''Never Look Away'' is a mural in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

Description

''Never Look Away'' is a mural of eight

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

activists, installed at the intersection of Northwest Broadway and Couch Street near the North Park Blocks in northwest Portland's

Pearl District The Pearl District is an area of Portland, Oregon, formerly occupied by warehouses, light industry and railroad classification yards and now noted for its art galleries, upscale businesses and residences. The area has been undergoing significan ...

. Depicted Oregonians include

Rupert Kinnard Rupert Kinnard (born 1954) also credited as Prof. I.B. Gittendowne, is an American cartoonist who created the first ongoing gay/lesbian-identified African-American comic-strip characters: the Brown Bomber (a teenage superhero) and Diva Touché Fla ...

, an openly gay African-American cartoonist who created the first African-American LGBT

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

characters; David Martinez, a founding board member of the

Q Center Q Center is an LGBT community center and non-profit organization located in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. History The community center was established in 2005, championed by then-city Commissioner Sam Adams. Kendall Clawson, an Afr ...

and a co-founder of Portland Latino Gay Pride (now called PDX Latinx Pride); and activist and musician Kathleen Saadat. Other national figures include gay liberation activist Marsha P. Johnson and

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

rights advocate

Angelica Ross Angelica Ross (born November 28, 1980) is an American actress, businesswoman, and transgender rights advocate. A self-taught computer programmer, she went on to become founder and CEO of TransTech Social Enterprises, a firm that helps employ tra ...

. According to Claudia Meza of Oregon Public Broadcasting, the mural is the "first public art project in the state dedicated to LGBTQ+ community achievements and progress". KOIN's Emily Burris said the mural is the city's first "dedicated to queer heroes". She wrote, "The mural is made up of colorful abstracts representing the struggle, growth and progress in a city known for its progressive policy, while acknowledging the work still to be done." The mural is approximately three stories tall and wide, according to lead artist and producer Cassandra Swan.

History

Zoe Piliafas met Oregon

LGBT rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 33 ...

activist Kathleen Saadat at a bar six years before the mural's installation. Piliafas has recalled: Several people and groups helped the project come to fruition since 2019. In addition to Swan, Ruban Lawrence helped produce the painting. The organization

Pride Northwest Pride Northwest, Inc. is a community-based regional LGBTQ+ Pride 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States. The non-profit organization was founded in 1994 and the current executive director of the organization is D ...

sponsored the artwork and offered recommendations for subjects to depict. The city funded maintenance and graffiti removal services and the Portland Street Art Alliance offered artist recommendations and production assistance. Additionally, Really Big Video's owners PJ and Maria Harvey provided use of a high-powered projector. Participating artists include Tommy Mack-Davis (known as Nafsi) and Kyra Watkins. The mural was painted in 2021.

References

External links

Never Look Away: Celebrating the Beauty and Struggle of Oregon’s LGBTQ+ Community
at

{{Portal bar, LGBT, Oregon, Visual arts 2020s murals 2021 establishments in Oregon 2021 in LGBT history Murals of black people LGBT art in the United States LGBT culture in Portland, Oregon LGBT monuments and memorials in the United States Monuments and memorials in Portland, Oregon Murals in Oregon Paintings in Portland, Oregon Pearl District, Portland, Oregon LGBT history in Oregon

Description

History

See also

References

External links