Five Portland plazas double as outdoor galleries after the city launched its Art in Plazas pilot in August.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and the Office of Arts & Culture selected five artists from 42 submissions and paid each a $10,000 commission to create temporary installations in public spaces. The program is funded through PBOT's Percent for Art dollars, according to the Office of Arts & Culture.

Portland has 20 street plazas, community spaces with public seating and room for neighborhood activity. The pilot aims to highlight neighborhood identity and draw more people into those spaces.

Three installations are already up and drawing visitors.

At Ankeny Alley in Old Town, multidisciplinary artist Larry Yes installed "Rainbows of Possibilities" on Aug. 27. The piece consists of 12 wooden benches with concrete bases, each painted in rainbow colors and stamped with a word like HOPE, JOY, DREAM or LOVE. Yes arranged the benches in circles, but visitors keep rearranging them into their own groupings.

"What I hope is people just have a little spark of joy … My real hope is that people sit down and connect to each other and they see words like hello, love, joy, fun, hope – and then they think of something positive …" Yes told Oregon ArtsWatch.

Yes has exhibited work at the Portland Art Museum, Portland International Airport and MoMA in New York, where one piece sits in the permanent collection.

Near Portland State University at Montgomery Plaza, artist Lettie Jane Rennekamp installed life-sized human silhouettes cut from transparent, colored acrylic sheets on concrete bases. The figures overlap to create new colors as people walk among them.

Rennekamp, who co-owns Ulna Art Studio and has completed more than 40 murals including one at Portland International Airport, said she felt most excited watching kids walk up and play around the figures. In October, she will be part of a group show at red e café on North Killingsworth Street and part of The Reprintery at Multnomah Art Center.

At Rainbow Road in Southeast Portland, on SE Ankeny Street between 27th and 28th avenues, Arcadia Trueheart created "Plaza Portraits." She photographed more than 30 people who work and spend time in the plaza area. She then painted their likenesses in pieces on Tyvek with black ink and hung them as collaged composite portraits. Trueheart's parents ran a public art commission business in Portland for about 35 years.

Trueheart also partnered with Defend Migrants Alliance on a workshop tied to the group's "2000 a Day" campaign, which highlights President Trump's 2,000-a-day ICE detention quota. Community members made cloth flags bearing a simple face shape to be hung in the plaza and later used in the alliance's organizing work.

She is leading an additional workshop at Rainbow Road using drawing techniques that will inform a painting on two large chairs that stay in the plaza.

Two more installations are confirmed but details remain thin. Paula Champagne will exhibit at St. Johns Plaza, and Sarah Luu and Adela Cardona Puerta will work at Concordia Commons. The city's announcement listed their project summaries as "coming soon."

The installations are temporary, with end dates depending on how the materials hold up against the weather. After the pilot wraps, PBOT and the Office of Arts & Culture plan to evaluate results and decide whether to continue the program.