Cobbletale
- Title
- Cobbletale
- LC Subject
- Sculpture Landscapes in art Garden walks sculpture (visual work) public sculpture outdoor sculpture cobble
- Creator
- Mayer, Jerry
- Description
- This piece consists of historic cobble stones laid into a raised walkway. Jerry Mayer; Cobbletalk; Sculpture; PSU-West Hall The Oregon Arts Commission has ten Regional Arts Councils that provide delivery of art services and information. The Council for this location is: Regional Arts & Culture. You may view their website at http://www.racc.org/
- Location
- Portland State University >> Multnomah County >> Oregon >> United States Multnomah County >> Oregon >> United States
- Street Address
- 1705 S. W. 11th Ave., Portland Oregon
- Award Date
- 1992
- Identifier
- 1992_psu_west-hall_01_a01
- Accession Number
- 1992_psu_west-hall_01_a01
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Dc Rights Holder
- Mayer, Jerry
- Type
- Image
- Format
- image/tiff
- Measurements
- 42 feet x 24 feet 6 inches x 4 feet (max.)
- Material
- Sculpture Both a flat pavement and a "landform" shaped pavement area (maximum elevation is approximately 4 feet) are fashioned with almost 4000 historic Portland cobblestones. Cobbles are oriented in different directions in eight areas of the "landform" shape. Thirty-seven cobbles are engraved with a single word.
- Set
- Oregon Percent for Art
- Primary Set
- Oregon Percent for Art
- Relation
- 1992 Portland State University West Hall 1992_psu_west-hall
- Has Version
- photograph; black and white; documents
- Institution
- Oregon Arts Commission University of Oregon
- Note
- A campus map for Portland State University may be accessed at http://www.pdx.edu/media/c/a/campus_map.pdf courtyard of West Hall
- Color Space
- RGB
- Biographical Information
- Cobbletale metamorphises the West Hall courtyard into a topographic landscape and kinesthetic artwork. It is meant to be experienced by touching (feet, hands, posterior) as well as by sight. Cobbletale examines and appreciates, both geologically and in the more recent historical sense, Portland's cobblestones. In a subtler way, Cobbetale is a site-specific metaphor for history's layers and transformations. Either way, it constradicts and expands the notion of the courtyard. Through its materials, shape and scale, Cobbletale empowers the site's surrounding architectural forms and landscape paintings. The idea for Cobbletale came from the design team's discovery that cobblestones were unearthed during preparation for West Hall's construction. Sometime around the turn of the [19th] century, they had been laid along a streetcar route on Southwest 11th. Their location was at the edge of the present artwork. Some of these original cobblestones are now a part of Cobbletale. During the sixteen-month period of creating Cobbletale, the artist gained assistance from eleven different state and local agencies and bureaus, as well as three museaums and numerous private individuals. In order to gather an appropriate ""pallet"" of materials, the artist hand cleaned over 6,000 cobblestones with a hammer and scrub brush, eventually using approximately 4,000 and returning the remainder to the city's storage (Mayer, 1992).
