| Portlandia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Raymond Kaskey |
| Year | 1985 |
| Type | Copper repoussé |
| Dimensions | 10.62 m (34 ft 10 in); (height) |
| Location | Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Coordinates | 45°30′56.7″N122°40′44.5″W / 45.515750°N 122.679028°W /45.515750; -122.679028 |
Portlandia is a sculpture byRaymond Kaskey located above the entrance of thePortland Building in downtownPortland, Oregon. It is the second largestcopper repoussé statue in the United States, after theStatue of Liberty.[1]
Portlandia was commissioned by the City of Portland in 1985.[2] Sculptor Raymond Kaskey was paid $228,000 in public funds and reportedly an additional $100,000 in private donations.[3]
Kaskey and his assistant Michael Lasell built sections of the statue in a Maryland suburb ofWashington, D.C., and sent the parts to Portland by ship. It was assembled at a barge-building facility owned by Gunderson, Inc, and was installed on thePortland Building on October 6, 1985,[4] after being floated up theWillamette River on abarge.[5]
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The statue is based on the design ofthe Portland city seal. The statue depicts a female figure, Lady Commerce, dressed inclassical clothes, holding atrident in her left hand and reaching down with her right. The statue is above street level and faces a relatively narrow, tree-lined street.[6]
The statue is 34 feet 10 inches (10.62 m) high[4] and weighs 6.5 short tons (5,900 kg).[3]
An accompanying plaque includes the official dedication poem, also titled "Portlandia", written by Portland lawyer and poetRonald Talney:
"She kneels down, and from the quietness of copper reaches out. We take that stillness into ourselves, and somewhere deep in the earth our breath becomes her city. If she could speak this is what she would say: Follow that breath. Home is the journey we make. This is how the world knows where we are."[7]
Despite being funded largely by the City’s Public Art Program, Kaskey retained the copyright to the sculpture and has threatened lawsuits against unlicensed depictions of Portlandia.[8][3]
The statue appears in the title sequence of the TV seriesPortlandia, the result of "lengthy" negotiations with Kaskey that required the statue not be used "in a disparaging way".[3] In 2012,Laurelwood Brewing used an illustration of the statue on the label of PortlandiaPils, a beer it introduced; the brewery later found out about Kaskey's copyright and reached a cashsettlement with Kaskey.[3]
