Romona Falls

Next up, we're looking at Romona Falls, a sculpture/fountain in VanWa's Turtle Place plaza. The Waymarking page for it (1st link) notes that it was created by artists Greg Conyne and Wendy Armstrong, & includes the text of the plaque attached to it, which I'm shamelessly copying & pasting here:

For this sculpture/fountain the artists reclaimed used but familiar objects from a number of sources and combined them in an entirely new and different context. Old equipment from Clark Public Utilities, C-Tran and the City of Vancouver offer clues to the past expressed in a somewhat nonsensical way.

The rough, rusted and used appearance works well with the elements of the theme: Conserve Reuse Recycle. Seasonal rainwater from the roof of the adjacent building is captured to provide a portion of the falling water. The name "Ramona Falls" recalling a well known site on the slopes of Mount Hood.

As I noted in the earlier Turtle Place post, the plaza has since been torn up and rebuilt as a terminal for Vancouver's new Bus Rapid Transit system (which will open in early January 2017), but supposedly they're keeping the fountain as well as the plaza's giant mural.

As for the fountain's sorta-namesake, here are Wikipedia & Oregon Hikers Field Guide pages about Ramona Falls, since I've somehow neglected to go take my own photos of it yet. I have no idea why the fountain is spelled slightly differently, whether it's an in joke I'm not privy to, or maybe a typo that was caught late in the process & was too expensive to fix. Beats me.

Turtle Place

Next up are some old-ish photos of VanWa's Turtle Place, a small plaza on 7th between Washington & Main. This had previously been the Vancouver bus system's downtown transit center, until the city decided it was attracting crime and they might be able to do without a downtown transit center at all. So in 2007 they turned it into a pedestrian plaza, with a gigantic mural and a couple of sculptures. The plaza was always meant to be temporary, until they found another transportation use for the place, and you can see they didn't spend a lot of money on the place except for the art and the mural. Since I took these photos, the plaza shown here (such as it is) has been torn up to make way for a terminal for The Vine, a shiny new Bus Rapid Transit line out to Vancouver Mall, which is scheduled to open a week from today (1/8/17). The photos show they kept the giant mural, and apparently they're keeping the plaza's fountain too, which is good since I have photos of it too, and I haven't gotten around to posting them quite yet, and I'd hate for them to be completely obsolete before I use them.

goose mural, 25th ave., vancouver, wa

The next mural we're peeking at is up in Vancouver (the midsized Washington one, not the big Canada one), on 25th Ave & the alley between Main St. & Broadway. I don't know anything about it, but I see it now & then during allergy season, since the 'Couve is the land of non-prescripton Sudafed, and the Walgreens across the street is the closest pharmacy to the Interstate Bridge. Note for non-Oregonians: Our local state legislature has determined that we're uniquely unable to handle our Sudafed, and requires us to get a non-renewable prescription from a doctor for something you can buy at a pharmacy counter everywhere else, to keep us all from turning into depraved meth fiends. They haven't yet figured out how to prevent you from just crossing the river and buying it there like normal human beings do. And while you're over there, you can go for the 'Couve trifecta and buy some tequila at a grocery store and then pump your own gas, a couple of other things the State of Oregon feels its citizenry can't handle. Granted, on your way back home you can wave at all the 'Couve residents coming home from a day of sales tax-free shopping on the Oregon side of the river. So, potato, potahto, I guess.

Rocket Bike

Next up on the VanWa art tour is the Rocket Bike thingy in Heritage Square, the city's temporary park on Washington St. between 8th & 9th. There wasn't a sign next to it & I haven't been able to figure out who created it or anything. Maybe it's technically considered a glorified bike rack (note the racks at the base) rather than capital-A Art, per se. I am not sure how that works. In any case, the city put this city block back on the market earlier this year, so the park and its flying rocket bike may not be around for much longer.

Winged Woman

The next stop in our downtown VanWa art tour is Winged Woman, a 1997 sculpture by Elizabeth Heron in the city's Broadway sculpture garden. We've already visited the other 3 denizens of the garden on our tour: Spike Flower, Glyph Singer No. 3, & Wheel Series I.

The Phoenix

Next up in downtown VanWa art is The Phoenix, near 8th & Main, a kinetic sculpture by artist Andrew Carson that was installed in 2010. I seem to recall it wasn't being very kinetic at the time, so I don't have a video of it doing its thing, whatever it does.

Flying Umbrellas

Next up on the occasional VanWa art tour is Flying Umbrellas, at E. Evergreen & Main St. This was created in 2013 by Vancouver artists Jennifer Corio & Dave Frei.

I am in a distinct minority of Pacific Northwest residents in being pro-umbrella. Certain people loudly insist that true Portlanders are forbidden to ever use or even own umbrellas, under the mistaken impression that points are somehow awarded for getting rained on when you don't have to. I have no idea who would award points for that, or why, and I'd rather be dry than collect their stupid points anyway.

"A Gift For You"

Another of our ongoing occasional projects here is a public art tour around downtown Vancouver, Washington, Portland's northern suburb across the river. It's not always world-renowned cutting-edge work, exactly, but at least there are different people selecting it, so it's at least different than the usual stuff by the usual Portland suspects. In that spirit, here's A Gift For You, in Esther Short Park, near the fountain & bell tower. This was created by Jim Demetro, who also did the George Vancouver statue at the west end of the park.

Back in 2009, while snarking at an kitschy 9/11 memorial on SE Belmont, I laid out a few semi-ironclad rules for deciding whether a statue is Bad Art. This, sadly, violates three of these rules: The statues are painted, or at least were at one point; it includes multiple people interacting, which usually looks goofy; and it includes at least one child, which always looks creepy. Still, the burbs like what they like, and locals seemed to be rather fond of it in a 2012 Columbian article. So yeah.

Capt. George Vancouver statue

Next up is the Captain George Vancouver statue in VanWa at W. 6th & Esther, across the street from Esther Short Park. This was created back in 2000 by local sculptor Jim Demetro. As I suspected, this is far from the only statue of George Vancouver out there; there's one in front of City Hall in that other city of Vancouver, and one in King's Lynn, Norfolk, UK, and a gold one atop the British Columbia provincial parliament. The one we're looking at here is by far the most goofy-looking of the four.

Vancouver Arches

Photos of VanWa's Vancouver Arches, of which the city says: "These three brick arches were installed in 1984 to create a landmark for downtown Vancouver.". They're maybe not the most ambitious civic landmark ever, but hey. They're actually quite visible from Interstate 5 northbound into the city, so the designers at least got the location right. It's just that I always sort of assumed the arches belonged to a bank branch or an office complex or something.

Pioneer Mother

In this installment of the public art tour, we're looking at VanWa's Pioneer Mother, an Avard Fairbanks sculpture on the north side of Esther Short Park. Unusually, Pioneer Mother has an extensive Wikipedia page, which is great since I can just point readers there instead of doing a bunch of research myself. Fairbanks's work has appeared here a couple of other times, for monuments in Portland Firefighters Park and Milo McIver State Park, and I know of a couple of other public examples of his work around Portland that haven't made it into posts, such as the doors on the old US Bank building on SW Broadway.

Turtle Place mural

A few days ago, I did a theme day here and posted about a bunch of murals around downtown Vancouver, WA. It turns out I had at least one more VanWa mural post in my ginormous Drafts folder, so I figured I ought to post it before the others scroll off the front page. Until fairly recently, downtown Vancouver had its own "transit mall" along 7th St., a smaller version of the one in downtown Portland. Like Portland's bus mall, it acquired a bad reputation for loitering, drug deals, homelessness, etc., and in 2007 C-Tran (the Clark County mass transit agency) closed the bus mall and sent the buses somewhere else (I'm not entirely sure where they went). So this left the city with an unused half-block parcel of land downtown, which they decided to turn into a tiny park called "Turtle Place". Apparently C-Tran still owns the land here, and the park is meant to be temporary, to be removed once a shiny new Bus Rapid Transit line comes to town Real Soon Now. In the interim, they've taken a few steps to spruce up the mini-part a bit: There are a couple of interpretive signs, some old not-quite-vintage signs left over from the bus mall, a big steampunk water feature, and the gigantic mural you see here. The mural's just called Turtle Place, and was painted in 2010 by Guy Drennan, who also created a couple of the other Vancouver murals we looked at the other day. At first sight I actually thought this was a billboard; it doesn't help that "Turtle Place" sounds like it might be an upscale subdivision, or maybe a nursing home or something. But no, it merely tells you where you are. I suppose this is still better than having an ugly blank wall to look at here.

Vancouver Brewery History mural

The next stop on today's VanWa mural tour is Brewery History, on a wall at Main St. & Evergreen Blvd. This was created by local artist Tamra Davisson for Vancouver's 2012 Summer of Murals event. The mural shows a few historic beer bottles from the city's erstwhile branch of the Lucky Lager empire and its various local predecessors. The mural's info page goes into this history further than I care to, and tracks all the corporate mergers and renamings over the years, up to 1985 when the Vancouver brewery closed its doors. The one interesting bit is that Star Brewing (one of the predecessor companies) briefly employed brewer Henry Weinhard before he moved on and started his own operation in Portland. During the 1990s there was a short-lived revival of the "Star Brewing" name, but that company was unrelated to the original one other than the name. I imagine I would have tried their products once or twice, but I have no specific memory of it. I've never heard anyone claim to miss them, or even remember them. At last report, circa 1996, they'd concluded they were done for in Portland, and were pulling up stakes to move to Phoenix where beer drinkers didn't know any better, I guess.

Kaiser Shipyard mural

Today's VanWa mural tour continues with Kaiser Shipyard at E. 7th & Main St. This was created by Ellen Clark for Vancouver's 2013 Summer of Murals. That page describes the design briefly:

In 1941 a beautiful morning begins with employees efficiently working on various phases of ship assembly. scaffolding and cranes stand high to assist progress of the finest ships built on the Columbia river. The SS Joseph N. Teal awaits loading. Built in ten days, the 10,500 ton Liberty ship is proudly launched from the Henry J. Kaiser Shipyard. Reference materials provided by Pat Jollota.

A 2013 Columbian article interviewed several local residents who had worked at Vancouver's Kaiser shipyard during World War II. As the article points out, for much of the war the shipyard produced amphibious landing ships and even small aircraft carriers, rather than the Liberty ship depicted here.

After Degas’ "Practicing at the Barre”

The next VanWa mural on today's tour is After Degas’ "Practicing at the Barre”, outside the Columbia Dance school at E. 17th & Broadway. As the name indicates, this mural was inspired by a famous Degas painting (now owned by the Met museum in NYC). The mural was painted in 2009 by Guy Drennan. Its Clark County mural page describes it briefly: "Clients like the Degas piece, and this illustrates what the building offers to students of dance. Painted with Kelly Hytrek."

Vancouver Farmers Market mural

Our next VanWa mural is one at 6th & Main St honoring the Vancouver Farmers Market. The market itself is held at Esther Short Park, a few blocks further west, so I'm not sure why they needed a mural about it at this spot, but hey. Anyway, it was painted for Vancouver's 2013 Summer of Murals by Travis Czekalski of the Portland-area duo Rather Severe. Their work has appeared here once before, a mural on NE Sandy created for the 2014 Forest for the Trees event. You can kind of see a family resemblance, though Vancover's mural is a bit less psychedelic, aside from the walking ear of corn.

Chkalov's Landing mural

The next VanWa mural on today's tour honors an episode in Vancouver aviation history. In June 1937, Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov made the first nonstop intercontinental flight over the north pole, starting in Moscow and landing at Vancouver's Pearson Field. This flight is now often forgotten in the US (except for Vancouver), but Chkalov remains a national hero in Russia, along the lines of Charles Lindbergh here. Chkalov's flight wasn't just a publicity stunt, either; modern airline flights between Europe and North America generally follow near-polar "great circle" routes (this being the shortest distance between two points on a sphere), so this pioneering effort turned out to be of great practical importance.

Vancouver remembers the event with a few commemorations around town. There's monument to Chkalov next to the airport, and a major road nearby is named in his honor. And then there's this giant mural downtown, at Main St. & Evergreen Blvd, which was created in 2008 by Guy Drennan and Linda Stanton. Unusually, one wing of Chkalov's ANT-25 extends out over the windows of an adjacent building.

Fort Vancouver mural, Main St.

Today I'm going to post another batch of murals from downtown Vancouver, WA. VanWa has a lot of murals around its downtown core, thanks in part to a group called the Clark County Mural Society. Apparently one of the things they do is an annual Summer of Murals, in which several new ones are painted around town, and prizes are awarded. The mural we're looking at right now depicts historic Fort Vancouver (which is just east of downtown, on the other side of I-5), and was painted for the 2014 Summer of Murals by Michael Feliz. It took third place overall, as well as the "People's Choice" award. It's located on the wall of a financial planning firm at the corner of 12th & Main St.

Main St. Day Spa mural, Vancouver WA

The ongoing mural tour heads back to central Vancouver, WA, near W. 20th & Main St., where a gap between a couple of buildings has been transformed into a twee little garden spot. There are a few benches, some flowers, and a large mural on the side of the Main St. Day Spa building. The Clark County Mural Society's mural map doesn't list anything north of 19th, so I don't know the story behind this one.

I suppose the map ends where it does because this area isn't considered part of downtown Vancouver. My VanWa geography is kind of hazy, but I gather the business district along this stretch of Main St. is called "Uptown Village", and the city's neighborhood office says Main is the line between the Arnada and Hough neighborhoods. So now you know as much as I do.

I have a sorta-theory that Portland's next hip (and hyped) area is going to be around the historic mini-downtown of one of the 'burbs. People are increasingly being priced out of Portland itself, and demand is such that whenever a new part of the city becomes "trendy" it instantly fills up with cookie cutter luxury apartments. So maybe it's time to ask which suburb gets to be the Brooklyn to Portland's Manhattan. Vancouver has to be a leading candidate, although it loses points for the commute into downtown Portland.

Mini-Mozarts mural

Next mural up is outside the Mini-Mozarts preschool on Main St. in downtown Vancouver, WA. Unusually, the mural was crowdfunded back in 2011 with an Indiegogo campaign. The Indiegogo page says the painting was done by The Space Art Collective, an arts organization based nearby. Sadly, going by the group's social media accounts, they lost their space and went defunct just a few months after painting this mural.