When you step into the bigger and brighter Concourse B, set to open in summer 2021, the new artwork will probably catch a glimpse of you before you realize it’s gazing back. You’ll see it in the engraved steel portraits of some of Oregon’s most scenic places — a large graphic eye gradually appears in each landscape as you pass.
The optical illusion — technically known as a lenticular portrait — makes you not only pause to look at the art, but physically move around the space and change your vantage to see every dimension of it. That type of playful interaction is exactly what RYAN! Feddersen hopes you’ll experience when you see “Inhabitance,” an immersive installation coming soon to the Portland International Airport. The installation comprises three interconnected artworks: the “Sentinel” landscapes along with abstract “Habitat Tiles” and the gently rolling “Cloud Walk.” It’s the largest public art project to date from the Tacoma, Washington-based artist.
An enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and of mixed heritage, RYAN! draws inspiration from the region’s traditions and landscapes for these pieces, which highlight the biological diversity of the Pacific Northwest. She recently took a break from her studio to talk to us about her creative vision for Concourse B and the opportunities inherent in public art.
Let’s start with what’s next: You have a permanent installation coming in 2021 to Concourse B. What inspired the concept?
We live in a region that has some of the most diverse habitats in the world: beaches, grasslands, temperate rain forests, high desert, alpine mountains. So a lot of the inspiration for this new work comes from the Pacific Northwest’s biomes, which are astounding and vulnerable.
This piece is about imbuing these habitats with a very literal personhood, referencing eye mimicry and protective talismans to create this feeling of the land holding witness to us, that our gaze on the land is returned. It reflects Indigenous concepts of environmental personhood — and makes us think about how the land and the other life we share the planet with also have rights that we should not be violating.
How do you hope people will respond to the new PDX installation?
I hope it makes people feel differently about their relationship to the environment — that it emphasizes the scale and innate power and presence in the land. I also hope the piece makes people curious and that they find the shifting interaction with it exciting and surprising.
“Interactive” and “immersive” are two adjectives that often come up in relation to your work. In fact, you’ve said that your art “exists as people are interacting with it.” What makes accessibility and touchableness so integral to your artistic vision?
I know for me, as I’m making things, working with my hands allows me to understand my relationship with the subject matter on a deeper level. That’s one of the big motivations for why I emphasize interactive and often touchable work; I'm trying to provide an experience for people to get a deeper relationship with it.
I believe that art does not just live in an object — it's an experience we are sharing with other people through a variety of different methods. Now, that doesn't always have to be touchableness. In my early projects, that was the mode I often used because it’s very appropriate for temporary artwork. In this piece at Concourse B, interactivity is about your movement as a viewer, as what you see will be different depending on the perspective you view it from. It requires your action in order to activate the content of the artwork.
(Credit: RYAN! Feddersen)
You’ve described some of your work as “traditional Plateau storytelling applied to contemporary issues.” What are some of the ways this plays out in your art?
The best example of this would be through a project called “Coyote Now.” This project looks at the trickster Coyote in Plateau lore as a continuous, contemporary figure. In these traditional stories, Coyote’s antics are a way for people to understand their actions and the consequences of those actions for other living things. He's kind of an antihero in that way, but he shows us how to be better. With “Coyote Now,” I’m thinking about the ways that we can use metaphor and imaginative storytelling to understand our life experience and how to best move forward.
(Credit: RYAN! Feddersen)
As a kid, you wanted to be a Supreme Court justice when you grew up.
I don't know why I tell people that. [laughter] Back then, I thought it was the best way to enact change and participate in shaping our world, but there are many paths. I realized early on that it wasn’t a realistic path for me.
So what ultimately led you down the path of becoming a professional artist rather than a lawyer?
I don't have the story of being born with a pencil, as a lot of artists claim. I don't remember being that interested in art when I was very young — part of that may have been, to a certain degree, about access.
When I was a teenager I started getting interested in art and it was very, very healthy for me. It helped me process the world around me and how I saw myself within it. I started to realize art had power and that it was a way you could communicate with people about visions for the world and for change.
Creating public art presents a lot of challenges, especially in an environment like PDX where such a wide audience will experience your work. How does the venue — in this case, an airport — influence your creative process?
The interactions between the art and the audiences are a huge part of why I've pursued these types of projects. Museums and galleries are kind of self-selecting audiences and there’s limited accessibility into those spaces. I want to make work that’s for the community in a more direct way. People have a different feeling about their ownership of public spaces, which I find valuable.
And I do think about my public work differently. I know that people aren't necessarily choosing whether or not to see the art. I'm also thinking about how people are able to understand it. It’s important to me that the work is accessible to all audiences and not have barriers of needing an arts education or specific knowledge to be able to get something out of a piece.
Tom Strong - Chief Executive Officer, Skokomish Indian Tribe, Skokomish Washington
"We're foresters in that we're stewards," says Tom Strong, Chief Executive Officer of the Skokomish Indian Tribe, which manages 2,000 acres of Washington forests for its 800 tribal members. "We're not cutting and planting, seeking to develop our lands into a commodity. Instead, we're doing it to restore the forest."
Over the past 100 years, the two dams on the North Fork Skokomish River have had a major impact on the entire ecosystem of Skokomish land. "We want to restore the entire Hood Canal watershed," Tom says. The forests are just one part.
Selling wood from Douglas fir trees the tribe selectively thinned will help fund this restoration. "We don't have an endless amount of money," Tom says. "But we would like to think we've got an endless amount of time."
Ben Hayes - Co-owner, Hyla Woods, Cherry Grove, Oregon
Ben Hayes is a sixth-generation forester who manages Hyla Woods, outside Cherry Grove, Oregon, with his father, Peter. He is also a sustainable-forestry consultant. At Hyla Woods, the Hayes experiment with selective thinning and patch cutting, instead of clear-cutting, to foster diversity of tree species, ages, and sizes.
"When you look 100 years out, having greater complexity in terms of species and the structure of the forest, you can increase the forest's resilience in the face of extreme weather and drought," he says.
"We're working toward a model of forestry that you could practice for the perpetual future,” Ben says. “It's a model that lifts up both rural and urban communities and the ecosystems we rely on."
Richard and Ann Hanschu - Owners, Doneen, Forest Grove, Oregon
Ann Hanschu's father first bought land outside Forest Grove, Oregon, in 1956. Ann grew up trailing her father around the forest, learning from him. The Hanschus now have three children, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Richard says, "We're planting trees that our grandchildren will see the profits from — not even our children. It's long-range thinking."
"A lot of the timber is older,” Ann adds. “We're laddering it with trees of different age groups — some 30-40 years old, some 10-20 years old — so the land can continue to produce a sustainable amount of wood."
Herman Flamenco - Central Cascades Conservation Forester, The Nature Conservancy, Cle Elum, Washington
"We know historically that the stands we're working on were overstocked," says Herman Flamenco, Central Cascades conservation forester for the Nature Conservancy, of the 50,000 acres outside Cle Elum, Washington, the organization manages. Thinning the trees welcomes in light and biodiversity.
Some loggers in the region worry that this low-impact approach to forestry yields less lumber, and less profit, than clear-cutting. One local outfit took on this labor-intensive challenge, selectively harvesting Doug fir trees from steep slopes.
"Western Washington is wetter. In our dry climate, there's less moisture and increased fire risk," Herman says. "As we look at climate change, it's just going to get dryer. We want to make sure we can keep our forests around."
In the 1950s, back when people wore fancy hats to the airport, PDX’s main terminal had brown terrazzo floors.
By the 1970s, blue carpet sporting the old Port of Portland logo replaced the terrazzo. The airport was so concerned about keeping the carpet clean that we banned gum-chewing indoors.
In the 1980s, PDX replaced the ski-chalet paneling in the Clocktower Plaza with high ceilings and skylights, but kept the blue carpet.
SRG Partnership, a Portland-based architecture firm, designed the pattern for the now-iconic carpet on the layout of the airport runways.
The Clocktower Plaza, post-1988, with the iconic carpet.
The Clocktower Plaza (before its demolition in 2021-22) with the new carpet.
The flexible interior spaces were designed with the future of travel in mind — and to give you plenty of comfortable spots to recharge before your next flight.
Two permanent installations from acclaimed contemporary artist Jacob Hashimoto hang like clouds above the concourse’s common areas.
Shops and restaurants are clustered together like city blocks, with a pedestrian-friendly scale and lots of room to spread out.
PDX’s swanky new bar, Juliett, honors women in aviation with mid-20th-century style, top-class cocktails, and local wines and beers.
Sky-high windows fill the interior with daylight while maximizing the concourse extension’s energy efficiency.
At the east end of the concourse, a wall of windows opens up this epic view of Mt. Hood, where you’ll definitely want to pose for a photo before takeoff.
The Concourse E extension project is the dedicated home for Southwest Airlines at PDX, with six new gates.
Remember the view of Mt. Hood on Concourse E? It’s coming back, brighter than ever.
Tillamook’s menu includes the best of the classics with fried cheese curds and a signature grilled cheese.
Calliope takes its name from one of Oregon’s native hummingbirds and showcases creative and playful keepsakes.
Grab your favorite book, magazine or newspaper at Your Northwest Travel Mart.
Concourse B's 38-foot-high ceilings and 6,900 square feet of windows don't just let light in. They let you watch the airport in action. "I think this airport gave us a chance to celebrate the romance of flight," says Gene Sandoval of ZGF, the architecture firm that designed the new concourse.
ZGF Architects was inspired to bring the Pacific Northwest’s natural world indoors. You can contemplate the plants hanging from the ceiling and the Oregon white-oak walls as you relax in B’s comfy new seats. (Bonus: More power adapters!)
RYAN! Feddersen’s art installation, which fills the concourse, is made up of three interconnected pieces. The “Sentinel” landscapes and abstract “Habitat Tiles” are pictured here.
RYAN! is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. She draws inspiration from the region’s traditions and landscape for these pieces, which include the gently rolling “Cloud Walk” overhead.
Nicole and David Mouton, in partnership with HMSHost, opened an outpost of Portland’s beloved Screen Door Restaurant on Concourse B. Find Screen Door’s legendary fried chicken and waffles here from breakfast until dinnertime.
Sam and Nick Purvis, the brothers behind Good Coffee, source fresh coffee beans and teas from all over the world. Pick up a pastry or a bag of beans, too!
Our new rental car center opened in November 2021.
All rental car brands are now on-site at PDX – no more shuttles to pick up your car.
Perez Westbrooks' colorful digital mural celebrates Northwest flora.
Ben Butler's swirling wood sculpture is made from reclaimed Douglas fir.
The new facility also adds 30 ADA parking spots, more than 30 electric vehicle charging stations, and 2,200 long-term parking spaces to the airport.
Adding more lanes to our new, relocated exit toll plaza helps you leave PDX more quickly.
Every design decision we make is about keeping the heart and soul of PDX intact. You’ll see homages to all the things you love about our city and region in the new airport designs.
You’ll notice subtle nods to the Pacific Northwest landscape throughout the space. Natural light, living trees, and native Oregon foliage may give you the feeling of walking through a park.
The new terminal’s wooden ceiling, made from sustainably grown, local Doug fir, might remind you of daylight filtering through forest canopies.
This will be your new view when entering the spacious ticket lobby at PDX. The nine-acre wood roof is so distinctive you’ll be able to spot it from the air.
The ripples and currents of pristine Northwest rivers inspired the new terminal’s curvy profile.
Expanding the heart of PDX creates more space for our beloved local shops and restaurants — not to mention local humans (and visitors, too).