Women Making History in Portland

Women Making History in Portland at N. Interstate Avenue & Harding St., not far from the Widmer brewery. The RACC blurb about it:

In Other Words Women’s Books and Resources were the organizers of this mural. The mural represents a women’s history of Portland, and was made to promote the mission of empowering women through art and education. The mural portrays women from all walks of life within the Portland community.

Links:
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ShNOxn-TqY

This was created in 2007 by Robin Corbo, who also did the mural at the Community Cycling Center on NE Alberta, and the large BARK Mural on SE Powell, among other things. She posted a Facebook photoset about the mural, with brief bios for many of the women depicted here.

Community Cycling Center mural

The next mural on our tour is a large RACC-sponsored one on the Community Cycling Center at 17th & Alberta. The RACC description:

The main focus of the mural is a child-powered apparatus, accompanied by a range of locomotion machines for children of all ages and varying physical abilities. The machines form a parade that includes a tandem bicycle, wheelchair, reclining bicycle, tricycle, unicycle, and other various bicycles. The imagery in this mural is inspired by the Community Cycling Center’s dedication as a non-profit service organization that teaches bicycle safety and provides bicycles to those in need.

This was created in 2006 by Robin Corbo (who also created the MIKE and BARK murals elsewhere in Portland), and restored in 2008 after the building was rammed by a truck.

BARK Mural

Next up on the mural tour is the huge BARK Mural, the jam-packed nature scene at the Firestone store at 4601 SE Powell. I ran across this in a Kay's Bird Club post, though I'm sure I would have noticed it on my own eventually if I was on Powell more often. A 2011 Tribune article about it interviewed lead artist Robin Corbo (who also created the MIKE mural near Lloyd Center, and a couple of others I haven't posted yet). The article explains that the mural was created in conjunction with BARK, a nonprofit that works to protect the Mt. Hood National Forest, which explains the subject matter here. I imagine "created in conjunction with" means the group supplied volunteers to help paint it. Here and there you can kind of tell that community volunteers were involved, and the sorta-infamous 'Art Wall of Shame' Tumblr ranted about some of the mural's more uneven details. Ranting about well-meaning volunteers seems kind of meanspirited if you ask me. I suppose there's just no satisfying some people.

A tire store on Powell may sound like a weird location for a saving-the-world nature mural, but this was a deliberate symbolic choice; Powell doubles as highway US 26, which (eventually) is the main road to Mt. Hood and points east. (You could keep going on US 26 all the way to Ogallala, Nebraska, if you were so inclined.)

MIKE Mural

Our next installment on the ongoing public mural tour is the MIKE Mural, located outside a dialysis clinic at NE 7th & Hancock. It's part of the quasi-public RACC mural program, and they have a brief description of it.

The purpose of the MIKE (Multicultural Integrated Kidney Education Program) Mural is to create a compelling work of public art that targets youth, and raises their awareness around kidney health. Made and designed with the help of students from POIC (Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center/Rosemary Anderson High School), the mural seeks to empower youth to be ambassadors of health in service to their diverse communities through mentorship, partnership, and the promotion of healthy kidneys.

So I gather the shiny happy people in the mural are all leading active Northwest lifestyles despite needing dialysis. The description doesn't exactly say that, but I think that's what's implied.

The PSU Vanguard did a profile of muralist Robin Corbo, dubbing her "The Marvelous Muralist". This is one of several murals she's created around Portland. You'll probably be seeing the others here sooner or later, just knowing how these blog projects of mine usually go.