Oregon ArtsWatch: "Artful solutions to foster community"
Oregon ArtsWatch recently featured Gather:Make:Shelter’s Founding Director, Dana Lynn Louis’s newly installed privacy fence screen titled "Ripple Effect" designed for two temporary shelter-in-place villages on SE Water Avenue. The project is in collaboration with C(3)PO (Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside), and the screens wrap the villages in imagery from the natural world to unite us from the skies above to the rivers surrounding our community.
“Ripple Effect” in one of the villages on SE Water Avenue.
Is Ripple Effect bringing Portland’s unhoused residents security and shelter? Physically, yes (although only in conjunction with the other essential services provided by the “villages”). But it may also be providing them with some modicum of spiritual nourishment. Having art made for or about you can be a profoundly pleasurable and uplifting experience. Much has been written about fine art’s gift for inspiring introspection, but this is a work of public art which performs a tangible public service.