Royal Rosarian

Here's a slideshow of the Royal Rosarian statue at the Rose Garden. The RACC description:

The “Royal Rosarian” installed in the International Rose Test Garden is a remarkably lifelike sculpture created by Oregon artist Bill Bane, and was commissioned by the Royal Rosarians and the Royal Rosarian Foundation to mark the organization’s 100th year. Dedicated to community service, the Royal Rosarians are a nonprofit civic group that also serves, by mayoral proclamation, as official Ambassadors of Goodwill for the City of Portland and the Portland Rose Festival.

Essentially the Royal Rosarians are local civic boosters in funny hats. It was an all-male organization until quite recently, because letting women wear silly hats ruins everything, somehow. I'm not entirely clear on why that is. It could be worse, though. The civic boosters in Grants Pass, OR are "Cavemen", and they're responsible for a giant statue of a Neanderthal at the entrance to town, and they have to march in parades wearing pelts or loincloths or something. The Rosarians are afforded a little more dignity than that, at least.

The statue only dates to 2011, and was donated by the aforementioned Rosarians in honor of their upcoming centennial in 2012. The artist also created the Vera Katz statue on the Eastbank Esplanade, and the Vic Atiyeh statue at the Portland airport's international concourse. I haven't seen any mention of exactly who is depicted here, which old white dude was selected as the living embodiment of pure Rosarian-ness. I'm not sure it matters, but it would be an interesting bit of trivia, I suppose.

It would be a better story if the Rosarians were not what they seem. Maybe a crack paramilitary organization, cleverly disguised by archaic silly outfits, like the Swiss Guards at the Vatican. (You do know the Swiss Guards have machine guns concealed in those baggy medieval outfits, right?) Or maybe they're some sort of mystical order, with secret rituals and handshakes and so forth. And they control the weather and make it rain all the time on behalf of their precious roses. Maybe there's a dimensional portal somewhere in the garden and they serve some 11-dimensional tentacled horror-beast. Maybe they themselves are 11-dimensional tentacled horror-beasts, cleverly concealed as goofy civic boosters. I'm not saying they are, just that you can't prove they aren't.

Gov. Atiyeh Statue, Portland Airport

At the far end of Portland International Airport's international concourse is a statue of former Governor Vic Atiyeh, who was governor of Oregon from 1978-1987. He was famous at the time for international trade missions, forever flying to Japan and points across Asia trying to interest them in Oregon products and tourism and so forth. Hence the statue of him standing in the middle of the terminal, looking like his flight's been delayed. Portland Public Art devoted a short post to the sculpture, which is by the same guy who created the Vera Katz statue on the Eastbank Esplanade. The post is sort of lukewarm about the statue, saying "its mundanity, its general ordinariness is disconcerting". I actually like that about it; it seems to capture its subject more accurately that way. I mean, I only met him once, briefly, and I was one of a hundred or so Cub Scouts in the room, and I don't claim to have been a keen judge of character then (or now for that matter), but I recall he seemed like a nice man and he didn't act as though talking to us was a waste of his precious time or anything. If the sculptor had gone the traditional 19th century route and made a larger-than-life equestrian statue, with the governor in fantasy Roman emperor garb, now that would be a disconcerting thing to find in the middle of the Portland airport.

As of right now (2013), Oregon hasn't seen a Republican governor since Atiyeh left office. A recent Steve Duin column waxed nostalgic about the Atiyeh era, when politicians of both parties supposedly all worked together for the common good and so forth. I'm not sure how true that really was, but the end of his second term was also the beginning of the end of the state's traditional (and once-dominant) Republican party, business-friendly and socially (and temperamentally) moderate. In this polarized age, it's hard to imagine Oregon Republicans nominating an Arab-American of Syrian descent, much less reelecting him after he raised the state income tax to patch a hole in the budget. The party nominated moderate Republicans again in 1986 and 1990, losing narrowly both times. In the 1990 election, a far-right candidate drew 13% of the vote, more than enough to tip the election to Barbara Roberts, the Democratic nominee. The party got the message and spent the next few elections nominating a series of right-wing whackaloons for the top job. The last couple of elections have seen a return to sorta-moderate candidates, albeit ones with limited political experience and little charisma. Oregon Republican primaries tend to be rather brutal affairs, and the typical winning strategy is to tack as far to the right as possible in the primary, and immediately scurry back toward the center once you win the primary, and hope the public forgets all about your primary-season persona. The last couple of elections have been closer than the nutjob era of Bill Sizemore and Kevin Mannix, but they still can't seem to get over the top. It's possible that there just aren't as many moderate Republicans and true independent swing voters as there once were. I'm not really a swing voter, to be honest. I'm a registered Democrat of a liberal to left-leaning persuasion. When it comes to future elections, I'm not inclined to absolutely rule out voting for anyone or any party; I've even quietly voted for the 'R' in a couple of cases, albeit in cases where they had absolutely no chance of winning, just to keep the winner's margin of victory somewhat less absurd. My ideal world is one in which the Republican candidate keeps losing by a slim and hard-fought 51% to 49% margin, forcing the Democrats to nominate quality candidates and build reasonably professional campaign organizations. The D's have gotten careless over the years, seeming to think they just own the Governor's office, leading to lazy candidates (*cough* Kulongoski *cough*) and flabby poorly-run campaigns. At this rate, one of these cycles they're bound to screw it up and we'll be stuck with a shrieking flat-earther for four years. Which is a terrifying idea.

vera on the esplanade

Today's adventure takes us to the east bank of the Willamette River, just north of the Hawthorne Bridge. This location is home to this statue of former Portland mayor Vera Katz, located on the, uh, Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade, not to be confused with Vera Katz Park in the Pearl District.

I'll spare you my usual rant about naming things after living politicians, even though this would be the perfect opportunity for it. I'll just pass along this news story about the statue's 2006 unveiling, a surprise event to which the real Vera Katz was invited. The story features a photo of her sitting next to the statue, which is one of those things that just shouldn't ever happen. To anyone. Any person so honored -- you, me, an ex-mayor, anyone -- is bound to feel a number of things in this situation: You will be embarrassed, you'll be flattered, and you'll be creeped out. So will anyone else. Any difference here is just a matter of percentages. I'd be all "aw, shucks, you shouldn't have" at the ceremony, and then I'd rush straight home and blog about how weird and creepy it was sitting next to a life size bronze copy of myself, a copy that will likely be around long after I'm gone. I'd go on about how it wasn't even a good likeness, how the body language is all weird, etcetera, and generally not have anything positive to say about it. And secretly, a little, deep down, I'd be just a bit flattered. And I'd never, ever admit it to anyone, lest people think I'm shallow or egotistical or something.

So about the statue. It's titled simply "Vera Katz", and was sculpted by Bill Bane, a local artist out of Newberg. It happens to be #60 at ThingsAboutPortlandThatSuck, and Portland Public Art describes it as "Vera Katz - unimpressive sculpture". (PPA has posts about other Bill Bane works: Captain Carlton Bond at the Pearson Air Museum up in the 'Couve, and former Governor Vic Atiyeh. at the Portland Airport, plus he's done a bas-relief of pioneers at the Clark County Courthouse, also up in the 'Couve.)

I wouldn't call this my favorite sculpture in town either. It's not the worst, by any means -- that honor would go to the stupid Promised Land pioneer sculpture in Chapman Square. But it also falls short of, for instance, the Abe Lincoln in the South Park Blocks. And to be fair, the things about it that I don't like seem to be stylistic trends in contemporary sculpture, or at least in the contemporary sculpture our fair city buys, such that offhand I can't think of any recent statues I'm very fond of.

First, the composition is on the mundane side, not larger than life or heroic or idealized in any way. It's deeply unfashionable these days to depict politicians (living or otherwise) boldly striding forth into the heroic future, and I'm sure that's a desirable thing in general. But when you agree those are the ground rules, and you put up statues of your politicians anyway, the results often aren't very impressive. Of course it doesn't help matters when your politicians are kind of tiny and gnome-like.

Second, I don't care for the rough, almost lumpy look of the statue. It's as if it constantly wants to remind you that it's a big chunk of cast metal, not a person. I'm not sure of this, but I think this look may be intentional, since seemingly all contemporary sculptors do this. I think it's a sort of modernist tic, something about being honest about your materials and the frank expression of how things are made. Similar to how you're supposed to be able to see the imprint of the wooden forms in concrete buildings. Or, I guess, the lack of sets in a Bertolt Brecht play for that matter. Although it's also true that it's easier and cheaper if you don't care whether your statue's skin looks sort of slag-like. So that if buyers are willing to settle for cheap rough-n-lumpy statues, artists of a more perfectionist bent are soon driven out of the marketplace. But I'm in an unusually charitable mood today, so I'm inclined to blame this on a stylistic choice I happen to disagree with, rather than the buyer being cheap or the artist being unskilled.

So it's not a work of art for the ages, but it's still useful in that it practically begs to be posed with, decorated, or otherwise roped into some sort of creative scheme. A few examples, from across the Series of Intartoobs:

• A silly sequel to the famous "Expose Yourself to Art" poster, starring -- count 'em -- three ex-mayors. Note that in addition to the trio here, we have two more ex-mayors, plus the current guy. One ex-mayor, Frank Ivancie, is in his mid-eighties, and is of a fairly conservative bent by Portland standards, so we can probably rule him out. And the other two, well, it would be pretty weird and creepy to include either in a photo like this, for obvious reasons.


• Vera with an Arrogant Bastard (No, I don't mean Sam Adams, the mayor or the beer.)


• An empty Flickr group that requests: "Take a photo of yourself and Vera Katz wearing your bike helmet." There's also a single-post blog here, with a single photo. So not much to see here, but the fad may yet catch fire, and hipsters will line up around the block to take part in the latest ritual of the tribe. Or not.


• stereo anaglyph - more anaglyphs in same photostream


• with a teddy bear in the snow


• con sombrero y margarita


• And there's a MODKATZ group on Flickr dedicated to decorating the statue, although not a lot of photos there right now.