Th e Bul l eTin • Sun day, Jun e 27, 2021 A7
At 98, an Oregon woman fashions recycling into, well, fashion
BY BETH NAKAMURA
The Oregonian
Ruthanne Moore is 98 years
old and she is still creating.
Mostly, she creates things from
life’s detritus.
A collection of old iced tea
cans becomes a necklace. A col-
lection of old bobbins, same.
Moore looks at piles of trash
and sees possibilities.
A stack of newspapers?
“They should be in recy-
cling,” she says from her chair
inside the art studio at Willa-
mette View, a retirement com-
munity in Milwaukie where
she has lived since 2001.
“They’re just sitting there
taking up space.”
But, she asks as she consid-
ers that stack of newspapers,
“What could I do with them
that’s fun for both me and
them?”
Moore, who grew up in
Portland, went to Oregon State
University then returned to the
city, married and raised three
children. Briefly, before kids,
she worked as an occupational
therapist, so she knows some
things about the rewards and
benefits of working with your
hands. She feels a connection
with the materials, she says.
“I’ve always been interested in
doing things by hand,” she says.
She also feels a connection to
Sally Giles and Kristen Larsen,
licensed art therapists who op-
erate Artworks Studio inside
Willamette View. Moore says
she goes to the studio every
day, “until they close the door
and kick me out.”
Moore has made a few
dresses out of paper, putting
the pieces together using a
glue gun and glue. She made a
Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian
Ruthanne Moore, 98, sits inside Artspace Studio at Willamette View
retirement home.
dress from the post cards she
received and saved over the
course of her life. She crafted
an elaborate wedding dress out
of nine kinds of paper, all of it
white, and gave the creation
to her granddaughter after her
wedding in North Carolina.
A lifelong newspaper reader,
she made a dress out of news-
papers (including, yes, The Or-
egonian).
Expansion
Continued from A1
City estimates suggest up to
800 units of affordable housing
could be built.
The area also has the poten-
tial to be the densest master
plan for a community in Bend’s
history, Broadman said. The
vision is to make it a “complete
community” — meaning it
wouldn’t just be housing and
nothing else — that is walkable
and bikeable.
“It will not be an investment
in sprawl,” Broadman said in a
committee hearing Tuesday.
The other half of the large
parcel of land, which sits east
of SE 27th Street in south-
east Bend, already exists
within the city’s urban growth
boundary.
The bill received bipartisan
support in both the house and
senate, but faced pushback
from some lawmakers and
land use advocacy groups like
1000 Friends of Oregon and
Central Oregon LandWatch.
Critics who oppose the bill
argue that not enough land is
allocated to affordable housing,
Ryan Brennecke/Bulletin file
A parcel at the corner of 27th Street and Stevens Road in Bend is likely to be developed.
that it doesn’t follow the pro-
cess outlined in the state’s land
use law and that the public is
not afforded enough public in-
volvement.
“HB 3318 is a bare attempt
to exclude the people of Bend
from decisions about the fu-
ture of our City,” Rory Isbell,
an attorney with LandWatch
wrote in testimony. “It circum-
vents Oregon land use law and
“I like to read them,” she
says. “I think that’s why I glom-
med onto newspapers.”
Moore “keeps up with cur-
rent events and politics,” Giles
says. “She’s brought a lot of great
conversations into the studio.”
Several of Moore’s paper
dresses have been proudly dis-
played at two of Willamette
View’s five galleries, WallWorks
Gallery and White Oak gallery.
After exhibiting, her family
claimed two of them: the post
card dress and the wedding
dress. The dress Moore made
from maps is on permanent
display at Artworks Studio,
where Moore spends her days.
The newspaper dress is cur-
rently up for adoption. Moore
would like to see it go to a good
home. (If you’re interested, call
Call Kristen Larsen at Willa-
mette View at 503-652-6633.)
Ruthanne Moore made a dress
from newspapers, including The
Oregonian.
in exchange offers a mere 7.6%
of a 261-acre tract for afford-
able housing.”
Broadman said he also
thinks more land should be
dedicated to affordable hous-
ing, but that negotiating for
more was not on the table
when the land owner, the De-
partment of State Lands, al-
ready raised concerns about
how much land was being con-
veyed to the city.
“Our Department staff has
only had tangential discussions
with City of Bend staff and has
made it quite clear we have se-
rious concerns about giving
away 20-plus acres that would
decrease the value of an asset
for all Oregon’s school chil-
dren, as well as circumventing
the normal land use process,”
written testimony from the de-
partment states.
But Broadman said the bill
includes an even more ro-
bust public input process than
the traditional urban growth
boundary process does, and
that time is of the essence
to address Bend’s affordable
housing crisis.
“We need to move moun-
tains to make sure working
people can live here,” Broad-
man said.
Once officially adopted, the
city must submit a letter to the
Department of Land Conser-
vation and Development, also
known as DLCD, to express
its intent to consider a concep-
tual plan for the land, and the
owner of the land, Department
of State Lands, must consent
to the urban growth bound-
ary expansion before the end
of 2022.
A conceptual plan would
be an ordinance or resolution
adopted by the city council
that explains intended uses
and zoning of the land, which
would be informed by input
from the community. The
DCLD would then have to ap-
prove the plan.
The intent is to complete
the planning and have devel-
opment underway in the next
three and a half years, Broad-
man said.
The earliest development
could be expected would be
2024, Broadman said, adding
that 2025 “seems more feasi-
ble.”