Murals around Portland, Forest for the Trees NW, seen on Sunday, August 31, my mural find #2

Forest for the Trees, August 18 through 23, is a not-for-profit public mural project in Portland, Oregon. (Seen on their Web site.)



The second mural I located while out and about in my Zipcar Kia Soul, named Greer. Artist: Paige Wright of Portland, Oregon. Location: 2306 SE Morrison St. On her Web site:

There is a place where we lose ourselves. Some people call it a happy place or spiritual experience or meditation. I find that place within the studio. Human beings need a balance between the physical and the mental. The studio is where there is no hierarchy between movement and thought; one has to think to move and move to think.

Ceramics is a tool I use to investigate identity. Process becomes a metaphor for understanding. There is a filtration of information between what I look at and what is produced out of my hands. The marks and movements recorded in the clay become my thoughts.

I make portraits to analyze memories and understand myself. The act of Portraiture is like how we keep people; particular parts come together to construct a whole. A person’s specific features have to be described or just a vague human is created. By spending time rendering my relations I reflect on human framework and genealogy. Solidifying faces in the ceramic process I suspend the character creating placeholders and monuments that capture ephemeral memories.



The part of the mural that is ceramic, this face as a three dimensional portrait.



Zippers suspended from puffy white clouds. Rays of sun coming from the ceramic head included in the mural.



Another close-up of a part of the mural. The hands fascinate me, with their long arms dangling from more puffy white clouds. Plus, those short zippers in the other cloud. If you'll notice in the previous photo, much longer zippers dangle from another white cloud.



More from FFTT Web site: Forest for the Trees is a not-for-profit public mural project in Portland, Oregon. The mural project promotes public visual expression; collaboration; and community engagement with contemporary art and the creative process. In August 2013, FFTT united seventeen artists from around the world to paint ten Portland murals.

This August, twenty local and international artists will come together for a week in Portland to paint more than a dozen pieces on public walls. FFTT aims to bring opportunity for local and visiting artists, and to share their gifts on a large public scale in Portland—a city already known as a creative hub and home to many talented artists.