A Gualba s'hi arriba per Granollers i Sant Celoni, per l'autopista AP7. Està a la vessant sur del Montseny i el seu terme municipal està dividit en dues parts, dalt i baix. Gualba de Dalt, a la part de muntanya, concentra tots els atractius turístics. El principal són els boscos i, especialment, la riera de Gualba. Aquest és un espai magnífic, amb molta vegetació, de moltes espècies diferents, i un riu amb gorgs apte pel bany. El millor accés a la riera és per l'interior del parc del RACC. Aquest parc te tots els serveis que pogueu desitjar: piscines, bar, restaurant...  Seguint el camí, què és un itinerari de natura molt ben marcat i senyalitzat, es pot arribar a diferents saltants d'aigua, un d'ells el de la Goja, a la foto. En resum un dia, o un mati o tarda, en contacte amb la natura més asequible, del Montseny més rialler, una caminada apte per a tots els públics, amb possibilitat de bany en un riuet. Podeu oferir més a la canalla?

A Gualba se llega por Granollers y Sant Celoni, por la autopista AP7. Está en la vertiente sur del Montseny y su término municipal está dividido en dos partes, arriba y abajo. Gualba de Dalt, en la parte de montaña, concentra todos los atractivos turísticos. El principal son los bosques y, especialmente, la riera de Gualba. Este es un espacio magnífico, con mucha vegetación, de muchas especies diferentes, y un río apto para el baño. El mejor acceso a la riera es por el interior del parque del RACC. Este parque tiene todos los servicios que podais desear: piscinas, bar, restaurante... Siguiendo el camino, qué es un itinerario de naturaleza muy bien marcado y señalizado, se puede llegar hasta diferentes cascadas de agua, una de ellas el de la Goja, en la foto. En resumen un día, o una mañana o tarde, en contacto con la naturaleza más asequible, la del Montseny más risueño, un caminata apta para todos los públicos, con posibilidad de baño en un riachuelo. ¿Podéis ofrecer más a vuestros niños y niñas?

• font: vídeo aficionats de youtube

Debido a que es uno de los circuitos más utilizados para los ensayos de los diferentes equipos de Fórmula 1, la gran mayoría de los pilotos está muy familiarizados con el mismo.

El Circuito de Cataluña es una instalación pública, cuya titularidad pertenece a la Generalidad de Cataluña. Está gestionado por el Reial Automòbil Club de Catalunya (RACC).

El circuito ha sufrido una pequeña remodelación a principios de 2007, al introducirse una chicane en la curva del estadio, reduciendo la velocidad de esa curva. La escapatoria de esa chicane es de asfalto, a diferencia de las típicas escapatorias de grava, y han instalado un sistema nuevo de absorción de impactos, que aseguran la integridad del piloto hasta velocidades de 200 km/h.

De su trazado destaca la larga recta de meta de más de 1 km de longitud. El resto del circuito combina curvas y contracurvas rápidas con horquillas y una recta.

En el año 2007 se estrenó una nueva chicane situada entre la penúltima y ante-penúltima curva antes de entrar en la recta principal.

It's found a new place to hang, the second floor of the Multnomah County Central Library.

The reasons I love the Central Library are too many to ever count. But it's getting a bit tight for easy use, serving too many functions in too small of a space. Albert Doyle made an elegant structure in 1913, which was considerably improved upon by a major renovation in eleven years ago.

But I recently visited Rem Koolhaus' library in downtown Seattle, which should be the foremost destination for visitors. The building is a tremendous gong-bang for city planners, for bookworms, and for library planners. It serves a hundred functions at once.

Notably, the smell and grime of wet, sick humans was absent. It was a fine, clear spring day in Seattle, but easily half of the city's chronic homeless were inside, burrowing into books or taking naps. But at over 360,000 square feet, everyone had sufficient space to stretch out and feel comfortable.

The Multnomah County collection is of better quality (not larger, Seattle is 2.4 million compared to about 2 million). Our patrons are nicer, circulation is higher, and our library is probably the county's most laudable act. Nobody's going to give Ted Wheeler and company more money to put people in jail, but a bond measure to build a world class downtown library would win easily.

Vam anar al Montseny, a Gualba. La zona de barbacoa/calçotada és del RACC. Si ho ets sortia molt barat o de franc i si no ho ets et surt per 12€ (per cotxe), crec.

El club ha vendido 1.874 entradas para el compromiso entre el Celtic-Barça de Liga de Campeones en el Celtic Park. Un total de 442 aficionados viajarán el mismo día del partido con los tres vuelos directos a Glasgow, ofertados por el RACC, la agencia del FC Barcelona.

El mismo miércoles, en el primer vuelo de las 9.00 de la mañana saldrán 148 personas; en el segundo, a las 10.00 h., 185 y en el tercer vuelo – vuelo organizado a posteriori por la demanda de plazas-, a las 9.30 h. de la mañana, viajarán 109 barcelonistas. En los tres casos, los aficionados volverán cuando se acabe el compromiso.

También con el equipo

Aparte del desplazamiento de este miércoles, 77 seguidores más viajarán un día antes, con el avión del primer equipo del FC Barcelona. Por lo tanto, la cifra de aficionados que viajan con el RACC se elevará, entre los tres vuelos y el vuelo del equipo, a 519 aficionados.

Teniendo en cuenta que el FC Barcelona ha vendido un total de 1.874 entradas, hay más de 1.300 aficionados azulgranas que se desplazarán por su cuenta hasta Glasgow.

El RACC, la agencia oficial del FC Barcelona, ha organizado un tercer vuelo a Glasgow para vivir el Celtic-Barça del próximo miércoles 20 de febrero. Y es que después de haber cubierto las 330 plazas de los dos aviones previstos para asistir a este decisivo partido de ida, los seguidores azulgranas disponen de más plazas para apoyar a los de Rijkaard.

Esta nueva oferta de un tercer avión con disponibilidad para 135 plazas, mantiene el precio de 373 euros de los vuelos anteriores para los socios del Barça y del RACC (el precio es de 415 euros para los no socios).

Ida y vuelta, el mismo día

Los seguidores que viajen en este tercer vuelo tendrán que presentarse a las 07.30 horas a la terminal B del aeropuerto de Barcelona, para despegar a las 09.00h con destino a Glasgow y desde el aeropuerto escocés se trasladarán al centro de la ciudad. A las 17.30h saldrán con un autocar especial desde el punto de encuentro para ir al estadio del Celtic. Una vez finalizado el partido, el mismo autocar los trasladará al aeropuerto para coger el vuelo de vuelta en Barcelona.

El próximo 20 de febrero, el Barça se enfrentará al Celtic, en el Celtic Park de Glasgow. Como consecuencia de que no todos los socios solicitantes de las entradas para el encuentro de Liga de Campeones Celtic-Barça ejercieron su derecho de compra, a partir de hoy, 4 de febrero, a las 9 h de la mañana se pondrán a la venta para los socios y el público las 200 entradas que han sobrado de este proceso. Las entradas, que tienen un precio de 61€, se pueden adquirir en las taquillas del FC Barcelona con horario de lunes a jueves de 9 a 13.30 y de 15.30 a 18 horas y viernes de 9 a 14.30 horas, hasta que se agote la disponibilidad.

Debido a la normativa UEFA, en el momento de hacer la compra de las entradas el público se deberá identificar con el DNI o el pasaporte. Los socios o público podrán comprar hasta dos entradas por persona.

El viaje con el RACC

Ya se han llenado dos vuelos con socios y se ha abierto un tercero debido a la alta demanda y para facilitar que todos los socios puedan desplazarse a Glasgow.

A pesar de que hay vuelos directos a Glasgow, el desplazamiento para ver el partido entre el Celtic y el FC Barcelona no es sencillo debido al horario del partido y la combinación con el horario de algunas compañías aéreas. El RACC Agencia de Viajes ha diseñado un viaje para socios y aficionados del FC Barcelona que permite volar el mismo día del partido a Glasgow y que incluye el transporte en la ciudad y al estadio y la vuelta una vez acabado el enfrentamiento. Es, sin duda, la opción más cómoda para asistir a este partido, y a un precio muy competitivo. Los socios gozan de un 10% de descuento en este viaje, con un precio final de 373€ para socios y de 413€ para el público. Podéis reservar vuestra plaza en cualquier oficina del RACC Agencia de Viajes.

El RACC, de acuerdo con su vocación social de fomentar la seguridad y reducir la siniestralidad en las carreteras, ha participado por tercer año consecutivo en un estudio sobre el nivel de seguridad de 50 tramos de carreteras europeas en obras. El objetivo final de este trabajo es aportar un instrumento más en la evaluación de la seguridad y fomentar el intercambio de ideas y experiencias entre los diferentes países europeos.

El estudio, que evalúa el montaje y señalización de obras, ha analizado este año las obras de 11 países europeos. 2 zonas obtuvieron la calificación de “muy insatisfactorio”; 11 zonas “insatisfactorio”; 16 “aceptable”, 18 “satisfactorio” y 3 “muy satisfactorio”. La obra mejor valorada ha sido la ubicada en la A1 Austria (Linz-Viena), mientras que la menos valorada fue la de la CM42 (Madridejos-Toledo).

Fuente: Nota de Prensa de RACC

+ info

Estudio RACC (Eurotest), Obras de Carretera 2007. Estudio Completo (PDF, 575 KB)

Technorati Tags:ingenieria, racc, eurotest, 2007, madridejos, muy, insatisfactorio, cm42, carretera

Learn more about David Fitzgerald by reading Redemption Man, from The Oregonian, June 2005.

It's not a threat. It's a powerful truth which can only be shared by select individuals, bound by trust and experience, and in this circumstance by addiction.

Brian Lindstrom has been interested in addiction for twenty years. After attending Syracuse and making an excellent match with Cheryl Strayed, Brian returned home to Portland to toil for the NW Film Center and various nonprofits, making the rough Kicking in 2002, and now Finding Normal.

Finding Normal plays July 24 - August 2 at Cinema 21. I am anxious to see it.

The film is about the solution to addiction - which has been available on a very limited scale in the parking lots of Narcotics Anonymous meetings and now at semi-pro scale through Central City Concern, one of the nation's most innovative addiction treatment organizations.

There are two parts to the solution; the first part is that being in the presence of recovering addicts is essential for people for whom "normal" has evaporated; the second is that for the addict every person, place and thing must change to get well. Everything. The alternative is foretold and quite real: jails, institutions and death. The difficult challenging change is called, "Finding Normal."

Jill Kahnert is the hero here. It's rare to see an angel at work. She's tough, streetwise and no saint. Saving lives is her business and she is all business. And the vast structure of Central City Concern makes this possible with a variety of integrated programs, from detox to permanent housing.

Lies are commonly told about addiction and treatment. A blood transfusion, or a posh beach front treatment center, a state-certified counselor, a pill or a prayer. All lies. It's quite a bit harder than that.

Read the research - Addictions Recovery Mentor Program Report, from January 2001

Results? Very simply, the mentor program improves program engagement from 51% to 86%, and program completion from 16% to 45%.

But Portland - and the insipid Multnomah County Mental Health and Addiction Services Division - largely ignored careful research on the CCC Mentor Program, it's merits and success. Why isn't CCC completely funded? Good question - ask Ted Wheeler, who tried to squash an essential feature of this vital program - Hooper Detox.

Film review by Shawn Levy of The Oregonian
Finding life after detox - by Inara Verzemnieks

Leaders speak out – publicly and actively on behalf of the arts, to build audiences, to entice students, to steward public funding through governmental budgeting. They write letters to public officials and opinion pieces in local papers. They volunteer to speak on behalf of their organization in public meetings. They share their experience and prudence to counterbalance the natural enthusiasm of trained and paid staff.

Leaders provide support – which means cash and never means hugs. A mature board should raise 10% of the budget with a give or get off policy enforced by the board president.

If you’re on the board of an arts organization more than five years old or with a budget of over $250,000 and you’re not actively involved in speaking out and raising cash, you’re wasting space and time. Consider stepping down now and allowing someone with more vigor, time or courage to step forward.

Wait a second! you executive director-types say, arts-savvy board members with cash and connections don't just grow on trees on this castaway island we call Portland! Yes they do - if you're a smart hunter-gatherer, you can find them prepped and ready for harvesting!

Here is a incomplete list of board chairs and presidents of Portland arts organizations, and for some, the all important Charity Navigator rating.

(Who in Oregon gets the bottom ONE STAR [or POOR] rating? Doernbecher, Friends of the Trees, OPB, OMSI, Raphael House, Tucker-Maxon Oral School, William Temple House & Young Audiences all do - take your donations elsewhere until these rate at least four stars.)

Oregon Ballet - John M. Bernard, chair of the board. John is a senior vice president at Standard Insurance. Charity Navigator, a uniformly cruel and accurate measurement of nonprofits, rates the Oregon Ballet with TWO STARS- NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.

Oregon Arts Commission - Cynthia Addams, chair of the commission. She is director of programs for the Collins Foundation. OAC is funded through the state of Oregon.

Oregon Children’s Theatre - Mark Wilcox, chair of the board. I have no idea who this person is.

Regional Arts and Cultural Commission – Mary Edmeades, chair of the board. Mary is vice president of Operations for Albina Community Bank. RACC just published an excellent annual report. RACC is funded from a variety of governmental sources.

Portland Art Museum - Marty Brantley, chair of the board. Marty is former chief of the OECDD, which oversees the Oregon Arts Commission. He toiled as president of KPTV, and is former chair of the Portland Development Commission. Charity Navigator gives the Portland Art Museum THREE STARS - GOOD (measured prior to John and Lucy splitting town).

Young Audiences of Oregon & SW Washington - Jan Robertson is president of the board. Jan is also CFO for property managers Norris Beggs & Simpson. Charity Navigator gives Young Audiences ONE STAR - POOR.

Portland Opera - Jeff Evershed is president of the board. He's a VP at M&T Banks, yet somehow lives in Lake Oswego (perhaps he's the forefront of a colonizing hoard), and he's a Mitt Romney man.

Artist Repertory Theatre - Kirsten Leonard is chair of the board. She's a project manager for Carpe Diem Books, a tabletop publisher here in Portland.

Portland Center Stage - Donna R. Huntsman, chair of the board. Donna is a senior vice president at Key Private Bank.

Chamber Music NW – Peter Livingston (see right) is the president of the board and also an attorney with Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt (and a degree in musicology from Chicago!) Charity Navigator gives Chamber Music NW FOUR STARS - EXCEPTIONAL.

Oregon Symphony is two organizations, the Oregon Symphony Association, which is chaired by Walter Weyler, former owner of Kinetics and a cancer survivor, and the Oregon Symphony Foundation, which is chaired by Jack Wilborn, who has run the KPMG office in Portland since 1996. Charity Navigator gives the Oregon Symphony TWO STARS - NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.

(A pro secret - Google ads with arts-oriented keywords pay a very low rate - about $.01 per 500 hits. Very generous for an advertiser to pay more than double this rate.)

Tyler Green rules the art blog world with Modern Art Notes, a subset of Arts Journal, where he catalogs both the happening and the historical from an insider sensibility.

That Ain't Art - Four Seattlite artists post their findings from the web with brief commentary.

RACC's Jeff Hawthorne has Culture Shock, a mix of personal and professional with good pics and recent applause for Henk Pander's recent fellowship award and comments on the Chinese dragon controversy.

As per usual, Eva Lake is morphing into something new, and shows it in Eva Lake, a branch (I think) of the LoveLake site. Eva is a artist, artist-watcher, curator, and not shy with opinions rooted in skepticism and experience. Eva blogs in the original sense of the tool, a personal journal written for the world to see.

NEWSgrist - where spin is art - tracks the intersection of art and pop political culture; always readable and often provocative. New York-centric; long blogroll of peers.

The Anonymous Militant Art Bitch can probably source actual numbers, but the majority of lauded gallery reviews still go to men; from the legalization of the pill to Bikini Kill we held the revolution and women progressed - but not to equality. This site also wins an award for huge numbers of comments without always succumbing to analogies to Nazis, defying Godwin's Law.

T J Norris used the crippled Oregon Live blog tool for a while, but has converted to T J Norris | Blog, a very nice format for showing his work and commenting on local events and shows.

ArtDaily.org has something like a blog but more of an aggregator (a site of sites - like Boing Boing for pop culture or Hypemedia for mp3 culture, but combines press release material from museum openings worldwide with great photo galleries.

The Intrepid Art Collector perhaps started as a book promotion, but has advanced to announcements and trend-spotting: well written and professional within the constraints of Blogger. I have the book around here somewhere and will read it eventually.

More proudly provincial than even this blog, PORT is a mix of opinions, but dominated by Jeff Jahn. The editorial is mostly about Portland gallery shows, but seems aimed at acquiring advertising and not differentiating. Who's the audience?

In the mid-1990s, The Oregonian made a terrible business decision (or Advance Publications did - hard to sort that one out) to build an enormous and complex telephone system whereby you could call and listen to someone read movie reviews or Steve Duin. A boring business bust, they hung on tenaciously for a decade too long. Their swagger is maintained with Oregon Live Blogs, a hodge-podge of squibs and duds, some updated regularly, some randomly, some not at all. Within this context Visual Arts writer D K Row has launched his blog, now with comments. It could be good, but will it be read?

Abi Spring curates A-Blog, a portion of her artist site, with comments about arts-goings-on and her current work. She has a good eye - example, post on Christine Wallers & Steve Peters.

Is clothing design art? If so, UltraPDX does a good job mixing some Portland stylists with international trends. They keep up a good pace and the style-on-the-street photos are good.

Is architecture art? If so, Brian Libby's thoughtful and researched Portland Architecture gives another sort of tour of the town. For a city so purposefully platted, never bombed or burned, never broke or seriously corrupt, Brian shows an inventory of interesting buildings, spaces and conversation about the museum we live inside of.

A blog / news site way out of town which all should be watching is from the blog from the Your Gallery section of Saatchi site. Jpegs can defeat time and space and the persecution of yokels. It can be done.

Other current non-art favs

Extra bonus points if you can name the artist - or the model.

Or check back for the answer tomorrow.

Hint - The artist also memorialized Alan Berg! (of course it's in Portland.)

NOT ANSWERED - Those sturdy Fiskar's are in the hand of a statue of Carolyn Marks-Bax, a neighbor of Holladay Park, at NE 11th Avenue & Holladay Street, adjacent to Lloyd Center and the MAX line.

Marks-Bax is a former neighborhood organizer, aide to former County Commissioner Sharron Kelley, and organizer of the Sullivan's Gulch Blackberry Festival - all of which don't appear to be operative.

The gardener's hand is attached to a life size bronze statue, A Neighborhood Gardner of Marks-Bax, who I assume defines the prototypical Portland rose trimmer. The statue is one of three, a vase of bronze flowers, Flowers from a Neighborhood Garden, and a geometric structure which contains a batch of domestic elements, a toy house, a bagel, a hand shovel, called Isolated Molecule for a Good Neighborhood.

The artist is Tad Savinar, a fellow with a complicated resume and wide interests + curiosity.

The three parts surround a fountain by Murase Associates which kids love in the summertime. It's one where water shoots out of the cement at rhythmic or random moments, and with both parking and a fully functioning water pump, it's much better than the fountain at the Rose Quarter.

The park has been a byway for fifty years, a short distance to cross between here and there. It has enormous beautiful trees, flowering rose bushes, picnic benches, but is surrounded by traffic; humans hurrying.

Savinar's sculptures are boring, mundane, seemingly domestic and like a lot of his stuff, need a missing explanation. Casting bronze is an expensive proposition, and the message of rendering banal images in an extravagant manner is to cherish the provincial character of Portland's inner suburbia.

Why love Portland - or even more insular, why cherish this middle class frumpery? 1. Reason - Portland is possibly the safest place in the world, and people come here because nothing of any importance has ever happened here. They like safe. They like boring. They'll devote their years to pruning and composting and book-reading and raising children who love fountains.

And those who would challenge this paradigm just to make this bumbling burg wake up, young artists, troublemakers, criminals and political intellectuals, ought to do some traveling first, so they can recognize sanctuary and it's vital importance.

PPA first wrote about this dustup as "Chinese" Dragons - bad job all around and again in Chasing the Meaning of Public Artwork, where the more meaningful meaning of the artworks was defined. The daily paper, local shoppers, and art + pop culture blogs have underlined the limited capacity of the work.

The first two, in red granite on NW Fourth Avenue at Davis, depict a stainless steel structure atop an off-white stone dais. Caught in the tight grip of one structure is the neck of a small, wacked dragon; on the opposite, only a severed neck protrudes. Below is various "Asian" debris, both patronizing and ignorant, a duck head, a chicken head, a pocket calculator arrayed with an abacus. Other stuff.

Duds happen, but it must be additionally painful for the bureaucrats and "advisory panel" to know more of Goldbloom's "Chinese Lanterns" are due to be installed, with it's bad taste carved in weatherproof stone. These are complicated artworks to install and take time, but time with a mixed or mangled message works against the vision - if there is one.

Two more Chinese Dragons have recently appeared and two more Chinese Dragons are due from Goldbloom's studio. These two are both of the severed neck variety, and in gray granite. One is on NW Third and Flanders, outside the Royal Palm Hotel, the other at NW Third and Davis. Both will have opposing artworks installed soonish, and a final set looks to be installed at NW Fourth and Flanders.

(Years ago Chinese business leaders gave Eric Sten serious grief for giving the Royal Palm Hotel to a community mental health center, figuring crazy people were bad luck and would jinx their cockroach-ridden tourist-trap restaurants and firetrap hotels. Since then, thousands of people have moved off the streets thanks to Sten and the Royal Palm.)

The gray granite set are completely unremarkable artworks aside from the clusters of content, as with the red granite set, under the dragon's severed neck.

Under 3rd & Flanders gray granite severed neck is a set of dog tags and a 1942 internment order for Japanese citizens, which together cover a baseball bat. A single slipper. An overturned rice bowl - definitely bad luck and definitely kitsch.

Did Japanese internees wear dog tags? I have no idea. But the folks I connect who wore dog tags were GIs. A baseball bat? Why a baseball bat? Japanese = baseball?

Under 3rd & Davis is a real mystery - it appears to be a streetcar rail set in a ballast stone street, with a Palm Pilot. Is that what it is?

A Palm Pilot? As Matt Davis would write, "WTF?"

Anyway, more Chinese Dragons are coming so stay tuned.

Vanport Oregon - 1942, before the flood (where Delta Park is now).

Vanport, Oregon - May 1948, fifteen people drowned, thousands left homeless.

Title of the tapestry above, located in the collection of Fort Vancouver Tapestry Panels, is Alcoa continues operating behind dikes during the Vanport flood.

Columbia Villa, a public housing village off North Fessenden, was built in part as a response to this disaster. But to tell our city's history honestly, many Portlanders resented and resisted attempts to help these folks stay. With additional industries and a warmer welcome, Seattle and San Francisco both maintained African Americans after the war - but not Portland. Additional snubs of Klan gatherings, segregation by property sales, urban development in the middle of Albina - Emanuel Hospital + Interstate 5 plunked in the middle of Albina - made Portland one of the whitest cities in the nation.

In 2003, prompted by dozens of shootings, the Housing Authority of Portland launched the HOPE IV reconstruction of Columbia Villa, now renamed New Columbia. Everyone was moved out, the old duplexes were razed and new two story homes, a new school, modern apartments, storefronts, a community center, parks and gardens were arranged and built. Though many people have moved in, construction is ongoing.

Cultural sensitivity clearly was a foremost concern during planning and execution. The result looks excellent - everything is clean and neat and sturdy and waiting for everyone to come home. The housing mix of 852 units include public housing, affordable rental housing, elderly housing and homes for sale. An additional 92 public housing units are off-site.

With an approximate final cost of $30 million dollars, some art should have been been included. A little math? Two percent of $30 million is $600,000. Quite a chuck of change. Because costs of RACC purchased artwork is not published, we can only estimate how $600,000 was spent.

Three ornate aluminum gates to an unused community garden (most community gardens use cyclone fencing at best - $55 for a 50 foot roll at nearby hardware), named after former County chair Gladys McCoy.

Estimated ornate aluminum gates cost @ $10,000 each - $30,000

Local guides showed me the iron sculptures by Nigerian born artist Mufu Ahmed (right), who also designed 22 benches with squirrel or salmon motifs.

Estimated cost of 22 benches @ $5000 each - $110,000.

The both the gecko and the "half tiger half monkey" (above) are clear favorites, around the corner is a heron is a similar style.

Estimated cost of three iron animal sculptures $10,000 each - $30,000

What my short friends didn't like was a gigantic plane tree, uprooted, stripped, turned upside down, bolted to cement blocks, and crowned with a ring of sharp metal. To me it's just a vaguely evil imago (wasn't St. Peter crucified head down?) But to local children the 25+ foot tall sculpture is a dread spider, which can be seen from a thousand windows ringing an open field.

Artist Fernanda D'Agostino created Ancestor Tree from a London plane tree felled during construction. She lists $400,000 in payment for Ancestor Tree on her resume.

Much of D'Agostino's work litters the public paths surrounding Columbia Boulevard Waste Water Treatment Plant, across Columbia Blvd from New Columbia. Other local guides squired me through the bicycle paths and on to Smith & Bybee Lakes where more of D'Agostino's artwork imitates actual wildlife - except extracted, inspected by space aliens, and set back in place. "She must be a fan of Riven," one of the younger set acutely observed.

The Kandis Brewer Nunn Community Education Center (who, you say? Why the current chair of the HAP Board, administrator of The Jordan & Mina Schnitzer Foundation and director of Harsch Investment's marketing communications) closed and dark on a weekend afternoon.

The place is a bit empty - a village built without a population. Waiting for its diaspora to return.

More of the story.

• Sue Arbuthnot and Richard Wilhelm with Hare In The Gate Productions created a documentary film Imagining Home: Stories of Columbia Villa.
• Housing Authority of Portland announcement - Public Art at New Columbia
• Vanport Flood and Racial Change in Portland, Oregon - Oregon Historical Society
• Rudy Pearson, “African Americans in Portland, Oregon, 1940-1950: Work and Living Conditions – A Social History” (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University, 1996)
• Manley Maben, Vanport (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1987).

Just installed are two structures bracketing NW Davis at Fourth Avenue in the midst of what Portland calls Chinatown (truly an unhappy memory for folks 60+), created by Brian Goldbloom of Amboy, Washington. The structures are of pink granite enclosed in a stainless steel frame - from a distance is looks like a horrible dental extraction. Close up, it isn't better. One of the steel garrotes is throttling a dragon by the neck; below is a archaeological mess of kitchen equipment. The pink granite stands on top of a large white stone dais, which dwarfs the artwork.

One block of Davis has been rehabbed with sidewalk cement in the street and out-of-place palm trees. It would be an excellent demographic exercise to watch the number of pedestrians accidents in this busy thoroughfare, now freely mixing cars and wandering tourists.

From November 29, 2005 PDC press release - "The Regional Arts and Culture Council has commissioned eight public art “lanterns” for the project area from sculptor Brian Goldbloom. The sculptures celebrate the multi-cultural history and promise of the neighborhood and reflect its rich history and diversity."

No mention of the artist, Brian Goldbloom, on the Regional Arts and Culture Council site (the stewards of our public-paid-for artworks). No press release. No signature on the work. And, no lanterns.

The artwork has drawn immediate negative responses from local businesspeople, and the Portland Clean & Safe dude who showed me the damage to the dragon's snout, "a ball peen hammer, if I don't miss my guess," he exclaimed with a conspiratorial glance.

Here's who selected this artwork.

Selection Panel

• Doreen Binder, Old Town/Chinatown Steering Committee

• David Davies, Portland Development Commission

• Deborah Horrell, Artist

• Jack Lee, Old Town/Chinatown Steering Committee

• Louis Lee, Old Town/Chinatown Steering Committee

• Lloyd Lindley, Landscape Architect

• June Schuman, Nikkei Legacy Center

• Deb Stoner, Artist

• Ellen Vanderslice, Portland Transportation

• Public Art Manager: Kristin Calhoun, kcalhoun@racc.org

The most peculiar part of the two sculptures - on opposite sides of the Davis Street - is that dragon's head on the South sculpture has been shorn clean off - clearly dragons North and South are demonstrating "before and after" with hideous imagery.

Below the captured North Dragon, snarling and staring at the doors of House of Louie (terrible feng shui!), in rough granite are an overturned wok, a duck and chicken heads, some spatulas. Below the headless South dragon is a ubiquitous salmon, an abacus and a pocket calculator!

Wow. I thought the Britney giving birth was in bad taste. (Here's a great collection of super-bad public sculptures!) But this unnamed artwork is both badly made, badly conceived, no - just a bad job all around.
Sculpture's portrayal of dragon, wok draws complaints - Oregonian, 12.5.2006

Verdict: Art misses mark - Chinatown finds little to like in dragon sculpture - Tribune, 12.3.2006

Some days after the artwork is installed, RACC posts info on it's web site.

• Public Art Fact Sheet FESTIVAL STREET LANTERNS, appears to have been created several months prior to installation, includes selection committee list.

Brian Goldbloom - Artist Registry

PERCENT FOR ART PROGRAM: Financial allocation process is informal, inconsistent, and may not fulfill requirements for public art - RACC audit, August 2005

Editorial and comments on this blog at Portland Mercury's Blogtown (some comments are in bad taste).

So here's the real problem. Clearly a bad decision was made with Facing The Crowd. (And let's avoid an aesthetic argument - imagine we're discussing a public artwork you don't like). So what to do with a very large, very heavy, very permanent, high-profile thing which has been blessed as art, if we change our collective minds?

This is a vital difference between public art and private art. You want something I think is ugly hanging in your house? I don't care - and I don't have a right to care. It's none of my business. It's in your house. But this city is my house and your house and we need to decide collectively what art hangs here.

Can we throw them away? Melt them down and recast into a sculpture of Maurice Lucas? No, that would be indiscreet. Can we hide them in a warehouse, bury them Rose City Cemetery, pawn them off on Spokane or Stockton or Nampa, Idaho?

Should we ignore the creeping creepiness and just shuffle by? These things could literally exist indefinitely! Thousands and thousands of years! They look very sturdy. Could a bus knock one over? Could kids from Lincoln set one on fire during lunch period? Could a crazy person throw a tarp over one and start living inside the head?

What if a committee selected art for a big city museum? A disaster! The lowest common denominator of political decisions overwhelms a fine aesthetic. Bleck.

What if we hired a city curator, a person with zeal and personality and taste, able to make selections and defend them? Think Thomas Hoving - curiously one of John Buchanan's first employers. (Read the SF Chronicle's puff-piece on Buchanan.) HA! One, Portland can't attract the talent. Two, we don't have the balls to take their advice. Three, our petty covivial art scene would push itself into the forefront, demanding local purchases for gratitude.

Here's the strikethrough version of the new city code on purchasing public art. Aside from the increase in funds, there's not much change. (Someone cleaned up the grammar. That's good.)

But 5.74.040 C.3. of the City code reads, The Regional Arts & Culture Council will report annually to Participating Bureaus on the disbursement of funds from the Public Art Trust Fund. No change there.

That's good. That means someone knows how much RACC is spending on this stuff, and someday the "public art trust fund" could be a matter of public record. Until then, "informal" and "murky" remains standing procedure.

On the good side, sometimes the system works. Take a look at these cool cool brass plates adorn the front of the County Admin building on SE Hawthorne and Grand Avenue.

Connections is by Walla Walla artist Wayne Chabre. He writes on his brass plaque - "I hope this artwork makes people smile as they enter the building to conduct business with the County." Very ambitious mission statement.

The right viewing distance from the artwork is fairly perilous - the middle of a busy street. If you can block out the flashing cars, these have the flavor of Chinese mountain paintings and fit nicely into the red brick of this old bank building. Clearly Chabre did homework - all the scale and proportion is true and informative. I like them.

It's Robert Krueger, Public Art Collections Specialist, 503-823-5404, rkrueger@racc.org of the Regional Arts & Culture Council - or RACC, and the RACC database of public artwork. Which today or yesterday updated it's placeholder site to no longer say the database would be back online "in late October." This note has been slightly altered toward the unaccountable.

Here's where the database should be - but it's not!

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October 30, 2005 version

We're sorry...
Due to technology upgrades, the RACC Public Art Search page is currently unavailable, but will return soon. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for visiting.

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It's not the Water Bureau, I know. We don't need a public art database. (Which calls to question to point of the thing.) We don't need to know where all this stuff is, or what condition its in, or who made it or when. I guess we don't.

But the stickier question is, where is it when it isn't anywhere at all, at least not yet?

The Multnomah County Library, a mighty finer municipal fiefdom, managed to switch it's database systems last month, not comfortably but they switched. Nice difference - switched. Not stopped for a long unpredictable amount of time, only to be delayed longer.

Why not leave up what was there? Why evaporate entirely? Why not a clean switch? Is this some amateur deal where someone's cousin got involved? But wait a second – I thought we paid to have someone keep track of all this public artwork.

So yeah, it's not an amateur deal. Or at least it shouldn't be.