About this tag

“Sheehan’s Flowers” sounds like it ought to be a florist, but it is really a neighborhood mural with a good origin story. The artist originally planned something about Portland’s history; residents told him they wanted flowers instead. So the wall became a kind of floral census, using different plants to represent some of the cultural backgrounds found in the neighborhood—cornflowers, shamrocks, irises, roses, and king protea among them. Sometimes the better public artwork is the one that survives contact with the people who actually have to look at it every day.