Project DescriptionThrough the generous patronage of Pioneer Place Mall the Settlement expands its curatorial exhibition space, Vehicle, to the 3rd story windows facing the bus mall on 5th Ave. Exhibitions will run quarterly and prominence will be given to installation site specific works. The target audience for this exhibition space is the Portland pedestrians and transit riders who walk and mill around on 5th Avenue. Adding to Portland’s visual landscape, Vehicle draws attention to the mall as a house of aesthetics and discernment open to all.
Laura Hughes is Vehicle’s first featured artist. She will be creating a site specific installation, Across the Way, which will develop over a period of time, growing with and reacting to the environmental reflections of light created by the surrounding architecture. She will paint the windows with removable translucent tempera paint from the inside to isolate, enhance and abstract fragments of the reflections that land on the windows from outside at different angles. Her process will continue this approach by painting the walls facing the windows with planar shapes that give the illusion of spatial depth based on the directional angles of the architecture. These two layers will intersect through shifting interactions as the viewer passes by. A mixture of colored lights programmed with timers will illuminate these effects, altering and increasing their properties when seen at night. Hughes is creating a visual spectacle of the usual storefront window display, bringing a heightened attentiveness to peripheral fragments of the urban-built environment surrounding us, while at the same time revealing the process to the public as it will be created in the windows.
