Public Art is ‘Good Cents’

Salem’s Millrace Park is home to newly created public art that celebrates Oregon’s Bottle Bill.

It’s been nearly 50 years since Oregon became the first state to offer a deposit for returning empty bottles and cans. After Oregon’s Bottle Bill passed in 1971 and went into effect in 1972, Native American artist Lillian Pitt, 75, says it was nice to see the Warm Springs reservation she grew up on in Central Oregon get picked up a little bit.

“Whatever people could do to help clean up and profit from it a nickel at a time, that was good,” Lillian said. 

Before the bill passed, 40 percent of roadside litter in Oregon was said to be beverage containers. By 1979, it went down to 6 percent, according to The Oregon Encyclopedia. In the years following the passage of the bill, several other states followed Oregon’s lead. Now at 10 cents for each return, 2017 numbers tell us 73 percent of our recyclable beverage containers are redeemed, according to the Beverage Container Return Data. 

In honor of the passage of the Bottle Bill and the 50th anniversary of the Oregon Environmental Council, Lillian is part of a team chosen to create an art piece to be installed in December at Salem’s Millrace Park, just north of the SAIF building on Trade Street between Church and High streets.

Known as one of the most highly regarded Native American artists in the Pacific Northwest, Lillian uses a range of media, from clay and bronze to glass, to honor the history and legends of her people. Her work has been shown at Bush Barn Art Center and Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem along with the Portland Art Museum and Museum at Warm Springs as well as museums nationally and internationally. She traces her lineage back to the people of the Columbia River. Her tribal affiliation is Warm Springs, Yakama and Wasco tribes.  

For years, Lillian has paired up with Corvallis couple Mikkel and Saralyn Hilde who met her in the late ‘80s when Saralyn was gallery director of Corvallis Art Center. The trio have worked on several public art pieces in Oregon, including the 2016 sculpture “River Guardian” on the Portland waterfront and a 16-foot-tall by 42-foot-wide sculpture on Interstate 5 on the bridge over the Willamette River between Springfield and Eugene. In Salem, they collaborated in 2017, using auto reflectors to design the fascia on the Chemawa Indian School Health and Wellness building. 

The team is back together for the Millrace Park piece commissioned by the city of Salem. Their brushed aluminum sculpture of a man holding a 5-cent piece above his head will stand 10 feet tall and honors not only the Bottle Bill but the native people of the area. Mikkel fabricated the aluminum body. If you look close enough, you’ll notice that the legs create a negative space that looks like a Coke bottle and the top portion, the head and arms, resemble the pop top of a can. The arms and rib cage mimic the designs on native basketry and petroglyphs. Pitt is responsible for the fused glass work that will make the head, 5-cent piece and filler between the ribs. The aluminum and glass materials are both symbolic of the cans and bottles recycled through the Bottle Bill.

“Lillian is always honoring her ancestors and speaks reverently about her people and culture. She wants everyone to know they are still here,” Saralyn said. “We help translate that into contemporary form.”

Lillian calls the group “a great team,” with all contributing to ideas, Mikkel doing fabrication, design and project management, and Saralyn bringing her administration and research skills to the table. 

The Salem Public Art Commission picked the group’s design out of half a dozen finalists who submitted proposals for the piece.

“Their proposal was a really well-written concept, thoughtful and talked about Native Americans being the first to recycle, living off the land and taking care of where they live, which had overlap with the Oregon Environmental Council,” said Christine D’Arcy, Chair of the Salem Public Art Commission, who also complimented the playful elements in the work. 

Lillian and Saralyn said protecting the environment is an important connection between the Bottle Bill and native people. 

“The indigenous people are the best recyclers,” Saralyn said. “They never took more than they needed. Deer were not only used for meat but the hides for clothing and blankets. (Native people) always recycled. It’s what they did.”

Saralyn calls global warming “probably the most critical thing happening on our planet.”

“Oregonians are incredibly forward-thinking,” she said. “They had the good sense to come up with the Bottle Bill. They are innovative, so now we need to take the next steps to solve today’s problems. The Bottle Bill was 50 years ago.”

Good Cents

Where: Salem’s Millrace Park, on Trade Street between Church and High streets.

Funding: “Good Cents” is funded by the Oregon Environmental Council, Salem Public Arts Commission, Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative and Travel Oregon.

More: “Good Cents” is part of several pieces commissioned this year around Oregon to celebrate the work of the Oregon Environmental Council. Artwork commemorating the Beach Bill will be sited in Cannon Beach, Sokol Blosser Winery in Dundee has a piece honoring the land-use planning law that protects agricultural lands and reduces urban sprawl, and Portland State University architecture students created an art project celebrating the Bike Bill on the school’s campus.

This story originally ran in Press Play Salem issue 4 (Dec 2018/Jan 2019)