News

James Lavadour has been selected to make a large-scale 2-D work for the Portland International Airport.

Port of Portland and the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) selected Oregon artists James Lavadour and Ryan Pierce to create a large-scale, 2D public artwork for Portland International Airport (PDX), anticipated to be installed in late 2025 and debut to the public in 2026. Both artists were selected by the PDX Terminal Core Redevelopment (TCORE) Public Art Committee.

Lavadour’s largest public artwork to date, the piece will be composed of 36 individual painted 24” x 30” panels in a grid formation that create one unified, complex painting. Conduit, the title of the painting, represents the idea of a passage or connector. Meaningful in the context of the airport, “conduit” as a theme is also personally significant to the artist: aware of the significant challenges faced by Indigenous artists trying to gain the recognition of mainstream galleries, Lavadour founded Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in 1989, the only professional printmaking studio on a reservation in the USA, to provide a conduit for Native artists. Painted in Lavadour’s signature expression over a period spanning more than 10 years, the assembled panels represent the depth and breadth of Lavadour’s painting practice, his commitment to uplifting Native artists, and a welcome to visitors. In Lavadour’s words, “I think of this painting as similar to a beaded belt to be given as a welcoming gift to all that pass. This homeland is open and welcome to all.”

“RACC is proud to partner with the Port of Portland to bring James Lavadour’s and Ryan Pierce’s visionary works to PDX. Lavadour’s Conduit honors our region’s landscapes and Indigenous artistic legacy, while Pierce’s Liberated Luggage invites travelers to engage with the resilience and playfulness of our natural world. These installations exemplify RACC’s commitment to ensuring public art reflects the diversity of our communities and enhances our shared spaces,” says Kristin Law Calhoun, Director of Partnerships and Programs at the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

Read the full press release here.

Susan Seubert’s March 2025 exhibition Fragile Beauty was reviewed by Wonderful Machine.

“The exhibition was recognized by UNESCO and the UN as an official side event for the 2025 International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. It has been featured in regional publications, is the subject of a short documentary by Pattern Integrity Films, and even connects to a piece of her work hanging in the Portland Art Museum’s Monet exhibit. These accolades amplify the project’s core message, carrying it from the quiet gallery space into a global conversation about art, science, and our planet’s future. It serves as a stunning, visceral record of what we see and what we stand to lose.”

Read the full story here.

Marie Watt’s work is included in Four Freedoms, now on view at the Kansas City Art Institute, June 26, 2025 - August 15, 2025

"For Freedoms deepens civic engagement through the arts. We provide artists, institutions, and communities a decentralized space for connection, and the tools to support their creative capacities and resilience as cultural producers. Together, our network is building more robust civic dialogue, and inspiring a sense of belonging and responsibility for one another. Our vision is of a joyful, interconnected world where creativity is seen as integral to enhancing civic expression, listening, healing, and justice."

Four Freedoms
KCAI Gallery | 4415 Warwick Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64111, USA
June 26, 2025 - Aug. 15, 2025

Created by For Freedoms, with Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur, in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery. For Freedoms is an artist-led collective that uses art to inspire civic engagement and conversation. Their work highlights the diversity of America through nonpartisan, creative interventions.

For more information: https://kcai.edu/calendar/Four-Freedoms/

Marie Watt’s solo exhibition, Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, opens at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University on August 26 - December 6, 2025.

“Multimedia artist Marie Watt is a storyteller. As a member of the Seneca Nation (one of six Indigenous nations that form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy) with German-Scots ancestry, she tells stories that draw from both Native and non-Native traditions: Greco-Roman myth, pop music and Pop art, Indigenous oral narratives, Star Wars and Star Trek. 
Watt reminds us of the stories told by her Seneca ancestors: how the world came to be; what we have to learn from animals; our ethical obligations to the planet, as well as to past and future generations. She tells stories about humble, everyday materials and objects—blankets, quilts, corn husks, letters, ladders, dream catchers—that carry intimate meanings and memories. 

Over the course of her career, Watt has told these stories through prints. The collaborative printmaking process is consistent with Watt’s desire to build communities through art and storytelling. The stories the prints tell are personal, cultural, and universal, dealing with elemental themes including shelter, dreams, the earth and sky, the cosmos. 

As a Klamath elder once told her: “My story changes when I know your story.”

Since this exhibition debuted in 2022, Marie Watt’s repertoire of stories has continued to expand and grow. In our presentation of the exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, we have the privilege of including new work Watt has created over the past three years, including Forest Shifts Light (Sequoia, Crest, Canopy) 2025, a jingle cloud commissioned for this presentation. We are further honored to present this exhibition in Watt’s hometown—she was born in the Pacific Northwest and has called Portland home for almost thirty years.”

For more information: https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/jsma-at-psu/storywork-the-prints-of-marie-watt?authuser=0

Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation
August 26 - December 6, 2025

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University
1855 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

Marie Watt's solo exhibition MARIE WATT: Tuning to the Sounds of the Skies is now open at The Gund

"Marie Watt’s installations are created—and lifted—by many hands. Suspended above us, her sculptures invite us not only to look, but to gather, breathe, and take part. Inspired by the Coast Salish story Lifting the Sky, as shared by Vi Hilbert of the Upper Skagit tribe, Watt reminds us of a powerful lesson: that even in moments of fragmentation, people can come together. In the story, the sky has begun to press down on the world, dimming the light and overwhelming life below. The people, though separated by different languages, find one word they can share: yəhaw̓—to proceed, to move forward, to do. United by breath, intention, and rhythm, they lift the sky.

MARIE WATT: Tuning to the Sounds of the Skies
July 9 - December 14, 2025
The Gund
Kenyon College.
101 1/2 College Drive
Gambier, Ohio 43022

For more information: https://www.thegund.org/exhibitions/marie-watt-tuning-to-the-sounds-of-the-skies

We are looking forward to James Lavadour’s retrospective- James Lavadour: Land of Origin, curated by Danielle Knapp, opening at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon on August 9, 2025.

“James Lavadour: Land of Origin presents the most comprehensive survey to date of works by painter and printmaker James Lavadour (Walla Walla). Spanning five decades of work, this national retrospective celebrates Lavadour’s deep connection to the eastern Oregon landscape, particularly the Umatilla Indian Reservation and surrounding Blue Mountains region where the artist has spent most of his life, and recognizes his esteemed place in contemporary American painting. The exhibition includes nearly thirty of Lavadour’s magnificent signature grid paintings, works on individual panels, and prints, most of which have never been exhibited together. It will draw on significant loans from the artist, major museum collections, and private lenders. Recognizing one of Oregon and the nation’s most original and powerful artists, James Lavadour: Land of Origin will also be accompanied by a full catalogue.

The exhibition catalogue for James Lavadour: Land of Origin includes essays by exhibition curator and JSMA McCosh Curator Danielle Knapp and guest writers Meagan Atiyeh, Rebecca Dobkins, and Marie Watt; an interview with Lavadour and JSMA Executive Director John Weber; a fully illustrated checklist with additional images of representative works; and a comprehensive artist’s CV.”

For more information visit: https://jsma.uoregon.edu/art/exhibition/james-lavadour-land-origin

James Lavadour: Land of Origin
Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery
August 9, 2025 - January 11, 2026'

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
University of Oregon
1430 Johnson Lane 
Eugene, OR 97403

Marjorie Dial's work is featured in the new issue of ARCADE NW and included in accompanying show LOOM, at Muutus Studio.

"Issue 42.1: Materiality will be released alongside a specially curated exhibition of work from national artists, centering the themes of material and material use.

Issue 42.1: Materiality
Co-edited by John Parman & Camilla Szabo
Design by Finnegan Schneider

Issue 42.1: Materiality centers around critical discourse on architecture and the built environment, materials and sustainability in relation to a rapidly advancing world, and ephemeral works relating to scent, photography, textile, and sculpture. Themes include tactile engagement with the natural world, craft as a record of time, the role of technology in material understanding, and Indigenous fables on timber, territory & extractivism.

Materiality is a rich, sweeping theme which can’t be contained by one literal definition. It can include the ephemeral—scent, a shadow, an echo... It can be the poetry of architecture, or a photograph which leaves a trace of a history—or obstructs history altogether. It can be a clay vessel casting an incantation, acting as both a transmitter and receiver. Or the discolored patina on a hand painted cabinet after years of wear, each door a slightly different shade than the rest.

Featured print journal contributors include Saul Becker, Kim Clements, Madeline Cotton, Lisa Di Donato, Marjorie Dial, Lydia Felty, Rocky Hanish, Noor Hiyeri, Peiting Li, Claire Needs, Garrett Nelli, Meg Partridge, Andrew Rabeneck, Anne-Catrin Schultz, Katrina Spade, Madeleine Stearns, Loren Supp, and Nina Wigfall.

Art Opening: Featuring work by Saul Becker, Imogen Cunningham, Lisa Di Donato, Marjorie Dial, and Jessie Homer French."

https://www.arcadenw.org/

Mutuus Studio 

6118 12th Ave S

Iván Carmona and James Lavadour both have work included in Color Outside the Lines, opening August 19 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University.

Color Outside the Lines from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation examines the ways artists have used color to question institutions, beliefs, and expectations. Some of the artists included here celebrate and amplify colors intrinsic to their cultures, showcasing beauty once dismissed or rendered invisible.

Artists like Faith Ringgold and Christopher Myers, for instance, create works inspired by African quilts and stories; these pieces emphasize the vivid contrasts in color often prevalent in African textiles. Other artists employ color to confront stereotypes and subvert expectations. Derrick Adams’s Eye Candy (2022) incorporates images of a Black man wearing brightly colored leotards; these images are borrowed from 1970s underwear advertisements, prompting contemplation of ideas around masculinity, sexuality, and who is considered worthy of being portrayed.

Color Outside the Lines
August 19, 2025 – March 14, 2026
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at WSU
1535 NE Wilson Road
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164

Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm

For more information: https://museum.wsu.edu/exhibit/2025-color-outside-the-lines/

Seattle Art Fair 
July 17 - 20, 2025
Booth #C05

Lumen Field Event Center 
800 Occidental Ave S 
Seattle, WA 98134 

We are pleased to be returning to Seattle Art Fair and to have the opportunity see old friends and meet new ones. Our booth will be filled with exciting new work by gallery and invited artists. 

Please join us as a guest with complimentary tickets, courtesy of PDX CONTEMPORARY ART. 

The pass will grant you access to the fair during the following hours:        

Opening Night

Thursday, July 17, 2025: 6— 9pm

Public Hours

Friday, July 18, 2025: 11am — 7pm
Saturday, July 19, 2025: 11am — 7pm

Sunday, July 20, 2025: 11am — 6pm
 

The gallery will be closed on Friday, July 4 for the holiday.