives:

“Activity ebbs and flows within the established workday. Bodies move in swarms or in solitude along currents. The shapes of these movements oppose the rigid structure of the work week. Paths build upon one another as each person moves in, out, and through the building. Individuals gradually flow from here to there and the populace of the building swells and shrinks like changing tides.”

About the Artist:  A native of Missoula, Montana, Abigail McNamara received her B.A. in Studio Art from Lewis & Clark College in 2012. She has exhibited her work nationwide and recently received a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission to support the execution of her upcoming installation at Duplex Collective in Portland.  In 2013, she was selected as an artist-in-residence by Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts as well as Grin City Collective. She currently works and lives in Portland.  For additional information and images of her work visit: abigailmcnamara.com

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in down-town Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.

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 (AFTA) has recognized 37 outstanding public arts projects completed in the United States in 2013, including two artworks managed by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.  A total of 345 projects from across the country were submitted to AFTA for consideration for this year’s Public Art Network Year in Review, the most prestigious national honor in public art.

• Streetcar Stop for Portland by artist Jorge Pardo located just north of the Rose Quarter, at NE Broadway and Weidler. The eccentric multifaceted structure includes over 300 individual panels in shades of gray and brown on the exterior, with warm hues of orange and yellow on the interior, sheltering streetcar passengers and marking the stop in a highly visible and fantastically colorful way. Pardo’s creation provides a “rainy on the outside, sunny on the inside” experience for Portland’s Streetcar riders. The inspiration for the exterior palate derives from an evening photograph Pardo took and then simplified and mapped onto the surfaces. He intended the piece to be best appreciated when it is dark and rainy and the interior lighting creates a warm glow that stands out like a beacon amongst its dark surroundings.
   
• Inversion +/- by Lead Pencil Studio is a monumental scale sculpture in three parts located at the bridge approaches for the Hawthorne and Morrison Bridges in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District. The elements draw “ghosts” of buildings demolished in the 1950’s for highway construction, including a cast-iron foundry, a warehouse, and an apartment building. At Hawthorne, two large elements are constructed with a matrix of weathered steel to form the front and back corners of a building. At Morrison the matrix renders the perimeter of the same building form emphasizing the negative space surrounding it.  In reconstructing remnants from the past and building out to the previous property lines, the sculpture explores the scale and complexity of the lost civic fabric.

Streetcar Stop for Portland and Inversion +/- were both funded through the City of Portland’s Percent for Art program, which sets aside two percent of most publicly funded capital construction projects – in this case, the Portland Streetcar’s eastside expansion – for the creation and maintenance of public art.

“We are honored that these two works have been recognized among the country’s excellent and innovative public artworks last year,” said Eloise Damrosch, executive director of RACC. “What I like the most about these two projects is how they engage people along our streets in very different ways – one is human scaled and neighborhood focused, while the other is of much greater size and intended to be viewed from a distance or from below looking upward against the sky. Inversion references the past, while Streetcar Stop is a nod to our future, emphasizing the importance of public transit and sustainability.”

The Regional Arts & Culture Council manages one of the country’s oldest public art programs, with more than 2,000 community-owned artworks in a variety of public places throughout Portland and Multnomah County. The entire collection can be explored online at racc.org/public-art/search and through an iPhone app (publicartpdx.com). RACC and Travel Portland also produce a public art walking tour map for the central city.  In addition to its public art program, RACC provides grants and other services for artists and arts organizations in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties, and helps teachers integrate the arts into the standard curriculum in K-8 classrooms across the tri-county region. Learn more at racc.org. 

For a complete list of all recognized projects, click here.