Portlandia

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Portlandia

Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of Michael Graves' 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.^[1].

Raymond Kaskey, Greg Pettengill [1] and Michael LaSalle built sections of the statue in one of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., and shipped the parts to Portland by Rail. It was assembled at a barge building facility, Gunderson, Inc. It was installed in September 1985 after being floated up the Willamette River on a barge.

The statue is based on the design of the city seal. It depicts a woman in classical clothes with a trident reaching down with right hand to greet visitors to the building.

The statue itself is 36 feet (11 meters) high. If standing, the woman would be about 50 feet (15 m) high. An accompanying plaque contains a poem by Portland resident Ronald Talney.

The statue is above street level, and faces a narrow, tree-lined street with limited automobile access. Occasionally, there are suggestions to move the statue to a more visible location, but these have come to nothing and the sculptor states that he designed the statue for its location and would not approve of moving it.^{[citation needed]}

It has also 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 uses such as key chains or T-shirts, because the rights to the image of Portlandia remain the sole property of the sculptor.^[2]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ Warren, Stuart & Ted Ishikawa. Oregon Handbook. Moon Publications, 1991.
^ Bancud, Michaela. "Your best shot at a perfectly sculpted figure", The Portland Tribune, May 27, 2003. Retrieved on 2007-04-09.