Intellectual Ecosystem

Here's a short YouTube clip of Intellectual Ecosystem, a video art installation on an outside wall of the Portland State Student Rec Center building, facing the Urban Plaza. The university's PR describes it as:

...a video work that uses imagery of PSU student performances, faculty work, and archival holdings that were researched and filmed over a one year period.  Nearly forty faculty members and student groups were engaged by the artists.  
...
“Intellectual Ecosystem” contains a total of 160 minutes of original video content, projected in a custom programmed sequence to remix the clips.  The work is viewable from inside the ASRC and also animates the busy Urban Plaza from a 12’ x 16’ transparent holographic screen that, even when the projector is active, allows the activities of students inside the building to become another layer of the composition.  The title of the work is inspired by PSU Environmental Studies Professor John Reuter, who has called for the creation of new metaphors and the identification of characteristic patterns to allow people to grasp the immensity of natural processes.  

The installation was created in 2010 by artists Fernanda D’Agostino and Valerie Otani; you might recognize both names from other Portland public art projects that have appeared here previously. D'Agostino created Urban Hydrology and Patterns May be an Action, or the Trace Left by an Action along the MAX line at PSU, Icons of Transformation at North Portland's Overlook MAX stop

Otani created Voices of Remembrance and Prowform & Propform along the Yellow Line, Money Tree at the SE Powell Green Line station, and Folly Bollards at the downtown Peforming Arts Center, I mean, "Portland'5 Centers for the Arts". (Yes, that's an apostrophe-five, and it's there on purpose. It's a terminally silly name, and some marketing consultant probably made a ton of money thinking of it.) The two artists collaborated on the Flows and Eddies sculptures around the Smith & Bybee Wetlands nature area.

Voices of Remembrance

Portland's MAX Yellow Line ends at the Expo Center, the city's general-purpose large event space. Auto shows, dog shows, cat shows, trade shows, gun shows, swap meets, concerts, and so forth. The Cirque du Soleil sets up circus tents in the parking lot every so often. The Multnomah County Fair used to be held here, and the old Pacific-International livestock expo was held here for many years and lent its name to the place.

Riders exiting the train pass under a set of Japanese torii gates, each adorned with little metal tags jangling in the wind. This is Valerie Otani's Voices of Remembrance, the public art for this MAX station, and it commemorates a much darker episode in the Expo Center's history. From the local arts agency's description of the piece:

Five cedar gates commemorate the site where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Stainless steel tags in the shape of tags people were required to wear, create sound giving voice to this history.

There are numerous accounts on the net about Oregon's deportations and the Expo Center's role in them, including articles at the Oregon Historical Society, OPB, BlueOregon, & Portland IndyMedia. The latter two include a survey of 1942 news stories from the Oregonian. I was thinking of doing that myself but I'd recommend reading those accounts instead. Japanese internment was a national shame; these articles point our our particular local shame: The unseemly enthusiasm Portland brought to the task, and the fact that almost nobody spoke out against the deportations. There are probably still a few people around who spent World War II rounding up law-abiding citizens, or guarding the camps, or stamping transit orders in the internment bureaucracy, although of course nobody will admit to it now.

There's also a good article about the gates at UltraPDX by artist Linda Wysong. (The article link goes to a Wayback Machine copy of the piece, as the UltraPDX site seems to be offline right now.)

This is not Portland's only monument to this ugly historical episode -- there's also the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Waterfront Park, as well as a few references along the "festival streets" in Chinatown. I think this one is by far the most effective of the lot, however. Next time you're at the Expo Center, take a moment to stop and look, and think about what happened here.

Flows and Eddies

Here are a few photos of Flows and Eddies, the public art scattered around the Smith & Bybee Wetlands. Flows and Eddies is the name for the overall project, which is divided into a few sub-groupings, each of which in turn consists of a few individual sculptures. Two of these groupings are represented in these photos:

Ecology Stones

Forms found in the natural habitat of the lakes are carved in monumental scale basalt boulders, creating a “teaching landscape” that awakens viewers to the rich plant and animal life that surrounds them.

Mussel Shell

A large carved stone based on the fresh water mussels found in the lakes marks the entrance to the canoe launch. The lines of a mussel’s shell mark the years of its life. A second mussel shell paving stone is etched with the dates and cycles of time of important events in the history, prehistory and natural history of the lakes, making note of the ‘deep time’ found in wild places.

Not pictured are Habitat Reefs, Habitat Trees and Seasonal Encampment, mostly because I have no idea where they are. Smith & Bybee Wetlands is a huge place, and the art seems to be scattered a bit randomly all over the park.

Flows and Eddies is a fairly recent addition to the park, only arriving in 2004. Like Drawing on the River beneath the St. Johns Bridge in Cathedral Park, it was actually funded with One Percent for Art money from the still-unopened Wapato Jail. The jail borders a remote corner of Bybee Lake near the old St. Johns Landfill, and as you might imagine it doesn't welcome casual visitors. The then-sheriff figured it was silly to spend the public art money at the jail where nobody would ever see it, so a few outside projects were funded instead, including this one.

If you like these, you might also check out Urban Hydrology on the transit mall at Portland State University. Like Flows and Eddies it's a collection of nature-inspired Fernanda D'Agostino sculptures, but they're based on electron microscope images of diatoms. It's possibly my favorite of the new crop of transit mall art that arrived with the MAX Green Line. For whatever that's worth. If Google results are any indication, I may be the only person on Earth who pays attention to this stuff.

Prowform and Propform

A few photos of Prowform and Propform, a pair of public artworks at the Prescott St. MAX station. Prowform is a construction of tubes and vanes at the north end of the station, designed to sorta-resemble the prow of a ship (allegedly), while Propform is the rusty propeller shape in the nearby "Prescott Biozone". Said biozone is of the region's seemingly endless demonstration projects around trying to mange stormwater in an artsy and upscale sort of way. The city's Bureau of Environmental Services maintains a list of such projects, which describes Prowform and Propform thusly:

Brian Borrello and Valerie Otani, Artists; 2004 These sculptures, inspired by the historical ship building industry on Swan Island, are artful representations of the history of the area, as well as innovative approaches to managing stormwater.

MAX Yellow Line art guide says of the two, "A stainless steel "ship's prow" gathers rainwater and funnels it to a greenspace.", and "A rusted steel propeller sculpture flowers amidst a swirling pattern of grasses."

I'm not sure what the process was for choosing an overall theme for each MAX station. Generally they're supposed to reference the local neighborhood somehow, and they picked the maritime industries of Swan Island for this one. That's a reasonable choice. So far, so good. But they also had to include a positive environmental / educational message about stormwater management, for whatever reason, and figure out how to mash the two ideas together. These two themes don't have any obvious synergies, which may be why we ended up with a pair of nautical-themed downspouts. I'm not sure what else they could have made and still stayed within the prescribed themes, quite honestly.

It's odd that we have an actual genre of stormwater-themed art here. Maybe I'm the only person who thinks that, I dunno. In recent decades the city's Bureau of Environmental Services (the delicately-named sewer agency) has tackled the multi-billion-dollar Big Pipe and other big-ticket capital projects, and the 1% for Art rules apply to them as much as anyone else, so I suppose that makes for a large pot of money to draw from. For that kind of money we could probably have gotten ourselves a giant gold statue of South Park's Mr. Hankey, or maybe some Futurama sewer mutants, but for whatever reason the city prefers art that focuses strictly on the boring rainwater side of their business. Like Prowform and Propform, Eye River near OMSI has a focus on our heroic struggle against the endless, pitiless rains. Memorial Inscription near PSU isn't water-themed itself, but it's part of a mini-plaza that also includes educational displays so college students can learn important truths about the rain, our friend, constant companion, and eternal adversary. Or whatever.

Money Tree

The MAX Green Line's Powell Boulevard station is home to Money Tree, the sort of winged post in the distance in the above photo. TriMet's description of it:

Valerie Otani created a contemporary Money Tree to symbolize the revitalization of the neighborhood and hope for the prosperity of the new immigrant communities. The overall form evokes the Douglas fir, and each branch takes its design from traditional folk art of cultures living in the neighborhood

This photo was taken from inside a MAX train, with an inferior-grade phone camera, so you can't really see the branch details, but an Examiner article about Green Line art has a detail photo of part of one branch, which gives a better idea of what it looks like up close.

Otani's work has appeared here a few times before, including Folly Bollards at the downtown Performing Arts Center, and Prescott Biozone on the MAX Yellow Line. She doesn't appear to have a website, so I'm having trouble elaborating on TriMet's rather terse description. They don't even mention which immigrant communities are represented here. I did run across a few mentions of a female Saudi-American artist who collaborated on part of Money Tree. An interview with her describes this segment of the tree:

You may also see one of Huda’s art pieces live in a neighborhood of Portland, Oregon called the “Money Tree” sculpture. It is a beautiful and creative joint public art project designed by both Huda Totonji and a Japanese American artist, Valerie Otani. Dr. Huda Totonji designed a branch of the “Money Tree” 20 feet tall sculpture. It stands tall on Powell Boulevard Station, TriMet, I 205. The theme of the sculpture is the revitalization with new immigrants as they bring prosperity and cultural strength. Dr. Huda’s design incorporates Arabic calligraphy that communicates good wishes for prosperity from the Muslim traditions.

As we continue through the Green Line sculptures, you'll notice a theme developing. With a few exceptions, they tend to be tall poles (such as the one here) with much of the design elements overhead and out of reach. I imagine this is to thwart casual vandals, metal thieves, and teenage boys who want to impress people by climbing them, because this part of the outer eastside isn't the most upscale part of town, and TriMet's afraid of whatever mischief the restless natives might get up to. That's my theory, anyway.

Folly Bollards

If you live or work in downtown Portland, you've probably walked past the "Folly Bollards" sculptures without even noticing them. They're tiny busts of comedic figures from around the world, set on low posts on either side of Main St. at the Performaing Arts Center, between Broadway & Park Ave. They're of relatively recent origin, created in 1998 by local artist Valerie Otani. Longtime Gentle Reader(s) of this humble blog might note that she also co-designed the public art at the Prescott St. MAX station (among other things), including the Prescott Biozone nano-park. Ok, so you almost certainly don't remember that, but I never turn down a chance to link to a 5 year old post. It sort of makes it look like I have a master plan for this humble blog, and have some sort of clue about what I'm doing here.

I'd walked past the little heads countless times before I noticed them and wondered what they were. I'm actually a big fan of this sort of thing: The Folly Bollards don't demand your attention, but there's a lot of detail to see if you're inclined to stop and look. A brief post at Portland Public Art mentions them, less snarkily than usual. Which I get; the faces are kind of cute and it's hard to be snarky about something this small. It would seem kind of mean, somehow.

Anyway, here's a list of the various heads and who or what each one represents:

• Taro Kaja – Japan
• Jester
• Nasreddin
• Trickster
• Anansi
• Sidha Karya
• Nutamat – Kwakiutl
• Mongwi Kovem
• El Viejito
• Harlequin
• Monkey King