PORTLAND, ORE. — Portland’s newest public artwork, Jorge Pardo’s “Streetcar Stop for Portland,” will be dedicated on Monday, September 30 at 11:00 a.m. The sculpture is located on North Broadway at the triangle of Wheeler Avenue and Weidler Street. The artist will be present and available for interviews, and Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick will officiate.

RACC will also host a conversation with the artist later in the evening on September 30th at 6:00 p.m. at the Left Bank Annex, 101 N. Weidler. Both events are free and open to the public.

Fabricated of steel, wood and fiberglass, the new shelter measures 35’ long by 18’ wide by 16’ tall. The multi-faceted structure includes over 300 individual panels in vibrant shades of orange, yellow, red and grey.

Jorge Pardo was born in Havana, Cuba, and emigrated to the United States in 1969. He studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena from 1984-1988 and has exhibited globally since his first solo show in Los Angeles in 1988. In 2010 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (see http://www.macfound.org/fellows/38/). Pardo lives and works between Merida, Mexico, Los Angeles and Long Island; currently his studio is in the Yucatan. This is his first municipal project in the United States.

Streetcar Stop for Portland was funded by a 2%-for-art set-aside for the Portland Streetcar east side expansion project. The shelter is a complement to another large scale project commissioned for the Portland Streetcar expansion, Lead Pencil Studio’s Inversion: Plus Minus which is a series of three sculptures located at SE Grand Avenue at Hawthorne and at Belmont. RACC manages all aspects of public art projects for the City of Portland and Multnomah County, including artist selection, design approval, fabrication, installation and maintenance.
 
 

Project Background: Forecast, which marks the first in a series of collaborations between installation artist Paula Rebsom and painter Grant Hottle, opens in the lobby of the Portland Building September 16th and runs through October 11th. These two artists work in very different ways but share a common interest in shifting perspectives, imagined realities and broken landscapes. Their joint project draws on the strengths of both by combining painted 2-D work with sculptural elements to build a thought provoking installation.

As the viewer approaches the piece they are confronted by a massive rectangular object (a painting?), nearly too large for the space. Inside the industrial blacks of the plastic-like surface, subtle blues and purples provide a visceral and atmospheric quality. The odd protrusions in the canvas become difficult to ignore. A view from the stairs offers a peek behind the painting, imposing a whole new set of questions rather than answers. Forecast is meant to be seen from two viewpoints—the lobby, where one sees the front of the industrial black painting, and the stairs, where the white light and poles causing the disruption in the canvas become visible. The physical tension in Forecast mirrors the conceptual tension between opposing forces—light and dark, hidden and revealed, intentional and accidental.

“We are two artists that improvehearingnaturally.com work in very different ways but share a common interest in shifting perspectives, imagined realities, and broken landscapes. We became interested in collaboration as a way to think about our work outside the context we have built for it over the years…It is in this space that we find the greatest potential for our ongoing collaborative endeavor. We are fashioning a new visual language based off of a simple foundation, adding complexity as we learn how the work speaks to others.”

About the Artists: Portland artists Grant Hottle and Paula Rebsom both received MFAs from the University of Oregon in Eugene, in 2007 and 2006 respectively. Individually they have shown widely on the West Coast and elsewhere in the U.S. Grant Hottle currently teaches at Clark College in Vancouver, WA, and at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. Paula Rebsom just completed a month long residency the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in Woodside, California and currently teaches at Marylhurst University south of Portland. 

Viewing Hours & Location: 8 am to 5 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.
 
 

Project Background: Photographer Michael Sell’s current work explores the point at which fine art intersects with décor, and investigates how one supports or subverts the other:

“I have recently begun a body of work that samples colors from famous photographs and collapses the visual elements and meaning of each photo into a single swatch of color. These color swatches can then be used as the basis for custom paint colors, allowing viewers (or “users”) to incorporate famous photographs into their home décor without addressing the photograph’s subject, concept, or emotional content.”

Beginning August 12th Sell will make his “photoswatch” work site-specific by creating a large-scale swatch grid on the main wall of the Installation Space. Each individual color panel will reference its specific source material—in this case an actual work of art currently hanging somewhere in the Portland Building. The color panels, or swatches, will be labeled with the title and location of the source artwork, for example: Purple Fields, 9th floor, reception. As the viewer approaches the installation the multiple swatches will resemble the grid of color one sees in the paint aisle of a hardware store. On the floor in front of the grid a set of small sample size canisters of paint—all mixed to match their particular swatch color—will be offered to visitors to take home and use as they see fit.

Sell’s reduction of the artwork displayed in the Portland Building into single swatches of color calls attention to the compartmentalization of art as it is typically presented in office spaces and highlights the modest range of creative expression we’re exposed to in these settings. Allowing viewers to take home that same bit of color further underscores the idea of artwork commodification and begs the question of whether the art in commercial settings is simply décor or something more; likewise the take-away souvenir—is it just a small can of paint, or does its provenance make it something more?

About the Artist: Born in Detroit, Michigan, Michael Sell now lives in La Grande, Oregon where he is Assistant Professor of Art and Media Arts Communication at Eastern Oregon University. His media-centric imagery has been exhibited throughout Michigan and Oregon, and in select shows in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. He has presented his work at multiple Society for Photographic Education conferences and at the 2013 Far West Popular Culture and American Culture Association conference.

Viewing Hours & Location: 8 am to 5 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.
 
 

The Public Art Network of the Americans for the Arts (AFTA) has named a local project, “Dekumstruction,” to its 2012 Year in Review, which highlights the 50 most outstanding public art projects in the United States last year.

The PAN Year in Review is the only national program recognizing projects of excellence in public art. From over 350 applications, three national public art professionals selected 50 outstanding projects that were completed in 2012. The panelists were Justine Topfer, curator, Out of the Box Projects, San Francisco, CA; Norie Sato, artist, Seattle, WA; and John Carson, artist and head of the School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

Dekumstruction is a sculptural artwork integrated with a custom bike rack designed by the artists Buster Simpson and Peg Butler located at the intersection of NE Dekum & Durham, adjacent to the Breakside Brewery. Twenty halved oil barrel planters stenciled with the names of depleted oil fields and painted with an iridescent sheen allude to the culture of big oil. The planters are planted with native species and receive water run-off from the adjacent private property. All of the water then flows through a downspout onto an upended oil barrel that quite literally “beats” the drum on rainy days. The installation celebrates the displacement (deconstruction) of two former car parking spaces with a multifunctional sculpture that accommodates ten bicycles while conveying shifting attitudes about consumption, energy, and stormwater management.

This collaboration was initiated by the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services as a part of their Sustainable Stormwater “green street” program to address stormwater management issues in Portland. They in turn brought in the Transportation Options folks from the Bureau of Transportation to help with bike parking to give the project an aesthetic and augmented conceptual twist, and then turned to the Regional Arts & Culture Council, which hired artists Buster Simpson and Peg Butler. Simpson and Butler helped choose the site, worked the adjacent building owner and the stormwater engineers, designed the prototype for the bike rack and then artwork and its relationship to the adjacent building, and oversaw the fabrication and installation of the above ground work. The overall project budget was nearly $60,000. Funding came from a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency with additional funds from all of the other partners.