July, 2021
Street art, murals, and graffiti have given us the chance to feel so much more of a city; the ebb and flow of urban humanity expressed through a few cans of spray paint and the artist’s mind’s eye. We found the angst of the populous at Austin’s Hope Outdoor Gallery. We found Tucumcari’s addiction to heritage, and rage expressed at the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis. We found Phoenix trying to hide its street art away by “allowing” free artistic statement all along a single back alley in an upscale hipster neighborhood. We found wonderous gonzo works in Las Vegas’ art district. Every piece is an artist’s interpretative expression and impression of a City in a particular place in our Country at a particular point in that City’s timeline of life.
We do admire the classics found in sticks and bricks museums – the beauty, exquisite technique, and timelessness of the artist’s work impresses. But as with our street art friends, the subject, color and brush stroke used, and emotive power of the finished work remains an expression of a point in time in the artist’s world view; a motivation driving the artist’s creativity – that in turn is driven by how what is around him or her influences the work produced.
On a bright sunny day in Portland we found a downtown parking space central to our mission, unloaded our bikes, strapped on our helmets and started peddling ready to see what Portland’s contribution would be to our expanding collection of photographs – we were off to find a sampling of the murals of this City of neighborhoods, Portlandia citizens, parks, homeless encampments, industry, manufacturing, more homeless encampments, waterways and bridges, sporting teams, shopping, feasting and nightclubbing!
Some 10 miles or so later we felt we had covered the heart of Portland’s downtown and its street art…
About a mile or so from this last piece we stumbled across outdoor and indoor parking lots in service to a single office building. The richness of the artists’ work was astounding; a fabulous find in this urban setting.
Riding our bikes in pursuit of artistic creations gave us a chance to experience and (perhaps) absorb the energy of the neighborhoods – upscale blending into a warehouse district blending into the edge of a “tent town” of the homeless blends into retail blends into apartments and houses and condos.
Imagine a dozen or so neighborhoods contributing to Portland’s outdoor museum of street art, murals, and graffiti, and realize that Barbara and Brian touched only 1. Downtown seems to be eclectic enough – vibrant colors, creatures formed by the imagination and fantasy, a world of cartoons, a hint of protest and a little whimsy, and a good smattering of reality.
Just what one would expect to see on a sunny day in a typical city. Got a favorite?
Barbara and Brian
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.“ – Henry David Thoreau
Aimless Wanderings 
HOLY MOLY! I love it! I always so enjoy all of your street art finds, and WOW! There are so many here. It’s so engaging. I enjoyed them all, but “art fills the void” was so powerful for me – just the idea of a reference so enormous, like literally such a big physical size! During spirit week this year at Marty’s school, one of the daily prompts was to come dressed as an album cover. Marty wore a white shirt, on which I put an Andy Warhol signature (my best approximation, in any case), and we used a thin string to tie to two ends of a banana that she wore around her neck all day — in replication of the Velvet Underground album cover.
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Such beautiful colors. PUBLISH❣️
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Barbara sez: “art is everywhere…art IS,,,art is art. I’m so happy Marty’s school embraces the whole notion of making art more a part of every single day, making it a prominent feature of her everyday school experience.” (there was more, but my sausage fingers couldn’t keep up so please fill in the blanks of support and compliments) And from me – how many of Marty’s generation will remember the Velvet Underground. Love your references… Lou Reed abides!
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People frequently call Marty an “old soul.” I guess they’re not wrong. Like her parents, her musical interests are eclectic!
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