mural, 412 sw 12th

Mural at SW 12th & Stark, by by Troy Lovegates & Paige Wright. Wright also created one of the murals at SE 23rd & Morrison for the 2014 edition of the festival. I had this one confused with the nearby mural at 12th & Washington and had the artists backwards, but I think I've got the credits right now, & I've corrected the other post.

mural, 412 nw couch

Mural on the upper floors of a building at NW 4th & Couch, by Tokyo artist Nigamushi.

mural, 524 se ash

Mural at SE Ash & MLK, by Peruvian artist Jade Rivera, near the "Nothing Good Comes Easy" mural we looked at a couple of posts ago.

mural, 1302 se ankeny

Mural on a church building at SE 13th & Ankeny, by Andrew Hem.

mural, 417 se 11th

Mural at SE 11th & Oak by Blaine Fontana & David Rice, on the same building as a couple of other murals we've looked at before. Similar to how some people can't stop with just the one tattoo, I guess. Though I imagine these buildings will be torn out and replaced with luxury condos in a few years, and the analogy sort of breaks down at that point.

mural, 200 se mlk

2015 Forest for the Trees mural at SE MLK & Ash, by Michael Salter.

Nothing Good Comes Easy

Next up is a giant mural of the words "Nothing Good Comes Easy", on the upper stories of a building at SE Grand & Pine. This was created for the 2015 Forest for the Trees event by Ola Volo & Zach Yarrington. I'm not a huge fan of the "ginormous motivational affirmation" style of mural, but they've been proliferating across the city in recent years, so obviously someone likes them.

mural, 706 se mlk

A 2015 Forest for the Trees mural by Aaron Glasson & Celeste Byers, located at SE MLK & Alder, outside the River City Bicycles store.

mural, 1129 sw washington

A large mural at SW 12th & Washington, created for the 2015 Forest for the Trees event by Michael Reeder.

The Journey Itself is Home

Next up is a 2015 Forest for the Trees mural by Josh Doll, located way out at SE 50th & Franklin, a couple of blocks north of the Foster & Powell intersection. I'm not usually a big fan of murals that feature big sorta-inspirational sayings, but this one gets partial credit for including a dog. This area isn't exactly suburbia, but the intersection does feature a Taco Bell, a Taco Time, and a Burger King -- and I have to admit I ran across the mural by accident while making a drive-thru taco run. I realize Real Portlanders are supposed to eat nothing but artisanal kale-quinoa nuggets, washed down with artisanal kombuchatinis. Corporate tacos are just so downscale and inauthentic, after all. But hey, this is a pseudonymous blog, I can admit it here and nobody can pin it on me.

bird mural, se 11th & alder

A recent mural of birds at SE 11th & Alder, by Portland artist Klutch

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mural, 2505 se 11th

A 2015 Forest for the Trees mural by Insa, John Gourley, & Zach Johnsen, located on the back side of the Ford Building at SE 11th & Alder. The building was originally a Ford car factory (albeit a rather small one), believe it or not.

april keepalive

This is another one of those periodic "I need to post at least once in this calendar month" posts. I actually haven't posted anything since early March, and it's May tomorrow, so this is close to the maximum possible time gap without breaking the decade-long run. I actually have a slightly different alibi this time; I was on vacation for a couple of weeks in March (and I've barely sorted the photos from that, so there'll be a few Hawaii photosets to post whenever I get around to it). Then I got sidetracked working on a fun open source project that I'd love to link to if I wasn't trying to keep blogging/social media and professional stuff separate. Suffice it to say it was fun, and it took up a lot of spare time that might've otherwise been spent here. Maybe I'll get back into this thing again in May.

To be honest I'm sort of trying to decide whether to just bulk post the contents of my drafts folder as-is, just so I can stop stressing over it.

sunflower mural, se 9th & ankeny

Next mural up is a large sunflower design on SE 9th, between Ash & Ankeny, outside an educational carpet company (which is something that exists, turns out). This was created in July 2013 by Jose Solis (the FB post's external photo embed looks dead, unfortunately). Solis's work has appeared here once before: He also created the murals at SE Portland's Andy & Bax store.

mural, 2424 n mississippi

Here's a mural I ran across recently on Mississippi Ave. just north of Interstate, at the end of a fenced lot on the Widmer Brewing campus. I haven't been able to find out anything about this one. The internet has failed me yet again. Maybe nobody else has noticed it?

SE 130th Place & Ramona

Yet another painted intersection, this one wayyyy out at SE 130th Place & Ramona, a bit west of Powell Butte. Unfortunately this one's a bit worse for wear, so I only took this one photo. An artist involved in the project has a page up about it, with photos from when the book-and-butterfly design was first painted in May 2013.

SE 37th & Bybee

Another painted intersection, this time a fish-and-rainbow design at SE 37th & Bybee. 37th is not really a street here, rather just a stretch of unused city right-of-way. So the intersection is basically a weird wide spot in the road with an island in the middle. The 2015 City Repair guide explains they've been slowly transforming the unused stretch of 37th into a "food forest and garden" over the last few years. I didn't really notice anything that looked like a food forest or garden when I was there, but gardens are never very photogenic in late winter anyway.

SE 86th & Glenwood

Painted intersection with a flowers-and-bees pattern at SE 86th & Glenwood, a couple of blocks south of Duke St. This is another new painted intersection, first painted in June 2015, sponsored by a couple of local community groups.

SE 28th Pl. & Pardee

Painted intersection at SE 28th Place & Pardee, next to a small private school. This one looks quite old and beat up, but apparently it was just painted in July 2015. So I suppose the winter hasn't been kind to it. The link goes to the neighborhood association's painting project & shows what the design is supposed to be: A woman riding a bike, with buildings and trees in the background.

rhino mural, 1308 se morrison

Rhinoceros mural on SE Morrison, outside a trendy cocktail place a bit e. of SE 12th. This was painted in August 2015 by Josh Keyes, for the annual Forest for the Trees mural event.