Untitled, OHSU

Next up is another bit of OHSU art, an untitled Bruce West sculpture in the Kohler Pavilion's sculpture garden. The university's wildly incomplete art page lists a different West sculpture titled Oregon Fabric. The page doesn't give a location, but it looks like it's indoors somewhere. (Also, the photo links on that page point at huge .TIF image files for some reason, so you might want to not click on them.)

St. Francis Park Fountain

Some time ago, I posted some photos of SE Portland's St. Francis Park, a small and rather run-down park owned by the adjacent Catholic church. One of the things that made it seem especially decrepit was the park's old fountain, which sat dry and abandoned in the middle of the park. I think there were even weeds growing in it. It hadn't run for many years and I just assumed it was broken, but some time in the last few weeks they turned it back on and have been running it regularly. I heard about this on the net somewhere and went to check it out, and took photos and a short video clip. A number of other people were there just watching it, like it was something they'd never expected to see either.

It's a fairly elaborate water feature. The water flows out of a low steel sculpture by Bruce West, cascading into a small pool. From there an artificial stream burbles downhill to a lower pool, with some rustic wood bridge structures around it. The video clip follows the water backwards from the lower pool.

The odd thing about this is the timing. The church just announced a plan to tear out the park and replace it with an affordable housing complex. Neighborhood groups aren't thrilled by the idea, and are looking for options that would keep the park in place. So why run the fountain now? Maybe they're open to selling it to the city instead, and maybe they're showing off the fountain to help gin up some interest in the idea, or boost the selling price a bit. Or maybe it's just to see what condition the park's current plumbing is in before they go tearing it up. I dunno. My sentiments here are similar to what I said about the "Fountain for a Rose" in O'Bryant Square: If the park has to to go away or be completely redone, I hope they'd at least keep the fountain around. If not in place, at least relocate it somewhere else.

untitled (underground)

Today's thrilling adventure takes us underground, to an obscure tunnel under SW 4th Avenue in downtown Portland, home to the striking (but even more obscure) sculpture pictured above. It's a 1973 piece by Bruce West, the same guy behind Land Form, Sculpture Stage, and one of the many "Untitled" pieces along the transit mall. This one (which is also untitled, as far as I can determine) doesn't show up on contemporary public art guides, but Cafe Unknown stumbled across it in a vintage mid-1970s walking map, and went to investigate. That post pressed a lot of my buttons (abstract art, vintage 1970s stuff, obscure things around town, "secret" underground tunnels, etc.) and it was inevitable that I'd have to track the thing down myself sooner or later. Although the tunnel part is less exciting than you'd think; it looks like just another beige office corridor, albeit without windows.

The vintage pamphlet described the piece this way:

Between the Georgia Pacific tower and parking garage across 4th St. is a tunnel. And in the center of this tunnel is a Bruce West sculpture with an undulating chrome surface which reflects into many more on its adjacent mirrored walls. Enter the garage building from 4th St. and take the elevator to "C" level. This not only leads to the tunnel but to the G.P. historical museum.

The historical museum (which I visited as a Cub Scout many years ago) is long gone, but the sculpture is right where it was back in the 70s.

As you might imagine, there's basically nothing on the net about this thing. The artist's website mentions it briefly:

1973 Free Standing Sculpture - 8'x5'x2' - Pressed Formed and Chrome Plated Steel - Georgia-Pacific Headquarters Corporate Collection - Portland, OR

It also shows up twice in the library's Oregonian database. On August 12th, 1973, a small item titled "G-P building adds sculpture" described the new acquisition:

A chromed steel sculpture by Bruce West, commissioned by Georgia-Pacific for the tunnel between its headquarters building on SW 5th Avenue and adjacent parking garage, is the firm's latest acquisition for its collection of art by Oregonians.

Fabricated in welded-steel modules, then chrome-plated and assembled into a curving-surfaced, monolithic form, the sculpture is about eight feet high, with its reflective surfaces picking up mirrors and brightly painted ceiling of the tunnel.

The Cafe Unknown post speculated that the sculpture had once sat in the building's lobby or somewhere else a little more prominent. But the article indicates it was designed for its current location, and the mirrored walls are part of the design. The ceiling, however, is no longer "brightly painted". In 1973 that almost certainly meant "fluorescent orange", so today's sedate color scheme is probably a good thing, quite honestly.

I should point out that the building now belongs to Standard Insurance, as Georgia-Pacific's headquarters left town in the early 1990s if I recall correctly. They're now part of the evil Koch Brothers empire (which I try to avoid doing business with), so it's probably just as well that they aren't here anymore.

The piece also gets a brief mention in a February 1st, 1981 article, "Making the City Your Playground", February 1st 1981. It's a very quirky article full of suggested kid-friendly activities around town. Much of the article is devoted to visiting area airports, with a bit of walking around downtown looking at art. These ideas would likely be considered too boring for a 2013 version of the article, although obviously it all depends on the kid.

I can't help but wonder whether my mom read this article, because I distinctly recall visiting airports with my siblings for the educational value, and traipsing around town looking at art, which was pretty embarrassing at the time because of all the naked statues. And now here I am writing this humble blog. So from now on, if anyone claims this blog is weird or pointless, I'm just going to go ahead and blame formative experiences and so forth. I'm not saying they're wrong about this blog; I'm just saying I have a reasonable excuse now.

untitled (6th & washington)

Today's adventure in Portland Transit Mall art takes us to 6th & Washington, home to a piece I repeatedly failed to see and walked right past while taking photos of other sculptures on 5th & 6th. This is Untitled, a chunk of stainless steel wall created by Bruce West (the same guy who created Sculpture Stage, & Land Form), and apparently it's graced the Transit Mall since the 1970s without me ever noticing it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it; it's a perfectly pleasant decorative object, and failing to notice something this big has to be at least partly my fault. But you have to admit it doesn't draw the eye the way, say, Kvinneakt does, or for that matter the also-untitled (but colorful) 1970s bus mall sculptures at 5th & Oak and 5th & Ankeny. A snarky Portland Public Art post about Mr. West's works around town has this to say about Untitled:

Transit Mall thing politely titled, untitled. Part of the 1976 or 77 splurge on low-maintenance art for the Mall startup.

Can we get exchange this untitled thing for a picnic table?

Knowing this city as I do, the answer to that rhetorical question is that if you put a picnic table on the transit mall, sooner or later a homeless person would sleep under it, on some cold rainy winter's night. Local businessmen would be outraged, and the city would remove the table posthaste. And even if they could keep people from sheltering under the table, we only have three, maybe four months of picnic table weather each year anyway.

In any case, in addition to the West pieces in the Portland Public Art post, Cafe Unknown tracked down yet another piece of his, half-forgotten and cleverly hidden in a subterranean parking garage downtown. As you might imagine, it's been added to my todo list.

Sculpture Stage

Photos of Sculpture Stage, the stainless steel wall thingy in Waterfront Park, near the Saturday Market canopy & the new Naito Fountain. If you're like me, you may not have realized it's supposed to be art at all. It's by the same guy behind Land Form in Lair Hill Park. Both pieces date to about the same era, although there isn't an obvious resemblance between the two. For more about all that, I'll just point you to a snarky Portland Public Art post about the guy's various works around town.

None of the links above mention this, but the piece adorns an outer wall of an old (but still operating) sewage pumping station. The station is in the middle of an inconveniently well-touristed area, so there's kind of a social convention to not see it and to pretend it's not there. You'd think the arts community would be less squeamish about this sort of thing, but it's still Portland, after all, not Paris, and the oddest things make us squeamish.

Lair Hill Park

View Larger Map

Today's adventure takes us to Lair Hill Park, off Barbur just south of downtown Portland. More precisely, we're mostly visiting "Land Form", another of those big rusty 70's sculptures people used to be mad for. I've mentioned it in passing before, in an old post about the tram, and I don't have a lot more to add now. It's just that I have photos this time, so enjoy, or whatever.



If you want to know anything more about the sculpture itself, Portland Public Art has a amusing post about it, its creator, and his other works around town. I linked to the same post last time, but the URL's since changed, and it's a fun read if you're interested in this sort of thing.



There is, obviously, more to the park than the sculpture here. It's actually tucked away in a less-used corner of the park, and it's kind of camouflaged due to its, uh, "organic" color, so you barely notice it's there unless you already know it's there.



The park also sports a playground, tennis courts, walking paths, lots of trees, and a vast army of squirrels. I'm not a tennis player, so there's not much for me to say about the tennis courts, and I don't have kids, so I don't really have an opinion about the playground either. If you're interested in that, I did come across what looks like a great review of the playground, with several good photos. The verdict: Not fabulous, and kind of outdated, although the "pesticide-free" bit is a definite plus.



People also walk dogs here a lot, but I don't have one of those either. Here's a cute photo of a dog here, right next to the sculpture. I bet dogs pee on "Land Form" a lot. I would, if I was a dog.



Back in the 60's and 70's, the park was apparently quite the hippie magnet, our own vastly smaller version of Golden Gate Park. The park's mentioned in a couple of great articles about that distant era: "Something Happening Here...From JDs to Hippies" and "Music on the Cusp: From Folk to Acid Rock in Portland Coffeehouses, 1967–1970".



If you happen to be of the Boomer persuasion, I can see how you might take issue with me calling it a "distant era". But, you know, the Oregon Historical Society is busy cataloging psychedelia. The Oregon freakin' Historical Society. And, look, it was 28 years from Pearl Harbor to Woodstock, and it's been another 39 from Woodstock to the present day. It's not that I'm coming out and calling you a geezer or anything. And if I was, I'm sure there's probably an upside of some sort to being a living fossil, like being able to semi-remember all sorts of trivia from the mists of time that nobody younger than you is even remotely interested in. That sort of thing.



One more useless factoid, and then we're done: There's no hill called "Lair Hill", here or anywhere else. The park, and surrounding neighborhood, are named after William Lair Hill, a lawyer/historian/editor of the pioneer era, who owned land around here for a while. So now you know. Amaze your friends! Confound your foes!

Or not.