Pal-Do Market mural

The next mural up is the Pal-Do Market mural, outside of the eponymous Korean market at SE 61st & Foster. The RACC description:

This mural, located on a popular Korean market, is the first mural in Portland designed specifically on behalf of the Korean community. The artist, Una Kim, chose the image of a dragon because it is a powerful and positive symbol of good luck in Eastern art. Recognizing the role public art can have in recognizing specific communities, Kim sought out artists from differing minority groups residing in the surrounding neighborhood to complete small vignettes on the dragon using text and images to represent their cultures. She also invited a graffiti artist to contribute an element of street art to the mural.

The artist is a professor at Portland State, and she also created the Alive mural on SW 2nd, on the back side of Keller Auditorium.

Alive

Some photos of "Alive", the new arts-themed mural on the back of the Keller Auditorium building, on 2nd Avenue between Clay & Market. This is part of my daily commute, and I'm pleased to have something colorful to look at instead of the old blank grey wall.

Before the austerity-and-budget-cuts crowd starts in with the usual whining about the city spending money on nice things in this economy (or any other economy), I should point out it only cost us around $3,200. I imagine much of that was for the paint, and painting the wall a flat ugly grey again would've likely cost about the same.

A neat thing about the mural (and probably one reason it was so cheap) is that it was created by a a PSU professor, assisted by students from her Art 399 class. One student blogged some nice photos of his section of the mural, inspired by the work of the French painter Raoul Dufy. I seem to recall having a Dufy calendar a few years ago, for whatever that's worth. All in all, this one gets the big seal of approval.