A Tribute to a Noble Architect

Every few months, someone sends me their selfie in front of the Noble Architect, it never gets old. And we of course loved it when the food network showed it as one of 2 images to represent portland!

Back in 2011 David J. Laubenthal and I set out to make a public art sculpture for the thriving and quirky Alberta Arts District in Portland, Oregon. We wanted this piece to address the innate connection between humans and nature, as well as to honor the land of this area. Of equal importance was for our piece to be conceptually accessible to the public, to welcome interaction and I admit that we had the arrogance to want it be iconic.

Dave and I are both ideas people and the air crackles around us when we start our playful and charged brainstorms. We tossed around various ideas including animal forms, nests, a totem poles but were most excited about making a stack of animals. Animals that would have been walking around the designated sculpture site were it not so populated with humans. The budget didn’t allow for the stacked bear, bobcat, beaver and raptor (owl or Kestrel Hawk) we had in mind and after some debate Dave convinced me that if we had to pick one animal, the beaver was the perfect choice because of its history and importance to the region.

The more we learned, the more we knew this was the right animal for our public art sculpture. We discovered that going back long before Euro-americans settled here, beavers abundantly inhabited and thrived here playing a key role in the precarious balance of ecosystems in the region including the health of water fowl, migratory birds, fish and everything down to soil health and water retention.

I highly recommend taking a look at @rebeccaryan’s post for a deeper look at these fascinating and hugely underestimated animals: https://steemit.com/nature/@rebeccaryan/my-backyard-canadian-beaver

As demand worldwide for beaver pelts soared in the 1800s, this region simultaneously became more populated with settlers and trappers, and beavers in Oregon were trapped to near extinction.

The economy and significant wealth in this area for more than 200 years was largely built on the back of the beaver. And as it turns out, the future of this region environmentally and thus economically also depends heavily on the beaver.

We have now seen ecosystems to fail like dominos one after the other as beaver populations dwindle and currently there is an important movement in the Pacific Northwest to restore wetlands through the strategic introduction of beavers.

The architectural and engineering feats that beavers are responsible for are remarkable - how they fell a tree, the engineering of their structures, and even their mark-making is pretty extraordinary. They are so much more than natural ecologists which is how we landed on the title: Noble Architect.

Despite being the state animal of Oregon, there isn’t a significant image of the beaver in the state that truly honors the animal. It’s not thought to be the most elegant or even lovable creature, but the more we learned about and sketched the beaver, the more respect we felt and we found ourselves falling in love with this magnificent and talented animal.

Although we both were responsible for the concept and I helped steer the aesthetic for the nuances of the form, Dave is a master of humanizing animals to convey a lot of emotion in a single gesture and he worked his magic to create this magnetic posture. He made a host of scale models and when he arrived at this pose we both felt “this is it”.

The structure:

A decommissioned street pole at the center of the armature and it runs 8’ into the ground for stability during potential high winds.

Dave made his armature around the pole with concrete using a combination of additive and subtractive processes. Creating the form took about 2 months beginning to end which included some curing time.

Transporting this beast was, well a beast!
Here from Dave's shop to mine:

Surface:
When it came to surface, we decided to use a faceted composition to give the piece more dimension and to use richly colored tile to show the beautiful fur.

Here Rob and I are patterning the surface and drawing the tile shapes. This was the first step in several months of work to create the tile that would become the surface:

And here, installing the tile:

After loading the truck once again, Dave and I - satisfied, excited and worried about the installation the next morning:

Here is the site. The cover for the 8' hole has to be removed, the pole inserted and beaver lowered over the pole.

Me and the beav before the mold for the concrete stump was poured:

Voila! The Noble Architect, Facilitator of Rich Ecosystems, Benefactor of the Past, Builder of Our Future
In November 2012, The Noble Architect was installed. On it’s stump stands 72” tall from base to top with a 36” x 36’ girth.

It has an inquisitive pose gazing eastward hopefully towards the rising sun and a day when humans and nature harmonize.

Its presence is understated and humble but important. Our goal was to make an icon and we’re pleased each time someone sends us a selfie or family photo in front of the piece. Even more exciting is the many artists who have made art to interact with the piece.

This piece has even been chosen for derivative t-shirts for the Alberta Arts District. And we of course loved it when the food network showed it as one of 2 representative images of portland!

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