A.C.E.
January 3, 2022
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 17
Celebration of Oregon’s diversity debuts at Portland airport
By Steven Tonthat
Oregon Public Broadcasting
ORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — At first glance, Eugene
artist Liza Mana Burns’ latest mural is a bright
and colorful panorama depicting Oregon’s diverse
landscape.
However, the work — titled “Celebrate Oregon!” —
actually contains images of 127 seemingly random
objects: a wine bottle, a Chinook salmon, a comic book, the
Siuslaw Bridge — all on display at Portland International
Airport’s Concourse B, near Alaska Airlines 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 find the
books The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula 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 its diverse geography, the state is a collection
of different people and customs that come together to form
a giant cultural 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 integral part of Lewis and Clark’s
expedition. “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 flood
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 various 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 content experts
like Chuck Sams III, an Oregon Cultural Trust board
member and deputy executive director of the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
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 & Inclusion manager at the Immigrant and
Refugee Community Organization (IRCO).
“She came up with the hummingbird and a sunflower,
P
“CELEBRATE OREGON!” The “Celebrate Oregon!” artwork, created to honor the diverse cultures that call Oregon home, is a vibrant tapestry of
Oregon geography into which are woven 127 symbols that depict our shared arts, history, and humanities. Large 16-foot murals of “Celebrate Oregon!”
have been installed at the airports in Eugene, Medford, Redmond, and Portland. (Image courtesy of the Oregon Cultural Trust)
which are two symbols that I didn’t know had cultural
meaning to Hispanic Oregonians,” Burns said.
The hummingbird, she discovered, is treasured for its
almost magical qualities and is an important symbol for
the Mexican and Indigenous communities.
The sunflower 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 Cultural Trust to commemorate
the trust’s 20th anniversary.
The Oregon Cultural Trust was created in 2001 by the
Oregon state legislature and funds multiple arts and
cultural projects across the state. According to the trust’s
communications manager, Carrie Kikel, the fund has
raised more than $74 million for arts and culture
programs.
The trust is partially funded through a cultural 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 culture with state dollars, but
only if Oregonians tell us it matters to them,’” Kikel said.
In 2020, the Oregon Cultural Trust looked to revamp
the artwork for their custom license plate, which was
created to promote the cultural tax credit.
“We wanted to create a design that truly reflected all
Oregon culture and all the diversity of Oregon culture.
And that was a really lofty goal. How do you reflect all of
Oregon’s diverse cultures in that tiny space?” Kikel said.
After an extensive search process, the trust
unanimously selected Liza Burns, in part due to her artist
statement.
“She decided you have to start with this place, because if
not for this place, there would be no culture, there would
be no people, there would be no spirit of Oregon,” Kikel
said. “So how do you represent so many different cultures?
You give them each a little piece of the real estate.”
After seeing Burn’s design, officials at the trust felt that
her vision deserved a much bigger and more public
platform.
So Burns turned her small license plate image into four
large 16-foot murals that were installed at the airports in
Eugene, Medford, Redmond, and Portland.
“Having murals at airports was really about how the
artwork could serve as an introduction and really
communicate who we are as a people and what we value,”
said Kikel.
Designing this public-art project opened Burns’ eyes to
the richness of culture in her home state. Ultimately, she
hopes that people will take the time to pay attention to the
little details in her mural.
“I really encourage people to use the QR code and learn
about some of those symbols. I guarantee you’ll find
something you didn’t know about Oregon, or a piece that
you thought you knew, but you can learn more about.”
To view the interactive key that explains the meanings of the 127
symbols contained within the “Celebrate Oregon!” artwork, visit
<https://culturaltrust.org/celebrateoregon/license-plate-narrative/>.
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