Public Works - Rose Mural 
Portland, Oregon USA summer 1984

Before heading to college F+F founder Jonathan Gibson trudged from downtown business to urban commerce committee seeking permission and funds to paint a large 12ft {4m} flower, the Portland city symbol, on the side of a downtown building.
Months of slogging the airbrushed original through Oregon winter rains found reward when the strong and organized Portland Neighborhood Association groups endorsed the project followed first by the civic Metropolitan Arts Commission and then state-wide Oregon Arts Commission grants making it financially possible.

The original six-inch render was for much taller, and thinner, Chaucer Court building also known as the old Odd Fellows Hall - a retirement apartment building in the heart of downtown excited to have the project on their park-facing wall as a strong and lively community existed there.

However, the paved lot below was rented out by the hour and a local car-park magnate refused to lease the spaces needed claiming that paint splatters would cause trouble - which renting the spaces obviously would have solved. After writing the grants, securing dozens of permissions, lining up paint & scaffolding donations... the project was dying before it had actually started.

This David and Goliath story made it to the front page of the statewide papers and brought forward another site without access restrictions and vastly larger audience via the nearby St. Vincent DePaul building. The new location was both a challenge and opportunity too good to refuse. Oregon Dept of Transportation stated well over a million vehicles drive by the intersections each day - circa 1980's - and stood prominently above the sunk in-place I-405 freeway and the city's north/south Burnside Street divider.

In fact the new wall measured 150 ft (45 m) across and rose itself would scale up from 15 ft to 36 ft (12 m) square.  However, with nearly twice the square area and a paint-slurping brick surface rather than the anticipated sealed and painted stucco meant resources for the original building would soon tap out. As that summer window before college was the only opportunity, work proceeded even without complete resource commitments. As expected, shortly after finishing the central Rose image paint supplies ran low and with the very last dribbles the letters, "out of paint" spelled it all out and work halted. Things looked dire, but many people came forward to help. A middle aged man gave me a couple of twenties after coming out of the restaurant across the street. Scaffold was given in exchange for the company name worked into the painting. More publicity with photos and small benefit concert by some punk friends {Brian of Vox Nirvana, where are you?} raised the most cash. Enough to get the job done came through.
After that it was off to Tulane Architecture School in New Orleans with the satisfaction of a job well-done, though not well-paid.

A Rose by any other Color...

NOTES from the Journal... My mural painting period began in High School with a colorful piece of artistic graffiti under the Goose Hollow freeway underpass in downtown Portland, Oregon, that caught the eye of some passing patrolmen - who would have liked to take us in for some harrassment. Their good-natured, but hard-edged, ribbing was interrupted by a little old lady drove up to start harranguing the officers. She was very animated about what a fine job my compatriot, John Jennings, and I were doing and how there was no profanity in the scene depicted. I would later know her as the local Art Museum curator, Polly Eyerly, and her husband, Jack, would be of immense help a few years later when I began the journeyman effort to paint a giant Rose Mural at 14th/15th at SW Washington. Since we were skipping graduation ceremonies to pursue this bohemian life, it felt only fitting to do up a few drawings that night about what a real mural could be and very next day, with my rendering in hand, we marched on City Hall for approval so nobody could harrass us again - and we won. We lobbied and received funds for paint and some donated gear and - viola, a summer art project was born. Years later I attended a vocational art school studying design, airbrush, layout, life-drawing, brush-lettering, and many wall painting projects. I filled up a number of the school walls {the scratched and dented remains still visible in the third floor of the Bullier Building} with illustrations & super-graphics of mostly of Sci-Fi images. As I neared completion of the program I was thinking I was up for something bigger... Eventually, this spawned a nobler effort to make a serious artistic and social contribution to my hometown.

 

Rose Mural in downtown Portland, Oregon measures 135ft x 35ft.

All told wages came to 43¢ an hour that summer.
Truly a labor of love that has stood the weather for two decades due to superior materials and execution.

 

POSTSCRIPT
Rally for the forces of good...
Because this overlarge painting sits on the side of the non-profit DePaul Society they are periodically tempted by buckets of cash to allow a commercial message to cover over this two-decade + plus landmark...Please give them a pleasant shout-out about how important leaving this murtal be is to you.

Do something good today, give them a quick word about how much you enjoy this large public mural and want to be sure it's saved from the sign painters' brushstroke and accountant's quill!

< sound of crowd cheering>