Artful—a fence and a space

I've lived in Portland long enough to know how to get from where I'm at, to where I want to be. However, the route I come up with in my head isn't always the fastest, especially if there's a road closure, an accident, or any of the other many traffic snarling issues that can arise. Because of this, if I'm going far (or somewhere new), I usually ask Google Maps for a suggested route. Using mapping software has the added benefit of taking me through neighborhoods I've never seen, I love that! That's how I recently ended up driving a new-to-me stretch of Belmont Street, and how I discovered this cool metal fence with botanical cut-outs.

The gate, with a big tree echo...

Each panel of the fence was slightly different. A few shapes were repeated along the way, but no two panels were the same.

I figured it must be fairly new, since there's minimal rust. I looked all around to see if there was any information on the artist behind the design. I wasn't able to find anything.

Once I was at the end I peeked over the fence to see the space between the fence and the building.

Mahonia are blooming all over town, these have been pruned up—maybe an attempt to get the spiny leaves up and out of the way.

Once I was back at the other end I decided maybe a video was the better way to share the botanical artwork? You be the judge—it's probably best to click though and watch it on YouTube rather than here on the blog.

Once home (while editing and uploading my photos), I decided to go looking for information on the building, which I assumed was an apartment building. Nope. It's listed as single family residential, what? Dating to 1921 the building is just shy of 10,200 sq ft and last sold in 2024 for $1,400,000.

Naturally, since I was researching, I took a few screenshots of prior years from Google Maps. Here's May of 2009. The fence borders what was lawn on the left-hand side.

Here's June 2019.

And April 2025, it's all so very curious!

Later that same day (December 13th) I stopped by a space I'd wanted to see for awhile now, slow poet (art space + vintage shop). I took these photos in the fabulous outdoor space behind the gallery.

Pretty cool right?

It was all very inspiring.

Kim (owner of slow poet) inherited the mural, and has plans to update it. I thought it was kind of old Portland fabulous, like '70's t-shirts, vintage Nikes and Rainer beer.

So that's my sunny warm day (in December!) spent exploring...

The Bit at the End

I guess I was in an arty headspace that day because later the same evening I ended up watching several of the NYC loft visits/interviews on Joshua Charow's YouTube channel. They're kind of addicting. 

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