Uroboros

A few photos of "Uroboros", a small modern sculpture in Westmoreland Park. It's hidden away toward the south end of the park near Crystal Springs Creek, and it's not all that big, and it's sort of earth-toned, so you won't necessarily notice it. I never noticed it until I read about it on the interwebs and went there specifically to track it down, and even then it a while to find it.

Its Smithsonian Art Inventory page gives a date of "possibly 1978", and gives a little extra detail about it:

Medium: Sculpture: concrete; Base: concrete.
Dimensions: Sculpture: approx. 45 x 45 x 16 in.; Base: approx. 21 x 20 x 16 in.
Inscription: (At lower right:) Kibby 78(?) signed
...
Remarks: Commissioned under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and donated to the park.
Condition: Surveyed 1993 November. Treatment urgent.
References: Save Outdoor Sculpture, Oregon survey, 1993.

Looking at this sculpture today, I seriously doubt 1993's urgently required treatment ever happened.



Not much on the interwebs about this one; Portland Public Art mentions it in passing, comparing it to the rather similar Disk #4 up in Peninsula Park:

It is a fair replica of Chuck Kibby’s Uroboros, in stone, located at Westmoreland Park. There may be more in storage somewhere. Both typify a 1970s combination of anxiety about marketing and incomprehension about interesting artwork.

I note that both pieces were funded under CETA, a 70's-era federal jobs program that's fondly remembered for its lax rules and generosity. My understanding is that you could get a grant for just about anything under the sun. You'd just claim that someone, somewhere, would probably have a job for a while, and the feds would write you a big check. It sounds almost European, and I mean that in a good way.



If I'm reading things right, and guessing correctly, it appears the guy who created "Uroboros" now has a well-known historic preservation firm in Los Angeles. A 2008 LA Times article profiles the company and talks about its rapid growth & growing pains. (Although note the real estate bubble was still inflating at that point.)



Like the similar Disk #4, I don't really have a strong opinion about this one. I do generally prefer abstract art. I realize that's still a minority opinion even after a century or so of it, but there you go. And this one's perfectly fine, although as an astronomy & photo geek I can't help thinking it looks an a lot like a coded aperture mask (See this one from the European INTEGRAL gamma ray satellite).



In any case, it has an interesting texture that's kind of fun to play with in photos (and hopefully you can see this). I'm not sure it's the original, intended texture, but hey. If the city or RACC ever scrapes up some cash for restoration work, I can think of one obvious candidate for the job.

magnolia 2010

crocuses 2010

Upstream Downtown

Even if you spend a lot of time in downtown Portland, odds are that you barely notice all the parking garages. They're big ugly grey concrete beasts, very un-PC and kind of archaic. We aren't quite bike-nirvana enough to get rid of them, so instead we just sort of try to ignore them and block them out, which actually works rather well. The garage at 3rd & Morrison is among the worst offenders in the ugly department, although it does have retail at street level at least. And if you're on the Morrison St. side and look up (which I suspect most people don't do), you'll discover "Upstream Downtown", a collection of 18 brightly colored salmon sculptures.



Its Smithsonian Art Inventory page says the fish were created in 1992 by the sculptor Gary Hirsch. They're done in aluminum, acrylic, and enamel, and they measure roughly 4 by 12 feet. Which is much larger than they appear from the ground. The page then describes the work thusly:

The exterior side wall of a parking garage features eighteen panels each featuring a different multi-colored fish. In the center of the wall there is a hook and worm.

I hadn't noticed the hook and worm before reading that, but yeah, there it is. It makes a bit more sense now. I mean, I don't think it's supposed to be deep or anything, it's a bunch of whimsical (and very 1992-looking) cartoon salmon. But at least now I know what they're doing.

As for why they're here -- I can see the city wanting to de-uglify its parking garages (or at least their most tourist-facing sides). I'm afraid it's still a big hulking ugly parking garage, salmon or no salmon. So I have to say the fish aren't working miracles here, although I'm not sure anything could.

And why salmon, you ask? You must still be unfamiliar with Portland's "Law of Salmon": The surest way to win a public art commission in Portland is to include some salmon in your project somewhere, regardless of whether the result makes any sense. And if your proposal is 100% salmon, you're basically golden.

I know I've said this before, but the Law of Salmon makes me wish we had more interesting wildlife in these parts. I mean, salmon are tasty and all, but they aren't exactly the cleverest, or most attractive, or most fascinating fish in the sea. I find myself wishing for a Law of Electric Eels, or a Statute of Toucans, or the Echidnas Act of 1987, or the Panda Manifesto, or a unanimous Supreme Court decision favoring Snow Monkeys. You know, something along those lines. But, alas, it is not to be.

Vegas: Encore Butterflies + Etc.

now tweeting

Yeah, it's true, I've got one of them Twitter thingys: http://twitter.com/atul666, and you're welcome to follow me if you're so inclined. The account isn't actually new; I signed up for it quite a while ago. If you scroll down this page a bit, the sidebar has a section laughably titled "My Vast Media Empire", and there's a link in there somewhere. But I didn't initially see the point of Twitter, so the account basically languished until last December or so. I'm not sure whether I "get it" now, or I merely stopped demanding it have a point, but hey. It's kind of fun either way.

shadows, burnside

A few photos from that strange parallel world where objects have colors and shadows.

Those of you who recognize the location might be wondering how I could stand there taking photos of shadows while homeless people slept in doorways just feet away. I'm kind of wondering that myself, to be honest. It generally just doesn't occur to me to take photos of people, with or without their permission. And I'm not sure I'd pull it off properly if I did. My gut feeling is that the results would come off as exploitative and kind of anthropological, like a 50's National Geographic article about a primitive Amazonian tribe, except the photos wouldn't be as good. That's my after-the-fact excuse, at any rate.

cherry trees, spring 2010

Taken on the same morning as the previous post, same ISO issue & everything. So sorry for the noise etc., and enjoy the flowers, or whatever.

If you looked at this post earlier, you might have noticed that the text made no sense at all and wondered what was going on. I was somewhat less than half awake at the time, and it seemed perfectly coherent then. I suppose "blog awake" ought to be an official rule, right up there with "blog sober" and "blog non-zombified".

spring, 2010 edition, again

You know how, a couple of posts ago, I made skeptical noises about a certain tree probably not blooming for months and months yet? I neglected to mention that photo was from about a month ago; here are two from today, and voila. Flowers. For this, I blame El Niño, and Exxon, and people who drive SUVs, and people who drive Priuses but own 6500 square foot "sustainable" houses, and flatulent cows, and talk radio, and flatulent sheep, and giant Japanese salmanders (just on principle), and various minor celebrities, and SUVs again, and coal, and both paper and plastic bags, and flatulent celebrities, and oil sheiks, and the sun, and the moon, and SUVs. So, uh, thanks for all the hard work, I guess.



If the photos look noisy, it's because the camera was on ISO 3000, which was a really huge ISO number back when the Canon 40D came out. I'd like to say this was a deliberate choice to cut motion blur, since it was really windy this morning and the high ISO seems to have helped. But I'd simply had it on 3000 from the last time I was using the camera. I'm still remembering how this "doing stuff other than working & sleeping" thing is supposed to work, so please bear with me.

Thx. Mgmt.

chums

I realized I hadn't inflicted any saltshaker photos on you for many moons, so here's one. So, uh, enjoy.

Lens: Kowa-R 50/2, handheld up to the camera since I haven't figured out a way to mount it yet.

spring, 2010 edition

I post a photo just like this every year, insisting it's a sign of spring. And then it takes months and months before it's actually nice outside. Or before the tree actually blooms, for that matter. So I realize it's sunny outside today, but I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.

Lens: Helios-44, labeled "Made in U.S.S.R."

various opinions

shimmer tree

electric vehicles only

Every day, Portland becomes a little bit more like Demolition Man. This is just today's example.

unstuck

An old & partially unstuck bumper sticker on a wall, NW Portland. Not sure what it said originally but I assume the second line must be "Portland". So it was probably something ironic.

Hand-lettering your bumper sticker so it looks stencilled is probably ironic too. Unless it's meta-ironic, or post-ironic. I can never keep that stuff straight.

Chas. B. Merrick Memorial

You probably don't remember this, but about a year ago I tracked down Portland's obscure George Washington statue, at the corner of NE 57th and Sandy. While I was there, I took a few photos of an even more obscure & curious drinking fountain near the statue, marked simply "CHAS. B. MERRICK MEMORIAL A.D. 1916". My gut feeling was that looking for info on Mr. Merrick was likely to be a dead end, which happens a lot. So I didn't pursue the matter until now. But it turns out we're in luck this time, and I can answer a multitude of questions you didn't know you were about to ask.



Charles B. Merrick was a civic leader in early 1900s Portland, and the 1911 book "Portland, Oregon, its history and builders" has a brief bio. Your basic Spanish American War vet / grocer / insurance executive (of the "Beaver State Merchants' Mutual Fire Insurance Association", organized 1908 ) / postmaster, and general pillar of the community. In his capacity as community pillar, he figured in the city's early urban planning efforts, lobbying the city and the public to adopt the Bennett Plan. And as postmaster, he was behind early experiments with airmail, where a pilot flew batches of letters from Portland all the way to Vancouver WA. That's more of a big deal than it sounds, actually, since the Interstate Bridge hadn't been built yet.




The bio I linked to earlier said this of Merrick:

Born in Saginaw, Michigan, July 30, 1873, Mr. Merrick is thirty-seven years of age and may be said to have just fairly entered upon the possibilities of a long and useful career.

Merrick died not long after this was published, in August 1912, at Lakeview OR. He was 39 years old plus a month or so, or almost exactly my age right this minute, which is a tad spooky. The circumstances of his very untimely demise aren't noted in any of the online sources I've found, but I see that an area newspaper, the Alturas New Era, printed an obit dated August 28th. And the Library of Congress has a list of libraries that have the New Era on microfilm for this time period. None are local, unfortunately. But the answers are probably out there if some dedicated researcher wants to track them down.

A rootsweb blurb gives a little more info: Died August 21st in Lakeview, buried August 26th at Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Portland. They actually have a search tool on their website, and it seems he's located at Section E, Lot 200, Space 1.



The one thing I haven't found any info about so far is why he has a drinking fountain dedicated to his memory. I don't know who put it up, or why. I mean, I suppose being a community leader and having an untimely demise of some sort might be enough. And I admit I sort of like the idea of people who die at 39 being remembered for being youthful and for the bright future they had ahead of them. But still, I'm not able to tell you who put the fountain here, which is too bad. Surely that's answered as well by old newspapers on microfilm. But it only gives the date 1916, so until someone scans and OCRs papers from that era you'll be looking through a whole year's worth of Oregonian issues on microfilm, hoping there was a news story at the time. And since it's 1916, you'll be reading a great deal about World War I while you're at it, and that will be depressing. So this may be another chore for some avid researcher.

Updated: The scanning and OCRing has occurred, and the Oregonian historical database now has a few some answers for us. A lengthy obit ran on August 22nd, 1912, "LATE POSTMASTER BORN POLITICIAN", where the word "politician" is used in a complimentary sense. It appears the fountain really was created just because he was a well-liked pillar of the community who died young and suddenly. No cause of death is given, although my understanding is that this was not unusual in 1912. Except, of course, when a poor person died in lurid circumstances. Then it tended to be front page news. But that's another blog post entirely.

An August 18th, 1912 article states that Merrick and a number of other prominent citizens were setting off on an excursion to Lakeview to attend the convention of the Central Oregon Development League, whatever that was. Going to Lakeview by car was quite an undertaking in 1912, it seems, as the article goes on at length about everyone who was going, what routes they were taking, and the heroic efforts to make sure everyone had a map. Merrick and his party journeyed to Lakeview via Burns. That isn't exactly a direct route from Portland, and involves driving through what is still empty, rugged terrain.

A February 18, 1917 story about the dedication of the fountain includes a photo, which shows us that the fountain was once topped by some sort of urn or planter. It appears to have been metal of some sort, so my guess is that someone over the last near-century decided it was valuable and made off with it.