Flying Together (MHCC)

Next up we're looking at another sculpture on the Mt. Hood Community College campus, this time Flying Together by Oregon sculptor Tom Hardy. If this looks vaguely familiar and you don't spend a lot of time at MHCC, you might be thinking of Hardy's other Flying Together, which is similar but not identical to this one. The other one is located outside the Oregon Historical Society, on the South Park Blocks in downtown Portland, and before anyone asks, the downtown one is still there, these are definitely separate sculptures, not a single one that moved to MHCC from downtown like "TriMet" in the previous post. Meanwhile if you're only familiar with the MHCC one but you like Hardy's style, clicking his name above will take you to more posts about other public art he's done around the region.

bird sculpture, 1st ave.

Here's another item to file under the "gone" tag. Until recently, the big office complex at SW 1st & Market was home to the Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance firm, and the building's main lobby featured this sculpture of a flock of birds over the front desk. I noticed it while walking past the building, and immediately figured it was a Tom Hardy sculpture, since it looks very much like a smaller version of his large flock of birds at Lloyd Center. I don't have actual confirmation of this, but his style is pretty distinctive. You could see the resemblance comparing the photos, if my photos of this one were better. Unfortunately I won't be able to get better photos; the lobby's been renovated since I took these and the sculpture's no longer there.

Flight of Birds

Today's art foray takes us to Lloyd Center again. This is Flight of Birds, another Tom Hardy bird sculpture, which hangs over the escalators at the mall food court. I'd never really paid much attention to it until now, but it turns out Flight of Birds is one of the few remaining vestiges of the original groovy 1960 open-air mall.

A July 31st 1960 Oregonian article describes Flight of Birds along with the other (now vanished) examples of then-avant-garde art the mall had commissioned:

A flight of steel birds will soar over the east end of the Lloyd Center skating rink as one of the market's principal objects d'art.

Constructed by Oregon artist Tom Hardy, the 30-foot long assembly of metal-winged birds will be suspended from a barrel vaulted ceiling.

Some 70 feet above the rink, the "Flight of Birds" was made of 10 and 16 gauge steel and painted gold to show up against a white overhead.

Hardy, artist in residence at Reed College, cut sheet steel and welded it together for many weeks before the aerial sculpture was completed.

Commerce promoted art at Lloyd Center back then, and art returned the favor. The long-vanished Sieberts home furnishing store in the mall held a show of Hardy sculptures to coincide with the unveiling of Flight of Birds:

Sieberts at Lloyd Center is presenting a one-man show for Tom Hardy using the artist's huge "Birds in Flight" done for the Ice Arena as inspiration for the exhibition of smaller Hardy works.

Since Hardy's welded metal sculptures are becoming increasingly popular for home interiors and patios the store has arranged this showing in conjunction with furniture arrangements indicating the most effective use of the sculpture for enjoyment in the home.

Both large and small scaled sculptures are in this most recent Hardy showing. Smaller sculptures include fox heads done in copper, a small horned toad, bird studies and bison. A larger version of the bison theme is done in steel on silver leaf platform. A handsome metal screen, turquoise banded, features a giraffe motif. A number of pieces are birds poised on pedestals rather than being shown in flight. Drawings augment the showing.

A brief 1964 item mentions a showing of a color film of Hardy creating Flight of Birds. I imagine that film would be an interesting period piece if it still exists somewhere.

If you're curious about what the rest of the mall used to look like (before it was renovated & enclosed around 1991), check out these photo-filled posts at MidCentury Modern League, Malls of America, and Vintage Portland.

I grew up in westside suburbia so we didn't go to Lloyd Center very often. Mostly I remember being cold there because it was an open-air mall in the Pacific Northwest. I still kind of looked forward to going there though, because it had what I was convinced was the world's greatest candy and nut store. Childhood memories about candy stores are notoriously unreliable, but I recall window displays overflowing with red and green pistachios, which were especially tantalizing because mom wouldn't buy them due to the artificial colors. Once I talked mom into getting some old fashioned rock candy, because it looked cool, and she'd talked about having it when she was little, but I didn't care for it. Another time I ended up with a bag of hot salted pine nuts (and I'm kind of amazed they had pine nuts back then, in retrospect), and I didn't really care for those either. Come to think of it I'm not really sure why I thought it was the world's awesomest candy store, because I can't think of a single thing I got there that I have fond memories of now. I'm sure it must have been visually stunning, though. If there are any vintage photos of the store out there, I probably don't want to see them and realize how ordinary it actually was.

Flying Together

Some photos of Flying Together, a sculpture of a pair of birds outside the Oregon History Museum on the South Park Blocks. I've probably walked right past it hundreds of times since it arrived in 1990, without ever really paying attention to it. This time it registered for some reason and that set the well-oiled blog post factory in motion. I'm not really sure how I overlooked it until now, but hey, I've missed worse before. I've said once or twice that one of the big things I like about this blogging racket is that it forces me to pay attention to my surroundings for a change, since ordinarily I'm kind of terrible at that. With a caveat, I guess, that clueing in on one's environment isn't necessarily something that happens all in one go and then it's done. Flying Together being a case in point, obviously.

Anyway, this is another animal art piece by Tom Hardy, who created Oregon Landscape at PSU and many, many other works all over the Northwest and beyond. The Smithsonian survey page for it has a brief description: "Two abstract birds in flight with their wings extended vertically. The upper bird is sideways with its lower wing connecting to the upper wing of the lower bird. The lower wing of the lower bird extends into the base."

The Smithsonian database says there's another Flying Together at Mount Hood Community College, described as "Three wing-like segments attached to a slender vertical element atop a large rock. " I haven't seen a photo of it, but it sounds different from the Park Blocks one, so maybe Hardy only reused the name. The Park Blocks one does look a lot like the only other bird sculpture of his I've covered, the Herons at Howell Territorial Park on Sauvie Island. The Sauvie one has three birds instead of two, and they're a bit more heron-like, but there's an obvious family resemblance. There's another Hardy bird sculpture in the food court at the Lloyd Center Mall; I have photos of it too, but it's a bit further back on the blog post conveyor belt. It'll be here sooner or later, so don't touch that dial.

Oregon Landscape

Today's adventure in obscure stuff takes us to the Portland State campus, where Oregon Landscape adorns the Park Blocks side of Neuberger Hall. It's a series of bronze sculptural panels attached to the first floor windows, depicting various Oregon landscapes from seashore to high desert. It dates back to 1960-1962, around the same time Neuberger Hall was constructed.

I had trouble finding any info about this one at first because the big Travel Portland art map calls it Oregon Country for some reason, and searching on that name yields very little useful information. The Smithsonian art inventory, PSU's historic resource survey, & the city archives all call it Oregon Landscape, so I assume that's the actual name. We'll have to go with that in terms of what's canonical, since Tom Hardy (the sculptor) retired last year at age 90, sold off the contents of his studio, stopped tweeting, and even took down his website. Hardy, incidentally, also created a couple of other pieces that have shown up here before: Running Horses on the transit mall (formerly in Pioneer Courthouse Square), & the Herons sculpture at the Bybee-Howell House up on sauvie island, etc. This one is by far my favorite of the three. Bonus points are hereby awarded for the octopus.

Speaking of the city archives, which I was a moment ago, they have an old photo of Oregon Landscape dated 1970, before the Park Blocks were closed to vehicle traffic. It's quite strange to see a regular city street and traffic in that location.

I was curious about Oregon Landscape when I was a student at Portland State, mumble-mumble years ago, but it was tough to get a good look at it back then. Either it was considered unfashionable, or the groundskeeping budget had been zeroed out during the years I was there; either way, the sculpture was barely visible behind a thicket of bushes. So it was sort of interesting to finally get a good look at it for the first time. If there are any signs around explaining what it is, I haven't come across them; a 2010 class blog post included a photo of the piece & wondered what the deal was with it. So if there's a sign somewhere, clearly I'm not the only person who hasn't noticed it. Which is always a relief.

Howell Territorial Park expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us back to Howell Territorial Park on Sauvie Island. I previously posted some photos of apples and hydrangeas taken there, but I haven't gotten around to doing a post on the park as a whole. I think the big reason for this is that the park preserves a historic pioneer-era farm and farmhouse, and I just don't find pioneer history all that compelling. I mean, our local creation story is basically the tale of some farmers looking for better farmland, and traveling a long way to get it. I mean, it's not exactly a Viking saga full of swords and dragons, or a legend about being descended from a moon goddess, even if we do have our own video game. Other than surviving the long journey, I'm not aware that any pioneers really did or said anything particularly fascinating. If any of them kept scandalous secret diaries, they haven't surfaced yet. And then there's the small matter of what happened to the previous human population when settlers showed up.

If you're wondering why I visited at all, I was visiting Sauvie Island to take a few photos of the new bridge (which I haven't quite posted yet), and I made a side trip to wander around Wapato Greenway for a bit. So since I was in the area, I though I'd take a look at this park too.

If you do happen to be a pioneer history nut, sadly the park doesn't offer much in the way of attractions. You'd think that it would, but it doesn't. The historic Bybee-Howell farmhouse is empty and closed to the public. I assume that's due to lack of funds, because this is Oregon and everything chronically lacks funds. I took a couple of photos peeking through various windows, but they aren't very interesting photos. The old orchard is a bit more interesting, as it apparently preserves a number of rare heirloom apple varieties. I've read that there's also an old rose garden somewhere on the grounds as well, although they weren't blooming when I visited so I don't have any photos of that. There's a little info about the grounds here, but I haven't come across anything resembling a guide to the place or even just a list of what's here.

The grounds are home to a sculpture titled Herons, by Portland artist Tom Hardy. This is according to a post at the Portland Public Art blog. I initially knew nothing about this thing, since there doesn't seem to be a sign giving the name or artist on the sculpture itself, or anywhere nearby, or on Metro's web page about the park for that matter. The State Archives has a photo of it, but no further info beyond that, not even a name. So apparently I'm not the only one who's been stymied by the lack of signage.

The park does get a quick mention in a 2000 New York Times article going on about the wonders of Sauvie Island. No, seriously. It's a good article, it's just kind of weird that it showed up in a New York newspaper. I didn't realize the NYT was already stalking Portland back then, but apparently so. Just as a quick factoid for you, it seems that Sauvie Island is 40% larger than Manhattan (33 square miles vs. 23), and has just 1/1000 of the population.

For those of a more wonkish bent, I did find Metro's 1997 Master Plan for the park, as well as a 2000 conditional use permit from Multnomah County basically signing off on the master plan. It's not clear how much of this plan was ever implemented, though. The proposed expansion of visitor facilities doesn't seem to have panned out, at any rate. No gift shop, no overnight guest accomodations, not even a convenient source of coffee, which is just uncivilized.

Running Horses

Today's stop on the occasional tour of transit mall art is Running Horses by Tom Hardy, on SW 6th Avenue near Madison. If you have a vague sense that this one isn't actually new, you're correct. The horses were commissioned as part of the original Pioneer Courthouse Square project in 1986, and were a sort of companion piece to Animals in Pools, apparently. So they've been removed from their original context here, but I'm not sure that's a problem. There probably is such a thing as too many animal sculptures in one place.

Sybilla Avery Cook's Walking Portland describes the sculpture:

Running Horses, a metal sculpture, is on the Pioneer Courthouse side of the square. Tom Hardy, a noted Oregon artist, has been designing motion-filled sculptures of stone, welded steel, and bronze for over 50 years. Portland contains many of his birds and other animal pieces. His work can be seen all over the United States; an eagle medallion he created adorns the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C.

I don't usually pay very close attention to animal sculptures; I have only the vaguest recollection of where exactly Running Horses was located at Pioneer Courthouse Square. I'm fairly certain I never stopped to look at them in either location until I took the photos you see here. So it's possible I've seen any number of Hardy's other works around town and I just wouldn't know it. The only one I know of that I've seen is the heron sculpture up at Howell Territorial Park; once you know they're by the same guy, the stylistic resemblance is pretty obvious. For more info about him, OPB's Oregon Art Beat did a profile of Hardy in 2005.

Note that in several of these photos, you'll see that Running Horses is just across the street from Hilda Morris's Ring of Time (the little black onion ring-shaped thing across the street). I think it's worth crossing the street to go have a peek at, but I realize I'm not most people, and your mileage may vary.