Saturday, November 21, 2015

SE 48th & Hawthorne Roses

Sometimes when I think I've gotten a little too esoteric here, I remember somebody has a Tumblr (and a Google Map to go with it) that are just about Portland murals of roses and nothing else. You probably know about this already because I, uh, link to this Tumblr a lot. Still, I'm reasonably sure that this humble blog is less esoteric than that Tumblr. I like to think this is a fascinating and eclectic corner of the interwebs, at least if viewed over a sufficiently long time scale, e.g. if you want to see something other than murals, just go back to somewhere prior to last August or so, and there's all sorts of other stuff. Ok, it was mostly public art then if I remember right, but there were a bunch of bridges before that, plus vacation photos now and then. And after murals it'll be something else, though I'm not sure exactly what just yet.

Anyway, the aforementioned Google map included a couple of painted roses somewhere around SE 48th & Hawthorne, so a while back I went to track them down. They apparently didn't merit a post of their own on the Tumblr, so I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but eventually I found the one you see here. It was quite the thrilling adventure, as I recall. Although it was a while ago, and it's possible I'm misremembering, and the whole middle part with the tigers never actually happened.

But I digress. Turns out the rose here is identical to a couple on a different building further west on Hawthorne. So maybe it's a sort of corporate logo, though PortlandMaps shows different LLCs owning the two buildings (yes, I checked). Or maybe there's an obscure local rose artist who works in stencil and doesn't sign their work. Dunno.

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