23rd & alberta roses

And here's the rose design I mentioned in the previous post, also by artist Pablo Garcia. Street View says this was still there as of June 2016. Like most other pictures of roses you see here, I ran across this in a Portland Roses Tumblr post.

ne 23rd & alberta mural

This mural was on the side of a building at NE 23rd & Alberta just over a year ago. It was created by artist Pablo Garcia, who also did the elephant mural that replaced it, which I don't have photos of, as well as the rose design on the front of the building, which you'll see in the next post.

ne 27th-28th alley murals, ne alberta

Next up (and still on NE Alberta), here are a couple of murals on either side of the alley between NE 27th & 28th. I don't know who created these or when, or even whether they're "official" or just sort of appeared overnight. You might think that since Alberta's heavily marketed as an artsy sort of place, someone might be maintaining a map or a list somewhere, so you could go on an art stroll around the neighborhood after your fancy wine and cheese party. As far as I can tell nobody's taken on that project. I mean, I suppose if you needed that you could probably use the "NE Alberta" tag here in lieu of a proper quality list. I tend to say "I don't know" quite a lot, but at least I usually get the locations and photos right.

ne 29th & alberta murals

These panels are, or were, on the side of a building at NE 29th & Alberta. They looked potentially temporary, and I took these photos over a year ago, so it's possible they aren't there anymore. And it's NE Alberta, so it's possible the entire building isn't there anymore.

mural, ne 30th & alberta

The ongoing mural tour is back on NE Alberta again, this time at Alberta & 30th. This one was on my todo list thanks to a post on the Portland Roses Tumblr. That's all I know about this one, I'm afraid.

Alberta Street Crossing

Next up we're visiting Alberta Street Crossing, a pair of murals on NE Alberta Ct. on either side of 42nd Avenue. These were created in 2011 by artist Loey Hargrove, with a grant from the RACC (the local public arts agency). I was going to snark and be pedantic about the title saying "Alberta Street" when it's really on Alberta Ct. But I noticed my original notes from whenever I saved this draft post said "Note ct. not st., to be pedantic about it.", and I'm kind of inclined to play against type for once. So really, who cares? It still says "Alberta", after all. Close enough.

Alberta Who's Who

The next mural we're visiting is on NE Alberta, facing the alley between 29th & 30th avenues. An old Neighborhood Notes post calls it "Alberta Who's Who" (or I think it does, or did; the site seems to be down at the moment). The mural doesn't list any names, but I gather this is a diverse assortment of prominent people from around the neighborhood. Call me a non-Alberta resident if you like -- and you'd be correct -- but I have no idea who any of these people are.

La Sirenita mural

Mural outside the La Sirenita taqueria on NE Alberta, by Portland artist Pablo Garcia. He was actually busy painting it when I wandered by (which kind of tells you how long this has been floating around in my drafts folder). I suppose I could have stopped and said hi and asked a few questions or something, but I admit I'm not really in the interviewing business here at this humble blog. I've gone over a decade without ever doing one, and I don't think I'd be very good at it if I tried to start now. Even if I wanted to, which I don't, because antisocial.

Riggins Remodeling mural

The mural tour continues with another stop on NE Alberta; the next mural is at the Riggins Remodeling shop, facing the alley between 27th & 28th. I wasn't able to find out anything about this one, which happens a lot with art on Alberta for some reason. The local booster association has a murals page, but they only list a handful of RACC and Forest for the Trees ones, which is no help since I've already covered all of those. Oh, well.

Binks mural

Next up is the mural outside Binks, a hipster bar on NE Alberta at 27th. A June 2014 Oregonian article indicates it was painted around that time, thanks to a grant from the Portland Development Commission, but doesn't say who it's by. Which is a shame because I like linking to the actual artists when I can.

I do think it's weird that NE Alberta still gets PDC money, though. If you looked at the area just 15-20 years ago, there were empty storefronts everywhere, buildings in disrepair, potholes in the street, precisely the sort of thing the PDC was supposed to be targeted at. And they did it: Over the next few years, they were able to gentrify the area, first into an edgy-artsy district, and then into an upscale retail street lined with luxury condos (though "Arts District" lives on as an effective real estate sales slogan). You'd think that at some point the street would finally be on its feet and able to fend for itself, and the PDC could declare victory and go elsewhere. It's not that I'm in favor of them going to Lents, or Cully, or Portsmouth, and giving the neighborhood the Alberta treatment, displacing existing (mostly minority) residents in favor of the usual hip artisanal pumpkin spice pod people. I'm totally not in favor of that; I'm just surprised the PDC isn't doing it.

Community Energy Project mural

Next up on our tour is the Community Energy Project mural at NE MLK & Alberta. The RACC description:

The Community Energy Project (CEP) empowers people to maintain healthier, more livable homes, control the utility costs, and conserve natural resources through education, hands-on training, and distribution of weatherization materials. The mural for CEP depicts the positive actions and services they provide to communities, portraying people who are setting an example for others through their daily activities. The imagery reflects both interior and exterior local residential environments involving many factors that make a house sustainable.

This was painted in 2010 by artist Esteban Camacho Steffensen with help from community volunteers. The Community Energy Project itself has since moved to offices on SE Stark, but the mural was still there on the empty building the last time I checked.

Don Pancho murals, NE Alberta

Ok, our first stop today is the set of murals outside the Don Pancho Market & Taqueria, at NE 20th & Alberta. I don't know anything else about the murals, and I also haven't tried the tacos here, so I don't have a lot of material for a proper blog post. That's sort of the problem with a lot of stuff I have in drafts right now. I feel like I ought to say something and not just post photos, and I sort of hit a wall at that point. I could probably fill a few paragraphs snarking about Alberta St. gentrification, but I feel like I've covered that topic a lot already. So anyway, enjoy the photos, I guess.

OR-7 mural

Next mural up on the tour is the OR-7 mural outside the Alleyway Cafe & Bar on NE Alberta at 24th. The design's based on the famous Oregon wolf OR-7 (a.k.a. "Journey"). Here's a blog post about the mural by Roger Peet, one of the artists.

Ciao Vito mural

The mural tour is still on its extended visit to NE Alberta St. -- I thought that for a change I'd do a few in the same area instead of hopping randomly around the city. This time we're checking out the bright design outside Ciao Vito, an Italian restaurant at Alberta & NE 22nd. This is directly across the street from the To Oregon With Love mural we looked at a couple of posts ago. The old Murals of Portland site mentioned that this is by Tom Cramer, who also created the Machinery mural on Williams Ave. that we looked at recently. I don't know the exact date on the mural here, but a 2012 Willamette Week profile of Cramer seems to indicate it's at least as old as Machinery, and is much older than the current restaurant. So technically I probably shouldn't be calling it "Ciao Vito mural", but I haven't seen any other name for it, so I'll have to go with that.

Keep Your Chin Up

The next stop on the mural tour is on NE Alberta once again; in fact it's on the opposite side of the same building as the last installment (To Oregon With Love), and the artist behind that mural co-created the subject of this post too. So this is Keep Your Chin Up, painted for the Forest for the Trees event by Portland artists Blaine Fontana & Zach Yarrington, and Tokyo's Jun Inoue.

So there's sort of a local mural subgenre centered on upbeat, inspirational phrases: This one, obviously; the huge Everything is Everything in industrial SE Portland; the phrase "You are confined only by the walls you build yourself" on To Oregon With Love, and probably a few others I'm forgetting offhand. I have to say I have mixed feelings about this subgenre. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but Alberta was the core of a historically black neighborhood that's now gentrifying at warp speed, displacing many longtime residents in the process. In this context, murals coaching people about unlimited personal achievement seem a bit... problematic, if you ask me.

To Oregon With Love

The ongoing mural tour returns to NE Alberta St. again (and not for the last time), and this time we're looking at To Oregon With Love, at the corner of NE 22nd & Alberta. This was created in 2014 by Blaine Fontana, who also did the cool Koi mural on SE Hawthorne (which has since been partially painted over, unfortunately). The RACC description:

This mural represents many of my favorite aspects about Portland and Oregon, but is collectively a quilt representing our independent spirit, our vibrant attitude and tremendous pride we all carry as Oregonians.

If the title sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of "From Oregon With Love"/"Oregon kara ai", a 1980s-1990s Japanese TV drama set in Central Oregon. Some sort of corny heartwarming thing about an orphan from Japan who comes to live with his aunt and uncle in America. YouTube has part of a 1992 episode in which the now-teenage kid tries his hand at logging and driving a semi. I'm not actually recommending it, but here it is:

Giant Rabbit mural, NE Alberta

The mural tour is visiting NE Alberta again, and this time we're taking a look at the ginormous rabbit mural on the side of a building between 18th & 19th. This was painted by LA-based Brazilian artist Mateu Velasco for the 2014 Forest for the Trees event.

Given the subject matter, I have to put in a plug for an old blog post of mine about the movie "Night of the Lepus", a not-very-scary 70s monster movie starring DeForrest Kelley (Star Trek's Dr. McCoy). This was from the short period of time when I thought this might evolve into a blog about bad movies. Eventually I realized that writing about bad movies was a lot of work, or at least I made it into a lot of work, and this humble blog eventually morphed into today's photos-of-stuff format. The current all-mural thing is not a permanent feature of this blog, by the way; it's just the current project, which turned out to be a bit larger than anticipated. Eventually I'll move on and do something else, though I'm not sure yet what that might be. Maybe historic buildings or something like that. Dunno.

Community Cycling Center mural

The next mural on our tour is a large RACC-sponsored one on the Community Cycling Center at 17th & Alberta. The RACC description:

The main focus of the mural is a child-powered apparatus, accompanied by a range of locomotion machines for children of all ages and varying physical abilities. The machines form a parade that includes a tandem bicycle, wheelchair, reclining bicycle, tricycle, unicycle, and other various bicycles. The imagery in this mural is inspired by the Community Cycling Center’s dedication as a non-profit service organization that teaches bicycle safety and provides bicycles to those in need.

This was created in 2006 by Robin Corbo (who also created the MIKE and BARK murals elsewhere in Portland), and restored in 2008 after the building was rammed by a truck.

Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord

If you've been following this humble blog's ongoing mural project, you might be wondering where I find all this stuff. Locating good sources is a fun part of any blog project, and I've found several over the course of this one: The RACC website lists many (but not all) of the ones that belong to their "public art easement" program. There's a Tumblr that covers Weston rose murals, and the Forest for the Trees website tends to list everything created for their annual festival. And then there's a guy whose Flickr handle is "wiredforsound23", who posts geotagged photos of all sorts of obscure stuff. The guy clearly knows a lot of people in the street art world, since he often includes a title and artist with his photos. Though I get the impression he sometimes invents a title on his own if a mural doesn't have one. In any case, the mural we're looking at now is one he says is called Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord, by Acid Wizard, on the second story of a building at NE 29th & Alberta. If the artist's name sounds familiar, he(?) also painted a similar wizard face next to the smoking cat mural on N. Mississippi. I have a feeling this wizard face may be on the no-permit side of the street art world, which is a fun legal distinction that only matters in Portland. These photos were taken a few months ago, and for all I know it's been painted over by now. For all I know, the entire building's been replaced with luxury apartments by now, because NE Alberta.

Cultural Totem

A few photos of Cultural Totem, a public art piece at NE 14th & Alberta, created by artists Roslyn Hill and Lillian Pitt (who also co-created Salmon Cycle Marker at PSU. The description from its RACC page:

As artists, one Native American and one African American, we have made this contemporary totem to reflect our cultural and heritage stories, recognizing our many similarities.

Portland Public Art gave it a meh back in 2006, calling it "largely forgotten" and saying it "serves as a beginning, I guess".

Some years ago the city blocked 14th at Alberta as a traffic control measure, creating a sort of mini-plaza where the street dead-ends. There are a few trees here, and I took a couple of photos since it's the closest thing Alberta has to actual greenspace along the street. Maybe I only noticed this because it was a hot day, but Alberta doesn't have a lot of shady trees, and (unlike the Pearl District) the city didn't put in any sidewalk planters as the area gentrified. Maybe trees have gone out of fashion temporarily in the urban design world, I dunno.