Portland artists bring colour and history to Albina Library

Amirah Chatman walked into a spacious community room on Saturday and took in the floor-to-ceiling wall of color in front of her. Pastel colours — soft blues, light oranges, warm reds — formed textured swirls on the mural that covered more than 600 square feet in one of the ground floor rooms of the Albina Library. "How beautiful," she said as she entered the room with her fiance, Daniel Coggins. "This is crazy." Although Chatman created the design herself, it was her first time seeing it printed along the length of an entire wall: The original work was only a few feet across before it was digitally scanned and reproduced on a gargantuan scale.

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Outside the windows of the community room, another mural decorated the two-story high wall of a courtyard at the center of the library — the work of Portland-based artist Daren Todd. Other paintings and sculptures by local artists decorated the walls, sat on plinths or hung from the ceiling.

And around 10 a.m. Saturday, all of the new artwork was free for the public to peruse when the library reopened its doors for the first time since it was closed for renovations in March 2023. The renovation at Albina — which cost roughly $55 million — marks the fourth library Multnomah County has upgraded since voters approved a capital bond measure to modernize libraries in 2020. The new two-story Albina Library features 30,000 square feet of space, multiple community rooms, a courtyard and a technology room. And, of course, a lot of art.