When I go on my daily walks around Portland, I find independent pieces of art on the sides of buildings and other places and if it moves or speaks to me or just looks cool, I’ll snap off a picture. Now I have more of a reason to do it and it makes for more content on my eclectic kinda weird website. So without further ado, let’s see what I’ve found lately.
Are you aware of the Toynbee tiles? Toynbee tiles are these weird, well, tiles that are pressed into city streets. There’s even a complete documentary on the web about the Toynbee tiles and whether it’s some kind of conspiracy, political statement, or just someone off their rocker. The conspiracy somehow involves James Cameron, big brother and probably some other stuff, too. It’s such a totally random subject that I know absolutely nothing about and if I hadn’t accidentally somewhere watched the documentary on the Toynbee tiles I’d know nothing about them; I still know nothing about them, but here’s the one I found in Portland, Oregon:
I just wanted to share these pictures that I took of various independent artworks around Portland. I don’t know the artists and didn’t even take the care to write down the addresses of where I took the pictures but the information might be in the metadata of the image as I took all pictures with my Pixel 3 phone, which has an excellent camera I might add.
After the Toynbee tile is a picture I titled Colorful, and the picture that opens this article is of course the iconic Welcome to Portland sign against that beautiful blue background. Finally a picture I mentally titled Spiky Tree. I thought it was a real picture actually and it reminded me of a tree I saw on some nature special which pretty much grew just like that in some arid desert area iirc with a fat trunk to hold water and tapering to the top so not too much energy has to be expended in getting water and nutrients to the upper part of the tree. Yeah, totally random stuff and probably behind-the-scenes website filler stuff. All pictures were taken today on a day so beautiful I had no choice but to leave my domicile and explore brave new antiseptically cleansed worlds. But isn’t everything? In the whole wide world? Just filler.
Please visit my Patreon page if you’re so inclined or make a donation. Or you can click the coffee cup in the bottom right corner of the screen and Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you!
I didn’t make anything of it when I found the ‘Toynbee Tile’ on a street in Portland, Oregon. It’s now as enigmatic as ever but I’m glad I found one as it lends credence to the ‘spookiness’ of the tiles but more importantly continues to speak to its ‘spooky’ and ‘enigmatic’ nature.