New Trash Cans Have Landed
[October 28, 2026]
New City garbage cans are in! Seven new cans have been installed throughout the Hillsdale business district. Others have been added at Barbur and Terwilliger and along Vermont Street: two near Ida B. Wells and Rieke, and a third several blocks west at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center.
You read it here first back in January: The program that brings arty trash (as opposed to trashy art) to curbsides around the City has expanded to include Hillsdale.
TriMet’s cement cans were removed in August, followed soon after by installation of the first of the planned replacement cans. All new cans are now in place.
The new cans are adorned with original art by local artists as part of a city program funded by dump fees.
Hillsdale's cans feature four works by two local artists.
Amaranta Colindres is a fine artist, muralist and art teacher whose murals can be found in public and private installations around Portland. In 2023, she was commissioned to paint "Multnomah Mola" in Multnomah Village, a street mural celebrating the neighborhood in the style of traditional a Panamanian mola (a colorful, intricately stitched textile traditionally made by Indigenous Guna women).
The rose was one of the first things Colindres painted after a sabbatical dedicated to raising her baby. She uses the rose in her guided meditation practice, where it serves as a tool for purifying energy. Finally, she wrote in her artist's statement that the City of Roses needs more visual representations of love.
The falcon, in addition to providing a nod to the “working birds” used by professional falconers to mitigate crow issues in our downtown, represents fierce self-expression and the healthy release of strong feelings. Colindres said, "I hope others are appreciative of the details on the feathers. It was very meditative to paint this bird as I challenged myself to achieve a highly detailed painting.”
Shoba Jetmalani’s work has been featured in regional solo and group exhibitions and public collections, including the City of Portland’s Vanport Building, Oregon State University, Multnomah County, and Portland City Hall. A licensed dermatologist as well as an artist, she finds commonalities between the two practices in the ways color and light shape visual perception of the surface, informing the viewer about underlying health and meaning.
In her artist’s statement, Jetmalani identifies the landscape in "Headlands II" as one of her favorite viewpoints on the Oregon Coast, near the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Cascade Head Trail. The setting invites reflection on our relationship with nature and our sometimes short-sighted attempts to control it. She writes, “But it also shows the strength and rhythms of our natural world and how our ‘humanness’ and compassion can be freed in these spaces. The young man is here to feel the fresh air and be immersed in these thoughts.”
"A Strong Beauty" began as one part of a diptych of magnolia blossoms from a favorite tree in the artist’s front yard. Jetmalani describes the woman in the painting as having “a reflective beauty.” Layered within the branches, she is peaceful but gathering her strength to face her next challenge with deep grace.
The new cans replaced older ones provided by other agencies and the Hillsdale Business and Professional Association (HBPA). The City pays to have the cans serviced twice a week, resulting in a savings of more than $1,000 per year for the HBPA, board member Chris Braidwood Reid told the Hillsdale News.
“The cement TriMet cans were a great add to Hillsdale when they were initially installed decades ago,” Reid said. “The new cans bring a bit of art to the town center and are a visual improvement over the current state of some of the cement cans.”
—Valeurie Friedman
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