Linda Wysong is a local cross-disciplinary artist who defies easy categorization—between the complexity and nuance of her work and her constant shifts between media, her work is always very much her own—and she is always developing into something new.
Her work has shown at Exit Art in New York, Southern Exposure in San Francisco, and Kunst en Complex in Rotterdam. She began her career by collaborating with the Building Trades Unions on Art at Work, a series of pieces that explore the relationship between art and labor. In 1989, Art at Work developed “Moving Circles,” a kinetic performance sculpture at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, that referenced the building up, tearing down, and rebuilding that occurs in our cities every day. Consistently trying to connect with the daily lived experience, she has worked on many public art projects, including Perch at the Northgate Community Center in Seattle, “Portals” at the RiverEast Building Plaza, the Delta Park/Vanport stop on the Interstate MAX, and Shifting Assets on the Springwater Trail in Portland.
In her current work, Backyard Conversations, she creates a lived experience and invites us along for the ride. This work was originally commissioned by the South Waterfront Artist in Residence program, and premiered in June of this year. Using the language and structure of the guided tour, she puts a lens to our built environment and its intersection with its inhabitants and the natural world.
Portland’s South Waterfront, once a wetland, was until very recently an industrial wasteland. Now, towers of glass and steel and fortresses of concrete dominate the landscape. Wysong explores the questions that went into creating this brand-new neighborhood—questions of history, environment, and construction. In so doing, she also raises the question: What is a neighborhood? And can it be built from scratch?
Wysong draws from prepared points and expert guests, as well as conversations with the regular people who are living, working, and playing in the area as the tour progresses. She pierces the physical structure of our culture, examining how we shape and are shaped by the systems that we have designed and built. What are the cultural assumptions we make that are so ingrained we don’t even recognize them? History, science, and engineering mesh, peppered with anecdotal reference—each segment will make the audience see the South Waterfront in an entirely new way.