Lents Hybrids

The next stop along the Green Line is the Lents Town Center / Foster MAX station, home to Lents Hybrids:

Brian Borrello's Lents Hybrids is a series of spiraling plant forms with "buds" that generate energy through a hybrid system of wind and solar generators. The pieces are evocative of the native long grasses that may have once grown near the station area, while the buds are symbolic of the unfolding beauty and potential for the Lents neighborhood.

I only managed to capture one of the sets of hybrids while riding by on the train. There's at least one more at the station, with four spiraling stems instead of two. And I didn't do the two-stem one justice either, this being yet another crappy Blackberry photo taken from a moving MAX train.

Borrello also created People's Bike Library of Portland in downtown Portland, Silicon Forest on the MAX Yellow Line, the blue ox feet at the Kenton MAX station, and apparently much, much more, including some giant filberts he's creating for the City of Tigard. Like Lents Hybrids, Silicon Forest is a collection of tall, skinny solar-powered tree structures. Add in More Everyday Sunshine and Nepenthes, and it starts to look like solar-powered art is a hot local trend right now. Or at least it will probably look that way to art historians a century from now.

Neighborhood Notes has a few construction photos. East PDX News has a few more, plus one of the finished product glowing blue at night, which looks kind of cool in a Lothlorien/Vegas sort of way. Lents Grown mentions a second artwork at the MAX station, Out of the Brambles by Wayne Chabre (who also created Connections at the Multnomah County building on Hawthorne). It looks like I would've needed to get off the train in order to see it, though, and even if I'd been in the mood to get off at each stop and look around, TriMet's website neglects to even mention that it's there.

As with Sky to Earth elsewhere on the Green Line, Lents Hybrids was created with help from a local pipe bending company. That sounds kind of esoteric, but their photo galleries showcasing their work are actually pretty interesting. Go take a look if you don't believe me.