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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.
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