The following description comes from the event organizer.

Betty Chilstrom (1924 – 2014) was a longtime resident of southeast Portland who over the course of several decades painted depictions of Portland area houses, buildings, industrial sites, and bridges as her way of documenting the beauty of the built environment around her. Many of the places Betty painted, such as the Captain Brown House, were later demolished despite the efforts of local activists, leaving the paintings as a visual archive. 

In this new exhibit, the AHC offers a glimpse of the breadth of Betty Chilstrom’s work, from residences and commercial buildings long-since demolished to some recognizable preservation stories, this exhibit not only demonstrates Betty’s skill as an artist, but also shows that there are different ways of preserving what we love about this city.