Conduit

Today's adventure in transit mall art takes us to Portland State University's fugly University Services Building, on SW 6th between Mill & Montgomery. Don't worry, we aren't going inside. We're just here to look at Conduit, on the otherwise blank concrete wall of the building's parking garage, facing 6th Avenue. Conduit was created by Emily Ginsburg (a professor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art); her website describes it:

This is an outdoor site-specific commission for PSU and TRIMET. It is using the act of traveling as a metaphor for the transmission and exchange of ideas and the perpetual space between thinking and communicating tied to learning, living and working.

For whatever reason, TriMet's transit mall art guide doesn't mention Conduit anywhere, but it does show up on the big Travel Portland public art map, which is where I came across it. I only mention this because I've sort of clued in on that map as a new source of things to take photos of, and the post you're reading now is far from the last item on that map. Thing is, I'm not totally convinced my usual formula for art posts results in interesting or useful content. I post some photos of the piece, tell you where it is, and if I can find descriptions of it on the net somewhere, I quote liberally from those rather than trying to describe or analyze it myself. I have no pretensions around being an actual art critic; if I particularly like or loathe something, I'll usually say so, but I'm not going to offer an extensive theoretical justification for it either way.

On the other hand, I'm pretty good at finding things on the interwebs, and some of my photos turn out ok. I suppose that's a good description of what I usually do here: Seize on some obscure subject, aggregate whatever I can find about it on the net, and add some original photos. Is that valuable? I dunno. I just know I've been doing it for mumble-mumble years now, to a continuous trickle of search engine traffic and the occasional return visitor. Anyway, enough handwringing for one post; you're probably just wading through this waiting for the aggregation part. I only came across a couple of items this time around, but they're both sort of interesting:

• You might also be interested in this interesting profile of Ginsburg at {rainboeliza}.
• PNCA's Flickr stream has several photos of Conduit.