The Exalted Ruler

Here are a few photos of The Exalted Ruler, the big elk statue outside the OHSU Casey Eye Institute. It's by Troutdale sculptor Rip Caswell, and commemorates the local Elks Club's longtime support of the hospital's childrens' eye clinic. Caswell's work has appeared here a couple of times before, namely the goose at the Kings Hill MAX station, and the deeply weird 9/11 memorial on SE Belmont.

Portland Public Art did a post about this elk back in 2006, and an unusually mild post by that site's standards. I assumed it would compare this elk unfavorably with the famous Thompson Elk statue in the downtown Plaza blocks, but it didn't. Then I got to looking at the two side by side, and it struck me that the OHSU elk is actually better than the famous downtown one. Or at least it's more realistic and lifelike, which would seem to be the main criteria for evaluating elk statues. I should note that the local Elks refused to have anything to do with the Thompson Elk, calling it a "monstrosity of art", and I'm starting to think they had a point; it looks a bit like the artist grafted elk antlers onto a small and slender type of deer. I'll just note that Roland Hinton Perry was an East Coast artist, so it's possible he'd never actually seen a real, live elk when he took the job.

Mean Greenies

The next stop on the ongoing mural project takes us to the back side of a warehouse on N. Page St, between Vancouver & Flint. A Flickr photo by wiredforsound23 calls it Mean Greenies, and notes that it's by local artist Charlie Alan Kraft. It's located on a west-facing wall between the warehouse and an adjoining house. Somehow I didn't notice it the first time I looked for it, and I figured it had been painted over or something. Later I checked Street View and realized I'd walked right past it, but going the wrong direction so I wouldn't have seen it. I'm sure I'll get better at this "noticing stuff" business eventually, someday.

30 Seconds Over Portland

The next mural up is 30 Seconds Over Portland (aka Love Bomb), the WWII bomber dropping parachute hearts at SE 82nd & Woodstock. The mural's located on the back side of the McCollum Automotive building, facing a church parking lot. A Tribune story explains that it was created by Tim Janchar, based on an earlier painting of his, for an ongoing neighborhood revitalization effort called "Our Happy Block". A Culturalogique post has a story about the design. I haven't seen any other sources mentioning it, and I don't know whether it's accurate or not, but here's the story:

Commissioned by the son of a WWII veteran who’s father had flown this exact type of airplane bomber during the war. The son later witnessed his father’s tremendous guilt and loss over the destruction and death he had caused and commissioned this mural on his behalf.

Carl, Pastor of the Calvary Lutheran Church shared with me that the father was able to see it while still alive and it had brought him great joy to know that one of these bombers was now dropping ‘love-bombs’ all over Portland.

Art Fills the Void!

The next mural up is Art Fills the Void!, the giant banana mural at SE 12th & Division. It's not the most elaborate mural in town, and it obviously needs a touch up, but there's a story behind this one. It turns out this banana dates back to 1982, which makes it positively ancient by mural standards. PDX Street Art explains that it was created by a group of artists calling themselves "Gorilla Wallflare", and the banana was meant as a protest against the Reagan-era guerrilla wars raging across Central America.

A Portland Public Art post about it went with the common theory that it's a riff on Andy Warhol's cover art for a 1967 Velvet Underground album. The PDX Street Art article includes an interview with one of the artists, who mentioned Warhol as one of a long list of inspirations, so I imagine there's at least a kernel of truth to the idea.

A September 1982 Oregonian article "Fruit looms on blank wall as first sign of attack on blandness" explains that the building was then home to an office supply company, rather than the assorted hipster businesses it hosts in 2015. Although the banana appeared without the company's involvement, employees immediately fell in love with the thing, and it quickly began showing up in sales presentations and the company newsletter. This undoubtedly helped it survive over 30-odd years. Gorilla Wallflare painted a number of other murals around town during the 80s, but apparently this is the only one left. The others have all been lost to time, the elements, periodic crackdowns by City Hall, and developers' bulldozers.

Prestige Motors mural

The next mural on the tour is the a small painting of a Vespa against the Portland skyline, located on the Prestige Motors building at SE 6th & Madison. (The company is, or maybe was, a scooter dealer.) The mural's signed "Zak", and dated 2008, but that's all I know about it. All I've found are Flickr photos of it by ohhh_yeah808 and Squid Vicious, which doesn't really help. Oddly enough there's a "Zak's Prestige Motors" located out at SE 82nd & Liebe, but Street View doesn't show any scooters, and as far as I can tell it's a completely separate and unrelated business. It's as if guys named Zak are somehow magically drawn toward prestige and motors. I agree this really isn't a high quality theory, but if you have a better one I'd love to hear it.

Green Hammer Mural

Here's a slideshow of the large new mural on the Green Hammer building on SE 6th, just north of Madison. It was painted in October 2014 by Stefan Ways, who posted a short "making of" video about it to YouTube. The video caption describes the design:

A hand holds a wood scribe, carving a half circle - contained within it in grayscale are city landmarks including the abandon factory at Fields Park, Hawthorne Bridge, and Union station.Outside the circle are images I referenced while hiking "The Gorge" east of the city. Swallows fly about transforming from the wood chips pulling the viewer toward "OR7", the lone wolf, introduced into western Oregon for the first time since the 1940s, and now has a mate and offspring - showing the importance of how vast, preserved wilderness allows for even the most endangered of species to thrive once again. All in all, this mural depicts a city, Portland, surrounded by natural beauty and wonders.

The Green Hammer company also posted several times on Facebook about the mural as it was being painted, if you can't get enough of "making of" photos: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Swift Lounge mural

The next mural up is at Swift Lounge on NE Broadway around 19th, sort of across the street from the building with the Mary Stephens Rose, which is what I was actually looking for when I bumped into this. It was painted in 2012 by Ashley Montague, and features (among other things) a bunch of Vaux's swifts, which are the weird little birds that roost in the Chapman School chimney every fall.

Swift-watching has become a popular activity in Portland since the birds adopted the Chapman chimney some time in the 1990s. Crowds gather at the school at dusk to watch vast clouds of strange little birds swirl and vanish into the school's chimney. A friend who's an avid birdwatcher dragged me along to watch the swifts several years ago, so I can attest that it looks just as bizarre in person as it does on YouTube. The high point of the evening, though, was when a hungry peregrine falcon showed up, looking to pick off one of the countless swifts for a meal. This seemed to generally distress the crowd, and there were even a few scattered boos here and there. I was a distinct minority in rooting for the falcon. If I was more of an extrovert I would have tried explaining that we were witnessing the world's fastest bird in action, and I would have mentioned the inspiring comeback story about DDT and eggshells and the Endangered Species Act and urban falcons. And if that failed, maybe resorting to the "Circle of Life" song from The Lion King would do the trick. I mean, it's not as if swifts are gentle vegetarian birds either. But, as I said, I'm not quite extroverted enough to try all that with strangers, even when they aren't self-righteous Subaru-driving Portlanders.

North Tabor Mural

The next mural up is the North Tabor Mural at NE 47th & Burnside, on the Penumbra-Kelly Building, home to the Portland Police Bureau's traffic cops. The artists must have realized that traffic enforcement would be an unpopular theme for a mural, and went with a cheerful past-n-future neighborhood design instead. The RACC description:

The mural’s purpose is to fulfill the third part of the North Tabor Identity Project, the intent of which is to define North Tabor within the eyes of the community. On the west wall, the composition depicts modes of transportation in the neighborhood’s past, present, and possible future--old and new streetcar, Max line, old truck, and future car. The mural corner portrays the old fuel station that once stood at the site. As the corner turns to the south wall, residents of various cultures gather around to socialize, walk dogs, and enjoy the soapbox-derby down Mt. Tabor. Through these scenes flows a ribbon of fabric coming from women sewing in the historic Shogren House. The mural then depicts residents commuting on longboard and bicycle with one cyclist tows trees for public planting, beginning the municipal scene of firemen, place, public transit, and postal workers. The scene pulls away into a view of urban farming, and then opens into local farmlands of the past. Leaflets of paper fly through the composition on which neighborhood children contributed images of their own design.

Cthulhu, East Burnside

The next mural on our tour is the big Cthulhu mural in a gated alley next to the Sizzle Pie pizza place on E. Burnside. This is by Bay Area artist Skinner, who describes his style as

Influenced by 80’s pop culture, human struggle, myths and violence, dungeons and dragons and the heavy metal gods, Skinner’s mind is one of psycho social mayhem fueled by a calculated chaos.

This is the part where I have to admit I walked right past the Cthulhu mural a few times without noticing, even after I'd started in on this mural project. I even had lunch at Sizzle Pie at least once while I was looking for some other mural nearby, not realizing there was a giant Cthulhu on the side of the building I was in. I'm going to blame this one on the eldritch emanations of the Great Old Ones combined with the building's non-Euclidean geometry, instead of my uneven powers of observation for a change.

Anyway, I'm kind of pleased we have a Cthulhu. What would be really great is if had an enormous life-size Cthulhu statue, rising out of the river if possible, but the mural's a good start. Anyway, here's a nice inspirational video from the internet:

Tree mural, Failing St.

Here's a small mural of a tree, located on N. Failing St. at the little alley between Mississippi Ave. & Michigan Ave. (Aside: North Portland's "States That Begin With 'M'" thing is possibly the dumbest street naming scheme ever invented.) A photo by wiredforsound23 says this was painted by someone who goes by "Yourself". Who, as you might imagine, has proven to be quite impossible to google. Or bing, for that matter, and yes, I tried that too. So the pseudonym is not what I would call a successful personal branding effort. Maybe that's the entire point of the name, I dunno. At any rate, it's a cool tree.

Lloyd Corporate Plaza Roses

The next stop on our tour of Weston roses is at the Lloyd Corporate Plaza office complex at NE 19th & Oregon, just south of I-84. The Lloyd Corporate Roses appears to be a large printed photo instead of a painting, so I don't know if it really counts as a mural or not. It's a decent flower photo, though, and I'm certainly not arguing that paintings are a higher form of art than photos. In any case, it's a Weston rose, and we can't say we've seen them all unless we visit this one too.

For what it's worth, the building here is home to a number of county offices, including county health inspectors, public defenders, and the headquarters of the Multnomah County library system.

butterfly, sw 2nd & washington

Downtown Portland's Historic Postal Building, at SW 3rd & Washington, has a blank wall on the back side of the building facing 2nd. There may have been an adjacent building at one point, but right now it's home to a surface parking lot, and since the blank wall faces traffic coming off the Morrison Bridge, it hosts a couple of very large billboards. Look below those billboards, though, and you'll see a blue butterfly that someone's painted. Google Street View indicates it's been there since at least April 2014, and it's obvious that graffiti near it has been painted over while it's been left alone, so I imagine it's supposed to be here. It's not signed, though, and I haven't come across anything at all to share about it.

If I had to guess, I'd guess it's supposed to be a Fender's blue butterfly, a local endangered species. The butterfly in turn relies on one rare subspecies of lupine, which is threatened by invasive species and habitat loss. This is all just speculation on my part though.

Broadway Building Rose

The next Weston rose up is on the second story of an office building at NE 10th & Broadway. The Portland Roses Tumblr just calls it the Broadway Building Rose, since this one doesn't seem to be named in anyone's honor, unlike the ones we've visited before. Or at least there's no visible caption on this one. These photos are from the Safeway parking structure across the street, which is probably the best view of it unless you have a roof key to the building next door.

Vern Hansen Rose

The next Weston rose on the mini-tour is the Vern Hansen Rose, on a building in the big Hollywood District U-Store complex next to I-84, not far from the Melvin Weston Rose we took a look at earlier. I'm not sure who this one is named for.

The photo on the Portland Roses Tumblr is better than mine. Mine was taken looking down from the west side of the 28th Ave. overpass, and I imagine the Tumblr pic was taken from a car on the freeway or from a MAX train, since I'm not sure how else you'd get that angle. It also looks like the rose was repainted recently (i.e. since the December 2010 Tumblr post), since in my photos the rose is on a dark background, and the letters are now lighter than the background. It still has a big security camera poking out of the middle of the rose, though, so it looks like it's at least at the same place on the same wall as before.

N. Dekum & Borthwick

The next painted intersection we're taking a look at is at N. Dekum & Borthwick, a block east of Albina. A City Repair project list from 2006 describes it:

This community project will include an intersection painting designed to bring the values and culture of long-time and newly rooted residents together at the crossroads in celebration. The community chose the penguin theme for the design after the penguins that once lived down the block at Peninsula Park.

The design isn't very clear from these photos, I'm afraid. I didn't include anything about penguins in my todo list item, and when I got there I happened to be looking at it from the wrong angle and didn't clue in on what it was supposed to be. At least one of the red triangles is a beak, attached to a spiral that's really a penguin head. It's a lot more obvious if you tilt your head or rotate your monitor, whichever's easier.

smoking cat, mississippi ave.

North Portland's Mississippi Ave. is generally a commercial street, with upscale condos rapidly crowding their way in, but there are still a few old houses along the avenue here and there. Just south of Mason St. there are a couple of hippie-fied houses with an elaborately painted fence out front, featuring a large cigarette-smoking cat. The captions to a couple of Flickr photos by wiredforsound23 claim that the cat was painted by Trent Gibson, while the wizard design around the corner is by someone who goes by "Acid Wizard".

Incomplete Field Guide for Time Travel

Here are a few photos of Incomplete Field Guide for Time Travel, an art wall in the basement of Portland State's Student Rec Center. The brief and rather unhelpful RACC description:

This is a conceptual drawing utilizing visual elements of the surrounding neighborhood and abstracting them into unusual forms. The piece comments on the development of architectural concepts in relation to modularity, transparency, multi-valence, and asymmetry.

When the rec center opened in 2011, PR about the new art in the building focused primarily on Intellectual Ecosystem, the building's video art installation. That sort of makes sense, since permanent video art is pretty rare in Portland, but the press release also briefly mentions "a cut and painted steel work 'Incomplete Field Guide for Time Travel', by Damien Gilley, installed in the auditorium lobby.". The artist's website merely offers a photo of it, without further explanation.

PDX Pipeline interviewed Gilley in 2010, and this piece got a brief mention there:

Your public art piece, ”Incomplete Field Guide for Time Travel”, was recently unveiled at PSU. What wit like to move from an ephemeral installation to a permanent, commissioned framework?

My approach remained simple similar to my temporary projects. I used simple materials (aluminum, auto paint, wood) that translate well in a line art, graphic look. But because I have been a graphic designer and know the process of using digital files to output hard materials, it was the same process of translating the digital into physical, a very predictable result.

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.

purple creature, sw 2nd

This little creature is painted in a downtown Portland doorway along SW 2nd near Taylor, next to the hyper-trendy Lúc Lắc Vietnamese place. It's been there for a couple of years without anyone painting over it, so I imagine it's supposed to be there. I have a sneaking suspicion it's from an anime or a video game, and I ought to be embarrassed about not getting the pop culture reference. If you know what it is, feel free to make fun of me in the comments below.

Cyclone Bicycle Supply mural

One odd thing I've noticed during this mural project is that Portland bike shops are very likely to have murals outside. I'm not sure why exactly, and it's not like I've run the numbers and have an exact percentage to give you, but it's more common than just about any other sort of business, with the possible exception of tattoo places. Today's example is at Cyclone Bicycle Supply, at 21st & Vaughn in a weird corner of industrial NW Portland. I ran across this one in a Bike Portland article while searching for an entirely different bike mural. The article lists a few of those, and mentions the mural was created in 2012 by artists Jeremy Eaton and Nick Makanna.

The "Go By Bike" sign in the mural is a play on the "Go By Train" neon sign that's long graced Portland's Union Station, and the "Go By Streetcar" sign that's been in the Pearl District since the early 2000s. I could swear I've seen a real, live "Go By Bike" sign somewhere around town, but for the life of me I can't recall where I saw it. It's possible it wasn't real after all and was just a detail in another bike mural. It all gets to be a big blur after a while.

Updated: Apparently the "Go By Bike" sign is at the massive bike corral next to the South Waterfront aerial tram station. Thanks to gl in the comments below and @WookieOfDoom on Twitter for pointing this out. Another commenter mentions there's also a "Go By Cab" sign at Radio Cab in NW Portland. At this rate I have to assume there's a "Go By Enormous SUV" sign somewhere in darkest Tualatin.