PORTLAND, ORE – Accounting for Public Interest, a playful interactive poll by artists Travis Neel and Erin Charpentier (a.k.a. Guestwork), opens at the Portland Building January 11th. The project examines the relationship between Portland residents and their ideal city and engages visitors in a game of critical thinking that guides participants through a series of exercises […]

PORTLAND, ORE — The Regional Arts & Culture Council will be hosting the 19th annual City of Portland and Multnomah County employee art exhibit, all the art that fits, opening on Thursday, December 3rd. The exhibit takes place in the Portland Building lobby Installation Space and is a yearly favorite for both the artists and […]

PORTLAND, ORE — To honor the legacy of Portland’s longstanding and nationally respected public art program, the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) presents Celebrate Public Art, an exhibition at Portland City Hall November 12th through December 4th. The impetus for the exhibit is the 35th anniversary of the Percent for Art ordinance in Portland. All four […]

MEDIA ALERT AND PHOTO OPPORTUNITY WHO: RACC WHAT: James Lee Hansen’s public art sculpture, Talos No. 2, is being reinstalled WHEN: Friday, October 30, 2015. Public art staff will be on site until 12:15pm. WHERE: SW 6th Avenue at Stark Street in downtown Portland Talos No. 2, a sculpture by artist James Lee Hansen that […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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:  […]

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 […]

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 […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Inspired by the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage, in which miniaturized scientists enter a living human body on a medical rescue mission, artist Alanna Risse has created an installation that invites viewers to make believe they are inside a whimsical reconstruction of the human heart. While still remaining roughly anatomically correct, the […]

PORTLAND, ORE — The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) will present “Painting BIG,” two hands-on mural painting workshops on Sunday, May 3 and Saturday, May 9. The May 3rd workshop will focus on using brushes, grids and projectors, while the May 9th workshop will cover spray paint, stencils and projection. Both workshops are from […]

PORTLAND, ORE – While she was on vacation a while back, artist Brittany Powell lost her camera. Her husband said, “You should just paint all of our photos.” He was kidding, but she did—80 of them. In doing so she noticed something interesting about the process: “Through painting the scenes, I became actively involved in […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Artists Lou Watson and Michele McCall Wallace are taking over the Portland Building Installation Space with an exhibition called In Celebration of Pigpens; The “Sties” the Limit? The installation is in response to the oft reprinted quote by Portland Building architect Michael Graves. When Graves was asked recently what changes he’d like […]

PORTLAND, ORE – On Saturday, March 14, 2015, RACC will host a free information session 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 […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Artist Peg Butler’s latest project,People Blind/Prospect & Refuge, will be staged in the exhibition space adjacent to the lobby of the Portland Building. With this installation comes an opportunity for Portland Building visitors to observe and consider their fellow humans from multiple physical and intellectual perspectives, subjectively and objectively. The installation is designed […]

PORTLAND, ORE – Artists Garrick Imatani & Kaia Sand have been in residence at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center (PARC) since 2013. In October 2014 they presented selections of their work at the North Portland Library. Now, in the final exhibition of their residency, they have installed artworks in the lobby of […]

PORTLAND, ORE – In 1957 iconic Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers wrote a piece titled The Pliable Plane; Textiles in Architecture. Her work begins, “If the nature of architecture is grounded, the fixed, the permanent, then textiles are its antithesis. If, however, we think of building and the process of weaving and compare the work involved, we […]