World's Greatest

Continuing with the current theme of MAX line public art, here are a few photos of World's Greatest, Bill Will's giant trophy thing at the Fair Complex/Hillsboro Airport MAX station.

I cut MAX art a lot of slack, possibly too much, but this one has always reminded me of a cheesy 1990s home decor knickknack grown to enormous size. This must have seemed like a good idea back in 1998 when the MAX line went in. I suppose the trophy fits because of the whole county fair thing (though I think the fair gives out ribbons, not trophies), but if you're really going for a giant 90s look, a 20 foot tall copy of one of those winged cat gargoyles would have been a lot cooler. Relatively speaking.

Eleven Very Small Sculptures

Not long ago, I dropped by NW Portland's Wallace Park to take some photos of Silver Dawn, the park's big shiny abstract sculpture over near the off-leash dog area. While I was putting that blog post together, I realized the park was home to a second, much smaller sculpture that I didn't notice during the original visit. Or rather, the park was home to a collection of tiny sculptures scattered all about the place, titled Eleven Very Small Sculptures. The RACC page describes it:

Artist: Bill Will, American, born 1951
...
A curious collection of eleven life-size bronze sculptures of common objects can be found tucked away in unexpected places throughout the park. The artist's goal for this piece was to provide artwork that would be subtle and integral to the environment, but would not compete with or obscure the elements that have already made the park an urban oasis.

Will also co-created Street Wise, the whimsical words-in-the-sidewalk thing near Pioneer Place, on the same block as the Human Comedy faces. His website doesn't seem to mention Eleven Very Small Sculptures anywhere; I suppose it counts as one of his minor works, at least size-wise.

I'm afraid I only have photos of one of the very small sculptures here, namely the book attached to a bench near the park's playground. This is because that was the only one of them I could find during a cursory look around the park. The RACC page has photos of several others: A flip-flop attached to a chain link fence (probably at one of the baseball diamonds); a coffee cup and scattered silverware somewhere I can't make out; small objects in the rafters of the park's picnic shelter; sunglasses atop a lamppost; and a milk carton atop a second lamppost. If I'm counting correctly, that comes to ten sculptures, assuming you count each piece of silverware separately. Finding these (and the mysterious eleventh one) is left as an exercise for the reader.

Shooting the Sidewalk

Couple of sidewalk photos I took today. The above image is part of the sidewalk around 3rd and Yamhill or so, also known as "Street Wise", a public art piece by Katherine Dunn and Bill Will. It's a block's worth of amusing, offbeat, and just plain weird quotes set randomly into the sidewalk. I always forget where it's at, and keep stumbling across it when I least expect to. If I have time, I stop and read a couple. Seeing things like "the end of life as we know it" in the sidewalk is good for a smile or two. Here's a blog entry I came across with a few more photos of the piece.

Actually there's bound to be a mystical way of using Street Wise to tell the future, by seeing which quotation either you, a friend, or some object, ends up closest to. Whichever one it is, that's your fortune for the day. You could throw spare change down the block and see where the pennies land. That would be simple enough. Or you could maybe get drunk, or spin around and get dizzy, and then see which quote you fall closest to. And if you happen to stumble off the curb out into the busy street, hey, that's your future right there.

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The next photo is a closeup of one of the many small round metal plates in the sidewalk we ended up with after the city removed all our old-style parking meters and replaced them with green Euro-licious solar-powered kiosks. This particular one is at the corner of SW 3rd and Pine St., next to the Embassy Suites hotel, in case anybody wants to make a pilgrimage or whatever. Note the web address on the plate. Someday archeologists of the future will be able to date all sorts of objects based on whether they have internet addresses on 'em or not. Supposing that detailed domain registration records survive into the distant future, they may be able to take that Kozmo.com polo shirt and narrow things down to the exact year or two Kozmo was in business. Heck, they may even be able to get DNA off of it, and grow themselves a shiny new dot-com geek in a test tube. But that's all in the distant future, of course.

ParkingZone.com describes itself as "The Parkingzone - Parking Supplies for over 15 years". I have a real weakness for industry websites, trade magazines, and the like. Every time you come across one, it's a chance to learn a thing or two about the parts of our world that we all take for granted. I always end up browsing through 'em for hours on end. I didn't realize just how much equipment it takes to run a parking operation, but once you go through the catalog you go, yes, I've seen them using that, and that, and one of those. I suppose you could even sign up and buy your very own, if you were so inclined. Looking at the catalog, it appears that what we're looking at here is a "gorilla post mounting plate". A gorilla post is the technical term for a temporary post that mounts in the sidewalk (in the aforementioned mounting plate, obviously). So I suppose our city can now easily blanket a large area with temporary "No Parking" signs if need be. The ParkingZone catalog also notes that the mounting plates are only 3/16" thick, so that they meet ADA requirements about not presenting a tripping hazard for disabled people. And despite all that engineering, one of these bad boys will only set you back a mere $9.50 a pop. Which is about the same as a fancy mixed drink in a trendy downtown bar, and those actualy make you more likely to trip, not less. The world can be just so confusing sometimes...

tags: portland sidewalk public art parking gorilla post