THE HEROINES

Reception and Artist Talk: Saturday, September 12th, 2026

Join us for an artist talk with author Claire Dederer at 2:30 pm
Reception to follow from 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
RSVP at info@pdxcontemporaryart.com

I have always been fascinated by the space between things. One of my first discoveries of this concept of dimensionality was through a favorite childhood book, D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. These illustrated stories depicted the complicated, contradictory world between the mythological and the mortal, as well as the messiness of moving between these dimensions. It also shaped my inclination to pay attention to the stories and art of myths and otherworlds that crossed my path, using them as metaphors for navigating this world. Over time, this has driven me to tease out the slippages between things: between voice and language, between abstraction and representation, and between two and three dimensions. I see each body of work I have presented over the years as a continuation of this exploration.

For my exhibition, THE HEROINES, I found Ovid’s Heroides to be the ideal source material for exploring questions about voice and story: Whose voices are privileged in this moment in time, and what do they share with voices from the past? Who gets to speak for whom? These are some of the central questions I am teasing out in this body of work.

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THE HEROINES is an exhibition that unfolds in several movements throughout the gallery space – each piece building in conversation with the next.

Using Ovid’s Heroides as source material as well as framework, these works dissect and reassemble mythological narratives into an invented language. In reconfiguring this material, historic voices confront contemporary concerns to reveal new associations and affinities between the past and the present.

These linguistic investigations, played out in various forms, form the core of the show.  That core is bookended by a pair of more atmospheric works – explorations of the chaos from which our ‘ordered’ thoughts emerge.

The progression opens with a pre-amble to ‘The Heroines’ with the outlier, 4-Channel Medusa, a series of silk screens created at the former Rauschenberg Residency, in Captiva, FL. The chaotic marks in each print writhe in a vaguely rectangular mass. The double mirroring presented as a grid implies discipline, setting up a tension between the container of the rectangle/frame and the formlessness of unruly chaos within.

The format implied in the Medusa quartet is sharpened and developed in the “Heroines Alphabet” series.  In these graphite drawings, the title of the show is used as a system for revealing hidden words, each one charged or burdened with its own (multiple) meaning.

The “Linguistic Architecture” drawings abstract the alphabet further; tight rectangles of luscious dark ink recall the word forms of the ‘graphites’. Stripped of the actual letters, the words remain only as an echo of the informing system. Bright scarlet notations peek out from the inky rectangular forms operating as punctuation (or potential instructions? as referred to in their titles; ‘Plan view; Section; Elevation; Window; Door).

This open question persists in a pair of “Notations” paintings. Symbols float in or appear on atmospheric fields.

As the viewer rounds the corner into the gallery’s double-height space, the order and repetition established in the prior space give way to (my version of) Platonic form and a multitude of voices.

In a corner, ‘Penelope’ levitates as a triangular pyramid. This sculpture occupies the corner as she defines it, attentive and observing from her hovering perch.

Adjacent to ‘Corner Penelope’ on the largest horizontal wall in the gallery is Chorus - an experimental wall drawing with sound.  With the invaluable assistance of musician and sound artist Robert Millis (who contributed sonic elements and tech support) and voice work by Mary Ewald and Maggie Mann, an auditory atmosphere emerges. This ‘Chorus’ of Incantatory murmurings, distilled from (2) sources ( a classical translation of Ovid, and a contemporary adaptation) reveal the Heroines; Fifteen women, born in myth and legend, persisting in culture and memory.  Their words and voices overlap. They are distinct but connected – mapped onto the wall via stereo wire and tied to us and each other through transmitted voice and sound.