Mark Hatfield bust, OHSU

At one entrance to the main OHSU hospital building is this bust of Oregon's late Senator Mark Hatfield, who represented the state in Congress from 1967-1997. He was possibly one of the last decent and humane Republicans around, although I voted against him the one time he was on the ballot & I was old enough to vote, because he was still a Republican. As a senator with a great deal of seniority, he was also quite generous with those old-style earmarks, and OHSU was one of his favorite beneficiaries over the years, and a great many places and things around the campus are named in his honor. An old Portland Public Art post says this is one of at least two depictions of the august senator, and the frieze somewhere near the main lobby is a better likeness, but I don't know where that one is & have no photos of it, so this one will have to do.

I don't know who created this bust; it's bound to have been someone very well reputed, as Hatfield's wife owned an art gallery for many years, and knew absolutely everyone. I didn't see a signature on the front, and its shrine-like niche sort of discourages one from looking at the back of it for a signature, as if from that angle you'd discover he was a mostly-benevolent space alien the whole time, and then the guards would have to dispose of you. Possibly that's not exactly what would happen, but that's the general sense I got.

Standing Lady Hare with Dog

Next up, we have another bit of art at OHSU. This time it's a really odd statue of an anthropomorphic female rabbit holding a dog. The late, lamented Portland Public Art blog did two posts about OHSU art, back when the Kohler Pavilion and the aerial tram were new, and one post included a short blurb about this statue:

There are outdoor sculpture areas on both floors with fantastic views of the city and the tram, showing artwork like the kitschy Sophie Ryder Standing Lady Hare with Dog – which she’s remade and sold many times. But it really works here, strong arms and strong backside gently holding the sick dog.

That last bit is glowing praise, by Portland Public Art standards. I'm unsure that this is my cup of tea, though, possibly because I've seen too many monster movies involving rabbits. Ok, one. Two, if Donnie Darko counts. Still, the artist's Wikipedia bio includes this fabulous line: In 1994 a sculpture of five minotaurs was banned from an exhibition at Winchester Cathedral because of the prominence of their genitalia., with a link to this Independent story. So that's a big mark in her favor, I'd say.

"Doctors" (OHSU)

We still have a few items left on our tour of public art at OHSU, because doctors really like buying art. This one's actually called Doctors, in fact; it's by Bonnie Bronson, whose work has appeared here a few times before: Nepali Window downtown, and the painted panels on her husband Lee Kelly's Leland One and the untitled sculpture at NE 72nd & Fremont.

Vita Mensae, Living Mind, Life of Thought

Ok, next up on the ongoing public art tour is another stop at OHSU. This time we're looking at Vitae Mensae, Living Mind, Life of Thought, the giant spooky half-head in front of the university's Medical Research Building. This was created circa 1993 by sculptor Larry Kirkland, who also did Capitalism, the stacked-coins fountain outside the Lloyd Center mall. There's a longer post about Vita Mensae at an OHSU history blog; the author wonders whether the Latin name is quite correct, and whether it would have been more appropriate to depict the other half of the head. Which are concerns that I guess a doctor would have about it that I never would have thought of. The post includes a photo of a sign explaining the sculpture, located inside one of the adjacent buildings. Oh, and the old Portland Public Art blog hated it (as usual), calling it "astonishingly ugly" and "a booby prize, probably selected by a committee of department heads as a perk for putting up with construction delays". The rest of the post continues in a similar vein. I used to aspire to that level of invective now and then, not so many years ago; now I'm just happy when I remember I still have a blog and ought to hit publish at least once a month.

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.)

The Three Graces

Next up, we're back at the OHSU campus again, looking at a small fountain called The Three Graces, in the Kohler Pavilion's outdoor sculpture garden. The fountain was created by Oregon artist Bill Kucha, and is dedicated to the late Leonard Schnitzer.

Alumni Fountain, OHSU

Here are a few photos of OHSU's Alumni Fountain, located in the plaza in front of Mackenzie Hall. A plaque at the base explains that it was a gift from the alumni association for the school's 75th anniversary in 1962, and it was designed by architect Lewis Crutcher. The fountain wasn't actually installed until August 1963, though; an Oregonian article about the new fountain proudly noted it was the first new public fountain in the city for over 40 years (and what the previous one might have been doesn't come to mind immediately). The article continues:

Pumps will send a 25-foot gusher into the air, then the water will flow back into the basin through 10 cuts in the upper side of the fountain, so there will be a dual sound. Colored lights will play upon the fountain at night.

The fountain is clearly not sending a 25-foot gusher into the air in these photos. OHSU has some vintage photos of the fountain online, and it was obviously spraying higher in 1968 than it is now. So they must have dialed it back at some point. Looking at the old photos, I suspect you wouldn't have wanted to walk past it on a windy day. I haven't visited the fountain at night, so I have no idea whether the colored lights are still there or not.

I wasn't familiar with Crutcher's work, but the interwebs have a few interesting tidbits. His 2000 obit in the Daily Journal of Commerce is largely devoted to his 1950s campaign against garish billboards and neon signs, cluttered sidewalks, and other civic ugliness. As this was decades before PowerPoint was invented, Crutcher illustrated his campaign with watercolors of European landmarks blanketed with the commercial clutter of 1950s Portland. The February-March 1959 issue of Old Oregon (the UO alumni magazine) [PDF] included an editorial by Crutcher about the many ills of the modern city, illustrated with a few more of these paintings. (Incidentally, his complaint about utility companies' hack-and-slash tree pruning practices is something that hasn't really improved over the last 60-odd years.) The city sign code largely adopted his ideas after a few years, although as fate would have it the few neon signs that survived are now seen as civic treasures to be protected at all costs.

Another aspect of his anti-ugliness campaign has survived the test of time a bit better: At some point, decades earlier, the city had decided that all Portland bridges must be painted black, no exceptions. The Broadway Bridge was black, the Ross Island was black, along with the Hawthorne and all the others. Crutcher had the bright idea that maybe a little variety wouldn't kill us, which led to the range of colors we see today. Except the Steel Bridge, which is owned by a railroad and not the city, and frankly looks like it hasn't been repainted since before the current color scheme went into effect.

Other projects Crutcher was involved in included restoration work at Skidmore Fountain Plaza and the Railway Exchange Block (which is currently being transmogrified into yet another boutique hotel), and the design of Memorial Coliseum. As an architecture student in the 1940s, he designed the houses for an early desegregated subdivision in Claremont, CA, which are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Bearer

Our next art stop is on the OHSU campus again: This time we're looking at The Bearer, a small James Lee Hansen sculpture lurking in the shrubbery outside Baird Hall. The Maryhill Museum did a retrospective of his work in 2014, including a study for The Bearer dated 1974. Which I imagine gives us a rough date for the final product too.

I've probably said this before, but Hansen's style somehow always reminds me of a 1960s science fiction paperback cover. It's not fashionable contemporary art in 2016, by any stretch of the imagination, but I've sort of warmed up to this look over time. In any case, I think we can all agree the location's doing it no favors. An old Portland Public Art post noted it and assumed it was somebody's little vanity project:

This little thing peeks out of the bushes in front of Baird. No tag, no nothing. I bet a dollar it’s a Arts & Crafts Society project a beloved Dean or Director made while in mid-life crisis. Prove me wrong. About two and a half feet high, bronze, late 1970’s by the style. Hmm. A cubist mother pushing a futurist baby stroller.

A commenter took the bet and explained that it was actually by a (locally) famous artist. No word on whether the promised dollar actually changed hands.

Scribner II

For the past year and change, new posts here have been about Portland murals to the near-exclusion of everything else. I think it's gotten a little monotonous, frankly, so I think I'm going to switch gears and work through some of the non-mural stuff I've had lying around for a while. I'd been planning on doing those after I got to zero mural posts in Drafts, but I think I could use a little variety right about now.

The previous big project here (if you remember back that far) involved tracking down public art around the Portland area (specifically excluding murals, at first, on the grounds that there are a whole lot of them around, and more all the time). As part of that project, I made a trip up to the OHSU campus on Marquam Hill, since the state's medical school has a ginormous art collection, including a few outdoor sculptures scattered around here and there.

The example we're looking at this time is Scribner II, a rusty Lee Kelly whatzit from the 70s in his usual chunky style, at a bus stop across the street from the Nursing School. This one reminds me of Kelly's Arlie outside the Portland Art Museum, which looks kind of like Scribner II up on stilts. I couldn't find a lot on the interwebs about this one; it only merited a brief mention in an old Portland Public Art post about OHSU art: "There’s an old rusty Lee Kelly in front of the nursing school, and another shiny one in front of the VA. Both hideous." (The one at the VA Hospital is Aeolian Columns, seen here last April.) That mention wasn't much of a clue, but I eventually located it in Street View, and later tracked it down in person. And here it is, in all its semi-groovy 70s glory. On the plus side, if you're waiting for a bus here and happen to cut or scrape yourself on Scribner II, you can just pop across the street for your tetanus shot. I dunno, maybe the whole reason it's here is to help drive demand for tetanus shots.

The only other mention of this sculpture I've seen anywhere on the net is a vintage photo from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, with Scribner II squatting in a snowy field, and that page contains no further information about the thing. So I can't explain the title, I'm afraid. I imagine it either refers to Charles Scribner II, the 19th Century publishing magnate, or there's a Scribner I lurking out there somewhere.

Aeolian Columns

Here's a photo of Aeolian Columns, a Lee Kelly sculpture in front of the Portland Veterans Hospital at OHSU, in a landscaped median between two buildings. Kelly's website describes it:

Aeolian Columns (1989), stainless steel and porcelain enamel columns fitted with organ pipes, c. 198 inches high; Collection Veterans Administration Medical Center, Portland OR. With composer Michael Stirling.

This is about the same vintage as Kelly's better-known (and similarly musical) Friendship Circle (1990) in Waterfront Park, and the family resemblance is uncanny. Sadly, I have a long track record of bad luck with local musical art, and I have never heard either of these sculptures in action. Or any other musical sculptures in town for that matter, except for the Weather Machine in Pioneer Courthouse Square. I'd claim to have some sort of anti-musical superpower, but in reality it's a combination of the art often being broken, and me being too impatient to wait around for it to do something. Anyway, a 1988 Oregonian article has a bit more about Aeolian Columns:

Oregon City artists Lee Kelly and Michael Stirling have been selected from among 64 contestants to create the $40,000 art-in-architecture project for the new Veterans Administration Medical Center, according to Barry Bell, center director.

The artists have created Aeolian columns, a collaborative sculpture and sound artwork created by sculptor Kelly and composer Stirling. The sculpture consists of three stainless steel columns between 15 and 16 feet in length, with bands of porcelain enamel providing splashes of color and highly reflective material.

The interior of the columns will be fitted with two tuned pipes that will produce the continuous series of tones scored by Stirling. The three pieces will be placed in the parklike setting at the entrance to the center, to create a man-made physical and musical grove.

I actually first heard of this sculpture in a Portland Public Art post about OHSU art that mentioned it briefly; the mysterious 'C' behind the blog was even less of a Kelly fan than I am, and said: "There’s an old rusty Lee Kelly in front of the nursing school, and another shiny one in front of the VA. Both hideous." I wouldn't go quite that far; "eyeroll-inducing" is more like it, and in general I do like Kelly's stainless steel stuff better than his rusty work. More importantly, I just hope the organ pipes play something pleasant and soothing, for the sake of the VA staff and patients.

Silent Messenger

Back in January, when I was up at OHSU quite a lot, I happened to notice a couple of statues in front of the Shriners Children's Hospital. Both depict a fez-wearing Shriner holding a child in one arm, and crutches in the other. Odd statues are sort of a natural topic for this humble blog, so I snapped a couple of camera phone photos. It turns out the statues are based on an iconic (to Shriners) 1970 photo titled "Editorial Without Words", and statues based on it (titled Silent Messenger) grace Shriners hospitals and facilities across the country, similar to the Ideal Scout statue located at many Boy Scout offices. Apparently no two Silent Messengers are exactly alike, though; it seems the gentleman's fez is always customized to bear the logo of a local Shrine organization. The two at OHSU are also wearing different outfits and carrying the crutches differently. As a non-Shriner, I have no idea why they have two statues or what the differences between them might symbolize, if anything. It's possible one of them was taken from their old childrens hospital at 82nd & Sandy. The OHSU website has more photos of both statues.

If this seems like something you'd want on your mantel, you're in luck, sort of. The design also comes in smaller sizes so in theory you can have one of your very own. Although apparently you have to join the Shriners (which involves first joining the Masons) and then be awarded one for distinguished meritorious service or something along those lines. Which seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to get a small statuette. But to each his own, I guess.

I realize Shriners do charitable works for kids and have jolly parade floats and so forth, but their archaic fantasy Middle Eastern theme kind of weirds me out. Charitable works or no, it would be hard for a fraternal group to get away with a comical blackface theme today, or a Fu Manchu fake-Chinese one, but spoofing the Arab world is apparently still hilarious in 2013.

I took a peek at the local branch's current newsletter, and they seem to be uniformly elderly white men (plus the women of the ladies' auxiliary, which is a whole other issue). As this is also the core demographic of Fox News and AM talk radio, I'd speculate there's a nonzero overlap of the two. I'd be genuinely curious to hear one of those guys explain how he reconciles the two things: On one hand, wanting to bomb the people of the Middle East back into the Stone Age, and on the other, wanting to dress up and pretend to be one of them. It puzzles me, and I'd honestly like to understand how they manage it.

OHSU Skybridge

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The ongoing bridge project makes another detour into Portland's West Hills, with a visit to the big pedestrian bridge up at Oregon Health Sciences University. The bridge provides a route between the main OHSU hospital and the Veterans Hospital that across a deep ravine from OHSU proper. Some sources insist this is the world's longest pedestrian suspension bridge, but I'm uncertain whether that's actually true or not. Structurae points out this is actually a cable-stayed bridge, not a suspension bridge; an engineering firm connected with the bridge's construction merely claims it's the longest bridge "of its type", whatever that means.

This had been on my bridge to-do list for quite some time, but I never had much of a reason to trek up to OHSU and wander around the hospital looking for the skybridge. But back in January, my mother was hospitalized at OHSU for a couple of weeks, and at one point I wandered out to go find bottled water on a Sunday afternoon, when just about everything at OHSU is closed for some reason. As I wandered around I finally saw a sign for the skybridge and figured, hey, I'll take a couple of extra minutes, and walk across (since the bridge project involves walking across whenever possible) & take some phone photos. It's a longer walk than you'd think; at 690 feet it's only a bit shorter than the Morrison Bridge (775'), so you walk and walk and the far side just doesn't get closer very quickly. Still, there were some interesting views from the bridge, and I've checked it off my list now, and it was certainly a nice break from hanging around the neurology ICU. I even found bottled water eventually (it turned out to be another seven stories down from the bridge level), and -- most importantly -- my mom's out of the hospital now and has made a great recovery.

Snow Day on the Tram

So today I got to ride our fair city's shiny new aerial tram. Seems that because of all the snow, they decided to temporarily open the thing to the city's non-medical riffraff, people such as myself. They weren't exactly encouraging the public to show up; the announcements said the tram was open to OHSU employees, VA & Shriners hospital staff, patients, and "others" who "need" to travel between Marquam Hill & South Waterfront. I figured that was my opening: I definitely fall into the "other" category, and "need" can be a very, very subjective term when you want it to be. It didn't seem very likely that they'd station a security guard at each end, screening each prospective passenger and rejecting anyone who seemed to merely want to ride it. That wouldn't really be the Portland way. But in case there was a security guard, I figured I'd try to talk my way on board. I'm really not very good at that at all. I almost never succeed at talking my way into anything, but in the worst case I'd just have had to get back on the streetcar and go home. They don't let OHSU grab people off the street for medical experimentation anymore, or at least that's what I've heard.

As I suspected, they were running the opening the Portland way: Open the thing to everyone, but word the announcement in such a way that not a lot of people show up. Imply there are vague, yet strictly enforced, rules on who can board, and let the public imagination run wild. That kind of talk is guaranteed to set off alarm bells with anyone who's ever gone through US Customs. But if quizzed about it, city officials can honestly claim they never specifically said there would be body cavity searches. It's just that they also didn't say there wouldn't be, and relied on the public's fear of confrontation to do the rest. Portlanders are experts at conflict avoidance. There are certain benefits to this, a reasonably low murder rate (by US city standards) for example. But it also means that you'll miss out on a lot of stuff in this town unless you learn how to not take the hint.

In any case, there were a few other joyriders besides myself, and the tram operators seemed happy to see us. Perhaps we were a nice break from all those doctors, endlessly prattling on about their golf scores and real estate deals and trophy wives. For a moment I was almost kind of disappointed that getting on board was so easy. In case you were wondering, no, I wasn't planning to mention anything about being an Important Local Blogger Of Note, or demand "don't you know who I am?". I doubt I'd try that even if I was, in fact, an Important Local Blogger Of Note (which I'm not). I can throw an elbow or two around if I need to, figuratively speaking of course, but I just can't do pretentious or self-important. I can't even fake it. Anyway that would seem like cheating, somehow. Journalists call themselves the "fourth estate", so those of us out here in blogospace are probably the eighth or ninth estate, at minimum, and therefore far, far below the minimum rational threshold for VIP treatment. If anyone tried to give me free stuff simply for having a blog, I'd instantly lose all respect for them.

So riding the tram was more fun than I thought it would be. Whether it's $60M worth of fun, I really couldn't say at this point. The trip only takes a few minutes, and I was taking pictures pretty much constantly both ways, so I may have to go again to ride it just for the experience. I almost got back in line and rode it again immediately, but sadly I had places to be and things to do. Maybe I'll go again tomorrow if it's still free.

The top photo is from the upper tram station at OHSU, with a tram car departing. As I've mentioned before, I've (unofficially) named the two cars "Tom" and "Lance", after a couple of mono-testicled celebrities. I haven't yet figured out which is which, though.




A genuine, real-life photo from the tram, looking north towards downtown Portland. The street on the left is SW 1st, with Naito Pkwy on the right. This angle is probably going to become a standard tourist shot as soon as they start letting real photographers on board the tram. Someday you can tell the grandkids you saw it first right here on this humble and highly obscure blog.




The other tram car, again from the upper station. These babies were pretty much made to order for a really fantastic James Bond fistfight. Yes, yes, I realize they did the fistfight-on-a-tram thing in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but that was a long time ago, and our tram looks way cooler. The governor's office has a couple of people whose 24/7 job is to bring movie productions to Oregon. If they don't already have the whole fight scene choreographed out, they aren't doing their job.

The key unresolved problem is what James Bond would be doing here in the first place, and what he'd do for the rest of the film's running time. We have a few people in town (mostly Republicans) who could be passable Bond villains in a pinch, but none of them have colorful henchmen that I'm aware of. It's a real problem.




Another photo from the tram, this time of SW Terwilliger, looking all snowy and alpine and BMW-commercial-like. You might notice that the road is oddly free of runners. Where'd they all go? DId they stay home just because the whole thing's a treacherous sheet of ice right now? Weenies. Wimps.

Ok, it's also possible they all slipped and tumbled down the hill. But hey, if anyone needs a ride to OHSU, the tram's right here.



Looking downhill (east) from the upper tram station, with the South Waterfront condo towers in the distance, and the Lair Hill & Corbett neighborhoods in front of them. It really is quite a long drop, once you get a good look at it. Neighbors have complained about the possibility of tram-based voyeurs peeping into their backyards -- like anyone in Lair Hill really has much of a backyard -- but nobody seems to have considered the impact, the literal impact, of the constant rain of colorful Bond-villain henchmen plummeting from the sky, crashing through roofs, flattening one's award-winning roses, alarming children and small animals, disrupting traffic even further, and generally lowering the tone of the place. It's always the problems people didn't anticipate that turn out to be the real killers.




The lower tram station. This is kind of boring in comparison to the other photos, but I figured I needed it for completeness. Someday the barge-building operation on the left edge of the picture will be gone, replaced by more condo towers, and then this photo will be a collector's item, sort of. Get 'em while they're hot.


Updated 1/18/06: Here are a few other rider reports I've come across:

• A post on greyduck.net about yesterday's free tram rides.
  
• Tales from the Tube reports on riding the tram last week. And the photo of the thing is nice, although my pics contain snow and are therefore better.
  
• And Russ at Portland Metblogs rode the tram back in December. I'm starting to think that everyone else with a blog has ridden it already. Or at least everyone with a blog and more chutzpah and/or connections than I do, in other words basically everyone.