Don Pancho murals, NE Alberta

Ok, our first stop today is the set of murals outside the Don Pancho Market & Taqueria, at NE 20th & Alberta. I don't know anything else about the murals, and I also haven't tried the tacos here, so I don't have a lot of material for a proper blog post. That's sort of the problem with a lot of stuff I have in drafts right now. I feel like I ought to say something and not just post photos, and I sort of hit a wall at that point. I could probably fill a few paragraphs snarking about Alberta St. gentrification, but I feel like I've covered that topic a lot already. So anyway, enjoy the photos, I guess.

ok, let's try this again...

It's been ages since I've done a real post here. I got tied up with Real Work, and sort of got out of the habit of posting. I'd occasionally look at my Drafts folder and get sort of discouraged; at one point I had a goal of zero drafts by New Years, and that's not looking very likely at this point. Anyway, I thought about doing another lame "keepalive" post just so I'd post something this month, but I don't have anything better to do this weekend, and there's a huge storm outside, so I'll see if I can put a few actual posts together for once.

keepalive (again)

So it's been another ultra-busy month at $REAL_JOB, and I haven't posted anything here since late August. I've never gone an entire month without posting anything at all; back in March I posted a short "keepalive" thing just to have a nonzero post count for the month. I think I'm going to have to do that again this month. I mean, I reserve the right to go on a huge writing binge between now and midnight tomorrow, but I have to say the odds don't favor it. Maybe next month...

SE 9th & Yamhill

Every June-or-so, a few more City Repair painted intersections pop up here and there around Portland. To be honest I haven't put a lot of effort into locating this year's crop of new ones; given the size of my Drafts folder right now, I wouldn't say I'm in desperate need of new material, and Real Job stuff keeps absorbing what would otherwise be free time to pursue this. In short, I've found precisely one of them so far, and only because I stumbled across it. So with that intro out of the way, we're at freshly painted SE 9th & Yamhill, where a big hops-and-barley design graces the intersection. This intersection's kind of an unusual case in that we're in a light industrial area, not a residential neighborhood. One corner of the intersection is home to Rogue's Green Dragon Pub, while diagonally across is a large Rogue warehouse. So the relevance of the design to its surroundings is kind of obvious here. (And yes, I noticed the thing when I came by for lunch and a beer or two or so.) So this is the bit where I tell you I told you so: A year ago, in a ranty bit in a post about the NE 12th & Beech intersection, I predicted that companies would eventually get in on the act, and the painted intersection thing would evolve away from being a community volunteer effort. I figured tech companies would do it eventually. I didn't figure it would happen the very next year or be arranged by a local brewery, although that kind of makes sense in retrospect. Still, when it comes to predicting the future, when you have a chance to take partial credit, take it.

Speaking of hops, this summer I tried my hand at growing a hop vine for the first time. You can assume by the lack of gardening photos here that it's not going that well. I don't believe I've ever seen that many bugs on a single plant before. Tiny little pinhead-sized bugs, clinging to stems and the bottoms of leaves, sucking the life out of the poor vine. After investing in this plant, I came across a Michigan State extension document about "Hop Insects and Diseases", which begins with an old Kentish proverb about hop growing: "First the flea, then the fly, then the mould, then they die". The remainder of the document is equally encouraging. Still, hops are a perennial (assuming they survive), so maybe I'll have better luck next year.

SE 3rd & Morrison mural #2

Last summer, a colorful snail mural appeared on a City Liquidators building in industrial SE Portland, as part of the 2014 Forest for the Trees event. A few months later, a second mural appeared next to it, full of bright colors and swirling eagles. This new one was created by artist Yatika Fields for a Native arts event called Native+Portland. If you look closely, the mural includes an "#FFTTNW" hashtag even though it was painted months after the festival. The official festival Instagram also has a photo of Fields painting the mural, so I'm tagging this post accordingly. I figure if they're not going to get all pedantic about it, I probably shouldn't go there either.

EuroClassic Furniture mural

Next mural up wraps around the outside of the EuroClassic Furniture store at SE 66th & Foster. (I don't get out to SE Foster a lot, so I first heard of this place in a Kay's Bird Club post.) It's got vignettes of Venice, London, and other European cities, surrounded by painted-on arches and columns and whatnot. On the east side of the building, a large sign reads "русский мебельный магазин", which just means "Russian furniture store". Which isn't too unusual given the surrounding neighborhood's large Russian immigrant population. Going by the store's website it seems like a regular (and well-regarded) US-style furniture store that welcomes Russian speakers and has a loud wacky mural outside. I dunno, I guess I was expecting something a little more flamboyant given the exterior.

Manuel Levenson Rose

It's been a while since we've done any Weston rose murals, but I found another one recently, so another of this humble blog's ongoing projects is still ongoing, it seems. The Manuel Levenson Rose is located on the Columbia East office building, on SE Division at 100th, just north of spooky, mysterious Kelly Butte. I'm not entirely sure who the rose is named for, but it's dated 1974, and a quick search comes up with someone by that name who lived in Portland and died in 1974. So that seems like a reasonable guess.

I occasionally wonder what future archeologists might think if they stumbled across a few of these rose-and-flag designs. Like, maybe the Portland area saw a renewed Lancaster vs. York civil war spanning the last quarter of the 20th century and the first couple of decades of the 21st. If they kept digging around the city they'd eventually bump into someone's discarded SCA/cosplay armor, too, and we'd go into the textbooks all wrong. I mean, unless this humble blog survives centuries into the future to set the record straight(ish). (Hey, this site does get archived by the Wayback Machine, so I can't totally rule that out. Howdy there, future historians!)

SE 23rd & Morrison mural #2

Next up we're visiting the second mural at the old gas station at SE 23rd & Morrison. This one was created by artist Paige Wright for the 2014 Forest for the Trees, and you'll notice that it includes a large ceramic face in addition to the painted bits. The festival's Tumblr calls it a "ceramic mural", which is an odd-sounding term even if it's basically accurate.

SE 23rd & Morrison mural #1

Our ever-ongoing mural tour is paying a visit to a former gas station at SE 23rd & Morrison, where a pair of murals were painted for the 2014 Forest for the Trees event. This is about a block due north of the warehouse on Belmont where we looked at The Fall and another unnamed mural earlier today (well, the posts went up today. I took the photos months ago.) So the first one here on Morrison is this giant robot mural, created by local artist Blakely Dadson. A big Forest for the Trees photoset at Empty Kingdom has lots of photos of last year's crop of murals being painted, including several of this one. I gather, from this, that you want to color in the laserblasts first thing. Rembrandt neglected to do this, and viewers barely even notice his laserblasts.

Hawthorne Fish House mural

The next mural up is outside the Hawthorne Fish House restaurant on SE Hawthorne near 44th. This was painted by Portland artist Matt Schlosky, sometime before November 2013 (since some of his photos of it are dated then.)

My usual policy here that posting about someone's mural isn't an endorsement (or otherwise) of the business inside. Or at least I've intended to say that, whether I actually have or not. I'm going to make an exception this time, however, because tasty Wisconsin-style fried fish (oh, and deep-fried cheese curds). Happily endorsed, for whatever that's worth.

Hawthorne Literary Mural

Next mural up is the Hawthorne Literary Mural, a collection of author portraits on the side of a building at SE 33rd & Hawthorne. This was painted back in 1997 by New Orleans artist Jane Brewster. The building it's on used to be a large, rambling used book shop, but it's evolved into more of a general vintage store in recent years, so the connection with the mural isn't as clear as it once was. I've seen this called the "Sylvia Plath mural" more than once as hers is one of the more prominent (and spooky) portraits. Turns out that it and many of the other portraits are now available in t-shirt or coffee mug form via Cafe Press.

Warehouse mural, SE 23rd & Belmont

The next mural up is at SE 23rd & Belmont, on the same warehouse building as The Fall. This one's on the opposite (west) side of the building, facing the La Calaca Comelona restaurant. I didn't see a signature on this one and I don't really know anything about it.

The Fall

The next mural on our ongoing tour is an autumn-themed one on SE Belmont near 23rd, on the side of a small warehouse building. The Fall was created for the 2013 Forest for the Trees event by Australian artist Reka One. A 2013 Vandalog post has a few photos of it and a larger Reka One mural in San Francisco, along with a TV interview clip about the latter.

OR-7 mural

Next mural up on the tour is the OR-7 mural outside the Alleyway Cafe & Bar on NE Alberta at 24th. The design's based on the famous Oregon wolf OR-7 (a.k.a. "Journey"). Here's a blog post about the mural by Roger Peet, one of the artists.

Transformation, Integrity, Community

Next mural on our ongoing tour is Transformation, Integrity, Community, on a Concordia University building at NE 30th & Ainsworth. The brief RACC description:

This mural was painted by Concordia University students. It prominently displays an open book with the words transformation, integrity and community under a flowing tree. The mural is physically situated where the campus meets the community.

Ciao Vito mural

The mural tour is still on its extended visit to NE Alberta St. -- I thought that for a change I'd do a few in the same area instead of hopping randomly around the city. This time we're checking out the bright design outside Ciao Vito, an Italian restaurant at Alberta & NE 22nd. This is directly across the street from the To Oregon With Love mural we looked at a couple of posts ago. The old Murals of Portland site mentioned that this is by Tom Cramer, who also created the Machinery mural on Williams Ave. that we looked at recently. I don't know the exact date on the mural here, but a 2012 Willamette Week profile of Cramer seems to indicate it's at least as old as Machinery, and is much older than the current restaurant. So technically I probably shouldn't be calling it "Ciao Vito mural", but I haven't seen any other name for it, so I'll have to go with that.

Keep Your Chin Up

The next stop on the mural tour is on NE Alberta once again; in fact it's on the opposite side of the same building as the last installment (To Oregon With Love), and the artist behind that mural co-created the subject of this post too. So this is Keep Your Chin Up, painted for the Forest for the Trees event by Portland artists Blaine Fontana & Zach Yarrington, and Tokyo's Jun Inoue.

So there's sort of a local mural subgenre centered on upbeat, inspirational phrases: This one, obviously; the huge Everything is Everything in industrial SE Portland; the phrase "You are confined only by the walls you build yourself" on To Oregon With Love, and probably a few others I'm forgetting offhand. I have to say I have mixed feelings about this subgenre. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but Alberta was the core of a historically black neighborhood that's now gentrifying at warp speed, displacing many longtime residents in the process. In this context, murals coaching people about unlimited personal achievement seem a bit... problematic, if you ask me.

To Oregon With Love

The ongoing mural tour returns to NE Alberta St. again (and not for the last time), and this time we're looking at To Oregon With Love, at the corner of NE 22nd & Alberta. This was created in 2014 by Blaine Fontana, who also did the cool Koi mural on SE Hawthorne (which has since been partially painted over, unfortunately). The RACC description:

This mural represents many of my favorite aspects about Portland and Oregon, but is collectively a quilt representing our independent spirit, our vibrant attitude and tremendous pride we all carry as Oregonians.

If the title sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of "From Oregon With Love"/"Oregon kara ai", a 1980s-1990s Japanese TV drama set in Central Oregon. Some sort of corny heartwarming thing about an orphan from Japan who comes to live with his aunt and uncle in America. YouTube has part of a 1992 episode in which the now-teenage kid tries his hand at logging and driving a semi. I'm not actually recommending it, but here it is:

Tango Berretín mural

The next mural up is on SE Foster again, this time at the Tango Berretín dance studio at SE 63rd & Foster. The mural on the building was created in 2010 by artist Remedios Rapoport. (A short video of the mural being painted is on Vimeo here.) Its RACC description:

Tango Berretín is one of the only all-Argentine tango studios in the US and exists not only to teach the dance, but doubles as a cultural museum. Argentine filete, an art style native to Buenos Aires, and Argentine tango are culturally inseparable. The idea of this mural is to showcase this connection. Also, as both art forms are descendant from European traditions, and as the Foster-Powell neighborhood becomes more culturally diverse with many European immigrants, it seeks to embody the essence of the community. The mural with tango dancers’ feet on the dance floor and a bandoneón—an accordion-like instrument—playing tango shows what is happening inside the building. The colors and faux Buenos Aires look will create an enjoyable cultural exchange within the neighborhood by putting the vision out for all to see.

Pal-Do Market mural

The next mural up is the Pal-Do Market mural, outside of the eponymous Korean market at SE 61st & Foster. The RACC description:

This mural, located on a popular Korean market, is the first mural in Portland designed specifically on behalf of the Korean community. The artist, Una Kim, chose the image of a dragon because it is a powerful and positive symbol of good luck in Eastern art. Recognizing the role public art can have in recognizing specific communities, Kim sought out artists from differing minority groups residing in the surrounding neighborhood to complete small vignettes on the dragon using text and images to represent their cultures. She also invited a graffiti artist to contribute an element of street art to the mural.

The artist is a professor at Portland State, and she also created the Alive mural on SW 2nd, on the back side of Keller Auditorium.