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Urban Renaissance Group recently unveiled a new public art installation by local artist-designer Brad Johnson at the Moda Tower office building in Downtown Portland, which the company manages. "Ponderosa Pelts" is a mixed-media installation celebrating the Columbia River Gorge region’s prolific Ponderosa pine, while working to raise awareness of its vulnerability to invasive bark beetles.
The display is part of a new public art installation endorsed by the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Public Art Committee in 2016, and is being done in conjunction with a major renovation of Moda Tower’s main lobby that is planned to begin later this year.
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With images meant to accentuate the bark’s complexion, select trees were captured by Johnson with high-resolution images. Like the work of a taxidermist embellishing the hide of a specimen, the photographic "pelts" were then cut apart, reassembled, laminated and variously accentuated.
Johnson began his work as a painter and digital artist in the late 1980s. His public art commissions often bring the natural world to an urban environment through large-scale scenes like recent installations at the Yard building, and in the lobby of the Yeon Building, another Urban Renaissance-managed Portland property.
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