Black Hole No. 4

In today's thrilling adventure, we're off to inner SE Portland to look for Black Hole No. 4, which the Smithsonian art survey says is at the Plaid Pantry convenience store at SE 20th & Ankeny. Seriously. I went there and took the above photos; it's just that I don't know what the actual art is supposed to look like, so I don't know whether this is it, or whether it's missing and this is just the pedestal it used to be on. The survey describes it as:

Artist:  
  Hess, Robert, sculptor.
Medium:  
  Sculpture: bronze(?); 
  Base: concrete.
Dimensions:
  Sculpture: approx. 20 x 25 x 25 in.; 
  Base: approx. H. 32 in. x Diam. 14 in.; 
  Pedestal: approx. Circum. 50 in.
Condition:  
  Surveyed 1993 November. Treatment urgent.

...which sort of suggests we're maybe just looking at the pedestal here. Sigh. The sculptor is apparently a professor emeritus at Willamette University in Salem, and photos from a Portland gallery representing him suggest that the missing sculpture was probably kind of cool. The only mention of it I've found in the Oregonian database is a brief community calendar item, from June 1985, stating the next meeting of the local neighborhood association would "Discuss a new crime prevention committee, goals for the community development plan, plans for the Buckman Flea Festival, and art for a Plaid Pantry store at Southeast 20th Avenue and East Burnside Street.". So that's all I really know. I did find a 1982 article about the same neighborhood association teaming up with Plaid Pantry to create a mural (which still exists) on another store at 12th & Morrison. So they'd worked together before Black Hole No. 4

If I was truly dedicated to this blogging thing, this would be the point where I'd start making phone calls and doing legwork and trying to figure out where the art went. Except that I hate making phone calls, and really I think this is a job for someone who lives a little closer and has more of a stake in the outcome. Is it in storage now, maybe in a vast warehouse like the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Or maybe it sits forgotten in a neighborhood volunteer's attic, and we won't see it again until it pops up on Antiques Road Show? Or maybe meth-crazed metal thieves stole it? Or professional art thieves, perhaps in the employ of an anonymous Swiss collector? Who knows?

cartopia, 12th & hawthorne (vine)

Colonel Summers Park expedition

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A photoset from Portland's Colonel Summers Park & Community Garden, at SE 17th & Taylor. I've gotten into the habit of saying I don't bother with neighborhood parks like this, where most of the park is devoted to ball fields and play equipment. But the community garden is fairly photogenic, and there's a little history to pass along, so I'm going to make yet another exception, like I did for Irving and Sewallcrest Parks earlier. Before we get to the history bit, some info about the park's standard-issue features, since those are what almost all visitors who aren't me come here for. The park includes basketball and tennis courts, a baseball diamond, and a covered picnic area. It formerly offered a wading pool for kids, but like the ones in other parks around town it was permanently closed in 2010 due to state health regulations. There's a neighborhood campaign to build a splash pad to replace the old pool.

Because this is the middle of a very hip part of town, it also attracts things like adult dodgeball, bike polo, and assorted as-seen-in-Portlandia activities. Years ago, coworkers and I used to come here on Friday afternoons and hit a volleyball around, which is one sorta-sport that hipsters still haven't discovered somehow. It was fun, but you had to watch out because dog owners weren't always that meticulous about cleaning up after their pets, and there was always a chance of finding a little grenade lurking in the grass if you weren't careful. Ah, memories.

As this is inner SE Portland, the park has also hosted Food Not Bombs and Occupy Portland events in recent years.

The southwest corner of the park contains a small memorial to the park's namesake, Col. Owen Summers. He was widely regarded as the "Father of the Oregon National Guard" (even our National Guard says so), and he was best known for his service with the 2nd Oregon Volunteers in the Spanish-American War. The same obscure conflict memorialized by two memorials in Lownsdale Square, another in Waterfront Park, yet another in Lone Fir Cemetery (though it's primarily a Civil War memorial), and probably others elsewhere. That war was an ugly episode in our national history, and it's kind of embarrassing that Portland built monuments to it all over town.

Summers himself was said to be a decent guy, and the Oregon volunteers came home before the guerrilla war in the Philippines got going in earnest. Still, I'd be perfectly happy with renaming the place back to "Belmont Park", which is what it was called until renamed in 1938 in a fit of patriotic fervor, for the war's 40th anniversary. The park was rededicated on September 13th, 1938, as part of the city's war anniversary festivities. The Battleship Oregon opened at its "permanent" waterfront home the same day. Although that turned out to be far from permanent, thanks in large part to the day's top news story, the infamous Munich Agreement that enabled Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The juxtaposition of the two stories is kind of mind-boggling. In any case, page 7 of the paper was a full page of Spanish War festivities photos, including one showing the dedication of the Summers memorial plaque. A page 5 story covered the dedication in more detail. As far as I can determine, Summers had no connection to this particular spot, and it's not clear why the city selected this park to name after him rather than one of the others around town.

I can't tell you a lot about the memorial plaque itself. The inscription says it was created by someone named Daniel Powell, but I can't find much in the way of info about him. The Smithsonian art inventory mentions one work by someone named Daniel Powell, located at Bok Gardens in Lake Wales, FL, co-credited with 15 other artists. I don't know if it's him, but the dates are potentially correct. A history page for the Oregon Society of Artists lists him as the organization's president from 1942-44, and describes him as "High school teacher. Sculptor, sketch artist." An April 14th, 1945 Oregonian article on the Society's Spring Art Show mentions him:

This year the society, in addition to showing paintings, drawings, and small sculptures, will exhibit two sculptures of heroic size, one of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and one of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, completed in the Sabin high school art classes under the direction of Daniel Powell, society member who is art instructor at that school.

I haven't found any record of what happened to these student-built heroic sculptures after the art show. "Sabin High School" was a short-lived boys' alternative high school program based at Sabin Elementary School, 1939-1947, which was formerly part of Thomas A. Edison High School.

Inversion: Plus Minus

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A few photos of Inversion: Plus Minus, the pair of rusty steel structures recently installed at the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge. (There's also one, not pictured here, at the east end of the Morrison Bridge as well.) The structures replace several curved ramps between the bridges and Grand Avenue, which I imagine were removed for traffic safety. The structures, we're told, represent ghosts of buildings that were removed when the current interchanges were built, circa 1957. RACC trumpets them in a press release about various bold new public art projects around the Eastside, along with a fairly interesting Q&A with the designers.

For whatever it's worth, local internet commenters are less thrilled about Inversion. See, for example, the comments at Lost Oregon, OregonLive's Commuting blog, and a KATU story about it.

And my opinion? I'm not sure I have one yet. I understand what the designers were aiming at here, and I also get that the look of rusty Cor-Ten steel is not universally admired. I can't really blame people for looking at it and quickly deciding it's ugly. On the other hand, it feels like there are some interesting photo possibilities here. I haven't figured them out quite yet, though, so I'll probably have to go back, and slow down and stare at it for a while, thereby confusing passing motorists even further.

St. Francis Park expedition

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Some photos from St. Francis Park, in inner SE Portland, on Stark between 11th & 12th. It's an unusual spot in that, although it looks a lot like a city park, it's actually owned and operated by the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic church next door. The church also operates the St. Francis Dining Hall, which serves meals to the city's homeless population, so there tend to be a few homeless people hanging around the park at any given time, and big crowds around mealtime. As a result the park's gained a long-term reputation for drug and alcohol problems. This has repeatedly put the church at odds with the surrounding neighborhood, at one point leading to a city-mediated six month closure of the park.

At some point, I'm guessing during the 1970s, a great deal of money was spent on the park. A big fountain and wading pools were installed, as well as a brightly painted wagon wheel drinking fountain, and a lot of landscaping work was done. But the church seems to have an even lower maintenance budget than the city parks bureau does, and everything's fallen into serious disrepair over the years. I'm sure they prioritize feeding people ahead of repairing fountains, and fundamentally I can't really disagree with that. I can't imagine the creepy, decrepit state of the park helps mend fences with the neighbors, though. The Catholic Church probably isn't interested in unsolicited advice from a nonbeliever such as myself, but it seems like they could send word around the local archdiocese and guilt-trip people into donating or volunteering or something. It's been done at least once before; an article in the May 23rd, 1977 Oregonian is titled "St. Francis Park - once eyesore, now pride of Buckman neighborhood", detailing the then-current efforts to revitalize the place. Since it was 1977, we're told that one of the park's trees is named Beverly, and the article includes part of a fifth grader's poem about the tree.

A post over at Portland Public Art had a similar take on the place several years ago. That post points at a Picasa gallery of the park, with more photos along the same lines as the ones here.

sunflowers, colonel summers park