SUNSHINE DAIRY 1935 - 2023
PORTLAND, OREGON
“Life is Full of Distractions, Pay Attention to What’s Really Important” - HAND OF DOGG
So much gratitude to all the artists and friends who came together in 2019 to make this massive mural project happen. It was one of the best spaces PSAA has had the honor of painting to-date. Thank you for all making it so special.
Photo: Kyle Overman, February 2023
On the walls of this old dairy, we helped to write the final chapter of a piece of Portland history. While it always pains us to lose public art and historic sites like this, we are reminded in times like these that by its nature, all street art and graffiti is ephemeral, as are we and the things we build. Pay attention to what is important. Embrace your people and frequent those places around you that you love. Together, we turn spaces into places.
Photo:Caleb Ruecker @portlandhistory, February 2023
Sunshine Dairy started operation in 1935. It was a Portland mainstay until 2018 when the company declared bankruptcy. Given the structural foundation issues, the owner decided to redevelop the site. The building has unique industrial zoning, which allows for both residential and mixed-use development at the site. Realizing that the dairy would be sitting vacant for awhile, the property owners decided to activate this space with street art until its demise. With the help of donations, PSAA was able to arrange for several teams of artists to completely cover the building with bold artwork.
Spaces like Sunshine Dairy are important pieces of our public art landscape, as they provide easily accessible space for artists to explore new techniques and build their portfolios.
This site was part of PSAA’s unique Community Art Program. These special projects are much more organic and don’t have any planned sketches. Some have loose themes, but many do not. Each team of artists chooses a general color scheme, and their own schedules. Artists are provided very open creative freedom, which provides spaces for innovation and experimentation.
Over 30 artists were on display on walls of this iconic Portland dairy. Due to the pandemic, the Sunshine Dairy Community Project remained up for over 4 years, longer than anyone expected. Sunshine Dairy was PSAA’s first major Community Art Project of its scale. Since 2018, PSAA has curated three other large Community Art Projects, including the Salvation Army Building and the Salt and Straw Kitchen in the Central Eastside and the Mt. Whitney Blocks at SE 11th & Ash.
ARTWORK AT SUNSHINE DAIRY
Photos: Paul Landeros, Tiffany Conklin, Sara Sjol, Invoice, Tim Trautmann, Jeremy Nichols
SUNSHINE DAIRY ARTISTS:
GIVER, EKOSE, VIDEO, FIBER, ABNR, KANGO, LAWSON ARTS, NOTES, ADJUST, NIMBY, ZAE, RABK, UGH, CEEKAY, PESTOE, CKOS, BOSE, HENRY, BLINK, DEVIN FINLEY, GATS, DETR, YATSE, YUCKO, COPS, GIMER, ENVY, FNGER, AT ME, KENRO, GRISLE, QUINN, JOINS, RASKO, JEREMY NICHOLS, PTV CREW
HISTORY OF SUNSHINE DAIRY
Written By Josie Allison, Photos Scanned by Anton Legoo
In the 1930s, John Karamanos, a Greek restauranteur, wanted to start a dairy delivery service for his friends and founded Sunshine Dairy products. At the time, Portland was home to 50 independent dairy processors.
For the next 83 years, Sunshine stayed committed to serving local food service industry, local manufacturers, and local retailers and co-packers with their personalized delivery and steadfast dedication to high quality, naturally-produced products. By 2018, Sunshine Dairy was a fourth generation, family-owned operation.
The company gained organic certification and was consistently committed to producing the highest quality dairy products through specialized processes that produced superior, fresh taste. Every load of milk was screened for antibiotics and surpassed the federal standards of quality and safety. Sunshine was devoted to the philosophy that natural is better.
Since the development of the bovine growth hormone rBST in 1994, the company sourced from farmers who signed an affidavit not to inject their cows with the artificial stimulant and sought to support farms with sustainable farming practices. In return for their promise, Sunshine paid the farmers a premium to compensate for the economic benefits that using the artificial hormone would have brought. In order to keep their prices low, the company was willing to accept smaller profits from each gallon of milk. In 2001, Sunshine officially became the first dairy in the region to buy exclusively rBST-free milk. The company reaped the rewards from their dedication to natural products as organic milk sales began to rise after growth hormones were increasingly introduced into mainstream dairy.
One of Sunshine’s largest vendors was the Farmers Cooperative Creamery (FCC), whose members are nearly all small to mid-sized, family farmers from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and Chehalis and the Yakima Valley in Washington
The shifting climate of the dairy industry and the consolidation of dairies throughout the U.S. pushed Sunshine Dairy into bankruptcy. Sunshine signed an agreement with Alpenrose Dairy, another company founded in Portland.