Summertime in Portland’s Living Room is typically filled with thousands of Portlanders enjoying community concerts, cultural festivals, and outdoor movies. This year events at the Square may have looked different; but, thanks to local artist Bill Will’s art installation – Polka Dot Courthouse Square – community members throughout the region were still able to experience the joy and tradition of Summer programming in Downtown.
What began as an artistic interpretation of social distancing quickly became a unique stage to safely host some of Portland’s most acclaimed arts organizations and local artists. Throughout the Summer, Polka Dot Courthouse Square hosted 85 pop-up performances in the Square by more than 40 of Portland’s well-known artists and art groups. Each performance safely brought life and vitality back to Portland’s Living Room as artists of all mediums and expression utilized the colorful 12-foot “dots” as their own personal stages.
Community members who happened to be passing through Downtown on any given Summer day were pleasantly surprised by the sounds of opera singers, drummers, pianos or string ensembles with lunchtime and evening performances. These performances included the Portland Opera, Oregon Symphony, ArcoPDX , A-WOL Dance Collective , The Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers, 45th Parallel, Body Vox and many, many more. The Square was also proud to showcase the cultural traditions from the India Cultural Association of Portland, Oregon Chinese Coalition, Andisheh Center and Chabad of Oregon. Each performance was shared virtually on the Square’s social media and website to reach more than 300,000 people, bringing the sense of community often felt in Portland’s Living Room into living rooms throughout the region.
Polka Dot Courthouse Square has allowed community members visiting Downtown, as well as those still at home, to experience our City’s Living Room at its finest – full of joy, vibrancy, and art. This one-of-a-kind installation will take a brief hiatus at the end of October before returning for the holiday season as Polka Dot Downtown which will include over 80 dots at nearly 20 locations throughout the core business and retail district of Downtown. You can catch up on all the previous performances from Summer in Polka Dot Courthouse Square here. To stay up to date on Polka Dot Downtown, make sure you’re following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Polka Dot Courthouse Square would not be possible without the generous support of the Square’s Downtown partners 200 Market Building, Melvin Mark, Downtown Development Group, Ferguson Wellman, Moda Health, Downtown Portland Clean and Safe, Meier Family Partnership, Oregon State University Foundation, Consult: Ron Stewart and Portland Mall Management.