Category: Public Art

Campus Security: A Soldier Statue

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Tanned and ready.

When I first saw the statue it was highly recognizable. From my studies of Revolutionary War history, I knew it to be a Colonial soldier. The hat, clothes and gun all fit those times. I was born in the Boston, Massachusetts area, so I grew up surrounded by Colonial history. There’s also a hazy flashback to my father’s National Guard trophy with the Minuteman soldier standing on top. The statue seems out-of-place here in the west, so far away from that old history. It now has the feel of a monument to someone who got lost a long time ago as he wandered and stumbled about in search of cheap real estate and a decent cup of coffee.

On campus.

I noticed the soldier statue from the other side of Barbur Blvd. It’s a busy road with four lanes so it’s likely that I initially overlooked the Colonial Office Campus. It may have taken a second look  for the colonial reference to make sense. The Colonial Office Campus is exactly what it says it is, office space for professional services used by lawyers and counselors. The statue can be found past the intersection of Capitol Hwy and Barbur Blvd heading towards Tigard.

Half a dance away

In front of the main office park building there’s another statue. My imagination had me thinking that this one was a child of the solider. The kid, dressed in what appear to be rags, gets to stay home and frolic while his father fights the war. Online I noticed a couple of the tenants mention the statues as landmarks to help clients find their offices. So eventually it made sense: Colonial soldier, Colonial Office Campus, Colonial columns on the main building; there’s a flurry of Colonial activity in a small section of SW off of Barbur Blvd. that’s subtle and unexpected.

Locked and loading.

The detailing on the sculptures drew me in. The soldier, with his sleeves rolled up, his burly arms fiddling with his gun as he stands as well as anyone could stand with knees stuck in a block.  His permanent stance graces a plinth decorated with 13 stars in tribute to the original 13 colonies. The child had been holding a light on a chain which, I was told, will be repaired.

Wired and ready.

The young frolicker was created in 1974. The Colonial soldier followed in 1976 which had me wondering if Oregon had been caught in the throes of bicentennial fever like the rest of the nation. The artist’s name, Carlton Bell, is inscribed on the base of each work. The soldier’s base also had three other names listed. It’s safe to assume they assisted on the project. Carlton Bell proved to be a mysterious figure. I found little information about him online.

My research did lead to a blog post about Portland Public Art. I would suggest anyone reading this take a look at that post too if only to see an excellent close up photograph of the soldier’s face. There was some speculation on the part of the writer of the public art blog. I know my writing for the Portland Orbit often leads me to speculate but from what I was able to gather, especially after talking to the friendly office park manager, the statues were made for the campus and not for previous businesses. The comment section offers details and stories about the life of Carlton Bell that I plan to explore in a future post. One commentator made an effort to identify the gender of the kid sculpture as male because his brother had been the artist’s model.

Ready for my close up.

I like the folk art feel to these statues. They have a charm that livens up a drab section of Barbur Blvd. while adding a dash of intrigue. The soldier appears to be guarding a curve in the road or protecting against an invasion from the motel across the street. There’s a randomness that’s refreshing in the placement. A Colonial soldier, far from the pages of history, silently stands guard. My first reaction was to wonder why there were roadside statues hanging around on Barbur Blvd. The Colonial theme helped me make sense of it, and the question should really be: Why not?

Guard duty.

 

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Quite the crossing guard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Louie Files: Louie Louie Sculpture

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I never would have known there was a “Louie Louie” sculpture in town if I had not been tipped off by Will Simmons. Will enjoys his fame as a blogger for the Pittsburgh Orbit and I was lucky to have him as a guest columnist. Earlier this month, he wrote about the greatest moment in rock history and had been looking for photos for the post. If you haven’t read it already it was about the 60’s Portland band the Kingsmen recording “Louie Louie.” I ran the post on April 6 in honor of the 54th anniversary of the making of that record.

A closer look.

You have to make some considerations when you’re attempting to illustrate a song. It’s challenging. Artist Tim Bavington illustrated the song’s sound waves in a sculptural form  that hangs in the lobby of the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal uilding at 1220 SW 3rd Avenue in Portland. You pretty much have to have synesthesia to make an image of music and yet Tim Bavington’s sculpture takes the notes and chords from the song “Louie Louie” and does that. My research revealed that the sculpture replicates the Kingsmen’s version of the song but unless you’re a sound engineer with a keen eye, as opposed to your average federal worker, how would you know?

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I made my way downtown on a Tuesday afternoon during my spring break. With a sneaking suspicion that a federal building meant security, I emptied my pockets of various odds and ends before leaving the house. I was getting worked up knowing I was going to have to explain my mission. When I arrived I told the guard about my blog related photography assignment. I wondered if I sounded professional, or crazy. He remained unfazed, as if this were an everyday occurrence. I was instructed to only take pictures of the sculpture and not the security apparatus I was passing through. Taking off my shoes only proved to be a minor annoyance. It was getting me closer to the sculpture. I discovered the plate in my arm from this summer’s bike accident didn’t set off the metal detector.

The guitar solo is the yellow part.

After collecting my belongings, one of the other guards told me, what sounded like a rumor, that the art was hung upside down. I was flabbergasted. Art hung upside down? I asked why no one ever returned to hang it right. She explained that she had worked in building construction and thought the art work cost more to hang than to make. Rearranging it would be cost prohibitive. She seemed like a good source of information so I asked how the art work ended up in a Portland federal building. Her explanation was cryptic. She told me she had lived in Portland for a long time and wacky things happen here. Days later I had to wonder if I had not fallen victim to the greatest joke about abstract art of all–the old nobody knows which side is up joke.

The Louie Files: Louie, Louie Sculpture

Feds in there somewhere.

The Federal Building itself is a work of art. Ironwork up the entire building had me wondering how this obscures people’s views from the windows but it sure looks cool. Inside the lobby, the “Louie Louie” sculpture is given a great amount of space, the whole lobby, minus the security apparatus, to be noticed and admired. The large windows on the ground floor allow light to be reflected back on the surface of the art work. I found this distracting because it doesn’t allow the color of the sculpture to be seen as well but it adds a dimension to the piece. It’s always going to look different. That sentiment was summed up in the title plaque that describes how artist Tim Bavington:

“assigned colors to spectrographic images of the music, and the resulting color combinations correspond to the song’s changing chords. Viewed from different angles and in shifting light throughout the day, the forms appear fluid and ever-changing.”

Seating for seven.

Another detail I appreciated was how the art reflected off the shiny floor, mirrored in swirls of color. I laughed to think about how there was seating arranged far from the art work with enough space between to take the whole thing in or not look at the sculpture at all. I had to wonder if people considered the artist’s methods, design and subject matter and if the art ever started discussions about the song itself.

Detail

The song has taken on a bit of a new life for me as I started this series of blog posts related to it. I never quite caught on to the “Louie Louie” resurgence in the ’80’s but after reading about the “Louie Louie” marathons at California college radio stations it now makes sense. I finally got around to visiting the building where the song was recorded. Next year I hope to write about the plaque being returned to one of its walls. I heard it had been stolen but was told when I visited the site that it was taken off for renovation work.

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The Louie, Louie Building sponsored by FedEx.

Mostly I like the idea of a bunch of guys bombing into a recording studio and being bum rushed into churning out a quick take of a song that became legendary. One Facebook responder didn’t think the guitar solo was raunchy enough and while that’s something to consider, the song was recorded in a way that created a delicate balance, anything done even in the slightest different way, another take or an overdub (if that technology even existed then), might have thrown off the whole recording. As Simmons described in his greatest rock moment post, the Kingsmen created a recording full of “magical quirks,” a phrase that relates to the possibilities that can still be found in Portland. Somehow it all seems subversive in a subtle way that a sculpture would be installed in a federal building  50 years after an Indiana Governor alerted the F.B.I. and started a rock and roll witch hunt of sorts over the song’s perceived explicit nature. I’ll take quirks anywhere I can find them even if it means taking my shoes off.

Next week’s topic will be Sign Additions. You’ll have to tune in to see what this is about. The following week we’ll be running the last of this year’s Louie Files series. We’re thinking it will be a first hand account of the Seaside riots.   

For sculpture information see:

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/07/the_kingsmens_infamously_innoc.html

Many thanks to Louielouie.net for their “greatest moment” write up:

http://www.louielouie.net/blog/?p=8424

Exotic Defacement

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When an official looking green sign caught my eye, I decided to walk the dog over and have a look. It was a public notice taped to a side wall of a of a dormant building, home to a small and former, nondescript auto repair shop. I thought notices were usually orange but this one, regarding a Marijuana Regulatory License, made its green color all the more appropriate. Finding out about another pot shop moving into the neighborhood is not the story here. The more the merrier, I guess. Even a marijuana dispensary taking over a potentially contaminated auto shop space is not reason enough to call the EPA. What would be the point?

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On my way over to read the public notice I took a picture of a poster on a utility pole. There were messages scrawled on it and a splash of red ink that looked like an anarchy symbol. It was getting dark when I photographed the poster so I didn’t look at the image until the next morning. That’s when I made the discovery: Someone had it out for the Exotic Ball.

Poster torn!

Poster torn!

I remembered that I had seen similar posters torn down. My theory was someone was defaming while someone else didn’t like the defamation or was offended by the poster. Assumptions flooded my mind while traveling by Max train and bus to work on a rainy morning. My questions were: Why take anything out on a poster? What has it done to anyone besides try to look foxy and do a bit of advertising? If you need a platform for your political message why use someone else’s sign? You don’t jack someone else’s poster. In the name of free speech people should be able to display ads without reprisal by those who might be offended. The best theory I’d considered revolved around a loner who couldn’t get a date to take to the Exotic Ball. It’s like an R rated Stalker/Cinderella plot. Someone type up that screenplay right away!

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Let’s consider this defamation. First there’s an awful lot of gobbledy gook obscuring the image of two ladies, with fantastic taste in foot wear, perhaps in a bathroom, an image of how wild things get even in the restrooms of the Exotic Ball. Then we see 666, I mean really if the devil doesn’t go to the Exotic Ball who the hell does? Or who admits to it, anyway? Also, I’m wondering about Hot Shot and Lord Pound.

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While riding home that day after work, I realized the poster had nothing to do with the Exotic Ball because it doesn’t exist. I had confused exotic with erotic, easy to do when the words are one letter different. This post is becoming one of those elderly hard of hearing jokes. It’s the Erotic Ball that’s held at varying times each year at the Crystal Ballroom. My assumption was that it’s held in February but there probably is already enough romance that month. I remember being at a Crystal Ballroom event and getting an unsolicited earful and an over informative report about the experiences of one participant. There was one specific clue from the poster that had me taking a long, slow fall from my jump to conclusions and embarrassing myself while dealing with the realization that I had just written my first piece of fake news.

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It hit me, the medium is the message. The interpretation is anyone’s guess. I can see Marshall McLuhan from that scene in the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall but now he’s talking directly to me. “You know nothing of my work,” he says.

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The women in the defaced poster were Exotic pinups from a magazine that’s distributed from various area strip clubs. I went from defending the Erotic Ball to dealing with something that became weird and possibly not in the realm of upbeat, positive Portland sanctioned weirdness. This was an attack on pin up photography which included prankish and juvenile Satanism. I characterize it that way because the easiest way to shock people is to reference Satan. I understood what made people want to tear it down. There’s a Satanism bias that occurs when people see the number 666. I tend to laugh these things off but there’s a disturbing element to all of this. A perfectly good Exotic pin up poster was trashed multiple times.

Reaping wind!

Reaping wind!

Now I have to ask myself, or maybe the world, a series of different questions that may never be answered. Who designs posters by scrawling over Exotic Pinup February 2017? What is the message? Who tore the posters off the other utility poles? Did the devil make anybody do any of this? What’s the point of including an illegible (uh oh, legible on another poster) email address? Who would I be emailing and what would be said? Something like: I’m an admirer of your illegible, satanic, insanity, perhaps? I have no answers at this time but I’m only half as confused as I was when I started this blog post.

Wall of Mirrors

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Bryant St. Bridge

The Bryant St. Bridge is a bike/walking path that crossses I-5. Most afternoons it’s encouraging to ride over it and look down on the freeway traffic jam below. The bridge fence curves to discourage people from leaping onto the highway.

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Not much else happens on the bridge but I did see a couple of Bernie Sanders supporters hanging a Bernie banner in the fencing. For whatever reason the sign was gone the next day.  There were also some traffic counters I spotted decked out in neon vests with each counter assigned a lane. It’s not a busy bridge besides the occasional pedestrian or fellow biker. So it makes sense to reflect on (yes, pun intended) these mirrors that hang from the gray sound barriers.

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I can’t remember when the public art display first appeared. My initial reaction was that the framed mirrors were too cutesy and juvenile in their primary color scheme of red, orange, green and yellow. I rode over the Bryant St. Bridge not too long ago and it hit me that I was dealing with a potential blog post. This meant I needed to consider the mirrors for longer than it took to ride past them. I want them to have some meaning more than being decoration but I’m not sure what it is. I have to admit they do break up the monotonous gray sound barrier walls. Some color, any color brings a bit of excitement to the drab exterior of the industrial wall color. I also realized the mirrors serve to allow me to see oncoming bike traffic around a blind curve while making my exit off the bridge.

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While the mirrors attract graffiti, they may in the long run focus vandals attention on a smaller target and keep them from trashing the hard to clean sound barrier stucco walls with spray paint.

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Grafitti on the mirror not on the wall!

Then there are the strange reflections that you may only experience if you stop and take pictures. If inclined, you can check your look in one of the multiple mirrors that dot the walls. But that’s probably not an incentive to stop a bike ride.

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Strange reflections indeed.

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