Defining Moments 2006
It was a drawing on a wall. And it was our favorite art piece, favorite bite of visual culture in Portland in 2006. “Orientation”, a participatory installation by Jen Smith, Amanda Eicher and Chris Nagler, wrapped a simple graphite line drawing replicating a mountainous horizon around the hallway in the motel gallery (19 NW 5th). Viewers were asked to look at the drawing, put on a blindfold, and attempt to redraw what they saw on the wall. By the time we saw the project, it was a beautiful tangle of lines like a loose printout by a wayward seismograph, the original line called out by a tonal coat of paint below it that marked its primacy. A non-participatory conceptual piece we loved was Scott Wayne Indiana’s “Proposal for a Forest or a Dessert” for the PDX Window Project.
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