"In the years he'd worked on Portlandia, after winning a public design contest, Kaskey took every chance to compare her to the Statue of Liberty, the face of America herself, as seen on every key chain, bottle opener, stamp, locket, coin, T-shirt, Christmas ornament, and novelty cast-iron pan imaginable. Not only was Portlandia made by the same grueling hammered-copper method, she was likewise a generically hopeful, mythic goddess."
"The story is that a light rain fell on the October day she floated on a barge down the Willamette toward Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park. She was a crouching lady in a toga, her right arm reaching down to the people and her left shooting a trident 40 feet into the air. She weighed nine tons. Cars stopped on bridges to watch. Boats trailed."
"As he closed in on the great copper goddess in midriver, he cried out, 'Whoop-whoop!' Then he cried again, for good measure, 'Whoop-whoop!' Wolfe was in the park, where 'Tax-straddle arbitrageurs stood shank-to-flank with sod farmers.' The goddess united all. Thousands cheered as she rode on a flatbed truck from the water to the Portland Building, where she still crouches."
In 1985, Portland unveiled Portlandia, a monumental nine-ton copper statue created by sculptor Raymond Kaskey after winning a public design contest. The statue depicts a crouching woman in a toga with her right arm extended downward and left arm holding a trident. Kaskey deliberately modeled Portlandia after the Statue of Liberty, using the same hammered-copper construction method to create a generically hopeful, mythic goddess. Writer Tom Wolfe documented the statue's arrival, comparing it to Lady Liberty as populist public art representing vague promises of hope. When Portlandia floated down the Willamette River on a barge in October, thousands gathered to witness the event, with Mayor Bud Clark paddling out in a canoe. The statue was transported to the Portland Building, where it remains, having successfully united people across social classes during its arrival.
Read at Portland Monthly
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