At yesterday’s “Art in the Pearl,” a downtown Portland festival where locals sold art, demonstrated metal forging, and doused an entire car in brightly-hued paint, I sat at the IPRC’s table and helped kids Gocco-print the “Knitting for Ponies” logo onto handmade notebooks, while the table next to me, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest College of Art, provided plastic ponies and yards of yarn to knit into miniature leg warmers, saddles, or blankets. The ponies were then sent off into Portland, where they’re asked to be tied to the metal rings that line sidewalk streets, a throwback to when Oregonians rode horses instead of cars, and needed a way to tie them up.
Although I’ve yet to see a live horse in town, their tiny plastic counterparts can be spied here and there thanks to the PNCA program and Scott Wayne Indiana, who began “The Horse Project” as a collaborative art happening in 2006.
