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This Cascade Art Beat exhibit makes you the artist

Photos and story by Abe Proctor

For the first time in Portland, a major art piece will feature the observer, the average citizen as the creator/artist. As part of С��è��ý’s annual Art Beat Festival, the center of the Cascade Campus will be filled with a mass of 26 “blackboards” – 4 feet wide by 8 high – poised to be filled with the creative imagination of the entire С��è��ý community.

“This will be a unique event where hundreds of people not only from the campus but the surrounding community, including Jefferson High School students, will be the stars,” said С��è��ý instructor John Olmstead, one of the exhibit’s creators.

Each of the 52 blackboards – both sides of 26 columns – will be stocked with trays of colored chalk. Members of the public are invited to draw or write anything they like, be it writing, poetry, art or expressions of political and social belief.

The installation will officially open on Monday, May 6, and the entire creation will be in a constant state of change until Friday, May 10. Each evening, it will be “reset” as each blackboard is wiped clean in preparation for the next day’s creative expression.

For more information, contact John Olmsted at jolmsted@pcc.edu.