openings

While I'm finishing up a few new pieces to show you from my Beauty of Life show,  I thought I'd do a short piece about the place where it will soon live: the Portland Building Installation Space. This tiny venue has been lovingly attended to by the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) for the past 16 years. For many years, it was one of the very few places to only show installation work in Portland and it continues to be one of the city's hidden art gems to see work by emerging and established regional artists. The image here is from a 2009 project by Nickolus Meisel.

The installation space is in the downstairs lobby of the Portland Building, where the city keeps its municipal bureaus and departments such as: Environmental Services, Human Resources, Management and Finance, Parks and Recreation, Risk Management, Technology Services, Office of Transportation, and the Portland Water Bureau. It was designed by Michael Graves in the early 1980's and remains controversial to this day with its colorful postmodern facade, and the pronounced lack of natural light for those who use it on a daily basis.

Above the front entrance sits Portlandia, designed by Raymond Kaskey.  This huge bronze amazon has become one of the city's icons. It also happens to be the second largest copper repoussé statue in the United States after the Statue of Liberty.

RACC supports eight shows a year in this space. The building is open to the public from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and staffed by security around the clock, seven days a week. I love this space because it's mostly seen by city workers and those who need to use their services.  Anyone is welcome to enter the building during their operating hours and see the exhibitions. I was lucky enough to snag a spot once before, in 2004, where I premiered my Vertical Garden.  (Faithful blog readers may remember that I found a permanent home for it last year!) RACC has a great online archive of the over 100 shows that have been in this space that you can see by clicking here.

There's no opening or closing events for shows in the Portland Building Installation Space, so I decided to host an open studio event all day on Saturday, September 11th and show this project in progress. Please click here to see my website's calendar for hours and location.  I haven't ever had an open studio presentation to the public before, so I'm curious to see how that goes. It's also the 100th birthday for my house, so I figured a ritual gathering of some sort was in order. I hope to see you there!