Sarah Gilbert, Jess Perlitz, Mike Bray, and Stephanie Snyder with Kristan Kennedy
Gabrileño/Tongva/Kizh Lands, Los Angeles, CA / Portland, OR
Artist Conversation & Picnic
Co-presented with Ditch Projects and Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery
DESCRIPTION
Please join us on the lawn in front of the Reed's Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library for music, picnic fare, and a conversation with artists Sarah Gilbert, Jess Perlitz, and exhibition curator Stephanie Snyder, facilitated by Kristan Kennedy, Artistic Director & Curator of Visual Art at PICA. There will also be tours of Perlitz’s Reductions of Mountains, as well as the Cooley exhibition Tender (a collaboration with Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR).
Tender will open at Ditch Projects on October 19 at 5:30 PM and remain on view through December 1.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sarah Gilbert is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, CA whose work explores craft and collectivity. Joining a wide range of materials and processes, her interdisciplinary practice often moves between art and science, synthesizing traditional craft techniques with emerging technologies. She has presented recent solo exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk; and at the 7th Tallinn Applied Art Triennial, Estonia. She has been a Fellow at the Creative Glass Center of America, Millville; and a Resident Artist at Faro Tláhuac, Mexico City; Glazenhuis, Lommel; and Olustvere Mõis, Estonia. She is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Affiliate Faculty in Gender and Feminist Studies at Pitzer College.
Jess Perlitz (b. Toronto, ON) is an artist whose work is informed by our formations of landscape and the body’s place within it, finding points of desire, incongruity, and disruption. She is a graduate of Bard College, received an MFA from Tyler School of Art, and clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. Perlitz is currently an Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College, and most recently, the co-leader of Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project. Perlitz is a 2019 Hallie Ford Fellow, a Joan Shipley awardee, and an award recipient from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in playgrounds, fields, galleries, and museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens; Cambridge Art Galleries, ON; De Fabriek, NL; and aboard the Arctic Circle Residency. Her project Chorus is installed at Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia.
Stephanie Snyder is the Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, a position she has held since 2003. Snyder graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College and completed her graduate studies in Art History and Art Education at Columbia University. In 2008, Snyder received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Getty Foundation, and in 2014 she was a Fellow in the Getty’s Museum Leadership Institute. In 2013 she received an award for her critical writing from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the CUE Foundation, New York. The author of numerous catalog essays and other writing projects, she is a regular contributor to Artforum.com.
Kristan Kennedy is an artist, curator, and educator, who has been involved with PICA since its founding in 1995. Kennedy began working with PICA as a volunteer, then was supported by the organization as an exhibiting artist, consequently served the organization as a board member, and joined the staff in 2003. She is currently Artistic Director, Curator of Visual Art at PICA. Kennedy works collaboratively alongside co-artistic directors Roya Amirsoleymani and Erin Boberg Doughton to set the artistic vision for the organization, curate the Time-Based Art Festival, manage the Precipice Fund and create public programs. Kennedy currently directs PICA's year-round Exhibition Program, where she focuses on commissioning and developing large-scale projects, publications, and happenings with artists that exist at the borders of genres. She is a working artist who is represented by Fourteen30 Contemporary Art, here in Portland Oregon. Kennedy writes and lectures about art praxis, curatorial practice, and artist‐centric ethics within and outside of institutional frameworks. She has taught in various MFA programs across the country for the last decade as an Associate and Visiting Professor teaching Contemporary Art seminars, mentoring, and developing visiting artist programs. Kennedy sits on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and is a founding member of Common Field.