Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of the Portland Building, in downtown Portland, Oregon, at 1120 SW 5th Avenue. It is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty.
The statue is based on the design of the city seal. It depicts a woman dressed in classical clothes, holding a trident in the left hand and reaching down with the right hand. The statue is above street level and faces a relatively narrow, tree-lined street. An accompanying plaque contains a poem by Portland resident Ronald Talney.
History
Portlandia was a product of Portland's Public Art Program. Kaskey was paid $228,000 in public funds (the equivalent of $500,000 in today's dollars) and reportedly an additional $100,000 in private donations.
Raymond Kaskey and Michael Lasell built sections of the statue in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., and sent the parts to Portland by ship. It was assembled at a barge-building facility, Gunderson, Inc. It was installed on October 6, 1985, after being floated up the Willamette River on a barge.
Size
The statue is 34Â feet 10Â inches (10.62Â m) high and weighs 6.5 short tons (5,900Â kg). If standing, the woman would be about 50 feet (15Â m) tall.
Copyright
It has been claimed that Portlandia's relatively low profile results from sculptor Kaskey's close guarding of his intellectual property. Unlike the Statue of Liberty, Portlandia may not be reproduced for any commercial purpose without permission from the artist. The rights to the image of Portlandia remain Kaskey's sole property.
The statue appears in the title sequence of the TV series Portlandia, the result of "lengthy" negotiations with Kaskey that required the statue not be used "in a disparaging way". In 2012, Laurelwood Brewing used an illustration of the statue on the label of Portlandia Pils, a beer it introduced; the brewery later found out about Kaskey's copyright and reached a cash settlement with Kaskey.
See also
- 1985 in art
- Berolina, personification of Berlin
- Hammonia, personification of Hamburg
- List of public art in Portland, Oregon
- National personification
- Tethys (mythology)
References
External links
- History of Portlandia from the Regional Arts & Culture Council
- Poem by Ronald Talney on plaque
- Writing Portlandia: My 15 Minutes of Fame by Ronald Talney
- Video of Portlandia arriving in Portland at YouTube
