Artists Archive
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Adam Sorensen’s work explores the landscape as subject and depicts the natural world with an intellectual remove. His dark otherworldly scenes suggest the lonely contemplation of overwhelming beauty. Sorensen’s work has been exhibited as part of the Portland Art Museum's 2011 APEX Project Space series, in Los Angeles as part of “High Five: Emerging Art in America,” in the Portland Art Museum’s 2003 Biennial as well as the “Core Sample” exhibition of that year. He was selected as one of ten artists for the annual young painters competition at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and was recently featured in New American Paintings. His work has been exhibited throughout the Northwest. Sorensen is currently represented by PDX Contemporary in Portland, Oregon, and James Harris Gallery in Seattle, Washington. An exhibition of new paintings is currently on view at PDX Contemporary Art.
Learn moreAKIO SUZUKI is known as a pioneer of sound art, but the breadth of his activities and the form of his works far exceeds the normal boundaries of sound art. It is perhaps more as a “quester after sound and space” that he has received the most attention from artists in many fields. Suzuki’s journey as an artist began in 1963 with a performance at Nagoya station, in which he threw a bucket full of junk down a staircase. The inspiration behind this performance is the idea that if one were to hurl an object down a well-balanced stairway, a pleasant rhythm might be the result— took the desire to “listen” as its subject. That desire to hear, to listen has remained the one constant in Suzuki’s stance as an artist. During the sixties, Suzuki’s sense of playfulness led him to undertake a series of Self-Study Events, where he explored the processes of “throwing” and “following”, taking the natural world as his collaborator. The experiences he gained in these events led him in the seventies to invent an echo instrument he named Analapos. The instrument’s structure resembles that of two mirrors facing each other, reflecting into infinity. As an extension of the principles underlying Analapos, Suzuki constructed the Hinatabokko no kukan (Space in the Sun) in 1988. This space consists of two huge parallel walls, in between which the artist can sit all day and purify his hearing by listening to the reflected sounds of nature. This space leads the artist to discover a new method of listening. Suzuki himself comments: “Sound, which had been conceptually imprisoned in various spaces, is freed to circle the world.”
His performances and installations have been presented at major venues internationally including: Yokohama City Art Gallery, Japan, 2010; The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2010; The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, 2007; Gelbe Musik, Berlin, Germany, 2007; The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan, 2005; British Museum, UK, 2003 and DAAD Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 2000.
He has also participated in major international events and Festivals including: Tuned City, Brussels, 2013; LISTE Art Fair Basel, Switzerland, 2013; MaerzMusik, Berlin, Germany, 2012; Nuit Blanche Festival, Paris, France, 2004; Adelaide Festival, Australia, 1999; Sonambiente Festival, Berlin, Germany, 1996; Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987; and Festival d’Automne, Paris, France, 1978.
Learn moreAki Sasamoto is a New York-based artist who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever medium it takes to communicate her ideas. In her installation and performance works, Sasamoto moves and talks inside the careful arrangements of sculpturally altered objects, activating the complex emotions at work in her daily life. Sasamoto’s works appear in theater spaces, gallery spaces, and landscapes. Sasamoto has shown in exhibitions at Mori Museum, Take Ninagawa, Yokohama Triennale 2008, Japan; Gwangju Biennial 2012, South Korea; Chocolate Factory Theater, the Kitchen, Soloway, Whitney Biennial 2010 at Whitney Museum, Greater New York 2010 at MOMA-PS1, New York; and numerous other international and domestic venues. Sasamoto has collaborated with visual artists, musicians, choreographers, mathematicians, and scholars.
Selected Press:
"String Theory," Jennifer Krasinski, Artforum, March 19, 2014.
"After Magritte," Martha Sherman, Dance View Times, March 11, 2014.
"Stilts Aren’t the Only Way to Rise Above It All," Brian Seibert, The New York Times, March 7, 2014
Learn moreAlessandro Sciarroni is an Italian performing artist with an extensive background in visual art and theater. His works are featured in contemporary dance and theater festivals, museums, and art galleries, as well as in unconventional spaces and involve professionals from different disciplines.
His work goes beyond the traditional definitions of gender. He starts from a conceptual Duchamp-like matrix, makes use of a theatrical framework, and he can use some techniques and experiences from dance, as well as circus or sports. In addition to the rigor, coherence and clarity of each creation, his work tries to uncover obsessions, fears and fragilities of the act of performing, through the repetition of a practice to the limits of the physical endurance of the interpreters, looking at a different dimension of time, and to an empathic relationship between the audience and the performers.
His works have been performed in 21 European countries, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Uruguay, and the United Arab Emirates. Among the main events he took part: the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Impulstanz Festival in Wien, the Venice Biennale, the Festival d'Automne and the Festival Séquence Danse at 104 in Paris, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, Juli Dans Festival in Amsterdam, and he exhibited his work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the MAXXI Museum in Rome.
Alessandro Sciarroni is supported by APAP - Advancing Performing Arts Projects - and his shows are produced by Marche Teatro in collaboration with international co-producers such as the Comune di Bassano del Grappa / Centro per la Scena Contemporanea, the Biennale de la Danse / Maison de la Danse de Lyon, the Mercat de les Flors-Graner / Barcelona, Centrale Fies and the Association Corpoceleste-C.C.00# of which he is artistic director. It is also one of the artists of the Project Matilde, regional platform for the new scene in Marche. In 2015, Alessandro Sciarroni was appointed Associate Choreographer of the company of the Ballet of Rome and he is supported for his latest creation Aurora from the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès.
Learn moreAlexandria Rema Saleem is a first generation Palestinian American* artist and cultural worker. She works with individuals, communities, and the land to reclaim our right to sacred spaces through land tending, worldbuilding, dance, ritual, risk, and tenderness. Flowers are her deepest ally and main medium, working between the land as a regenerative flower farmer and her community as florist, event designer, and installation artist. She is currently co-stewarding the Black Oregon Land Trust and is the Director of Arts and Culture with the Center for Study and Preservation of Palestine.
*Saleem grapples with an appropriate way to name her locations amidst the ongoing legacies of harm to land and people by colonialist projects.
Learn moreSegade is a member of My Barbarian, a performance and video art collective, exhibiting and performing at MoMA, New Museum, Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, Participant inc., New York; Hammer Museum, Human Resources, Los Angeles; Hirschhorn, DC; Museo El Eco, Madrid; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; Yaffo23, Jerusalem, Israel, among many others. Segade received Art Matters Grants in 2008 and 2011; Creative Capital Grant in 2012; and Foundation for Contemporary Art Award, 2013. A Native Californian, Alexandro Segade lives in Brooklyn.
Learn moreAlex Ian Smith is an artist, musician, and curator based in Portland, OR.
Learn moreAlex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults community based movements, human and civil rights organizations, and governments internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
Learn moreA.L. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, co-curator of the project Ridykeulous, founding member of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and collaborates with numerous visual and performing artists. Her works have been featured internationally at such venues as P.S.1/MoMA, Tate Modern, The New Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Centre Pompidou, The Kitchen, REDCAT, and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, among others. Her work is included in such public collections as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Steiner is currently based in Los Angeles and is faculty at the University of Southern California.
Selected Press
The Lowdown: A.L. Steiner, Io Tillet Wright, New York Times T Magazine, May 11, 2011.
Eve Fowler & A.L. Steiner, North Drive Press #4, 2007.
Would it be okay if I kept my sweater on?, Naomi Fry, Paper Monument.
Learn moreAmy O’Neal and Ellie Sandstrom have danced together in other people’s productions and in O’Neal’s own choreographic work for 10 years. O’Neal is a performer, choreographer, dance educator, the creator of Amyo/tinyrage, and the co-director of locust (music/dance/video) with musician/composer Zeke Keeble.
Learn moreAmy Sillman is an artist who works primarily in painting and drawing. Born in Detroit and raised in Chicago, she moved to NYC at age 19 to study language and literature before turning to visual art, but has retained an interest in the psychological (and sometimes comic) spaces between form and language. Sillman’s active exhibition record began in the 1990’s, and her work is now included in many public and private collections. In 2013 she had a traveling mid-career survey show called one lump or two, which opened at the ICA Boston, accompanied by a monograph published by Prestel, NYC. Her bibliography also includes Amy Sillman: Works on Paper, a book on her drawings published in 2006 by Gregory R. Miller. Sillman got her MFA at Bard College, and then taught there until 2012. In 2015 she begins a Professorship at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt.
Learn moreAndrea Stolowitz is a playwright living in Portland, Oregon and a proud member of Playwrights West. Her plays have been produced nationally and internationally. The LA Times calls her work “heartbreaking” and the Orange County Register characterizes her approach as a “brave refusal to sugarcoat...issues and tough decisions.”
A recipient of Artists Repertory Theatre’s $25,000 Fowler/Levin Prize, Andrea premiered her newest work, Ithaka, at the theatre in June 2013.
Her previous play Antarktikos premiered at Pittsburgh Playhouse in March, 2013 and won the Oregon Book Awards’ Angus L. Bowmer Award for Drama in April 2013. Andrea’s screenwriting work includes Jonathan’s War, a feature-length action film; the treatment for Code Name: Pelicano, which was sold to independent producers; and the upcoming web series Crackerjacks, which is currently in development.
A Walter E. Dakin Fellow at The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Andrea has also been awarded residencies at Ledig House, Soapstone, and Hedgebrook; and arts grants from North Carolina, Oregon, and private foundations. An MFA playwriting alumna of UC-San Diego, Andrea teaches at Willamette University and the University of Portland and has served on the theatre studies faculty at Duke University and UC-San Diego.
Learn moreAndrew Schneider is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist who creates original works for theater, video, and installation since 2003. Schneider creates and performs original performance works, builds interactive electronic art works and installations, and was a Wooster Group company member (video/performer) from 2007-2014. Rooted at the intersection of performance and technology, Schneider’s work critically investigates our over-dependence on being perpetually connected in an always-on world. Andrew’s original performance work in NYC includes AFTER (2018 Under the Radar Festival), YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award –The Invisible Dog, 2016 Drama Desk nom – 3LD); DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Dance Roulette), TIDAL (2013 – River to River festival); and WOW+FLUTTER (2010 –The Chocolate Factory Theater) among others.
Learn moreAngelo Scott is an interdisciplinary artist from the South currently living in Portland, OR and completing their BFA in Intermedia at PNCA. Their sonic compositions build shifting layers of melodic sentiments from splintering phrases, emphasizing irregularities in live sampling, synthesis, and insisting upon fleeting swells of emotive expression as a passage through intricate patterns in overwhelming soundscapes. Scott received their Associate of the Arts from Linn-Benton Community College in 2019, where they worked as the photo editor for The Commuter. While living in Corvallis, Oregon, they began operating in DIY sonic arts communities, co-organizing and curating installation and video works for Corvallis Experiments In Noise's What is Noise? festivals. In 2016, they co-initiated and co-created Sponsored Trash, an ongoing performance arts collective. They currently perform solo sound compositions as Tyronza and participate in improvisational ensembles, create video projections, and make collaborative CRT installations for interactive music events.
Learn moreAshley Stull Meyers (she/her/hers) is a writer, editor, and culture worker. She has curated exhibitions and public programming for a diverse set of arts institutions along the West Coast, including those in San Francisco, CA, Oakland, CA, Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR. She has been in academic residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE) and the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta). She has served as Northwest Editor for Art Practical and has contributed writing to BOMB, Rhizome, ARTS.BLACK, and SFAQ/NYAQ. In 2017 Stull Meyers was named director and curator of The Art Gym and Belluschi Pavilion at Marylhurst University, and the following year was made co-curator of the 2019 Portland Biennial. Currently, she is program director for the Multicultural Resource Center at Reed College, and is contracting as an independent curator.
Learn moreBarry Sanders holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature. He taught for over thirty years in the departments of Literature and the History of Ideas at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges, where he was the first to hold the Peter S. and Gloria Gold Chair. The author of fourteen books and over fifty essays and articles, he has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was twice a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He serves as a contributing editor of North American Review, and writes frequently for Cabinet. His essay “Bang the Keys Swiftly: Type-Writers and Their Discontents” recently appeared in the New Museum catalog Ghosts in the Machine, published by Skira Rizzoli. He is Founding Co-chair of the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Ford Institute for Visual Education.
Learn moreBeacon Sound is a record store, label, and event space located in North Portland dedicated to connecting the sometimes-disparate dots of contemporary music both locally and globally. By design, Beacon Sound is as much a cultural node as a record store: a gathering place for like-minded people, a home for all sorts of events and happenings, a facilitator/instigator of unexpected connections and modes of production.
Learn moreThe Design Collaborative know as the Black Aesthetic Studio (BAS) is led by artist duo Cleo and Kayin Davis, in conjunction with Professor of Architecture Robert Alexander Clarke, and historian Kimberly Moreland. They will investigate policing through the lens of Oregonian historically anti-black urban politics and policies. And how these systems of policing affected Black Folks' ways of living, being, and seeing throughout time.
BAS aims to uncover how past, present, and future policing histories have imprinted African Americans' psychology and aesthetic throughout time. They will construct temporal gateways that will encapsulate specific periods which will draw the audience into black space, thus illuminating the user on how we see our histories and futures which has been policed by white authorship from the founding of our nation. These constructed visions will be critique on Oregon racist history and policies, allow one to understand how migration and oppression has transforms black identity and its expressions.
Cleo Davis started his education in architecture at the University of Oregon further changing to industrial design at San Jose State. He is an artist whose work takes a critical view of the social, political and cultural issues and through his work, he continues to reconstruct the cultural view modernizing while also highlighting traditions. Although he engages with multiple subjects and mediums his methodology remains consistent. He also has started the screw loose Studio the Mayo House project and most recently, the archives project in collaboration with Kayin.
Kayin Talton Davis started off in an artistic direction from a very young age, but later learned her love for math and science and pursued a Bachelor's in mechanical engineering at Portland State University. Her design projects were always influenced by a drive to be accessible to all. She started the soapbox theory in 2001, as a way to express herself creatively. And through these mediums, her interest is always in creating something that is positive, helpful and accessible to all but especially children from culturally underrepresented communities.
Robert Alexander Clarke is a designer, educator, and theorist practicing at the intersection of culture, identity, and architecture. His work aims to develop and canonize black aesthetics, thus authenticating it as a lens through which to practice architecture. His design office, BAS (Black Aesthetic Studio) was founded by Clarke, Cleo Davis and Kimberly Morland; their studio explores how to unearth new aesthetics that are immensely specific to African American culture, experience, and identity. Before joining as Activist in Residence at UCLA’s City Lab, Clarke held posts as a Wilson Smith III Design in Spatial Justice Fellow at the University of Oregon’s College of Design. As well as Research Fellow at Newlab under the supervision of architect and New York University Associate Professor of Practice Mitchell Joachim. Before opening his practice, Clarke worked for many years at architectural firms across the globe, including HOK, Terreform ONE, Gensler, and Archi-Union.
Kimberly Stowers Moreland, MBA, MURP, is wife of Michael L. Moreland and the mother of four amazing young adults: Katherine, Mike Jr., Kristen, and Karina. She owns Moreland Resource Consulting and has over 25+ years of experience in the public sector, urban and historic preservation, community development, and urban planning in Portland, Tacoma, and Salem.
Moreland serves as the President of the Oregon Black Pioneers, and their mission is to preserve the history of Black Oregonians. On behalf of the Oregon Black Pioneers, she authored Images of America: African Americans of Portland (Arcadia Publisher). She is the Vice-Chair of the Portland Historic Landmark Commission and a member of the Portland Landmark Commission.
As a community historian, Kimberly began documenting Portland's Black history for over 30+ years. As a city planner with the City of Portland, she worked with the community advisory committee and local historians to produce the History of Portland's African-American History (1805 to the Present). She was on the project team that produced Cornerstones of Community: The Buildings of Portland's African American History, published in 1995. She was subsequently involved in the Multiple Property Documentation (MPD) history project, which builds on the Cornerstones research to produce African American Resources in Portland, Oregon, from 1851 to 1973. This research brings attention to sites related to Portland's Black history so they can be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
As owner of Moreland Resource Consulting, Moreland worked with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Home Forward, former the Housing Authority of Portland (HAP), to better understand how their past policies unjustly impacted African Americans. Since, 2021, she has teamed with the City of Portland and Architectural Resource Group (ARG) on successfully approval of four National Historic Landmark Register nominations significant to Portland's Black history, including Dean's Beauty and Barbershop, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, Golden West Hotel, and Dr. John D. Marshall Building. In 2023, with Constructing Hope, Moreland co-authored Building Legacy: BIPOC Construction Trailblazers in Oregon, which highlighted twenty-three construction trade pioneers.
In 2023, she partnered with Robert Clark and Cleo Davis to establish Black Aesthetics Studio LLC (BAS). The firm explored how to unearth new aesthetics specific to African-American culture, experience, and identity.
Learn moreChoreographer Suniti Dernovsek and visual artist David Stein began making work together in 2004 under the name Hot Little Hands, which, in 2011, evolved into the Portland-based contemporary dance company bobbevy. In addition to 18 shorter works, Dernovsek and Stein have produced six evening-length shows: This is how we disappear (2013); Palace of Crystal (2011); ill-starred (2009); Lawn of the Limp (2008); Avian Fable (2007); and Marionette (2004). They have been presented by Conduit Dance, Reed College Arts Week, Danspace in NYC, Velocity Dance Center, Northwest New Works at On the Boards, Ten Tiny Dances’ South Waterfront Project, and PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival. They have received several grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as the Dance New Work Award from UWM.
Learn moreLender and designer Bogosi Sekhukhuni (b. 1991, South Africa) offers considerations on cultures and histories of technology and science. Since 2013, Sekhukhuni’s work has been featured internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, with institutions that include MoMA, Foxy Production, Fondazione Prada, Tate Modern & Kunsthalle Bern. They have been awarded the Prix Net Art Award. Sekhukhuni is a founding member of the artist group NTU and is co-founder of the design firm INFANT.
Bogosi is a 2023 Golden Spot Residency awardee.
Learn moreKatie and Michael Gaughan (Brother and Sister) play positive, high-energy punk rock with a focus on visual performance and audience participation. Star Tribune calls Brother and Sister, “A sibling duo that is part White Stripes, part Whitesnake and part white noise.”Brother and Sister have toured the Midwest and West Coast. Their most recent scavenger hunt was commissioned by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
Learn moreCharlie Salas-Humara is a painter and musician living in Portland, OR. Self-taught, he began working with acrylic, oil, charcoal, and collage as a means of expressing his love of dance and music through art. Salas-Humara has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Russia, and China (with The Planet The and under the moniker of Panther), and has shown his visual work in Portland, OR, Springfield, OR, Los Angeles, and New York.
Learn moreChaz Stobbs is a multi media artist currently studying video and sound at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon. His work focuses on the interaction of synthetic and natural materials in social constructs. Along with a visual arts practice, he is the current director of Veritable Stimulation.
Learn moreChristopher Kirkley is a self-described amateur ethnomusicologist and gentleman explorer of the West African Sahel. His work spans field recording, cultural archiving, experimental ethnography, and the role of new media in West Africa. Under the label Sahel Sounds, he has produced an extensive discography of record releases in conjunction with artists across six countries.
Selected Press
Desert discs: how mobile phones are at the root of Saharan music, Mic Wright, The Guardian, November 1, 2010. Learn moreChristopher Sutton is a longtime artist, musician, writer, and DJ who currently lives in Portland, Oregon. As a musician he has toured, performed, and recorded with bands such as Hornet Leg, Gossip, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Spider & The Webs, C.O.C.O., Hooded Hags, The Dirtbombs, and Chain & The Gang to name a few. His life as a writer has seen contributions mainly to self published fanzines like Shotgun Seamstress, Bumpidee, and his own zine Nigerian Triple Daisy. He currently writes a blog called Record Lections and some of his opines can be read in the online magazine called Network Awesome. Sutton also exhibits his work as a painter and designs album art for his bands Hornet Leg and C.O.C.O. Finally, Sutton is a DJ participating in regular soulful Portland dance parties like Soul In The Hole and Sugar Town and in various venue around the Northwest.
Selected Press:
"DJ Hornet Leg talks records," Nikki McCoy, Northwest Military, May 14, 2014
"Hornet Leg: Ribbon of Fear," Joe Hemmerling, Tiny Mix Tapes, 2009
Learn moreColin Self (b. 1987 Oregon, USA) is an artist, composer, and puppeteer based between Brooklyn, NY and Berlin, DE. They create music, performances, and new systems for interfacing with the human spirit across a spectrum between the living and deceased. Their practices revolve around the temporary assembly of communities and envelop collaborative and dialogical experiments into play.
Learn moreCraig Stephens was born in Sacramento, California in 1963. He grew up in the foothill town of Weimar. He attended American River College and later transferred to UC Davis where he received his B.A. in art studio in 1993. During his undergraduate years he had the privilege of taking classes from Gary Pruner, Roy DeForest, David Hollowell and Wayne Thiebaud. In 1996 Mr. Stephens began teaching high school art classes at Chana High School in Auburn, California.
Since 2006 he has completed a small painting on a nearly daily basis, which he shares through Instagram feed. He has found that the practice of completing a painting a day suits his disposition and aesthetic.
Mr. Stephens currently resides in Auburn, California with his wonderful wife and amazing children. His works can be found in private and corporate collections throughout North America and Europe.
Learn moreC. Riley Snorton is a scholar, author, and activist whose work focuses on historical perspectives of gender, sexuality, and race. His publications include Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (U Minn Press, 2014) and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (U Minn Press, 2017). Snorton is Professor of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Chicago.
Learn moreCrispin Spaeth offers private coaching, workplace trainings, and group classes that champion the beauty of our human design and its intrinsic relationship to confidence, connection, and freedom.
Her work is deeply informed by Integrative Alexander Technique (IAT), an experiential learning process that allows you to access your natural coordination so that you can move, think, and communicate more effectively and in line with your true wishes.
Learn moreCrystal Baxley and Stefan Ransom are Portland-based artists who make events, videos, sounds, posters, prints, books, blogs, sculptures, playlists, drawings, emails, and food, individually and collaboratively. In 2012 they created a compilation album of 35 songs based on Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art, titled Songs on Conceptual Art. It is available for free online at http://songsonconceptualart.com. Baxley and Ransom have organized events and exhibited projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, the Open Engagement Conference and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, and the Kadist Foundation in San Francisco.
Learn moreTrained in the humanities, she got her start in the art world. After graduating from Yale in 1996, she moved to New York, where she worked for Goldin in her studio on the Bowery. Following a brief stint working at an art school in France, she returned to Manhattan where she resumed working for Goldin before departing for graduate school at NYU. In her master's program, she studied critical theory – “post-structuralists: Derrida, Baudrillard, all that kind of stuff.” In 2001, she began to work as the art director for Byrne, the former lead singer of one of the most acclaimed bands of the ‘80s, Talking Heads.
Learn moreDan Seward, also known as Bunnybrains, is a musician, curator and promoter in Hudson, New York, where he runs the celebrated (and somewhat nomadic) record store, John Doe Records. This exhibition focuses on Bunnybrains thirty plus years as a transgressive, mutable, collaborative, performative project and what it means to illustrate the life of a true muse. From live broadcasts of Bunnybrains radio show Battlefield Earth, participatory workshops, rotating guest exhibitions, spontaneous happenings and performances, the artist shares their space with you in an effort to vivify "Bunnybrains is all".
Bunnybrains’ career highlights include a vinyl only pressing with Matador, a national tour supporting Devendra Banhart, a four CD boxset that garnered raves from the indie press, and opening for a reunited Hawkwind—a set credited with giving the many hippies in attendance bad trips.
Learn moreDao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, and visual—to explore hybridity and contemplate the intersection of personal and collective histories. Using practices of polyvocality, fragmentation, and (re)assemblage, Strom writes arrangements of poetry, music, image, song, and sound, to be experienced as performance, installation, multimedia, recordings, and inside the spaces of a book. Although separate, these elements are unified by a shared (under)current that transposes itself through or despite its conduits, and endeavors toward “re-membering” and attempting to synchronize the divided ‘languages’ within the self and concerning the self as placed in the world.
Strom is the author/composer of several hybrid works, including the music/poetry project TENDER REVOLUTIONS/YELLOW SONGS (2025), and INSTRUMENT (2020), which won the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and its musical companion of song-poems, TRAVELER’S ODE. She co-curated and co-edited the hybrid-literary anthology and exhibition, A Mouth Holds Many Things (2024), and released an album of ambient-folk songs, Redux (2022). She is also the author of a bilingual poetry-art collection, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else; a hybrid-form memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, with song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction. Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, Ford Foundation, Precipice Fund, NEA, and others. She is the co-founder of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of Vietnamese women writers and artists making polyvocal poetry-art works; and de-canon, a literary social art project centering BIPOC writers. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevadas of northern California and now lives in Portland, OR.
Learn moreDavid Sedaris burst into the national spotlight in 1992 when he read his SantaLand Diaries, a hilarious account of his experiences as a Macy's elf, on National Public Radio. Since then, he has written three collections of autobiographical essays, Barrel Fever (1995), Naked (1997), and Holidays on Ice, which has just been released in paperback. He is also the author of five plays which he co-produced with his sister, Amy, at the legendary Cafe La Mama in New York and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He continues to entertain the nation with his wry and witty observations of American culture as a commentator for NPR. In his Portland appearance, Sedaris will read from a new collection of essays inspired by his recent move from New York to Paris.
Learn moreDennis Scholl is the Vice President of Arts for the Knight Foundation. He oversees the foundation's national arts program, including the Knight Arts Challenge and Random Acts of Culture. He is well known as a collector of contemporary art for over three decades. Scholl is also the founder of a series of initiatives dedicated to building the contemporary art collections of museums, including the Guggenheim, the Tate Modern and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. He is a four-time regional Emmy winner for his work in cultural documentaries. His first feature documentary “Deep City: The Birth of Miami Sound,” premiered at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival. Dennis is also the co-founder of Betts and Scholl, an award-winning wine project. In 2012, Scholl was a Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow, focusing on the role of culture in community engagement. Dennis is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. Previously, he was a practicing attorney and CPA.
Learn moreArgentine director, dancer and choreographer Diana Szeinblum began her career with the prestigious contemporary Ballet of the San Martin General theatre under the direction of Oscar Araiz. On a Goethe Institute scholarship, she studied at the Folkwang Tanz Schule and danced with the FTS company under the artistic direction of Pina Bausch, where she worked with choreographers such as Bausch, Susanne Linke and Urs Dietrich, among others. Her award-winning independent dance theatre work Secreto y Malibú toured across Europe, Asia and the US in 2003 including performances at PICA, The Walker Art Center, Dance Theatre Workshop and the Fresh Terrain Festival in Austin. ALASKA, her last piece, premiered in 2007, in the Konex Art Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and toured through the NPN Performing Americas Program in 2008. ALASKA will also be included in the Teatro a mil Festival (Chile) CINARS (Canada) the Feria de San Sebastian (España) and he Festival in Madrid 2009. Szeinblum is a sought-after teacher of composition and improvisation classes in Buenos Aires and throughout Argentina.
Lucas Condro began his studies in Argentina in 1997. In 1999 he was invited by the teacher and choreographer David Zambrano to take a seminar at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, where he studied for three years and received the degree of "Dance Maker." In Amsterdam he worked with the choreographers Red Peace, Hooman Sharifi; Nicole Butler and David Zambrano. In 2004 he improved his skills in the Montpellier Choreographic Center, under the direction of Mathilde Monnier. Condro is one of the key performers of Diana Szeinblum's work, appearing in her play 34 Metros, Homage to Kagel and ALASKA. He teaches Improvisation and technical courses in Argentina and throughout Latin America.
Learn moreDon’t Shoot Portland is an arts and education organization that promotes social justice and civic participation. Our year-round programming allows us to advocate for community members facing racism and discrimination by providing legal representation and direct advocacy. Since our inception in 2016, Don’t Shoot Portland has hosted its own dialogues, community forums and workshops focusing on history, archiving and social culture. The art proponent of our work acts as a communicative tool to facilitate discussions about race in America while providing educational assets to those most affected by discrimination in public policy.
As we uplift and amplify social movements around the world, your solidarity and commitment to change is the impact needed. We must continue to evolve alongside one another to extend this work. Our community action plan provides direct essential resources, legal advocacy and more to support communities that have been systemically marginalized. Our programming will remain free and low-barrier to keep our resources accessible to all.
Teressa Raiford is a community organizer, philanthropist and fourth generation Portlander. Her experiences with gun violence inspired her to demand accountability from leaders and lawmakers surrounding public safety. In 2016 Teressa established a human rights organization, Don’t Shoot Portland, focusing on civic education, art and nonviolent direct action while providing legal access to vulnerable communities.
Tai Carpenter (she/her) is a writer, gallerist and community archivist with a passion for social impact in the realms of art and civil rights. She is also the founder of Compose Yourself Magazine, an independent online publication spotlighting music, culture and social justice. She has curated political art installations, facilitated panel discussions and organized artmaking workshops centered on civic action with Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon’s Special Collections and University Archives, Society of American Archivists, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Shift Collective and Documenting the Now, among others.
Her work allows her to intersect two passions, art and civil rights, to create a more equitable and creative world by utilizing critical research to facilitate dialogues around art in relation to current social movements.
Tai is currently the Board President of Don’t Shoot Portland, a community-based advocacy nonprofit and Director of The Black Gallery. Most recently she was Gallery Coordinator for the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, Gallery Manager at HOLDING Contemporary and an Archives & Records Management Coordinator at the City of Portland Archives.
Learn moreDr. Simonis has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University and is the Owner & Lead Scientist of DAPPER Stats, a Portland, OR-based quantitative ecology consulting company. They are also the Founder & Director of the Chemical Weapons Research Center, a research, education, and activism organization focused on understanding the impact of chemical weapons on people, communities, and the environment.
When not working, Dr. Simonis plays competitive roller derby, and is a current member of the four-time, currently defending world champion and #1 ranked Rose City Rollers Wheels of Justice. Alongside competing, Juniper has been recognized for their activism and advocacy for inclusion of transgender athletes.
Website: https://www.juniperlsimonis.com/
Learn moreMiller & Shellabarger create artist books and public performances that examine queer identity, politics, and displays of affection and intimacy. They are recipients of a 2008 Artadia Chicago Award and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award. Together, Miller & Shellabarger have presented their projects at venues across the United States and at art fairs including Volta in Basel; Switzerland; NEXT in Chicago; NADA in Miami; and the Affair at the Jupiter in Portland, Oregon. The two artists also maintain separate artistic practices. Miller & Shellabarger are represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago, where they live and work.
Selected Press
Run, Don't Walk, Carlos Suarez de Jesus, Miami New Times, September 17, 2009.
Learn moreEileen Isagon Skyers has worked with contemporary art and nonprofit arts organizations including the Whitney Museum, David Zwirner, Rhizome, the New Museum, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, PICA, and the Digital Museum of Digital Art (DiMoDA). Her first book, Vanishing Acts, was published by LINK Editions (Brescia, Italy) in 2015, and her writing has been published in the New Museum Catalogue Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon, NATASHA, Wreath, Glass Press of the Future, Web Safe 2k16, Printed Web, and New World UNLTD, among others. Her moving image work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico. Skyers holds a BA in philosophy and a BFA in studio art from the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL) and an MA in critical studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR).
Learn moreFounded in 1991 by Artistic Director John Collins, Elevator Repair Service creates original works with an ongoing ensemble.
ERS’s theater pieces are built around a broad range of subject matter and literary forms; they combine elements of slapstick comedy, hi-tech and lo-tech design, both literary and found text, and the group’s own highly developed style of choreography.
ERS creates its performances through extended periods of collaboration. A typical development cycle includes 4-6 intensive work periods within a 2 year period, which conclude with work-in-progress showings. Time off between development is filled with touring and presentations of finished works. Following completion, the piece is presented in NYC for an extended run and is toured throughout the US and abroad.
Learn moreEthan Seltzer currently serves as the Interim Director of the School of Art+Design, and as a Professor in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. He served as Director of the Toulan School from 2003 through 2009. From 1992, through August, 2003, he was the founding director of Portland State’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, created to better connect the resources of higher education to the needs and issues of the communities in the 6-county, bistate Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region. Prior to joining Portland State University, he held positions as the Land Use Supervisor for Metro, the regional government in the Portland area, as an assistant for planning and budget issues to Portland City Commissioner Mike Lindberg, and as the Assistant Coordinator for the Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Program. Current scholarly interests include regional planning, regional development, and Cascadia. He has been a resident of the Portland metropolitan area since 1980 and has served as president of the board of the Oregon Environmental Council, the City of Portland Planning Commission, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, and the 40-Mile Loop Land Trust.
Learn moreEvie Snax is a multimedia digital visual artist, curator, hustler, sex magik worker, and queer indie porn enthusiast casting spells of self-love and liberation. Her work reflects her experience as a queer mixed Chinese-American/white femme and looks and feels like it does because she is a fresh millennial slut with keyboard fingertips. Her gifs center QTBIPoC and sex workers in a vibrant contemporary fantasy free of binaries, shame, and oppression. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally from Moore College of Art and Design to the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival. Currently she is co-producing Hot Bits, a touring sex-positive film and arts festival in its 4th year. She is also a recipient of the Leeway Transformation Award, is a CFEVA Visual Artist Fellow, and Elsewhere Exchange Fellow. Follow her on ig @snaxho_ and view her portfolio at snax.wtf/evie for more.
Learn moreStephaun E. Wallace, MS, MOL, is a thought leader, public health researcher, project manager at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and co-director of the University of Washington’s (UW) Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Community Action board (CAB), with a track record in developing, implementing, and evaluating major public health and human service programs in the areas of HIV/AIDS & STD prevention, care and treatment, in diverse, high-risk populations in the United States. Wallaces’ career highlights include Director of Programs/Deputy Director of the MOCHA Center, Inc.; Program/Training Coordinator of AID Atlanta, Inc. (where he co-founded the Evolution Center/Project); and Founding Executive Director of My Brothaz Keeper, Inc., and currently serves on several nonprofit boards, committees and coalitions, including maintaining active membership in national public health associations.
Mr. Wallace is a public health/social justice leader with more than 16 years of sexual/public health experience with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities and men who have sex with men (MSM), more than a decade of senior-level non-profit administrative and management experience, more than 20 of grassroots social justice/advocacy experience with LGBTQ/MSM communities, and a proven commitment to the illumination and eradication of HIV/AIDS and other health disparities via policy, research, education and advocacy. He has completed undergraduate degrees in psychology and criminal justice, Masters of Science degrees in Management and Organizational Leadership, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy in Epidemiology.
In the house and ball community (HBC), he is known as Stephaun Blahnik, Chairman/President of the House of Blahnik. Since 2000, Wallace has been an active part of the HBC, and has provided ballroom/life guidance and talent development for many ballroom superstars. Wallace has received several ballroom awards and accolades since being a part of this community; and has walked and won Best Dressed, American Runway, Face, and Sneaker vs. Sneaker in multiple regions of the country, in addition to having the honor of judging major and mini-balls around the United States. Wallace resurrected the House of Elite in 2000, and has been a part of the Houses of Revlon, Cavalli, Valentino, and now Blahnik. Wallace founded the Western New York Council of Houses, resurrected the Atlanta Ballroom Alliance, and has directly supported the Chicago, Carolinas, Kansas City, and the West Coast Ballroom Alliances over the years. Wallace also provides consultation to the federal agencies, and local and state health departments and organizations around the country on projects addressing the needs and issues of LGBT communities, especially those in the HBC. Additionally, Wallace co-lead the development of an intervention called Project VOGUE; which the 1st EVER CREATED research-based HIV prevention intervention focused on the HBC, utilizing community-based participatory research principles.
Learn moreFrankie Simone makes the kind of music that feels like they’re putting a microphone directly to their heart. Based out of Portland, OR, they just released their debut full length record, Sensitive Creature. An avant-garde pop album that will make you want to dance and cry at the same time. Sensitive Creature is a site of healing. In listening to it, you are transported into a utopian nightclub where all inhibitions are left at the door, creating space for emotion, growth and complete embodiment of self.
Learn moreGare St. Lazare Players Ireland are Ireland's most travelled theatre company, having visited over 63 cities in 21 countries worldwide to perform from their repertory of over 17 Beckett productions. The group evolved out of the original Gare St. Lazare Players, an international company founded in Chicago by Bob Meyer in 1983 and based simultaneously in Ireland and France. Since 1995, Judy Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett have been running the company. First Love premiered in 2008 in Ireland and has since toured to Argentina, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Ireland, Romania, Switzerland, Turkey and USA.
Selected Press
The Lovetts of Méricourt, Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, The Irish Times, April 10, 2010.
In Festival, Biography, Beckett and Blues, Jason Zinoman, New York Times, January 14, 2009.
Conor Lovett has a 'Love' affair with Beckett, Christina Borger, New Haven Register, June 14, 2009. Learn moreGeneral Sisters is a neighborhood corner store, installation, idea, structure, studio, exchange, living architecture, meeting place, kitchen, and garden. General Sisters is facilitated by Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Dana Bishop-Root.
Learn moreGob Squad explores the point where theater meets art, media, and real life. They stage their work in houses, shops, underground stations, car parks, hotels, or directly on the street, and often ask the audience to step beyond their traditional role as passive spectators. Gob Squad began in Nottingham, UK in 1994, but is now based in Berlin. They’ve toured to all continents apart from Antartica.
Selected Press
Semiotics of the Kitchen, Amy Taubin, Artforum. February 1, 2012.
A Visit to Warhol's World, In All Its Goofy Glory, Charles Isherwood, New York Times, January 23, 2012. Learn moreGreasy Kid Stuff began in 1995 on freeform radio legend WFMU and relocated to Portland in 2004. Hailed as “the best kid's radio program of all time” by Alternadad Neal Pollack, the show strikes a cord with punk-inspired parents looking for alternatives to mass-market kiddie culture. greasykidstuff.vox.com
Learn moreHelen Spencer-Wallace is an artist, creative coder, electronic musician, vocalist, and somatic educator based in Portland, Oregon. They make works of sonic and personal presence. They work in installation and performance, often both at once. They mess with inconsistent and multiple selves, explicit deception, and being a scary beautiful digital choir. Their solo work centers on extended vocal technique and nonlinear song manipulation. Most of their work these days uses presence sensors in concert with digital and traditional methods of composition. Their teaching practice focuses on creating new curriculums that increase access to music and digital arts technology, particularly in creative coding and analog modular synthesis. Helen is particularly interested in how emotional, energetic, and somatic rapport affect the accessibility of learning in fields that are systematically exclusive to people of certain classes and identifications. They also particularly enjoy teaching and developing curriculum for classes that contain students with diverse experience levels in the subject area. They teach creative coding and analog modular synthesis at Portland Community College and through whateverSpace/SLP, and have taught students from all over the world, of many walks of life, and from ages 8-60.
Learn morehome school is a free pop-up art school co-run by manuel arturo abreu and Victoria Anne Reis, in its fifth year of curriculum presenting multimedia, genre-nonconforming edutainment and creating welcoming contexts for critical engagement with contemporary art.
manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is an artist and writer from the Bronx. They received their BA in Linguistics from Reed College in 2014, and currently live and work in a garage in southeast Portland. Recent group exhibitions with Rhizome and the New Museum (online), the Cooley Gallery (Portland), Chicken Coop Contemporary (Portland), Veronica project space (Seattle), and AA|LA Gallery (Los Angeles). Recent publications in Art in America, Rhizome, CURA, SFMoMA Open Space, AQNB, et al. abreu is the author of List of Consonants (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and transtrender (Quimérica Books, 2016), and their debut collection of critical writing is forthcoming 2018.
Victoria Anne Reis (b.1982, East Meadow, NY) is trying to be a good mom and a good person. She lives with her parents and daughter, and works on a tree farm, in Boring, OR.
Learn moreIsabella Saavedra lives and works in Portland, OR. She originally hails from rural Northern California. Saavedra received her BS in Studio Art from Southern Oregon University in 2020 and began her MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Fall 2025. Saavedra received a 2024 Career Opportunity Grant from Oregon Arts Commission, as well as consecutive Arts3C Grants from Regional Arts and Culture Council in 2023 and 2024. She has attended residencies at ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership in Cleveland, OH, and p:ear in Portland, OR. Her exhibition record includes the Newport Visual Arts Center and Portland Center Stage. Most recently, she completed Understory, a permanent large-scale public art installation commissioned by the City of Portland’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program at the Mt. Scott Community Center.
Learn moreJacqueline Shea Murphy teaches courses in critical dance studies in University of California Riverside's Dance department. She is author of The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), awarded the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Book of the Uear in Dance Studies by the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), co-editor of the collection Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance (Rutgers University Press, 1995), and has published in journals including Discourses in Dance, American Literary History, Theatre Research International, Interventions, and several anthologies. She was the 2009 recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Aotearoa New Zealand, and is writing a new book about ways that contemporary Indigenous choreographers in the U.S., Canada, and Aotearoa are inhabiting Indigenous epistemologies and thereby reframing colonizing institutions in their dancing and dance making.
Professor Shea Murphy regularly teaches courses such as "Dance: Cultures and Contexts," "Introduction to Dance Studies," "Dance, Gender, Sexualities," "Yoga for Dancers," and "Rhetorical Approaches to Dance Studies." She holds a Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, a Master's in fiction writing from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars Program, and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. She has previously taught at San Francisco State University (American Indian Studies) and Mills College (English). She has a background in modern dance, and is a longtime practitioner and certified instructor of Iyengar yoga.
Learn moreJason Sturgill is an artist, educator, and illustrator based in Portland, Oregon with a background in advertising, graphic design, curatorial and education.
Clients and employers have included Wieden+Kennedy, Nike, Laika, Dark Horse Comics, and Modernista.
Jason holds an MFA degree in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University.
Learn moreJesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, and sculpture. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social development. Jesse has exhibited work in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; Drift Station, Omaha; Spirit Abuse, Albuquerque; the Knockdown Center, New York; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; the 21c Museum, Louisville; and High Desert Test Sites 2013. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Times. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, California.
Selected Press:
"Sitting in the Back of a Car by Chip Lord," The Architect’s Newspaper, July 2014
"Doing Battle with the Remains of Industrial America by Christian Frock," Hyperallergic, May 2014
"Jesse Sugarmann," John Motley, Frieze Magazine, March 2014
"Critic’s Picks: Jesse Sugarmann," Stephanie Snyder, Artforum, October 2013
"High Desert Test Sites, a Diary by Mutual Art," Huffington Post, October, 2013
"Subverting Deadly Materials: The Work of Jesse Sugarmann," Mack McFarland, NY Arts Magazine, October, 2013
Learn moreJohn Smith was born in London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 1977 he became involved in the activities of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op. John Smith has developed a body of work that deftly subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction.
Since 1972 John Smith has made over forty film, video and installation works and shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television throughout the world. His solo exhibitions include: Royal College of Art (London), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK), Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (Germany), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool), Pearl Gallery (London), and Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin). Smith’s work has been featured in retrospectives at the 2007 Venice Biennale and film festivals in Oberhausen, Cork, Tampere, Uppsala, Bristol, Regensburg, Glasgow, La Rochelle and, most recently, in the 2010 Berlin Bienniale. John Smith lives and works in London, where he teaches part-time at the University of East London as Professor of Fine Art. He is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin).
Selected Press
On the Street where You Live: The Films of John Smith, Adrian Dakes, senses of cinema, November, 2003.
Interview with John Smith, Brian Frye, Millennium Film Journal, Winter 2003.
John Smith, Michael O'Pray, LUXOnline, 2003. Learn moreJulio Salgado | Photo credit Wil Prada
Julio Salgado is the co-founder of DreamersAdrift and the Migrant Storytelling Manager for The Center for Cultural Power. His status as an undocumented, queer artivist has fueled the contents of his visual art, which depict key individuals and moments of the DREAM Act and the migrant rights movement. Undocumented students, organizers, and allies across the country have used Salgado’s artwork to call attention to the migrant rights movement. Salgado is the co-creator of The Disruptors Fellowship, an inaugural fellowship for emerging television writers of color who identify as trans/and or non-binary, disabled, undocumented, and/or formerly undocumented immigrants. His work has been displayed at the Oakland Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. You can find his work at juliosalgadoart.com.
Learn moreA rising senior at Catlin Gabel School, Juma Sei has always found himself engrossed in predominantly white, privileged, and “liberal” school systems and communities across the world. As a result of this, Sei has deeply explored the more subtle aspects of oppression and prejudice his entire life - bringing a unique and somewhat introspective point of view to the work he does at Catlin Gabel and other organizations across Portland. In addition to his identity as a black male and African American, Sei’s parents are both Sierra Leonean immigrants, adding yet another perspective to his intersectional integrity. Arguably the most important aspect to any work he does is making sure to understand the context and history in which he’s operating.
Learn moreJunaid Sarieddeen (Beirut, Lebanon) His artistic research is oriented towards focusing on the position of the artwork within the time and space contexts of events. “Lorca” (2005), the intrusive event in the streets of Beirut, followed by the installation performance “ish ibka smu sud jud...” (2006) both carried the beginning of this artistic question for him. A question which started developing after he took part in establishing Zoukak Theatre Company in 2006 and later finishing his BA in Philosophy at the Lebanese university in 2008; which led him to consider the artwork as a political proposition. Sarieddeen is the dramaturg for Leila's Death, part of PICA's 2016 TBA Festival.
Learn moreKaneza Schaal is a New York City based theater artist. Her recent work GO FORTH premiered at PS122 and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; LMCC’s River-to-River Festival; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans; Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival in Egypt; and at her alma mater Wesleyan University, CT. Schaal received a 2017 MAP Fund award, 2016 Creative Capital Award, and is the current Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage. This spring her new piece CARTOGRAPHY will be workshopped through New Victory Theater Lab, NYU Abu Dhabi, and will show at The Kennedy Center’s New Vision New Voices. Her work with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, Jim Findlay, and Dean Moss has brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, and MoMA.
Learn moreKaren Sherman makes performances that incorporate her background in dance, writing, theater, music, and the handyman arts. Her work has been presented nationally by P.S. 122, Walker Art Center, PICA’s TBA Festival, Fusebox Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater, American Realness, The Southern Theater, Dance Place, Diverseworks, Movement Research, ODC, Red Eye Theater, and many others. Her honors include a 2007 “Bessie” Award for her performance in Morgan Thorson's Faker, multiple McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography and Dance, a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, SAGE Awards for her work as a choreographer, performer, and scenic designer, and residencies with the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Performance Lab, Movement Research, LUMBERYARD, and the Bogliasco Foundation program in Liguria, Italy. She was a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellow in The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and is currently an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence in its dance program. A freelance stage technician for over 20 years, she was Technical Director and Production Manager of NYC’s legendary Judson Church (1994-2004), Technical Director of both Movement Research (1994-1998) and Circus Amok (1995-1997), and she has been an overhire stage technician at Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) since 2005. Her writing, including essays and poetry, has been featured on many live, web, and print forums, including e-flux journal, Movement Research Performance Journal, Criticism Exchange, Culture Bodega, and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project about blood, astronomy, and animals. Part one, a solo visual art show opened at Hair + Nails Gallery in Minneapolis in March 2018. Part two, a dance, premieres in 2019, with part three, a book, to follow.
Selected Press
"Karen Sherman's 'One with Others,' gleefully mocks artistic hooey," Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post, April 21, 2013
Learn moreKat Salas is a proud chicanx and member of the Apache Nation. Her practice seeks to explore the ways in which curating can be used to build platforms for intersectional conversations and take up space in academic or institutional settings. In her spare time, you can usually find her tattooing around Portland or collaborating on STROLL's latest project!
Learn moreKenny Scharf burst into the New York art world in the late seventies with his space-age, pop art paintings inspired by Hanna Barbera and Andy Warhol. Along with contemporaries Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ann Magnuson, he belonged to a group of young artists who turned the club culture of the seventies into the booming art market of the eighties. Exhibiting his work at such places as Fiorucci, Club 57, the Palladium and the Mudd Club, Scharf caught the attention of serious collectors, critics and curators as he began to developed his own unique, cartoon-inspired style, for which he coined the term Pop Surealism.
Learn moreAlthough born in San Diego, California, and raised in Boise, Idaho, multi-disciplinary artist Khris Soden found his work centering on Portland and its history after he moved here in 2000. His projects have included the acclaimed City of Roses historical comics and the 2004 public installation series, You Were Here. As a member of the four-person arts group The M.O.S.T., Soden has performed in projects at Reed Arts Week 2005, TBA:05, and the 2006 Melbourne International Arts Festival.
Learn moreKimberly Stowers Moreland, MBA, MURP, is wife of Michael L. Moreland and the mother of four amazing young adults: Katherine, Mike Jr., Kristen, and Karina. She owns Moreland Resource Consulting and has over 25+ years of experience in the public sector, urban and historic preservation, community development, and urban planning in Portland, Tacoma, and Salem.
Moreland serves as the President of the Oregon Black Pioneers, and their mission is to preserve the history of Black Oregonians. On behalf of the Oregon Black Pioneers, she authored Images of America: African Americans of Portland (Arcadia Publisher). She is the Vice-Chair of the Portland Historic Landmark Commission and a member of the Portland Landmark Commission.
As a community historian, Kimberly began documenting Portland's Black history for over 30+ years. As a city planner with the City of Portland, she worked with the community advisory committee and local historians to produce the History of Portland's African-American History (1805 to the Present). She was on the project team that produced Cornerstones of Community: The Buildings of Portland's African American History, published in 1995. She was subsequently involved in the Multiple Property Documentation (MPD) history project, which builds on the Cornerstones research to produce African American Resources in Portland, Oregon, from 1851 to 1973. This research brings attention to sites related to Portland's Black history so they can be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
As owner of Moreland Resource Consulting, Moreland worked with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Home Forward, former the Housing Authority of Portland (HAP), to better understand how their past policies unjustly impacted African Americans. Since, 2021, she has teamed with the City of Portland and Architectural Resource Group (ARG) on successfully approval of four National Historic Landmark Register nominations significant to Portland's Black history, including Dean's Beauty and Barbershop, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, Golden West Hotel, and Dr. John D. Marshall Building. In 2023, with Constructing Hope, Moreland co-authored Building Legacy: BIPOC Construction Trailblazers in Oregon, which highlighted twenty-three construction trade pioneers.
In 2023, she partnered with Robert Clark and Cleo Davis to establish Black Aesthetics Studio LLC (BAS). The firm explored how to unearth new aesthetics specific to African-American culture, experience, and identity.
Learn moreKim Smith Claudel is an interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR, whose work intersects painting, sculpture, installation, and performance through a wide range of media. Smith Claudel's work has been exhibited internationally, including shows in Japan and Sweden, as well as throughout the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include the Painting Center, New York, NY; Mt. Hood Community College, Portland, OR; and Carnation Contemporary, Portland, OR. She is an active member of the artit collective WAVE Contemporary and Carnation Contemporary in Portland. She is the recipient of the 2025 Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and Ford Family Foundation, and was recently awarded an artist in residency at Building 5. She holds an MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, as well as an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY.
Learn moreKrystal South is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and writer from Portland, Oregon who has been online every day since she was 12. South has been included in group exhibitions and projects at Recess Gallery, Carhole Gallery, and Portland Art Museum, as well as in B.Y.O.B. at New American Art Union and Wieden+Kennedy in Portland. Her writings have been featured in Bear Deluxe Magazine, YA5, and September, a project of artists Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen at the 2011 TBA Festival.
Selected Writing
"Observations on the Uncertain," Krystal South, September, September 16, 2011.
Selected Press
"Mirrors, Punching, Walking, Dancing," Lisa Radon, Oregon ArtsWatch, August 21, 2011.
Learn moreSuraj, coined as the "The Queen of Waacking Nouveau ", is also the Queen of many historical firsts. The first Waacking choreography videos on YouTube, influencing everyone in the industry the world over. Now, Whacking is seen in countless stage shows, concerts, commercials, music videos and more, with much of the style’s visibility tracing back to Kumari’s tireless promotion of the dance style in the 2000s. Suraj is the first Waacking choreographer to explicitly introduce the dance style to mass media by creating dance content for the FOX reality hit TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Suraj is the founder and CEO of LA's International Waack/Punk/Pose Festival (Waackfest), the first festival in the world solely devoted to the cultural education and preservation of Waacking, Whacking, Punking and Vogue. Suraj is considered as the “go-to” expert for this underground dance from the 70s, serving as an international ambassador of its history, culture and technique.
Learn moreFounded by Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodríguez in 2003, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol is a young Mexican theater company reflecting the new dynamics of contemporary Mexican culture. They develop their multimedia stage productions as mechanisms to link work and life and give voice to overlooked moments in social and political historical. Lagartijas has toured widely throughout Mexico and Europe and has received awards from the Impatience Festival and the Zürcher Theater Spektakel.
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Learn moreLo Steele is a singer, songwriter, and award winning actor and poet from Portland. Known for her frank lyrics and simple melodies, like that in her most recent single “Insecurities”, she aspires to make art “that makes people feel seen”. You may have recently seen her in the one-woman-show Queens Girl in the World at Clackamas Repertory Theatre for which she won a Drammy for “Outstanding Solo Performance”. Check out her website or follow her on social media to find out what she has been creating while in isolation.
Learn moreMac Smiff is a longtime journalist focused on Northwest culture for outlets such as The Oregonian, Portland Mercury, Vortex Music Magazine, and his own vehicle, We Out Here Magazine. Well known for holding police and government entities accountable, as well as his call to Defund The Police, his social justice activism has been chronicled by the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, The Intercept, NPR, Rolling Stone, and others.
A professional problem solver, his hobbies include gardening and raising children who understand basketball analogies.
Learn moreMagic Luscious Spirit Sounds (MLSS) is a non-hierarchical cross-abilities collective that aims to create an inclusive, welcoming space where people with and without disabilities can share their love for music.
We believe in the transformative power of courageously embracing imperfection. Through collaboration, we break down barriers to music, making it accesswible and available for all.
Our collective encourages creative freedom and the courage to make music in new ways. As Octavia Butler said, "The only lasting truth is change" and we actively welcome impermanence to guide our group.
We believe that everyone is a musician, every voice should be heard and valued, and there is no right or wrong way to make music.
Learn moreMalik Nashad Sharpe, also known as Marikiscrycrycry, is a choreographer and movement director known for his provocative and formally engaging performance works that address themes of violence, alienation, horror, melancholia, and the horizon. He holds a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honors from Williams College and a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography. He has received commissions and shown his work at venues and festivals across the UK, Europe, and Canada, and is currently an Associate Artist at The Place, London and a studio resident of Somerset House Studios, London. He has held artistic residencies at Sadler’s Wells, Barbican, Performance Situation Room, Dance4, Duckie, and Tate Modern. In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine and is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2022, recognized for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements. He currently lives in London and is a guest professor in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden.
Learn moreManuel Solano (Mexico City, 1987): Through painting, performance and video, Manuel Solano’s work references pop culture and personal memories to inform on Manuel’s own queer identity and bittersweet experiences. After becoming blind for life in 2014 as a result of an HIV-related infection, Manuel’s rebellious nature drove him to keep making art rather than giving up his past life. He has since shown at Museo Carrillo Gil, Zona MACO and Galería Karen Huber.
Learn moreMark Searcy is a graphic designer, art director, web developer, and collage artist based in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreDancepod was an architectural installation that housed live-streamed dance parties in four cities simultaneously, Portland OR, Mexico City, Berlin, and New York. It was the first exploration of concepts laid out in the Swells performance/lecture.
Learn moreMaster Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is Black, Italian, Queer, Non-Binary, Neurodyvergent, and practices primarily in america. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people.
Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. In 2019 they developed the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School which has had many forms since, including Afro Futurist February, and three years of Fred Hampton Summer Camp. Supporting community efforts as well, taking the shape of support for the effort to Save Dr. Martin Luther King School from being displaced by the expansion of Interstate 5 which has triggered the need to move Harriet Tubman Middle School. Stevenson is currently working in the Albina community to develop a Living Archive at Jefferson High School with students, community, and the architectural design team. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, projects involving sculpture, drawing, and photography, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks. These include Tin Can Phone, a podcast all about life in and outside of prison, and Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project both of which are owned and operated by formerly incarcerated individuals. Stevenson pursues these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people and communities are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Learn moreStuart received her BFA in dance from NYU and was a member of the Randy Warhaw Dance Company for five years. On invitation from the Klapstuk Festival in Leuven in 1991, she created her first full-length piece, Disfigure Study. In 1994 Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods began a series of collaborations with visual artists, including Lawrence Malstaf, Gary Hill, and Ann Hamilton. Together with choreographer/dancer Benoît Lachambre and composer Hahn Rowe—both honored with Bessie Awards—Stuart created Forgeries, Love, and Other Matters.
Learn moreMelanie Stevens is an artist, illustrator and writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree for Political Science from Yale University in 2001 and is the creator of the graphic novel, ‘Black Picket Fences’. She is the co-founder and editor of Miss Anthology, an organization that supports and publishes racially and economically diverse young comic artists who identify as female or genderqueer, as well as the co-curator of Nat Turner Project, a mobile gallery space that allows artists of color the freedom to create or express their own language within and without the parameters of racial commodification or designation. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts degree for Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
Learn morePortland, Oregon based artist Mona Superhero’s work is comprised entirely of duct tape and masking tape. Each piece of duct tape art is crafted from layers of duct tape and masking tape, hand-carved to reveal captivating, often provocative Pop Art inspired imagery with eye-catching color and attitude.
Superhero spends her days creating new art for gallery shows, client work and for her line of prints and post cards.
Learn moreNight Shade is a group of artists rebelling against traditional flat-surface silhouettes and revolutionizing the ancient art of shadow puppetry by using light to manipulate depth and space. This art group blends hand-held lights, masks, puppets, composed music, sound-effects, and experimental storytelling into a bewitching form of cinematic puppetry that flows like film. Core artists are Alicia Cortes, Sarah Frechette, Oviedo Menendez, Jason Thibodeaux, and Alain Z, but also working under the banner Night Shade are Kevin Bouton-Scott, Michel Fiffe, Chris Rabilwongse, and Cynthia Star.
The Portland-based Night Shade collective began collaborating with Japanther back in 2005 in New York. That first show at the Arm Gallery in Williamsburg started the momentum of late night cutting and, since then, this group has performed across the US at various puppetry and art festivals, galleries, anarchist spaces, gutted bowling alleys, and pubs. In 2009 Night Shade performed their full-length epic shadow play, Night Shade, which contains over 700 intricate cut-outs, for a sold-out run at Disjecta, in Portland.
Learn moreAs a dance artist, Noelle Stiles is interested in how and where experience is held in the body. This interest provides a framework for extracting the corporeal language that both intimately connects and individuates us. Stiles has a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts and completed her graduate studies in dance at The Ohio State University. She has performed and presented work at venues such as the PICA's Time-Based Art Festival (2010), On The Boards, PWNW, Dance New Amsterdam, and Links Hall. Stiles' interest in teaching has taken her to places such as The Ohio State University, the Governor’s School of North Carolina and she co-founded the community focused dance class series Heavy Rotation with Kathleen Keogh of Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. Her work has been supported by Caldera's Artist Residency program, PICA's Resource Room Residency, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the ACA Associate Artist Residency program and was selected by PICA and the NDP to travel to the Dublin Dance Festival as part of a pilot international exchange program. In 2010, Stiles merged her work as a graphic designer with her work in dance to co-create a dance publication entitled FRONT. Based out of Portland, Oregon, FRONT is Tahni Holt, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Robert Tyree. FRONT utilizes the old-school tactics of the broadsheet newspaper to explore the new, current, future energy of dance theory and practices in the field.
Learn moreNorbert Schwontkowski is a painter who lives and works in Bremmen, Germany. He is represented by Mitchell-Innes Nash in New York.
In Conversation: Norbert Schwontkowski with Phong Bui, The Brooklyn Rail, December 2009/January 2010.
Learn morenůn studios is a burgeoning member-run risograph print shop in Northeast Portland, Oregon. Launched in 2020, the studio opened as a Black-stewarded space offering production, design, distribution support, education, and studio access to counter-hegemonic artists and organizers. Today, nůn operates with two MZ1090 duplicators, 30 ink colors, and a range of DIY binding and finishing tools. As a collective, mycelial in its reach, utility, poetic, and care, the studio offers free and highly subsidized printing services for organizers, writers, and artists who work in local to global solidarity movements, community wellness, and independent publishing, among other schemes and dreams.
nůn studios was born from A Black Art Ecology of Portland (BAEP)—a transdisciplinary convener and resource mobilizer cultivating networks of creative care for Black artists and communities. Through BAEP's continued support, proceeds from the 5 & 5 portfolio, as well as prints and publications from the studio’s first five years in operation, nůn hopes to launch a transdisciplinary artist-in-residence program that focuses on diasporic voice(s) and solidarity, and supports its communities in need.
Learn moreOregon Mushroom Stories, a project of Ecotrust and Edible Portland, brings the surreal, fantastical beauty of mushrooms, and the knowledge of growers, foragers and fanatics, out of the dark to a broad audience. Join PICA and Oregon Mushroom Stories for a weekend of mycological happenings at the crossroads of nature and culture, science and art, food and fungi.
Related Thinking and Artists
"Sounds and Mushrooms," Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, November 22, 1981.
"John Cage and Mushrooms," Audrey Ference, The L Magazine, September 5, 2012.
"Beard Beer: Rogue Ales Creates Brew Out Of Yeast From Brewmaster John Maier's Facial Hair," Hillary Hanson, Huffington Post, September 26, 2012.
Learn moreThe Oregon Painting Society is an art collective from Portland, Oregon, formed in 2007. They have exhibited and performed at Fontanelle Gallery (PDX) and Reed College (PDX).
Learn moreSince the Oregon Symphony was established 117 years ago, it has been recognized for its internationally acclaimed music directors, skilled performers, diverse programs, and outstanding community services in education and regional touring. The Oregon Symphony now ranks among the largest orchestras in the nation, and the oldest west of the Mississippi.
Learn morePaige Sarlin is an artist, filmmaker, scholar, and political activist. She holds a Ph.D. in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Film/Video/New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her feature-length documentary film, The Last Slide Projector, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2007 and screened at Anthology Film Archives in 2008. From 1999 to 2010, she was an active participant in the 16Beaver Group in New York City, a platform for the discussion of the intersection of art and politics. Her writings have been published in October, Re-Thinking Marxism, Reviews in Cultural Theory, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, and Framework: A Journal of Film and Culture. She is at work on a book-length manuscript entitled Interview-Work: The Genealogy of a Media Form. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study at University at Buffalo, SUNY.
Learn morePallavi Sen is from Bombay, India. She works with installation, printmaking, textiles, and intuitive, musical movement. Current interests include planting gardens and meadows, inner lives of birds and animals, the grief of the anthropocene, South Asian costumes, domestic architecture, altars, atheism and magical thinking, pattern histories, friendship + love, past/presen/future lover, work spaces, work tables, eco-feminism, love poems, the gates to Indian homes, walking, seeds, and twice daily cooking.
She received her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from the Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the Assistant Professor of Multiples + Distributed Art at Williams College and dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is the author of Dead Planet Cookbook, and is currently working on her second book about a garden based curriculum.
Learn morePeter Simensky’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum 52, New York; The Swiss Institute, New York; and Project Row Houses, Houston. Selected group exhibitions at Sculpture Center, NY; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Mass Moca, North Adams; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery New York; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York among others. Simensky’s Gold Dust was recently featured in Cabinet’s, Money Issue. He has received awards and grants from LMCC, NYFA, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He lives and works in Portland, OR and Brooklyn, NY.
Learn moreBorn in 1970, Philippe Quesne received his education in Visual Arts. For 10 years he designed sets for theater, operas and exhibitions. In 2003, he created the Vivarium Studio Company, and directed his first show, La Démangeaison des ailes, based on the acts of taking off and falling down. Philippe Quesne hunts the marvelous, the tiny, and pushes to the extreme experiences of our daily lives as well as the relationship between mankind and nature. As he did as a child, collecting insects, he now works and studies small communities under his microscope. The scenography is used as an ecosystem in which he immerses his actors into. His shows, such as La Démangeaison des ailes (2003), Des expériences (2004), D’après nature (2006), L’Effet de Serge (2007), La Mélancolie des dragons (2008), Big Bang (2010), Swamp Club (2013), Next Day (2014), compose a repertory that tours all over the world. In addition to his work for the theater, he creates performances and interventions in public spaces or natural sites, and displays his installations in the context of exhibitions. Since January 2014, he has been serving as the co-director of Nanterre-Amandiers, National Dramatic Center. In 2016, he will create Caspar Western Friedrich at Kammerspiele in Munich and Welcome to Caveland! at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels
BIO PAGE IMAGE/S:
La Mélancolie des dragons 1 @ Martin Argyroglo
La Mélancolie des dragons 5 © Pierre Grosbois Learn morePSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA program was founded in 2007. The Program combines individual research, group work, and experiential learning in order to train artists to make meaningful work, and to collaborate effectively with people, organizations and institutions. Portland State University emphasizes civic engagement and pursuing research that serves the community and the Art and Social Practice MFA program energetically supports that mission. Our community is our classroom.
Learn morePortland State University's Art Department offers free public lectures every Monday night of the school year.
PSU MFA MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES ON VIMEO
Click on the events at right to view past artists and speakers.
Learn morePublication Studio is an experiment in sustainable publication. They print and bind books on demand, creating original work with artists and writers they admire, books that both respond to the conversation of the moment and can endure. They attend to the social life of the book, cultivating a public that cares and is engaged. Publication Studio is a laboratory for publication in its fullest sense — not just the production of books, but the production of a public. This public, which is more than a market, is created through deliberate acts: the circulation of texts; discussions and gatherings in physical space; and the maintenance of a digital commons. Together these construct a space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being. At TBA, Publication Studio will conduct real-time collaborations with Festival artists and performers, strategizing and producing new books on-demand in a retail storefront.
Publication Studio was founded and is run by Matthew Stadler, formerly the literary editor of Nest Magazine and co-founder of Clear Cut Press, and Patricia No.
Selected Press
Book Publishing as Common Ground, Caroline Cummins, Oregon Humanities, Spring 2010.
A Very Long - and Very Interesting - Interview with Matthew Stadler of Publication Studio, Matthew Simmons, HTMLGIANT, March 18, 2010.
Learn moreRahila Naomi Stadem Coats is an improviser, choreographer, and dancer based in Chicago. Her works have been shown through the support of Twenty Percent Productions, the 2018 Jerusalem Jazz Festival, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Company Projects, Synapse Arts, Thodos Dance Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago, and the University of Ghana at Legon. Currently, she dances for Red Clay Dance and is a vocalist with music group Family Junket. She is excited to continue this journey with FORCE! and its loving constellation.
Learn moreWith a career spanning over 25 years, Rakesh has captivated audiences worldwide as a versatile performer, choreographer, teacher, and producer. His journey through the realms of artistry began in Bollywood dance, where he lent his talents to numerous films in South India. Evolving his craft, Rakesh found a new passion in Contemporary movement art, drawing inspiration from his family's lineage of yoga and disciplines like Kalarippayattu and other Indian dance forms.
For the past 15 years, he has traversed the globe, immersing himself in diverse cultures and artistic landscapes, shaping his unique perspective and vision. Experience the culmination of Rakesh's passion, dedication, and global influences in every performance and creation.
Learn moreCurrently based in Brooklyn, New York, Stiler received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been shown internationally at galleries including Nicelle Beauchene (New York), Sandroni Rey (Los Angeles), and Annarumma 404 (Naples, Italy). Recent and upcoming exhibitions include solo projects at Callicoon Fine Arts (New York), The Suburban (Chicago) as well as the Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park (New York). Stiler has been featured in BOMBlog, Artforum.com, and Flash Art Italia and is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.
Selected Press
Ruby Sky Stiler, Christopher Howard, Artforum, May 2009.
Ruby Sky Stiler, Rebekah Drysdale, Daily Serving, May 16, 2009.
In Words: Ruby Sky Stiler, Kelly Devine Thomas, BOMBlog May 25, 2009.
That's What He Said, Ian Cooper, The Highlights, October 2009.
Learn moreSable Elyse Smith’s work has been exhibited in numerous institutions, with solo shows at the Queens Museum in New York and the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee. In the forthcoming year Smith’s work will be featured in exhibitions at the New Museum, NY, the Wexner Center of the Arts in Columbus, OH, MoMA PS1, NY and she will be an artist-in-residence at the Rauschenberg Residency. Most recently, her work was on view at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA as part of Colored People Time, which traveled from the ICA Philadelphia. Her work was included in Great Force at the ICA at Virginia Commonwealth University, and solo shows include Carlos Ishikawa in London (2019) and JTT in New York (2018). Smith was a 2018/2019 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem which culminated in an exhibition at MoMA PS1, NY. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Matthew Brown Los Angeles, the Highline in New York, for which she also curated an event at The Kitchen, the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, SITE Santa Fe, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Socrates Sculpture Park, El Museo Del Barrio, and Andrea Rosen Gallery.
Learn moreSabrina Ratté (Canada, 1982) is a Montreal based visual artist, mainly working in the field of video. She completed a BFA and MFA in the Film Production Department of Concordia University in Montreal. Her work proposes different visits inside architectural environments and landscapes generated by electronic signals. Her practice is inspired by the relationship between electronic music and the video image, and she often collaborates with musicians for single-channel pieces as well as in live settings. Parallel to her solo work, Ratté is the visual part of Le Révélateur, with the electronic music composer Roger Tellier-Craig.
Learn more