Mono Lake

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Some old, scanned photos of Mono Lake, in the California desert east of Yosemite. These were taken in the early 1990s during the height of the court battle over the lake's water. The short version of the story: Since the 1940s, water had been diverted from flowing into the lake, and ended up in swimming pools in L.A. instead. As you might expect, this caused the lake to start drying up. Not everyone was thrilled about that, and -- this being California -- there were ugly, expensive, lawsuits, which went on and on for years as the lake level continued to drop. A couple of years after I was there, the city of Los Angeles lost the case and was forced to put water back into the lake. Wikipedia insists the lake's almost back up to its pre-diversion lake level. In which case some of the the scenery in these photos is now back underwater where it belongs.

Chicago Midway Airport

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A few hurried Blackberry photos from Chicago Midway Airport, taken on my way to Cleveland back in March. I'll be the first to say these aren't quality photos, but I should point out that the greasy fingerprint over the lens was caused by a genuine Chicago Italian beef sandwich. So, you know, local flavor. I'm going to argue that, thanks to the aforementioned fingerprint, the photos count as a "found object" piece, or possibly a collage, and are therefore an expression of Art with a capital A, and anyone who says they suck in a traditional photographic sense is an ignorant philistine. That's my argument, and I'm sticking to it.

I get bored quickly in airports, and I have this ongoing idea that I really ought to go seek out whatever local color there happens to exist within the airport's confines. In the case of the Midway airport, that involved the sandwich I mentioned earlier, plus tracking down a historical exhibit about the Battle of Midway, for which the airport was renamed in 1949. So in case you were wondering, the name doesn't refer to the airport being the midway point in your trip, despite what flying Southwest might lead you to believe. Although that does happen to be the reason Midway Island (at the far northern end of the Hawaiian Islands) is named what it is.

On a more obscure historical note, the airport also has a small plaque commemorating a 1933 trans-Atlantic flight. Chicago pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas, in their plane named the "Lituanica" attempted to fly nonstop from New York to Kaunas, Lithuania, only to crash in Germany, just short of their destination. Both pilots were killed in the accident. I had never heard of this flight before, possibly for that reason, but apparently the men are considered national heroes in Lithuania, and the main soccer stadium in Kaunas was renamed in their honor after the USSR broke up.

friday sailboats, charles river

Photos from a late Friday afternoon in July, in Boston. It was warm with a bit of mild wind, and the Charles River was packed with sailboats. I haven't been on a sailboat in a long, long time, but I can see the appeal. At least when the weather's nice, and the other sailors aren't dangerously incompetent, and you aren't stuck in drydock pouring money into endless maintenance and repairs. In other words, I'd been at a stressful tech conference out in the suburbs all week, and watching other people sail under fairly ideal conditions was relaxing, and a nice way to decompress.

Daddy Long Legs

Ok, one more piece of transit mall public art for the evening. This is "Daddy Long Legs" by local sculptor Mel Katz, who also happens to be the ex-husband of a former mayor. I actually don't think that's that weird, as he's been a prominent local artist since slightly before the beginning of time. It's merely a sign that in many ways Portland is still a very small town, or at least the creative and political parts both are.

TriMet's description tells a bit more about the thing:

In Daddy Long Legs, Mel Katz combines elements of sculpture and painting to create a counterpoint and contrast that add to the complexity of the work. The artist's father was a tailor, and growing up he was influenced by watching him work with templates to cut pattern pieces.

In any case, the clean, mid-20th-century abstract look is a nice change from the contemporary "Lumpy Little Dudes On Posts" look I've been going on about. It still may, however, have a role in the "Public art come to life" horror movie I keep talking about. It has legs, and some sharp, stabby-looking corners, so it has potential. As a formally abstract being we should probably assume its true motives are unknowable, and furthermore we probably ought to have it attack its victims offscreen, since I have no idea how it would eat, and adding a recognizable mouth to an abstract piece probably counts as a crime against Art, and we certainly can't have that. These complications aside, I feel it would add a touch of class to the film, which I suspect it will desperately need.

Lodge Grass

The transit mall art tour continues with another example of the "Lumpy Little Dudes On Posts" movement so beloved by some unnamed art buyer at TriMet or RACC. This one, "Lodge Grass", is at least less annoying than the others we've covered so far. TriMet's official public art tour (which is less fun than mine) describes it thusly:

The title of John Buck's Lodge Grass refers to a Montana town originally settled by Native Americans and to the name for a range of plants used by indigenous peoples to make shelters. The artist has used related symbols and imagery for the figure's head and shoulders.

RACC describes it quite similarly:

The title of John Buck's sculpture, Lodge Grass, refers to a town in Big Horn County, Montana, that was originally settled by Native Americans. Lodge grass is also the name for a range of plants used by indigenous peoples to make shelters. As the environment has evolved and useful plants such as lodge grass have disappeared, the thistle and other noxious weeds have replaced them, in the same way that wilderness areas have been replaced by suburban developments.

So, in part, the piece serves to mutely reproach the commuting suburbanites who pass by it every day on the way to and from their cubicles, and they don't even know they're being reproached. Or maybe I'm reading too much into the siting decision, I'm not entirely sure. I note that neither description bothers to mention the nude female figure without a head that holds up the various symbolic bits. It's a curious omission, that's all I'm saying.

In any case, it's easy to imagine "Lodge Grass" in the Portland public-art-come-to-life horror movie I brainstormed in the last post. Magic power: Horrible woody tentacles sprouting from its head, seizing and devouring everything in its path. Key weakness: Lack of eyes and ears; complete inability to communicate with fellow monsters; tentacles are right-handed, leaving the left side vulnerable.

Burls Will Be Burls

So here's another bit of ugly transit mall art for your perusal, this time a group of small bronze figures at 6th & Burnside titled "Burls Will Be Burls", a burl being a sort of gnarled growth on a tree. The figures are sorta-anthropomorphized versions of actual burls, but made of bronze instead of wood. Makes perfect sense, right? So, another stellar example of the "Lumpy Little Dudes On Posts" movement of the mid-2000s. Of which I am sadly not a fan, if you hadn't noticed.

It occurs to me though, if there was a horror movie in which Portland public art came to life and went on a bloody rampage, these little bastards would get a lot of screen time. They look malicious, but they're also quite small, sort of like the gremlins in "Gremlins", and "Gremlins" made serious box office. So there's that. I'm thinking something along the lines of "Troll 2" (since the creatures look kind of similar), but all artsy and Portlandy and crap. Naturally there would be a Kickstarter to fund the thing, and long stretches of attempted screenwriting in hip coffee shops around town, and people schmoozing me for gigs playing "Thompson Elk Victim #247" and stuff. Honestly, I'm quickly warming up to the idea. Naturally -- and in the true spirit of Hollywood -- I have no intention of paying royalties to the artists behind our movie monsters, though a shout out in the credits might be appropriate, or maybe a quick mention in a DVD extra, or a footnote on IMDb, or an obscure blog post like the one you're reading now, or something.

The Green Man of Portland

So, here's the latest installment in our ongoing tour of public art on the Portland transit mall. This time we're visiting my new least favorite piece, "The Legend of the Green Man of Portland". It's a collection of various ugly items strewn along 5th & 6th avenues between Burnside and Glisan. They're supposed to fill you in on the details of a bit of fake mythology the artist made up, heavily inspired by (or maybe freeloading off of) actual mythology. Two big clumsy ceramic-looking pedestals with little statues on top, which I suppose are supposed to be "gateways" to the thing. Plus a series of art panels, one per block, filling the avid viewer in on more exciting details of this dumb legend, executed in a properly hipsterish graphic novel look. I took photos of several of them; I missed at least one because there was a drug dealer leaning against it, and I didn't feel like disturbing him.

I probably should have taken that photo anyway, since it was a great juxtaposition: The official vision for the area, in which hip artistic types move in and gentrify Old Town and make it safe for upscale condo towers; and the Skid Row reality on the ground, which essentially hasn't changed since Portland's lusty seaport years of the late 1800s. That would have been a great photo, if only I was a braver street photographer, and/or owned more bulletproof items.

When I do an art post, I usually try to find out more about the artist and understand what their motivations and influences are and so forth. But I can't say I'm intrigued to learn any of that this time. If I had to speculate, I'd call it a typical example of the "Lumpy Little Dudes on Posts" movement of the mid-2000s, of which we have several new (& unattractive) examples in the new batch of transit mall art (and I'll get around to the others later).

Every time I see any part of "The Green Man", I just think "Oh, gawwwd" and roll my eyes and think it was a damn fool waste of money. Which I realize is a perfectly Philistine response, but an appropriate one, I think. The fact that we celebrate (and publicly fund) amateurish hipster art like this is one of the many reasons non-Portlanders keep making fun of us.

La Ventana Arch, El Malpais

More photos from the El Malpais area in New Mexico, this time not of lava flows but of the nearby La Ventana Arch, a sandstone natural arch near the park road just north of The Narrows. If I'm reading the map right, the road is roughly the boundary between the National Monument and the BLM-administered El Malpais National Conservation Area, and the arch lies just over the line in BLM territory. This bureaucratic division has no practical implications for you as a casual visitor, as far as I know.

The Narrows, El Malpais

[View Larger Map] <0>A few old photos from El Malpais National Monument in western New Mexico, just south of the town of Grants. Much of the monument consists of an enormous, rugged lava flow (hence the name), and these photos were taken from the Narrows viewpoint, looking out over the dark expanse.

I realize giant lava flows aren't everyone's cup of tea, and it's not like there's a shortage of dramatic scenery in this corner of the world, but it's still kind of a remarkable sight. So I'm always a bit surprised when people inevitably say they've never heard of the place. Well, now you have.