Portland Collaborative Art Project

Dedication

Monday, July 30, 2012

^{5:30 – 8:30 pm}

^{The artists, Rachel Seed and Reba Rye, will be at each site for an hour to greet and discuss the project.}

Installation Sites:

·        The front lawn of Western Middle School, corner of 22^nd Street and Rowan Street (5:30 – 6:30)

·        The Portland Promise Center, 1831 Baird Street, in the small park area across Baird Street (6:30 – 7:30)

·        The front lawn of the Portland Museum, 2308 Portland Avenue (7:30 – 8:30)

Center For Neighborhoods and the Portland neighborhood invite you to celebrate the P.A.I.N.T. dedication and project launch of the Portland Collaborative Art Project.

The purpose of this project has been to celebrate the Portland community of today and yesterday through interactive outdoor photography exhibits, as well as to illuminate and bring positive attention to people and places that add spirit to the community every day.

Rachel Seed’s portraits of a diverse group of Portland community members began in the fall of 2010 through winter 2012.  The subjects, including a poet, a church leader, a young dirt bike champion and several activists, were identified through community organizations and word of mouth.

Reba Rye printed photographs, along with two other sets, on fabric with Epson Ultrachrome HDR ink technology.  Outdoor sculptural shelters were designed and installed highlighting the three sets of photographs, each of which deal respectively with some aspect of the past, present and future of the Portland community.  Black and white historical photographs from the Portland Museum’s archives, Rachel Seed’s portraits of contemporary residents and portraits made by students in a seventh grade class at Western Middle School under the guidance of art teacher, Amanda Thompson, a Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School in the Portland neighborhood were used in the project.  The shelters invite visitors to enter, rest and seek a protective covering created by the planting beds designed to host vegetation that will climb up and over the structures on mesh trellis to provide shade.

Rachel Seed is photographer and filmmaker living and working in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at the International Center of Photography in New York, and is working on an experimental documentary film.

Reba Rye is represented by Zephyr Gallery, 610 E Market St, Louisville.  She resides in Henry County and Frankfort and is an Associate Professor of Art at Kentucky State University.

Funded by grants from the George and Mary Alice Hadley Fund of the Community Foundation of Louisville, and by the External Agency Fund of Louisville Metro government.