An Open-Air Museum, Part 2

Museums and art galleries are just beginning to awake. Portland's museum of street art has been thriving all along.

March 15, 2021

K.B. Dixon

Culture, Photography

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY K.B. DIXON

While our local art galleries are no longer quite closed, they are not yet fully open. Things are headed in the right direction, but restrictions still abound. Back in April 2020 I did a photographic survey of an alternative venue for the depressed aesthete—a venue offering a safe, in-person experience: the open-air museum that is Portland’s street art. There was plenty to see thanks to an industrious guild of talented muralists. The photographs here (all taken in 2021) are Part 2 of that survey.

For further information about Portland street art, I refer you to the Portland Street Art Alliance.

And to see the murals in Part 1 of this series, from April 2020, look here.

SOUTHEAST MADISON STREET AND WATER AVENUE

SOUTHEAST SECOND AVENUE AND CLAY STREET

*Artists: Derek Yost, RITE, HeySus, Chet Malinow, Maddo, Ekose*

SOUTHEAST TWELFTH AVENUE AND MORRISON STREET

Sponsor

SOUTHEAST THIRTY-FIRST AVENUE AND BURNSIDE STREET

SOUTHEAST ELLIOTT AVENUE AND BIRCH STREET

SOUTHEAST THIRTEENTH AVENUE AND POWELL BOULEVARD

NORTHEAST TWENTY-EIGHTH AVENUE AND ALBERTA STREET

SOUTHEAST SEVENTH AVENUE AND WASHINGTON STREET

SOUTHEAST FORTY-THIRD AVENUE AND HAWTHORNE BOULEVARD

SOUTHEAST FORTIETH AVENUE AND HAWTHORNE BOULEVARD

Sponsor

SOUTHEAST SEVENTH AVENUE AND BURNSIDE STREET

NORTHEAST TWENTY-THIRD AVENUE AND ALBERTA STREET

NORTHEAST TWENTY-SECOND AVENUE AND ALBERTA STREET

SOUTHEAST SECOND AVENUE AND YAMHILL STREET

NORTHEAST TWENTY-NINTH AVENUE AND ALBERTA STREET

K.B. Dixon

K.B. Dixon’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals. His most recent collection of stories, Artifacts: Irregular Stories (Small, Medium, and Large), was published in Summer 2022. The recipient of an OAC Individual Artist Fellowship Award, he is the winner of both the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Eric Hoffer Book Award. He is the author of seven novels: The Sum of His Syndromes, Andrew (A to Z), A Painter’s Life, The Ingram Interview, The Photo Album, Novel Ideas, and Notes as well as the essay collection Too True, Essays on Photography, and the short story collection, My Desk and I. Examples of his photographic work may be found in private collections, juried exhibitions, online galleries, and at K.B. Dixon Images.