Portland’s Lost and Found Carousel Art
Oaks
Park Pentimento captures the blurring of past and present, a moment
when two generations of paintings collided to create remarkable new
images.
Over two days in 1982, Jim Lommasson photographed
the strange and beautiful paintings that decorated the center column of
the historic carousel at Oaks Amusement Park in Portland, Oregon. The
original carousel images—painted by German and Italian immigrants around
1912—were an exotic assortment of Edwardian pastoral scenes featuring
western explorers, Native Americans, an Arab riding a camel, and
idealized women. When these paintings began to show signs of wear in the
1940s, two itinerant artists—brothers from Vashon Island,
Washington—were hired to paint over the eighteen panels with depictions
of such local landmarks as the Columbia River Highway, Mount Hood,
Multnomah Falls, and scenes from the Oregon coast. Eventually, the
surfaces of these new paintings also began to flake and fade, revealing
parts of the original images in unusual and unexpected ways. The
resulting double exposures or “pentimentos” included a ghostly sailboat
gliding through a forest, an Indian chief looming over the Columbia
River Gorge, and a parasoled woman with the road to Crown Point emerging
from her loins. Each new image created a completely accidental, even
surreal, story about the juxtaposition of two generations of paintings.
Just three years after Jim Lommasson captured these images on film, the
original paintings were restored and the mysterious double exposures
disappeared under yet another layer of paint. Oaks Park Pentimento
preserves these haunting photographs and also includes an appreciation
by art historian Prudence Roberts and a look at Oaks Park, past and
present, by journalist Inara Verzemnieks.
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