Perhaps, a Memorial

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This face, giving off vibes of manga, are on the door side of the storage container that has Barney Rubble on:

This face is enigmatic and somewhat forlorn. It floats in a cloudy sky. The look on the face is passing a vague despair. The ear gauge is peace sign; the caption forever speaks of wishes and memory. And there's a halo up there in the upper right corner.

A memorial, perhaps? A forlorn wish for a better world? Both ... or some other deeper meaning? 

This Is Not The Barney You're Looking For

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Stark Street is a great source of street art. You have to know where to find it though.

The intersection of 162nd and SE Stark St sits at the place where Portland leaves off and Gresham picks up. There's a shopping center there, Village Square, which is a vintage edge-of-town suburban shopping center built back when this was the edge of town and suburban.

At the corner is a 76 Station, and alongside that station is a container used as storage. It has be gloriously decorated with joie de vivre. And a Flintstone character.

It's a little bit of a surprise, actually. You think Barney and what comes to mind is a purple dinosaur which used to be ubiqutious on public television, not the second banana to Fred Flintstone.

So, for letting ol' Barney Rubble be the star of the show/ Nothing but respect here from me. Actually, I liked the character of Barney better than Fred. He seemed to be a little bit smarter, in his way. 

The Height of the Eastside Street Art Renaissance, feat. Suspish

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Last August, the brief renaissance of outer east Portlandia street art hit something of a zenith, most of it on the west wall of the building that the Portland Police Bureau's Sunshine Division - which is the PPB's charity public engagement arm - which is located just east of SE 122nd Ave on Stark St.

The west wall has no windows and faces onto the north parking lot of what was once was the Fabric Depot store, and is without a doubt, a honeypot no tagger can resist for long. So, when Suspish showed up on the east side again (the second appearance by the Eugene artist) it was plain that something was going to happen.

So: dateline, east of 122nd on Stark, August, 2023. We have this:

Now, I'm not necessarily a fan of graffiti either, and if you do it in Portland, in some areas, you take your life into your hands. So, if you're going to bring it, bring it memorably. Make it good, make it skillful, make it art. And our various artists who gave us this gallery-in-passing did just that.

First thing, we have on the far left here, is this:

... a big ol' blue-white-black tag, something of a signature, with FOE, East, and '23 and 2023 in various places. This took a little care and design forethought and engages the eye nicely.

Next we have ...

... another appearance from our friend Suspish. The Suspish fish is obvious; the abstract Cylopean face colored in a dusky mustard yellow is also Suspish's work, I believe. 

The mouse is some other artist's work, a johnny-come-lately to the gallery and while inspired and whimsical doesn't quite show the skill that Suspish and this next artist shows.

Speaking of the next artist, here we are:

The original work in this gallery, which I think I've posted about when it first showed up. These two were the first on the building a few months before, and the creativity and artistic skill here still delight my eye. To the credit of the Sunshine Division, they let this stand for a number of months before covering it over, and a lot of us eastbound Stark Street drivers got to enjoy them. 

I particularly adore the intensity of the dude with the spray cans. Chef's kiss here for that.

Again, the signature EAST FOE can be seen by the ear of the figure with the spray cans, so I think it was the same artist that did the big tag on the far left.

To close our gallery tour, this:

SWOOP. Another boi with a hat, and signed again, apparently, by FOE. 

The building has since been painted, and the west wall of the Sunshine Division's building hs returned to that industrial vaguely-oatmealy color. Graffiti - street art - has an expiration date. No matter how skillful it is, it's designed to leave us, as the property owner always has the last word.

Most of it is just lazy marks, but some of it, sometimes, gets really elevated. I hope Suspish comes up this way again eventually, and another visit or two from F.O.E. would not be amiss. 

They brought their A game here, and I was, curiously, happy to see it. 

More New Suspish on Stark Street, or, It Comes From Eugene

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When I saw SUSPISH on the back of the PPD Sunshine Division building on SE Stark just east of 122nd, I was delighted. I love the style of this artist and remembered, as I pointed out here, that we've seen them before.

But there's more delightfulness ... they've returned to the original building we first saw them on. 14410 SE Stark is a kind of a warehous-ey building that at one time, more than a decade ago, held a Hotel/Motel Furniture Liquidators. It closed around a decade ago and has stood vacant ever since. Now, the first time we saw Suspish, it was on the east wall of the building, the one that faces the Franz Bread Thrift Store next door. It was painted over in due time.

Now, it's on the buildings facade:

This differs from the other Suspish, in that we have the angler-fish catching its prey but, moreover, it's more or less the same as the first Suspish that appeared in April 2021, which I include here for comparison:

The addition of sparkles in the first image gives it a little more visual delight.

But there's more. That nifty web thing, the hashtag, accidentally showed me that Suspish isn't just a couple of fun graffiti on the outer east side of Portland. 

Suspish is a Eugene thing. perhaps come to visit, to stop by and leave something in a Banksy-esque way. Eugene Weekly spoke with The Artist back on 2022. They're something of a street-art city mascot down that way. 

How The West Was Won On South Harbor Place

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More color at Riverplace. A bit of Western colonization myth.

Just after you leave Harbor Drive on S Montgomery St there, immediately, is a short frontage street called (unsurprisingly) S Harbor Pl. Turn right on that and go to the cul-de-sac at the end, and look left. 

A cartoon mural. Yippie-ki-yi-yay, if you follow.

It looks all Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, with a dash of ELO's "Wild West Hero" thrown in, and laid out in a comic book. 

Equally topical is the tent, but for different reasons.

Street Art, NE 82nd and Couch

3700At 103 NE 82nd Avenue, corner Couch, in Portland, there is a building which once housed a Vietnamese tofu restaurant.

And on that building is some of the most exquisite street art I've seen in many a day.

The work, attributed to IWS Crew is both trippy and sinister. For example, on the south end of the building, well ... I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to know what that tree is on, but I'm sure a lot of people want to have them some. Especially because it apparently allows you to communicate with extraterrestrials.

Meanwhile, the centerpiece of the work apparently is some sort of cautionary tale about being too habituated to being logged in.

Either way, the whole thing is well-done, and looks as though it was commissioned at some point. After the restaurant closed, some local posers added their own touches ... not one of them looking too professional next to IWS Crew's work.

[PDX] Scenes From A Street Fair: Hawthorne Blvd, 2014

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This last Sunday we sojourned over to the other side of the mountain (Mt. Tabor, that is), and went from our part of Hawthorne Blvd to the fashionable part of Hawthorne Blvd to see the people there.

Hawthorne Street Fair 2014 was happening this hot August day, and The Wife™ really wanted to go; me, I tend to stay away from human contact, having figured that, at this point, I've met all the people I need to. But, my love loves going out to these things … there are few things more quintessentially Portland than this … and I realize that she has the right of such things, as not being out in the world isn't really an option if one fancies themselves an artist.

And, besides, I haven't taken Photos on Sunday in a few weeks. That investment in time paid off, as follows in the scenes; one of the delights of curating one of these postings is I get to look at all the photos, re-experience the reality as the memory wells up. Coincidentally, it's one of the burdens as well – I end up sorting through so many pictures I get lost in selecting the ones that tell the story I want to tell.

The story is really the people and the surroundings. Now, mind, I'm not bagging on it, but the Hawthorne Street Fair is, at its nut, a bunch of people coming out to sell you things. I'm not criticizing it, here, but it is what it is.

That said, there's nothing wrong at all with it, it's got a bunch of great stuff and, in the Portland DIY tradition, all the best. We bought artisan soap from an entrepreneur who sold Scrumptious Suds (here's her website, and here's her Etsy shop). We stumbled upon a quite wonderful thing, a soap made with Ninkasi Oatis Oatmeal Stout, which smells a lot better than you'd think it did … warm, embracing, as The Wife™ said (I paraphrase) like a crisp autumn evening when the neighbors  have just stoked their fireplace, all that in the good way.

The old city-neighborhood feel of Hawthorne is endlessly enticing. Businesses have changed over the years … that Blue Star Doughnut shop, whose sign is just behind the telephone pole in the center of the picture there, used to be a Chinese food joint of some 30 years standing … but everything seems just as inviting as the first time, years ago, me and Wife got down Hawthorne and realized that These Were Our People-ish.

The merchants along Hawthorne in that area had stalls out in the street. The above display was apparently being marketed by the owner of the Potala import shop in the building directly opposite. I particularly loved that big glyph over the display of Tibetan impedimenta below.

As I've always said, you can always find your Om on Hawthorne.

The Peterson Building

The theme of the day is people and surroundings; this building has always delighted the eye. The Peterson Building, 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd, just bursts with imaginative potential. That little niche balcony up there. The two bay-windows toward the building's corner (don't they just make you think of hard-boiled PI's offices?). The hand-painted sign over the main entry to the upper floor there. The individually-painted shop facades. Made my point here, I think.

Again, the people. If those two old lovers aren't as Portland as anything, then nothing is.

One of the merchants on the street. I found her quite beautiful in absolute terms.

Oh, the ubiquty … one of our legendary food carts. I have never met a fried egg I didn't enjoy, so I dug this name for a long time before I found out it was a pun on the title of one of the Cure's most popular songs. But then I never was big on the Cure. Just the way I roll there.

Whatever that old, rusted sign with the light-studded arrow (or it would be, if any power was going to it) ever held, I don't know. But it suggests so many stories.

Tall bikes are a thing here locally, and I saw a couple. This one …

… looked fairly adventurous, and I was duly impressed. But I was really blown away by this one…

… with a fellow Portlander alongside for scale. Seriously, look at that rig! It  has stairs on it. 

I'm not sure what this mute duo's act was, whether they were trying to sell something or just to perform. That costume must have been murder in the heat though … at least as it was beautiful to look at.

They were absolutely quiet. No words.

The beats were as heavy as the pavement was hot:

And it caused not a little bit of dancing.

This dancer, as you can see, she owned that beat.

The Bread and Ink Cafe,  SE 36th and Hawthorne, started out as the original location of the Hawthorne Fred Meyer store (as photos I've seen depict, but none I can find right now).

Diners can now enjoy meals as well as draw on the tablecloths.

Of course, being Hawthorne and being Portland, there's other drawin's and art …

And, again, the surroundings: the building the Bagdad Theater's in has always been pleasant to the eye. Massive and sculpted.

I have a few more photos that I may share in subsequent postings.

But what I'll remember? Tiring … but a good tired. Glad I went. 

[art] New Books in the Studio

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Just in, these little gems:

The one on the left, The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield, is actually one we've had for a while. It helped me when I kickstarted my notional graphic design career (which remained notional; perhaps I left some ingredients out, I don't know … I'm going over those issues now) and it's a book full of good, as anyone who has ever read it will tell you.

The one on the right is the new one. I'm just taking that one up now. Turning Pro is designed as, at least visually, not a sequel, but an extension to War, I can tell this by flipping through and reading passages here and there. This is a good thing. Because, for me, getting inspired is one thing. I muff it up magnificently betimes, but getting started isn't really the problem, keeping going is the problem. I lose focus very easily.

I could say more about that but I realized I just came up about as far as I've ever really explored that subject. I knew I've received great gifts, both real and talent-wise, my problem has always been I don't know how to use them and where to take them. Mayhap this is my next stop.

In the meantime, I'm glad that Pressfield is extending the train of thought. For those of us who can catch the ball and run with it, War is a great book and everything it's cracked up to be. For those, such as myself, who can catch the ball but are promptly bewildered by how to run with it and immediately get sidetracked by some bright, shiny thing (in that I behave much as my cats do) this book (noting Pressfield's previous style) may be just the thing. I'll be exploring this in posts to come.

Next one: Urban sketching seems to be evolving as a social activity and distinct thing-to-do. I've picked up and put down this volume many times in bookstores, but I've finally been able to bring it home:

The Art of Urban Sketching, by Gabriel Campanaro, documents the group phenomenon via sketches from several cities in which this easy-to-join club has 'chapters'. Sadly, despite the wonderful Portland skyline in the bottom of the book's cover, my artist-heavy hometown is not one of them. But the stuff that is in there is so wonderful, so expressive and passionate, that I can't help but drink as much of it in as I can.

Nobody ever draws Portland's Outer East, and 122nd Avenue. Maybe that's my place. In the meantime, I'll be consuming it most deliciously.

Even Roadside Traffic Cone Monsters Need A Lift Sometimes

2101.(via ArtBistro) You don't see this sort of fellow thumbing a ride every day:

Original photo by Joseph Carnevale

North Carolina State University student Joseph Carnevale just kind of had the idea in class one morning. He's a history major who also works construction, so when the idea of nicking a few construction cones and making this awesome Cone Monster out of it just kind of sprung on him, it wouldn't go away.

So he kyped the cones, did some major reconstructive surgery, and executed the hack.

The police may or may not know art, but they know what they don't like: he was charged with misdemeanors over it. But the peoples like it; not only does he have an outpouring of public support hoping to get the charges dropped, but the construction company wants him to create a replica of the figure (which the police, being utter dilettantes, dismantled).

Ah, well, de gustibus non disputandum est, as they say.

Technorati Tags: street art, guerilla art, Joseph Carnevale