Bridgetown Aikido mural

The next stop on the mural tour is at the Bridgetown Aikido building at NE 28th & Flanders, where we find a "monkey king" design created by Portland artists Jessie Weitzel & Brianna Farina. The RACC's old, defunct Murals of Portland website said there was a mural here, so I came looking for it, but I gather that one was replaced by the current mural at some point, since the listed artists are different.

Jolly Roger Skull mural

A while back I was putting together a post about the big Arch Angel mural at SE 12th & Madison, and noticed a brief aside in a writeup about it by Meggs, one of its co-creators: "Also had extra time to Jam with Gage Hamilton on a quick Skull piece on the side of the Jolly Roger Dive Bar, opposite the main mural!" (links added by me, btw.) I completely didn't notice this skull at the time. I would have noticed if only I'd turned around and looked behind me when taking Arch Angel photos. But I didn't, so I had to make another trip to go find it. And voila, here it is.

Giant Rabbit mural, NE Alberta

The mural tour is visiting NE Alberta again, and this time we're taking a look at the ginormous rabbit mural on the side of a building between 18th & 19th. This was painted by LA-based Brazilian artist Mateu Velasco for the 2014 Forest for the Trees event.

Given the subject matter, I have to put in a plug for an old blog post of mine about the movie "Night of the Lepus", a not-very-scary 70s monster movie starring DeForrest Kelley (Star Trek's Dr. McCoy). This was from the short period of time when I thought this might evolve into a blog about bad movies. Eventually I realized that writing about bad movies was a lot of work, or at least I made it into a lot of work, and this humble blog eventually morphed into today's photos-of-stuff format. The current all-mural thing is not a permanent feature of this blog, by the way; it's just the current project, which turned out to be a bit larger than anticipated. Eventually I'll move on and do something else, though I'm not sure yet what that might be. Maybe historic buildings or something like that. Dunno.

Lost Cause mural, SE 34th & Belmont

The next mural up is another Forest tor the Trees one, located on SE Belmont just east of 34th, at the far end of a parking lot facing Belmont. This was painted by The Lost Cause for last year's edition of the Forest for the Trees festival. The 2015 edition is coming up in a few weeks, with a whole new batch of murals to cover. I still have several unfinished posts about previous years' murals sitting around in Drafts. Hopefully I'll have those done & dusted before the new batch arrives, but you never know.

Dragon, SE Alder

Next mural up is this whatzit on the D&J Imports building on SE Alder, between 11th & 12th. wiredforsound32 says it's a dragon, and was painted by Klutch (who also did the large mural at Buckman Field). I think it looks more like a firebreathing Left Shark, but what do I know?

Nectar Cafe mural

The ongoing mural tour takes us back to the Hollywood district again. A few weeks ago we visited the Velo Cult mural, which faces a parking lot near NE 41st & Hancock. The same parking lot is also home to the smaller mural shown here, on the back of the Nectar Cafe, an artsy/healthy neighborhood coffee place. The mural's signed "Notes", which is basically impossible to Google (or Bing, if you prefer). Luckily the cafe's Facebook page had a couple of photos of the mural being painted, back in October 2013, and the captions explain that it was painted by artist Derek "Notes" Leitch. If I was in a grumpy mood (which I'm not), I might complain about people choosing more distinctive artist nicknames, but hey, I managed to follow the breadcrumbs this time, and I actually kind of like a little detective work now and then.

Machinery

The next Portland mural on our tour is one of the oldest ones I'm aware of. Machinery, at N. Williams & Shaver, was painted wayyy back in 1989 by Tom Cramer, and restored in 2003 just as gentrification started to take hold along Williams. Cramer later painted a similar mural at Ciao Vito on NE Alberta. (I have a draft post about that one, so it'll show up here eventually, but I couldn't begin to guess when.) Somewhere around town there's also an 80s-era vintage BMW that Cramer painted to look like Machinery.

If I hadn't known the date, I would have guessed it was from the late 1980s, or more likely inspired by the 80s. There was a common aesthetic in the 80s that involved lots of jumbled angles and primary colors (think Keith Haring for example), and it's kind of fun to run across a surviving example in the wild.

A bit about the design, from the 2003 Tribune article about the restoration project:

[Cramer's] original vision was to make something bold and colorful that could stand up to the neighborhood, he says. In the 1980s the area was harder-edged, and there was a lot of gang activity.

What Cramer continues to like about the mural today is that it's not trying to sell anything, either commercially or politically. But it still has an 'upbeat edginess.'

'It's improvised. It's like jazz, and it just kind of goes for it,' he says, adding that given its absence of a larger message, the mural probably wouldn't stand a chance of being approved by an officially sanctioned public art committee today.

NE 28th & Davis mural

Ok, our next stop on the mural tour is on NE 28th near Davis. This abstract design is signed "Seak Joker Daim" for the trio of artists who created it. The RACC's defunct Murals of Portland website [archive.org link] says it was painted back in 2003. That was during the time when City Hall was paranoid about allowing murals anywhere, for fear of having to allow billboard ads everywhere. So I'm not sure how this one came about in that climate. Joker is a Portland-based artist (interviews at Graffuturism & Futurism 2.0), while Daim and Seak are German and I gather are fairly prominent in the street art world over there. So maybe that's our answer: I could easily see 2003 Portland bending the usual strict rules a little if an artist was famous enough, for fear of getting a bad reputation in the art world.

Community Cycling Center mural

The next mural on our tour is a large RACC-sponsored one on the Community Cycling Center at 17th & Alberta. The RACC description:

The main focus of the mural is a child-powered apparatus, accompanied by a range of locomotion machines for children of all ages and varying physical abilities. The machines form a parade that includes a tandem bicycle, wheelchair, reclining bicycle, tricycle, unicycle, and other various bicycles. The imagery in this mural is inspired by the Community Cycling Center’s dedication as a non-profit service organization that teaches bicycle safety and provides bicycles to those in need.

This was created in 2006 by Robin Corbo (who also created the MIKE and BARK murals elsewhere in Portland), and restored in 2008 after the building was rammed by a truck.

BARK Mural

Next up on the mural tour is the huge BARK Mural, the jam-packed nature scene at the Firestone store at 4601 SE Powell. I ran across this in a Kay's Bird Club post, though I'm sure I would have noticed it on my own eventually if I was on Powell more often. A 2011 Tribune article about it interviewed lead artist Robin Corbo (who also created the MIKE mural near Lloyd Center, and a couple of others I haven't posted yet). The article explains that the mural was created in conjunction with BARK, a nonprofit that works to protect the Mt. Hood National Forest, which explains the subject matter here. I imagine "created in conjunction with" means the group supplied volunteers to help paint it. Here and there you can kind of tell that community volunteers were involved, and the sorta-infamous 'Art Wall of Shame' Tumblr ranted about some of the mural's more uneven details. Ranting about well-meaning volunteers seems kind of meanspirited if you ask me. I suppose there's just no satisfying some people.

A tire store on Powell may sound like a weird location for a saving-the-world nature mural, but this was a deliberate symbolic choice; Powell doubles as highway US 26, which (eventually) is the main road to Mt. Hood and points east. (You could keep going on US 26 all the way to Ogallala, Nebraska, if you were so inclined.)

There Is Always Hope

The next stop on the mural tour is in Portland's Old Town, on NW Flanders near 6th. This large Art Nouveau-styled mural was painted in May 2015 -- I ran across it while it was being painted, in fact -- by artist Lydia Emily, as part of a national awareness campaign for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Lydia Emily (who has MS herself) painted similar murals in Los Angeles, Austin, and Louisville, KY as part of this campaign. A 2014 LA Weekly interview discusses some of her other work in the LA area.

Animal Crossing NW mural

A while ago, I drove out to SE 72nd & Harold to track down the Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhood's community mural, and I happened to park near a small neighborhood pet supply store. The entire front of the store was painted with a design full of cute animals. I figured since I was there anyway, I might as well take a couple of photos, so here they are.

Cartopia mural

Next thing on the mural tour is this design on a wall at Cartopia, the food cart pod at SE 12th & Hawthorne (which is home to a fantastic poutine cart, among other things). This was painted sometime in early 2015 or late 2014 by artist Dominatah, replacing a previous "Cash For Your Banksy" sign. I have photos of the old sign too but haven't posted them yet; murals seem to come and go faster than I can post about them. I suppose there are worse problems to have, blogwise, but it certainly isn't helping with the size of my Drafts folder.

Shop Small mural, SE 25th & Clinton

The next stop on our ongoing mural tour is at SE 25th & Clinton, where a bike-themed mural graces the side of a small commercial building (which apparently is not a bike shop, oddly enough). This was painted in 2014 by artist Stefan Ways, who also created the Green Hammer mural at SE 6th & Madison. The "Shop Small" on the bike basket is the key detail here: This was painted as part of a national campaign to promote Small Business Saturday, the day after Black Friday when you're supposed to do some holiday shopping at local small businesses.

In 2013, Ways painted another mural for the Shop Small campaign in Baltimore; that article mentions that the national campaign is actually sponsored by American Express, the huge global credit card company. (Their corporate Tumblr (which exists) has more photos of the Baltimore mural.) This is probably a way for them to try to reach millennials, who (it's widely believed) have less of an interest in "prestige" credit cards and other traditional status symbols than their elders did. The small business thing probably also reflects a desire to get more small businesses to take their card. Many businesses don't accept AMEX due to the higher merchant fees compared to Visa & MasterCard.

Anyway, long story short, when I started this post I figured this was yet another mural promoting our fair city's bike-based smug superiority, and/or a hip local bike store. I had no idea it was part of a national marketing push.

International Meat & Sausage mural

Here are a few photos of the painted sign outside the International Meat & Sausage / Overseas Taste market at SE 64th & Foster, next to Laurelwood Park. Business signs usually aren't part of this ongoing mural project, but this one's cute, and includes a cute cat, so I bent the rules for it, just this once. Sadly, until they invent Smell-o-Vision you won't get to enjoy the full effect; the whole surrounding neighborhood smells like spicy Eastern European sausages. I maintain this smells amazing, and the scent is a valuable public service, freely provided at no charge. Though I can see how non-carnivores (or people on diets) might beg to differ.

Tropical mural, SE 72nd & Harold

I stopped at SE 72nd & Harold to locate the Mt. Scott-Arleta Community Mural and noticed this tropical design painted on a building across the street. I don't know anything else about it, but it's kind of pleasant and I thought it was worth sharing.

JOIN mural

The next mural up is at NE 81st & Halsey, outside the JOIN homeless services agency. The agency moved to this location in 2010, and the mural was painted shortly afterward by artist Rodolfo Serna, with help from a couple of local youth programs. (The RACC's now-defunct Murals of Portland site [via archive.org] lists the credits as: El Programa Hispano students from Madison High School p:ear youth, JOIN staff, and Jakub )

Serna also created a mural in the 4600 block of SE Hawthorne in 2009, but I'm afraid you won't be seeing it here; the entire block is now home to a shiny new apartment building, because gentrification

Buckman Field mural

The next mural we're checking out is at Portland's Buckman Field Park, or rather on the back of a warehouse facing the park. This was created in summer 2014 by mural artist Klutch. Despite its size, this mural is a bit hard to find. The warehouse it's on is at the SW corner of the park, and the mural's down a slope from the running track, located behind some trees. If I'm not mistaken, the same warehouse is home to two Weston roses on the NE 12th side of the building. So, business in the front, party in the back, I guess.

Emerson School mural

The next mural we're visiting is at the Emerson School on Portland's North Park Blocks, where a cartoon mural version of the park blocks faces the school's parking lot. This was painted in 2012 by Mofee123. I've seen it called Elephant in the Park before but I don't know if that's an official or not. One fun thing about this mural is that the lot's "reserved parking" signs were integrated into the design. There's a closeup in the slideshow that shows this a lot better than the first photo does. (You did know my posts always have slideshows, right?)

In any case, the elephant in the maybe-title is the Da Tung sculpture, which a Chinese businessman donated to the city back in the early 2000s. My post about the elephant went up in 2008, and looking at it now I think my photos were better back then. I'd just gotten a swanky DSLR and I took it everywhere and used it all the time, whereas in 2015 the vast majority of my posts are just Samsung phone photos, mostly because the convenience of Flickr auto-upload is hard to beat. The rest of the post is pretty much just a link dump, though. I posted it in November, so I suspect I was trying to get a bunch of posts done in bulk to get to zero drafts by year's end. Zero drafts on New Years is my goal again this year, but I have so many of them right now I have no idea whether I'll be able to hit that goal. You probably don't believe me. If I could show you my Drafts folder you probably still wouldn't believe me. It's not just murals, either; they're just the low hanging fruit, so I've been doing a lot of them, and saving the others for later.

Alley mural, SE 6th & Yamhill

So our next stop on the mural tour is a little unusual. The block bordered by SE 6th & 7th Ave., & Yamhill & Taylor Sts. is home to several older buildings, with narrow alleys between them. Alleys like this in Portland are almost always fenced off, but these aren't (at least not yet), and the one facing 6th contains the mural you see here. It doesn't appear to be signed, and I don't know anything about it; I just happened to notice it while walking by, so I stopped for a few photos. It kind of looks like a Mayan design to me, but I'm not an expert on pre-Columbian art, and it could just as easily be an Aztec or Olmec pattern, or something invented for this mural for all I know.