Our Newest MAX Line Is an Art Gallery on Rails
By Fiona McCann April 22, 2016 Published in the May 2016 issue of Portland Monthly
Bill Will, Passage (SE 17th Ave Corridor: Rhine Street and Holgate Blvd Stations)
As the MAX meanders along SE 17th Avenue, it passes a series of rusted steel boats (38, to be exact), marooned on traffic islands, some sprouting manicured mosses and landscaped wild grasses. This is Bill Will’s Passage, a physical homage to Brooklyn’s history as a network of creeks, a wildlife trail, and a transportation link, with sail-less boats- boasting trees as masts while plant life undulates around them.
Photography by Courtesy TriMet
Blaine Fontana, TRI IT (TriMet Bus Maintenance Facility)
The gray hoarding around this 1,250-square-foot bus maintenance garage serves as canvas to a mural from local artist Blaine Fontana bearing a call-out to the neighborhood in its treatment of TriMet’s timeline. Depicting more than 100 years in the city’s transportation history, the piece takes viewers from 19th-century westward expansion through modern transit advances—via TriMet logos and symbols—in a series of vibrant panels.
Photography by Courtesy TriMet
Matthew Passmore, Intersection (Clinton St/SE 12th Ave Station)
Take some decommissioned, discarded freight rail removed to make way for the Orange Line. Then bend and shape the rusted tracks into intersecting contours and curved lines, reminiscent of transit maps. Overlooking the confluence of SE 12th Avenue, Gideon Street, and Milwaukie Avenue, this California-based artist’s piece interrogates intersections—physical, geographical, and narrative.
Photography by Courtesy TriMet
Jim Blashfield, Flooded Data Machine (South Waterfront/SW Moody Ave Station)
These metal-clad installations read like just one other utilitarian element of a gray and busy station platform. But a well-timed closer inspection of what look like waterlogged gauges reveals “historical core samples” of the river view, presented in moving images, maps, and old photographs that appear and disappear as the trains pass.
Photography by Courtesy TriMet
Dana Lynn Louis, Crystallization (SE Bybee Blvd Station)
Lynn Louis, one of this year’s Contemporary Northwest Art Award winners, took the once-buried Crystal Springs as inspiration for this multimedia project. A brightly colored glass cupola depicts a landscape created from photography, painting, and drawing that’s been screen-printed, etched, and laminated. Intricately patterned glass on the station elevator and nightly light projections on the platforms echo the natural theme.
Photography by Courtesy TriMet
The Orange Line is a mobile art gallery.
