Wheel Series I

The next installment in our ongoing public art tour takes us back to Vancouver WA's little municipal sculpture garden, at E. 9th & Broadway. This collection focuses heavily on Portland-area artists circa 1960-1980, and we've already looked at their Manuel Izquierdo and James Lee Hansen sculptures. Today's installment is about Don Wilson's Wheel Series I. Wilson was/is an art professor at Portland State, and he also created Holon on the South Park Blocks, and the massive Interlocking Forms along Portland's downtown transit mall. Both of those date to the late 1970s (although the date situation with Holon is complicated, for reasons I don't understand). I'm pretty sure the "1998" on the sign here is when Wheel Series I was donated, not when it was created. If I had to guess, I'd say this dates to the late 70s as well. Family resemblance and all that.

Holon

Hey, it's time for yet another installment of me wandering around taking photos of obscure public art around town. Today's adventure takes us to the south end of the South Park Blocks, where we find a small piece titled Holon, by Don Wilson, the same guy who created Interlocking Forms, a much larger, but similar-looking sculpture along the Portland transit mall. We're told Holon is a recent (2004) addition to the Park Blocks, and there isn't a lot about it out on the interwebs. The few descriptions of it I've come across seem to be taken from a single source via a game of telephone:

• PortlandOnline:

  Installed in 2004, this work made of white Indiana limestone by Oregon sculptor Donald Wilson is entitled Holon. The word comes from the Greek holos which means whole, entire, complete in all its parts - something that has integrity and identity at the same time as it is a part of a larger system.

• CultureNOW:

  Holon is the most recent addition to Porland's famed Park Blocks. Holon comes from the Greek word "holos," meaning whole or complete in its parts. Oregon sculptor Donald Wilson intended his piece Holon to be whole, with integrity on its own while being a part of a larger system.

• Regional Arts & Culture Council:

  “Holon”, originally commissioned in 1979, was dedicated to the late Dr. Gordon Hearn, the first dean of the School of Social Work at PSU, and reflects the school’s holistic design.

I frankly have no idea what "holistic design" even is. The word "Holon" is a technical term in philosophy, and the above descriptions seem to be trying to give a definition of it for a general audience, with little success. I'm not even going to have a go at that; if you're interested, just go read the Wikipedia article.

The RACC page I linked to gives an original date of 1979 and notes it was "re-carved" in 2003. The 1979 date would explain why it looks so much like its 1977 sibling on the transit mall. I'm not sure what "re-carved" means, but a 1981 "In Memoriam" piece about Mr. Hearn, and a mention of Holon in a human behavior textbook both indicate Holon was somewhere on the PSU campus as of the late 1970s. So re-carved could mean repaired, or replaced, or updated to reflect its creator's true vision, like with the first 3 Star Wars movies. Dunno.

Interlocking Forms

Our occasional tour of art on the Transit Mall continues with a visit to Interlocking Forms, yet another of the original 1977 crop of big arty doodads. I haven't run across a lot of info about it on the interwebs; Portland Public Art did a short post about it, back when they boxed it up for storage before MAX construction started. And there's not a lot of useful info about it there. There's a Yelp page titled "Interlocking Forms" that's actually about "The Quest" for the most part, and it's not a terribly useful or accurate page about either piece. And an Examiner story has a photo of it.

On that unscientific basis I'm going to conclude it doesn't inspire strong feelings either way in the local internet-using populace, and it's not particularly fashionable within the local contemporary art world. I wouldn't say I have very strong feelings about it either, although I'm kind of intrigued at how it manages to be both groovy (or some would say "dated") and austere at the same time. I do think it needs a better name, though, and I've taken to calling it "The Leg Bone's Connected to the Hip Bone". I have a theory -- well, more of an idle notion really -- that the more severe and intellectual an artwork is, the more it needs a jaunty or flippant name. Consider Mondriaan's "Broadway Boogie Woogie" for example.

I also searched for info on the sculptor, Don Wilson, with only a bit more success. It seems he either taught or teaches at Portland State University, and another piece of his (titled "Holon") sits at the south end of the South Park Blocks, on the PSU campus (the city's South Park Blocks Walking Tour mentions it briefly). It's a quarter century newer and much smaller, but the resemblance is pretty clear. At least once you know to look for it.

Another Portland Public Art post has a photo of Wilson sculpting something. Also ran across at least 3 city archives documents referring to other works of his; the full docs themselves (and the included photos) are unfortunately not online at this time.

The walking tour doc I linked to above mentions that Wilson was once an assistant to Frederic Littman, another local sculptor and creator of the Pioneer Woman on Council Crest, Farewell to Orpheus in the South Park Blocks, and other works. Other Littman students include Lee Kelly (Leland One, Kelly Fountain, Nash, etc.), and Manuel Izquierdo (The Dreamer). There isn't really a family resemblance between their works; it just goes to show how small and interconnected the Portland art world tends to be, basicaly an insular small town within the city, where everyone knows everyone else, gossip thrives, and you never want to burn your bridges if you can help it. Which is true of any skilled industry in just about any city, really. It's certainly true of software engineering in Portland, I can tell you that much from personal experience.