Birds on a Wire

Here are a couple of photos of Birds on a Wire, the kinetic water sculpture on SE Water Ave. across the street from OMSI. The building in these photos is part of a PGE electrical substation, and the art here is the collection of pipes near the top of the building. The pipes fill with water, from internal piping that you can't see here, and a certain fill level unbalances them, and they tip over and empty into a pool below (which you also can't see, due to a relatively recent wall around the substation). I would have taken a video to give a better idea of what happens, but it never seems to be running when I'm there.

OMSI has an info page about the fountain, which appears to have been created for the 1995-96 "Water Works" exhibit and not updated since then. I think the exhibit overlapped a little with the years I worked there, if I remember correctly, and that was a long, long time ago. I know I recognize some of the names in the site credits, anyway. If you like the Space Jam movie website, or you miss Geocities, you'll love OMSI's Water Works pages. Anyway, the page about Birds on a Wire has a couple of video clips of it doing its thing. Unfortunately as a circa-1995 website the video clips are postage stamp-sized QuickTime movies, but they're the only ones I've been able to find of the fountain in operation. In case the OMSI site goes away, here's their description of the fountain:

This water sculpture is a popular attraction at OMSI. Finished in 1995 by David Curt Morris, this fountain is very similar to the Deer Chaser fountain, but on a larger scale. Large metal pipes move in rythmic motions that remind one of birds drinking from a fountain.

A 2001 profile of Morris for the Reed College alumni magazine mentions that he also created the Columbia River Crystal sculpture in downtown portland, which I'm a big fan of. It and Birds on a Wire look nothing alike, and I wouldn't have guessed the connection on my own. A 1994 First Thursday blurb in the Oregonian, for a show at the Laura Russo Gallery, mentions the fountain in passing:

New York artist David Curt Morris is an architect with a predilection for water and engineering. The Oregon Museum of Science & Industry considered him the perfect person to create a sculpture for its new facility. That piece will be completed in 1994, but in the meantime his studio work made of bronze, glass and water is on view at the gallery. Morris is the son of Carl and Hilda Morris, the late Portland artists.

Morris is a common surname, of course, so I would't have guessed this connection on my own either, but Hilda Morris created Ring of Time, the abstract sculpture outside one of the Standard Insurance buildings that looks either like the Guardian of Forever or an onion ring, depending on how nerdy and/or hungry you are. I'm fond of it too, and I had no idea there was a family connection here.

In any case, another profile, for a gallery in Beijing, mentions that Birds on a Wire won an award for excellence by a local engineering society. Details of the award don't seem to be online; it's possible the engineering society didn't have a website yet back in 1994 or 1995. The 1994 date in the Oregonian article might be when it was originally supposed to be done, by the way; my recollection is that it took quite a few months to get the bugs and kinks worked out of it. But then, I wasn't personally involved in the project and mostly just heard office gossip about it, and it was quite a long time ago, and I may be misremembering the whole thing. The more I think about it, this entire 1994-95 business is making me feel old. Have I mentioned I have yet another birthday in a few days? Because I do, and this time I don't have tickets to Hawaii or Vegas or anywhere. Sigh.

Columbia River Crystal

I've gone off on the occasional rant about awful public art from time to time, so I thought it was high time I featured something that I actually like. This is Columbia River Crystal, by David Curt Morris, a New York sculptor who just happens to have grown up in Portland. Even graduated from Reed. I'm not saying that out of small-town boosterism, but it is kind of a neat bit of trivia.

Updated 11/12/08: I've always reserved the right to go back and update old posts if I've got something more to add on the subject, and this post was overdue for a little tweaking. In particular, when I wrote this I didn't have the whole Flickr thing sorted out yet, so I used a photo I found on the net somewhere. I'm not real big on doing that anymore, so I'm replacing it with a bunch of artsy-esque photos I took recently. If these don't float your boat, here are two photos I ran across out on the interwebs. Hmm. Was "interwebs" even a word when I wrote this originally? Is it a word now?

Forgive me if the post rambles off topic a bit toward the end. I used to do that a lot. At least the new photos are all "on topic". Well, whatever. On with our story...

Why do I like it? Reasonable people can disagree about this, of course, but I think it's beautiful, and it fits its location perfectly. The only downside is that its location is fairly obscure, at the entrance to the Crown Plaza office complex on the south end of downtown, near the corner of 1st and Clay. You either have to know it's there and go in search of it, or you have to walk around in the area a lot and eventually stumble across it, which is what I did.

The really encouraging thing is that it's a recent piece, installed in 1997. I'm not really hip to current trends in the art world, but I'd like to believe that abstract sculpture is improving over time, with this being a recent(-ish) example, and the infamous "Rusting Chunks No. 5" a.k.a "Leland One" representing a primitive, bygone era.

On my TODO list, there are two more downtown artworks I mean to track down when I get a chance. I've heard there's a neat little fountain in the underground parking garage of the ultra-mod 60's Union Bank of California Tower. And a few weeks ago I was driving past one of the new engineering buildings at Portland State University, and noticed what appeared to be the "parking garage pillar" thingy I mentioned in the Rusting Chunks post. I thought it had been demolished to make way for the new CS building, but maybe they just moved it instead. If true, that would be a serious crying shame.

While searching for info on the UBC Tower's fountain, I came across an fascinating blog entry mentioning the building itself, from the local blog anti:freeze. The building also features on this list of the best buildings in town.

Also came across pics of two smallish fountains in town that I've never personally seen or heard of. I gather the second one is somewhere near the lower reservoir in Washington Park, but I couldn't begin to guess where it might be located.

Yet another interesting post that wasn't quite what I was looking for. The "Cool flower planter" item toward the bottom looks like it's at Lovejoy Fountain Plaza. The author complains the area seems deserted, especially during off-hours. Which is true, but in this case I think it's great. I've always thought of this park as a sort of modernist secret oasis in the middle of the city, known only to those who live or work or go to school in the area. And really I'm just fine with it staying that way, especially now that tourist-filled streetcars are running just a block or two away. If only they knew, they could stop, and gawk, and loudly tell each other how there isn't anything quite like this back home in Idaho Falls, and drop their gum and cigarette butts everywhere, and pester the locals with stupid questions, and demand to know where they can buy tourist knicknacks, maybe snowglobes with the fountain inside or something, or cheap his-n-hers size XXXXXL t-shirts with pictures of the fountain on 'em, and maybe a tasmanian devil too, just to spice things up. But luckily it's not in the guidebook, so they don't have a clue it's there. For now, it's our little secret.

tags: portland sculpture fountain public art