People's History of Hawthorne

Next up on the continuing mural tour is People's History of Hawthorne, on the Eagles lodge at SE 49th & Hawthorne. Regular readers with good memories might recall the similarly-named People's Bike Library of Portland on W. Burnside; you probably can't go wrong with an obvious Howard Zinn reference here in Portland. Anyway, here's the RACC description:

“The History of Hawthorne”—or “the peoples’ history”—is a direct dedication to the surrounding neighborhood and community, showing not only the “known” history, but the personal mythos, characters (past and present, alive and dead) who have shaped SE Portland and this core region. This part of Portland is known for great neighborhoods, food, bars, churches, houses, parks, retail, and a general place to “hang out.” Hawthorne is a busy community all year round. Artist Chris Haberman wanted to show Hawthorne’s history and vibrancy, from hipster to hippy, from early farmer to brewmaster, and from homeless to home owner. During this exploration he canvassed the neighborhood, talking with dozens of citizens. Haberman sought to embody an “oral” tradition by weaving these stories and experiences into the history of the Hawthorne neighborhood.

For some reason this design makes me think "Dr. Bronner's soap label", even though the two things actually look nothing alike. Maybe it's the jumble of disordered words along the top, I'm not really sure. In any event, it was painted in 2012-13 by Chris Haberman, who also did the much smaller mural at O'Malleys, a bar at SE 66th & Foster.

Share the Road

Next mural up is Share the Road, a mural about bikes on the side of an auto shop at SE 43rd & Hawthorne. It has a brief RACC description:

The mural graphically registers the pulse of a neighborhood in motion and integrates the auto into the grander scheme of alternative transportation, environmental sustainability, and the need for harmonious safe traffic through an urban neighborhood.

This was painted in 2006 by artist Sara Stout, and was the subject of (at least) three BikePortland posts as well as (at least) one at Portland Transport, because bikes.

SE 48th & Hawthorne Roses

Sometimes when I think I've gotten a little too esoteric here, I remember somebody has a Tumblr (and a Google Map to go with it) that are just about Portland murals of roses and nothing else. You probably know about this already because I, uh, link to this Tumblr a lot. Still, I'm reasonably sure that this humble blog is less esoteric than that Tumblr. I like to think this is a fascinating and eclectic corner of the interwebs, at least if viewed over a sufficiently long time scale, e.g. if you want to see something other than murals, just go back to somewhere prior to last August or so, and there's all sorts of other stuff. Ok, it was mostly public art then if I remember right, but there were a bunch of bridges before that, plus vacation photos now and then. And after murals it'll be something else, though I'm not sure exactly what just yet.

Anyway, the aforementioned Google map included a couple of painted roses somewhere around SE 48th & Hawthorne, so a while back I went to track them down. They apparently didn't merit a post of their own on the Tumblr, so I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but eventually I found the one you see here. It was quite the thrilling adventure, as I recall. Although it was a while ago, and it's possible I'm misremembering, and the whole middle part with the tigers never actually happened.

But I digress. Turns out the rose here is identical to a couple on a different building further west on Hawthorne. So maybe it's a sort of corporate logo, though PortlandMaps shows different LLCs owning the two buildings (yes, I checked). Or maybe there's an obscure local rose artist who works in stencil and doesn't sign their work. Dunno.

Hawthorne Ink murals

Next up are a couple of murals outside the Hawthorne Ink tattoo place at SE 34th & Hawthorne. One mural's by Hunter Armstrong, who also did the giant snail mural at SE 22nd & Ankeny. The other one is by Jason Prouty of Garage31. I've said this before, I think, but I just want to thank artists who include a web address, Twitter handle, etc., in their work. This blog business is so much easier when people do that, and it helps me sound like I sorta-know what I'm talking about, which is nice.

Hawthorne Fish House mural

The next mural up is outside the Hawthorne Fish House restaurant on SE Hawthorne near 44th. This was painted by Portland artist Matt Schlosky, sometime before November 2013 (since some of his photos of it are dated then.)

My usual policy here that posting about someone's mural isn't an endorsement (or otherwise) of the business inside. Or at least I've intended to say that, whether I actually have or not. I'm going to make an exception this time, however, because tasty Wisconsin-style fried fish (oh, and deep-fried cheese curds). Happily endorsed, for whatever that's worth.

Hawthorne Literary Mural

Next mural up is the Hawthorne Literary Mural, a collection of author portraits on the side of a building at SE 33rd & Hawthorne. This was painted back in 1997 by New Orleans artist Jane Brewster. The building it's on used to be a large, rambling used book shop, but it's evolved into more of a general vintage store in recent years, so the connection with the mural isn't as clear as it once was. I've seen this called the "Sylvia Plath mural" more than once as hers is one of the more prominent (and spooky) portraits. Turns out that it and many of the other portraits are now available in t-shirt or coffee mug form via Cafe Press.

Cartopia mural

Next thing on the mural tour is this design on a wall at Cartopia, the food cart pod at SE 12th & Hawthorne (which is home to a fantastic poutine cart, among other things). This was painted sometime in early 2015 or late 2014 by artist Dominatah, replacing a previous "Cash For Your Banksy" sign. I have photos of the old sign too but haven't posted them yet; murals seem to come and go faster than I can post about them. I suppose there are worse problems to have, blogwise, but it certainly isn't helping with the size of my Drafts folder.

442 mural

The next mural on the ongoing tour is this group of soccer players outside the 442 soccer bar / Bosnian restaurant at SE 18th & Hawthorne. I don't know anything else about this one, unfortunately.

Some might argue that it doesn't really count as a mural when a business decorates an outside wall. I tend to err on the side of including things in this ongoing project, unless something's just a logo or an ad. And I might include it even then, if it's interesting enough.

Green Hammer Mural

Here's a slideshow of the large new mural on the Green Hammer building on SE 6th, just north of Madison. It was painted in October 2014 by Stefan Ways, who posted a short "making of" video about it to YouTube. The video caption describes the design:

A hand holds a wood scribe, carving a half circle - contained within it in grayscale are city landmarks including the abandon factory at Fields Park, Hawthorne Bridge, and Union station.Outside the circle are images I referenced while hiking "The Gorge" east of the city. Swallows fly about transforming from the wood chips pulling the viewer toward "OR7", the lone wolf, introduced into western Oregon for the first time since the 1940s, and now has a mate and offspring - showing the importance of how vast, preserved wilderness allows for even the most endangered of species to thrive once again. All in all, this mural depicts a city, Portland, surrounded by natural beauty and wonders.

The Green Hammer company also posted several times on Facebook about the mural as it was being painted, if you can't get enough of "making of" photos: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Douglas Building Roses

A number of recent posts here have been about Weston roses, which are paintings (or sometimes printed photos) of roses on buildings owned by a local real estate tycoon. (See this earlier post for more backstory, if you're curious.) If you've been reading these, you might have noticed I keep linking to the Portland Roses Tumblr, which is someone's site about paintings of roses around Portland and sometimes further afield. The lion's share of posts are about Weston roses, but the genre isn't completely monopolized by one rich guy. This post is about one of the exceptions.

The historic Douglas Building, at SE 35th & Hawthorne, is home to a pair of semi-abstract roses. As far as I know, they only appear on the Portland Roses Google Map & didn't merit Tumblr posts of their own, which made them harder to find when I went looking for them. I only have photos of the rose on the west side of the building, facing 35th; the other one is on the east side of the building, and as I recall it looks identical to this one. There's also a similar pair of roses on another building further east at 48th & Hawthorne, but that's a separate post. Because rules or something.

Clyde Drexler Mural, SE 9th & Clay

Here's a slideshow of the large mural of Clyde Drexler (the star Portland Trailblazers player in the late 1980s and early 1990s). It's located on SE 9th between Clay and Hawthorne (i.e. the south side of Hawthorne), on the back side of the same building that hosts the koi mural you might have seen here recently.

This was painted by artists Madsteez (who has a Wikipedia bio) and Oyama Enrico Isamu Letter, for the 2013 Forest for the Trees mural event. The festival's Vimeo channel has a time lapse video of the mural being painted, assuming you're in the mood for a Hall & Oates soundtrack. Going by other examples of the two artists' styles, I'm guessing Madsteez created the Drexler part, and Letter did the abstract sorta-lightning design that coils around Drexler.

Koi Mural, SE Hawthorne

Here are a few photos of the koi mural along SE Hawthorne, between 9th & 10th. It's on a wall next to the historic Red Men Hall building (the weird name refers to the fraternal organization it was originally built for, a group allegedly descended from the Boston Tea Party guys, and later New York's Tammany Hall.)

The mural was created by Portland artist Blaine Fontana for the 2013 Forest for the Trees mural event. Apparently koi are a common theme of his.

Oregon Portland Cement Gargoyles

The Oregon Portland Cement Building is a small but historic industrial building at SE 1st & Madison, next to (and below) the Hawthorne Bridge viaduct. Its sorta-Art Deco look is unusual for Portland, and more decorative than you'd expect from a cement warehouse. Like much of the Central Eastside, it's been converted to lofts in recent years, which means it's gotten a fresh paint job, including gold paint for the four gargoyles on the front of the building. These gargoyles are why we're here, actually; the building's National Register of Historic Places form explains:

The subject building was designed by noted Lake Oswego architect Richard Sundeleaf. In Frozen Music: A History of Portland Architecture (1985), authors Bosker and Lencek describe Sundeleaf as an architect who catered to "Portland's entrepreneurs on the rise", designing many offices, warehouses, and industrial plants in a modernistic tone. Sundeleaf's knack for tailoring anarchitectural style to fit a client's image is exemplified in the subject building. Bosker and Lencek go on to state: "With its cast-stone classical dentils and bulldog-faced gargoyles designed by Lavare, this creamy concrete structure projected a serene lyricism that celebrated the dignity of modern building materials," and "every effort was made to demonstrate the versatility of the cement manufacturers product."

The sculptor behind the gargoyles was Gabriel Lavare, a California sculptor who lived in Portland for much of the 1930s. For the most part he specialized in sculpted reliefs, like his minimalist lions at the entrance to Washington Park. I've always liked those lions, so when I realized he created these gargoyles too, a blog post about them was basically inevitable. The post about the lions includes a rundown of his career in Portland, so I don't think I need to rehash that here. The short version is that he found success here, but he left by the early 1940s and the city promptly forgot about him. Pointing out obscure and forgotten stuff is kind of a specialty of this humble blog, and in this case it's an obscure and forgotten person, someone who created some interesting work while he was here.

The Lavare Lions

The main entrance to Portland's Washington Park dates back to the early 20th century, and has a formal, old-fashioned feel. SW Park Place ends at the park, becoming the park loop road (Sacajawea Blvd. / Lewis and Clark Way). At the intersection, brick stairs lead to a small garden crowned by a monument to Lewis and Clark. Embedded in the brickwork, greeting visitors, are a trio of stone panels with Art Deco lions. They're low-relief designs and the lions are easy to overlook. I've always liked them, even if they're a bit anachronistic: Everything else in this corner of Washington Park is Victorian or at best Edwardian, so Art Deco looks sort of futuristic in this context. Until recently I didn't know anything about the two lions. None of the public art resources I usually check have anything to say about them. Fortunately the artist signed his work (protip to artists: always do this), and that was enough for me to figure out the rest.

The lions are the work of Gabriel Lavare, who I gather was fairly well known in his day but who seems to have vanished from the annals of Portland art in subsequent decades. Oregon, End of the Trail, the 1930s WPA travel guide to the state, lists him briefly among contemporary Oregon artists:

Gabriel Lavare, who also came from California in the early 1930's, is best known for his bas-reliefs -- carvings over the three entrane doors and the Mother and Child medallion in the foyer of the new Oregon State Library, the lion and lioness at the entrance to Washington Park, Portland -- and for the Town Club fountain.

The lions were apparently a WPA project too. A December 1934 Oregonian article raved about the lions, which had just arrived:

Those who in the future view the plaques will be impressed by the extreme simplicity with which Mr. Lavare has achieved his effect of strength, suppleness and poise which is characteristic of the cat family. Not all will realize the difficulty involved in such simple treatment and appreciate the artist's problem and the real ability which he has shown in solving it.

The designs of the lion and lioness are based on a form approximating a right-angle triangle in a square. In the lioness there is the sinuous line and alert awareness of the female, and in the lion the massive form and the unwavering strength of the male.

Mr. Lavare gives the following brief explanation of his work:

"I desired to obtain the utmost in surface decoration in the most restricted manner of carving. The style of carving was the natural outcome of working in a large, but thin, area of marble. The brittleness of the marble did not allow a depth of carving deeper than three-eighths of an inch.

"Therefore, the masses had to be arranged accordingly and every muscle which was unnecessary eliminated. Only the fewest muscles possible are depicted, and these only in order to define more distinctly the major masses."

In case you're wondering "Why lions?", it wasn't a random choice. The original Portland Zoo was somewhere nearby, just inside the entrance to the park. I haven't figured out where all the various parts of the old zoo were, but its seal pond was at the bottom of the hill near Burnside, where the Loyal B. Stearns fountain is now.

An Oregon Historical Quarterly article about the painter C.S. Price notes that he and a number of other artists, Lavare among them, had studios in the ornate but shabby Kraemer Building, at SW 2nd & Washington. The building was demolished in the name of Progress around 1951-52, and the corner is now home to the westbound offramp of the Morrison Bridge. There is nothing particularly Bohemian about the surrounding area today; like its contemporary, "The Village" on Upper Hall Street, the Kraemer Building has been quite thoroughly erased, and replaced with boring respectability.

Lavare's 1966 obituary mentions that he had moved back to California at some point. Prior to the obit he hadn't been mentioned in the Oregonian since 1941, so I gather he wasn't part of Portland's midcentury arts scene.

Here are a few other Lavare works I came across while looking for information about the Washington Park lions:

• 1937: Photo of Lavare at work on a Magellan statue. Also 2 photos of decorative newel posts for someone's home.
• 1940: photo of a bas-relief pioneer mother at the Oregon State Library
1940: A relief in profile of Dr. John E. Weeks, at the University of Oregon medical school, now OHSU.
• 1941: A panel of various Portland industries, for the United Airlines office at the Portland airport, 1941. Given the date, I think this would have been the current Portland airport, which opened in 1940, but it would have been in the original terminal building near Marine Drive, across the runways from today's terminal. The old terminal now serves as the airport fire station.
• 1941: A trio of decorative panels for Pilot Butte Inn in downtown Bend. The Pilot Butte Inna was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, but demolished anyway in 1973.
• The 1934 article about the lions mentioned he was working on World War I memorial panels in the Federal Building, which I think is today's Gus Solomon Courthouse / Post Office.
• Gargoyles on the Oregon Portland Cement Building next to the Hawthorne Bridge. I've always liked these little gargoyles. Don't be surprised to see a blog post about them at some point, sooner or later.
• Decorations in Portland's Jantzen Knitting Mills office.

sunset, hawthorne bridge

cartopia, 12th & hawthorne (vine)

Connections

This installment in obscure stuff around town takes us to the Multnomah County offices at SE Hawthorne & Grand Avenue. Flanking the main entrance are a pair of ornate bronze panels, the left one depicting a rural landscape, the right showing urban scenes. This is Connections, a 2005 piece by the Northwest sculptor Wayne Chabre. His description of it:

The Multnomah Building houses the business offices of Multnomah County, the most populous county in Oregon. These two panels frame the main entry, and represent the urban and rural aspects of the county. Bridges, roads and water images are metaphors for the County’s many governmental functions. Bridges are the central design element on the urban panel; they allow a city divided by a major river to function as a cohesive whole, as the County “bridges” many diverse communities, facilitating cooperative action and successful societal functioning.

In the rural panel, the arterial (County) roads converge from the periphery as capillaries in the circulatory system, supporting urban life by the work of the agricultural base and the dramatic beauty of the Columbia Gorge scenic preserve. These panels also suggest Portland’s connection to the Pacific Rim with the oblique reference to the Asian scroll.

The Portland Public Art blog liked it, which is rare praise indeed.

moss, hawthorne bridge

hawthorne bridge, 8mm

hop shoots, march 2011

A few photos of hop vines just starting to come up outside the Lucky Labrador on Hawthorne. I'm told that young hop shoots are in fact edible and quite tasty, although I haven't tried them myself. And, you know, it raises sort of a dilemma. Have vegetables now, or have beer later. Ok, that's actually not much of a dilemma for those of us who like beer. A tradeoff, then. Mmmm... beeer....