Portland, Oregon: Portlandia - 2nd Largest Hammered Copper Statue

Portland nearly shuts down on Christmas, not to mention the dusting of snow they received, so we took a walk to visit the beauty near our hotel downtown. You could see her from blocks away. She was very impressive, and the melting snow gave the appearance of tears dripping from her cheeks.

I had no idea how big and magnificent this was until I saw it in person. You might be able to get a better view from the second floor of the building across the street, but its escalators were closed, probably because we were there Saturday evening.

Sedate, statistic-based descriptions of Portlandia did not prepare me for the fact that she was frozen in the act of leaning down from her building to grab me right off the sidewalk! No kidding, I felt as if I was taking part in some re-enactment of "Attack of the 50-foot Woman."

Oh, and they don't tell you that she is armed. With a gigantoid trident. True, it was pointed at the sky at the moment, but I was definitely inspired to stay on her good side. Perhaps she is just trying to get the attention of passersby in the hope they can arrange to get her a less tacky building to crouch upon. That monstrosity would make anyone desperate, even if they are 50 feet tall, armed and made of metal.

Portlandia is based on a figure in Portland's city seal of a woman, dressed in classical clothes, who welcomes traders into the port of the city. The sculpture is on the third floor landing of the Portland Building. The sculpture is 36 feet tall but if Portlandia was magically to stand up, she would be over 50 feet tall. Portlandia is the second largest hammered copper statue in America (the largest is the Statue of Liberty).

Before being installed at the Portland Building, Portlandia was floated down the river on a barge and then transported through the city on a large truck. People lined up on the streets to see it. When it reached the building, the people crowded around the sculpture for a chance to touch it before it was installed out of reach.

Raymond Kaskey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1943. He studied architecture and graduated from the Yale School of Architecture. He then became a professor and sculpted part-time. His earlier art was mostly abstract. His current art is figurative (depicting recognizable people and things). Kaskey now lives in Washington, DC, and is a full-time sculptor.