5th Avenue between Yamhill and Taylor Streets
Portland, OR
Along the TriMet route you will find this 2004 bronze buy Rick Bartow. Rick Bartow weaves Native American symbols of parenting and life cycles throughout The Responsibility of Raising a Child. The sculpture started out expressing the difficult circumstances of single parents, but by placing the infant in the basket it becomes a hopeful, encouraging and optimistic work.
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Rick Bartow was born in 1946 in Newport, Oregon to a Yurok and Wiyot father who relocated to Oregon for work and married Bartow’s Euro-American mother. His artwork is influenced not only by his Native American heritage, but also by the effects of a thirteen-month tour of duty in Vietnam. He graduated from Western Oregon University in 1969 with a degree in Secondary Art Education, prior to being drafted into the Army.
Bartow is highly prolific working in sculpture, print, etching, monotype, ceramics, mixed media, and painting.
Bartow is currently working on a permanent outdoor installation for the Smithsonian Institute-National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.
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