Cardboard Castle mural (2)

The second mural of the trio at the Cardboard Castle building (4703 N. Albina) is on the south side of the building, facing the Albina Press coffee shop (which is home to a couple of murals of its own). Unlike the other two, this one wasn't part of a Forest for the Trees event. It was created in 2013 by Ashley Montague, who also did one of the murals across the street, and co-created the one at Refuge PDX, among other things.

I usually introduce a blog tag for somebody's work after about the third thing of theirs I've written about (i.e. the post you're reading now), and there are a couple of other Montague murals my giant omnibus todo list that I'll probably track down sooner or later. And voila, here it is.

I have sort of a theory that the presence of one mural attracts additional murals to the immediate vicinity. The intersection of N. Albina & Blandena is probably an extreme case, but here the first mural went up on the coffee shop in 2005. A few years passed, then this one arrived in 2013, and 2014 saw three more: Two more on the Cardboard Castle building, and one more on the Albina Press building. It may be sort of like tattoos: Somebody gets one, they like the look of it, and decide to get more of them. On the aforementioned giant todo list, I know of a couple of dense clusters of murals along NE Alberta and along Hawthorne, and I know of exactly one along equally hip Williams Ave. and none at all along Mississippi. There could be other factors obviously; Mississippi may just have a dearth of suitable walls, or property owners who won't play ball, or a really uptight neighborhood association. Or maybe it's just waiting for someone to paint the first one, and then the whole street will go wild.