WHO: Noble Architect by artists Ruth Frances Greenberg and David Laubenthal

WHAT: Sculpture Unveiling

WHEN: Friday, December 14, 2012 at 3:30pm

WHERE: Corner of NE Alberta Street at 18th

NOTES: Artists Ruth Frances Greenberg and David Laubenthal conceived of the sculpture to “mirror the ebullient, raw and wonderful vigor of nature as well as our relationship to it.” Many different species of animals inhabited and thrived in this area before it was settled as the Portland we know. One of the abundant animals was the beaver. Its pose is dignified and vaguely humanized, standing on its stump, at just over six feet tall. This artwork was selected by a local panel of artists and citizens, and will become part of the City of Portland’s Public Art Collection, administered by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

Refreshments to follow at Alberta Main Street, just next door.

LINKS: The Unveiling

www.facebook.com/events/398392830240242
 
 

It is that time of year again; the annual City and County employee exhibition in the lobby of the Portland Building opens on Tuesday, December 4th and runs through the holiday season. This “salon style” exhibition, open to all current City or County employees, is a yearly favorite and is anxiously awaited by regular visitors to the Portland Building. All types of creative work are represented in the unique show, from quirky to thoughtful, from elegant and beautiful to amusingly odd. The exhibition will run through January 8, 2013. 

Only original artwork created by current employees of the City or County is eligible. The exhibition is non-juried—all the artwork submitted will be installed, hung wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. For those eligible and interested in participating, submissions must be dropped off Tuesday, December 4th, between 8:00 and 10:00 am, to the Portland Building lobby located at 1120 SW 5th Ave. between SW Main and SW Madison.

For further information please see the exhibition guidelines on the RACC website below.

Viewing Hours & Location: The exhibition is free and open to the public 7 am to 6 pm, Monday – Friday. The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland.
 
 

Project Background: Using silverpoint to document gesture and movement, artist Linda Hutchins will bring a performance created specifically for the Installation Space to the Portland Building the week of October 22nd. Silverpoint is an old master drawing technique in which actual silver is drawn on a prepared surface much as we apply graphite to paper today. Linda Hutchins uses silver to create wall drawings that echo and record her drawing gestures. For this performance she will wear silver thimbles on all her fingers, and will strike and stroke the walls with both hands at once. In repeated short bursts, her hands will draw apart, along and together, gestures she likens to three choices about how to act in the world. Each gesture can be read by the mark it leaves behind and the completed wall drawings will remain on view after the performance. This unique performance/ installation has been created with the lobby of the Portland Building in mind, a place where people of all ages and backgrounds go about their daily lives apart, along, and together with each other.

Drawing performances will occur between noon and 1:00 pm Monday, October 22nd through Wednesday, October 24th. The completed set of drawings will be on view through November 16th.

About the Artist: Linda Hutchins lives and works in Portland, Oregon, where she earned her BFA in Drawing from Pacific Northwest College of Art. Before attending art school, she received a BSE in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and wrote operating system software for Intel Corporation. Hutchins was recently awarded Career Opportunity Grants from both the Oregon Arts Commission and The Ford Family Foundation, and has received two fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council. She was awarded the Jurors’ Prize for her wall drawing in the Tacoma Art Museum’s 2009 Northwest Biennial, and her work has been exhibited internationally.

Viewing Hours & Location: 7 am to 6 pm, Monday – Friday. The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland.  For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space series including images, proposals and statements for all the installations since 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.
 
 

Starting this week, the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) is presenting Selections of the Visual Chronicle of Portland at the Basil Hallward Gallery at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside in Portland. This exhibition, featuring 25 works from the collection, has been curated by Marci Macfarlane. An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, September 6 from 6:00 – 8:30pm in the Gallery. The show runs to October 1.

About the collection: The Visual Chronicle of Portland is a City-owned collection of works on paper— prints, photographs, paintings and drawings—that focuses on artists’ views of the Portland’s social and urban landscapes. The intent of the collection is to capture the zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, as our city evolves and changes. It is both an eclectic view of life in Portland as well as a record of artists working in the city. Currently there are 280 works by more than 160 artists in the collection.

Viewing Hours: On view during regular business hours, 9am-11pm, seven days a week at Basil Hallward Gallery, Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, Portland, Oregon 97209.

For more information, including links to images, visit www.racc.org/public-art/visual-chronicle.
 

Artists have begun creating three new large-scale public artworks in Portland, funded through the 2% for art ordinance as part of the Eastside Portland Streetcar expansion. Artist Jorge Pardo is creating a sculptural shelter at Broadway and Weidler, and Lead Pencil Studiois creating a pair of sculptures on Grand Avenue near the on-ramps for the Hawthorne and Morrison Bridges.

An eccentrically-shaped art shelter (at right), created by Jorge Pardo, will feature a “rain on the outside, sunshine on the inside” experience for waiting streetcar passengers. Fabricated of steel, wood and fiberglass, the new shelter measures 35’ long by 18’ wide by 16’ tall. The multi-faceted structure will include over 300 individual panels in shades of gray on the exterior, with warm hues of orange and red on the inside. Ultimately, it will shelter passengers north of the Rose Quarter in a highly visible and fantastically colorful way. Los Angeles based Pardo was the recipient of a 2010 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; this is his first municipal project in the United States.

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. The second, at Belmont Street, will render an enclosure around the perimeter of a “building,” emphasizing the negative space of the subject. 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.”

Construction on Inversion Plus Minus continues as weather permits, and the sculptures are scheduled to be completed by summer.

Lead Pencil Studio, based in Seattle, has strong Oregon connections. The artists have taken up local residence and rented a fabrication shop for the duration of this project. Han is a graduate of David Douglas High School, and both Han and Mihalyo are alumni of the University of Oregon School of Architecture & Allied Arts. The artists received the 2007-08 Rome Prize for Architecture from the American Academy in Rome.

These public artworks, managed by RACC and selected by a panel of local artists and community members, will be completed by the end of the calendar year. To arrange a site visit and/or interview with the artists, contact Kristin Calhoun at 503-823-5401 or kcalhoun@racc.org.

Links:

The Oregonian article (12/12/12) Southeast Portland bridge sculptures are designed to evoke central eastside industrial district’s past
The Oregonian article (11/30/12) Solving the mystery of the Hawthorne Bridge ‘thingy’
Jorge Pardo 
Lead Pencil Studio National Endowment for the Arts article 

Pardo Art Shelter concept
LeadPencilStudio_Inversion_plus_minus

Funding from the Oregon Cultural Trust will help RACC restore three significant sculptures in Portland’s public art collection

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) has received a $5,000 Cultural Development Grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust to support general restoration of three key historic monuments in the City of Portland’s public art collection: George Washington (located at NE Sandy & Alameda), Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste (Washington Park) and Portlandia (Portland Building).

The grant will help underwrite primary conservation treatments for George Washington and Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste, including:

• removal of built-up oxidation on their bronze surfaces;
• hot-wax treatment to control future oxidation;
• cleaning of monuments bases and pedestals.
• Portlandia—the second largest hammered copper sculpture in the U.S. behind only the Statue of Liberty—will receive a complete condition assessment along with an inspection of its internal steel frame and mounts to assess the accumulation of guano and other grime due to bird infestation.

This project is supported in part by a grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust: Oregonians sustaining, developing and participating in our arts, heritage and humanities. Keith Lachowicz, RACC’s public art collections manager, thanked the Trust for their support. “Caring for these large scale works requires a significant investment each year, and maintenance funds were never set aside for older monuments that were grandfathered into the collection,” he said. “This year’s conservation grant from the Trust will help ensure that more expensive treatments are not required in the future.”

RACC will work with Robert Krueger, Object Conservator & Proprietor of Cascadia Art Conservation Center, to perform the restorations. The total cost of the maintenance work is expected to be $12,337, and the restorations will be completed by April of 2013.

The George Washington Monument in NE Portland. A grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust will help RACC restore areas where the elements worn away the statue’s protective wax coating.

Oxidation of Sacajawea’s bronze surface is beginning to take hold on the hand and face.

The last large scale cleaning of Portlandia was completed in 2006