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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 28, 2021)
B4 THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2021 Airport mural celebrates state’s diversity By STEVEN TONTHAT Oregon Public Broadcasting At fi rst glance, Eugene artist Liza Mana Burns’ latest mural is a bright and colorful pan- orama depicting Oregon’s diverse landscape. However, the work, titled “Celebrate Ore- gon!” actually contains images of 127 seem- ingly random objects: a wine bottle, a Chi- nook salmon, a comic book, the Siuslaw Bridge — all on display at Portland Interna- tional Airport’s Concourse B, near Alaska Air- lines gates. Individually, the objects depicted in the mural might seem inconsequential. But take a step back and you’ll realize that every one of them represents a part of Oregon’s history. At the bottom left corner is a beer glass, a nod to Oregon’s reputation as being at the forefront of the craft beer industry. Shift your eyes to the right, and you might fi nd the books “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin and “Only What We Could Carry” by Lawson Fusao Inada, two of Oregon’s most prominent writers. Suddenly, the mural’s message becomes clear: Oregon isn’t a homogenous place. Much like it’s diverse geography, the state is a collection of diff erent people and cus- toms that come together to form a giant cul- tural mosaic. “You think culture is opera and ballet but it’s everything. It’s history, it’s language, it’s dance, it’s food, it’s Indigenous culture,” said Burns, the mural’s creator. While working on the project, Burns said, she learned a lot about aspects of Oregon’s history that she was unaware of growing up. “I didn’t know who York was, which is embarrassing to say,” Burns said, in reference to the African American man who was an Athena Delene Liza Mana Burns paints her mural, ‘Celebrate Oregon!’ integral part of the Lewis and Clark Expedi- tion. “So we got to include him. I didn’t know about the city of Vanport. So I learned a lot of pieces about Oregon history.” Vanport was the state’s second largest city in the 1940s, before completely disappearing after a catastrophic fl ood in 1948. Burns said that the most challenging part of the project was making sure to include all aspects of Oregon’s history and culture. She admitted that being a 32-year-old white woman meant that her worldview was inherently limited. So she reached out to var- ious community leaders to learn about what she might be missing or getting wrong. “I said, ‘I would like to work with people from the community to say, OK, what symbols are we missing?’” Burns worked with volunteer cultural con- tent experts like Chuck Sams, a member of the Oregon Cultural Trust board and Confed- erated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reserva- tion. Sams was recently named head of the National Park Service. “He was helping with selection of the Indigenous symbols and he brought up the American Indian movement. So we looked up that symbol and included that symbol,” Burns said. She also worked with Linda Castillo, the diversity, equity and inclusion manager at the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization. “She came up with the hummingbird and a sunfl ower, which are two symbols that I didn’t know had cultural meaning to Hispanic Ore- gonians,” Burns said. The hummingbird, she discovered, is trea- sured for its almost magical qualities and is an important symbol for the Mexican and Indige- nous communities. The sunfl ower has been used in Hispanic culture as ornaments, a food source and as medicine. Through those conversations, as well as many others, Burns selected the 127 elements that represented a part of Oregon’s culture that, when looked at as a whole, make up the entire state. Viewers can scan a special QR code with their phone that will lead to an interactive key to help decipher the meanings of the symbols. The mural is the result of an 18-month long project by Burns and the Oregon Cul- tural Trust to commemorate the trust’s 20th anniversary. The Oregon Cultural Trust was created in 2001 by the state Legislature and funds mul- tiple arts and cultural projects across the state. According to the trust’s communications man- ager, Carrie Kikel, the fund has raised more than $74 million for arts and culture programs. The trust is partially funded through a cul- tural tax credit, where a private donor will receive a tax credit for donating to the trust and any of the 1,500 cultural organizations across the state. “In establishing the trust, the Legislature was saying to Oregonians: ‘We will fund cul- ture with state dollars, but only if Oregonians tell us it matters to them,’” Kikel said. Classifieds SELL YOUR VEHICLE HERE! GARAGE SALE If it Drives or Floats... SEASON IS HERE! 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