before anything else, the finest site I have seen in some time:  Paper Make Stack.

One of the finest parts of collaborating on a project with scope as diverse as leftbank’s has been the many opportunities to involve friends….   Justin Gorman was one such contributor..  he helped make the building a creative space well before it was arguably habitable.   Tapped initially to document the physical evolution of leftbank, Justin’s involvement soon expanded to treating the walls as canvas.   Sometime later, he was painting a large, large sign above the back lot, and an absolute fixture at T:BA’s the WORKS.    After that, we commissioned him to develop Leftbank’s interior signage (in collaboration w/me) and he’s even more recently done work w/SOLIDCORE and uncommon, taking position as an early leader in the effort to maximize the collaborative potential of the place.       One of Justin’s most recent works is the development of his own (half self promotional/half creative clearinghouse) website called Paper Make Stack. You’ll like it.

I installed “Bang-Bang” in November of 2007 at the Leftbank. The piece “Bang-Bang” was about the building’s impact on the post-WW II jazz community of Portland. During World War II, a significant number of African-American migrant workers traveled from the Southern US to the Columbia River looking for jobs in the booming war time industry. Most of them found work in the Kaiser Shipyards, and when the war ended in 1945, a majority of them stayed, establishing what we know today as North Portland. more