Nob Hill Pigs

Here are a couple of photos of the cast aluminum pig sculptures on NW 23rd. Apparently they move around now and then, and aren't always in front of the artist/owner's favorite bar, but there were three there at the time I took these photos. A little info about them from Sybilla Avery Cook's Walking Portland, 2nd Edition:

In front of the Nob Hill Bar & Grill on the southwest corner are three large metal pigs: Porky, Petunia, and Porklandia. Porklandia is the one with little piglets underneath. The artist, Joe Justice, lives in the neighborhood and visits them frequently.

The pigs occasionally editorialize on current events. They wore face masks during the 2009 swine flu outbreak, and lipstick when Sarah Palin was running for Vice President.

A colorful 2003 Oregonian article about the pigs mentions that the first pig was created by the late Seattle sculptor Richard Beyer, and he and Justice worked together on the later ones.

Other Beyer pigs are located at the Seattle Public Library's Madrona-Sally Goldmark Branch, where a pig costars with a panther in The Peaceable Kingdom; and The Man Slopping Pigs (which depicts a man slopping pigs) is outside a car dealership in Falls Church, VA, once owned by Beyer's brother. Beyer is best known for his Waiting for the Interurban in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, in which a group of six Seattleites waits patiently for an interurban train that stopped running in the 1930s. A 1987 Seattle P-I interview talks about a few of his Seattle-area works, his surprise at the public adoration of Waiting for the Interurban, and his outsider position in the Seattle art world.