News
Marie Watt | PEM Awardee
From the Peabody Essex Museum
"Artists change the way we see and interact with the world.The PEM Prize is presented to artists from any field whose work explores the catalytic relationship between creativity and civic engagement. Reinvigorating and reimagining the communities in which we live, these artists are leaders, connecting us to the possibilities that exist for a more inclusive and understanding world.
Along with a cash award, the PEM Prize recipient receives the opportunity to work with the museum on a project or series of projects that will be accessible to all. While each project will assume a different form, PEM Prize awardees will be individuals or groups who strive to deepen our global cultural connections, ignite our imaginations and inspire us to action.
This year’s PEM Prize is awarded to artist Marie Watt (Seneca and German-Scots). She will be creating a piece to be completed onsite, creating a multisensory experience in collaboration with the museum’s community as part of the PEM Prize from November 2023 through June of 2024.
The PEM Prize Awardee is selected by a committee of museum staff and leadership for their catalytic use of creative expression in civic engagement."
Read moreHeather Watkins | Sun Valley Museum of Art
We are pleased to share that Heather Watkins work is included in Bodies of Work: Art & Healing at the Sun Valley Museum of Art. Bodies of Work: Art & Healing will be on view January 12 - March 23, 2024. Participating artists include: Katherine Shaughnessy, Heather Watkins, Renée Stout, Katherine Sherwood, Estelle L. Roberge, and Dylan Mortimer.
“The notion that making and experiencing the arts can be healing has a long history. At the beginning of the 20th century, tuberculosis patients “taking the cure” at sanatoria often participated in structured arts and crafts programs. Wounded soldiers recuperating during World War II were taught “lap crafts,” such as beading and embroidery, as part of their medical therapy. The arts have served as powerful medicine for both mind and body for centuries. When planning for this exhibition considering the connection between art and healing began, the Covid-19 pandemic was dominating headlines around the globe. How do the arts help us process and/or recover from medical illness? How can they help us navigate the complex experience of what it is to be a medical patient facing serious illness in the 21st century? And how can art help us heal from other kinds of social and emotional trauma?
The exhibition features artwork by several contemporary artists who have used their practices as ways of exploring and processing their own experience of medical illness and also the experiences of others. Working in a range of media and from widely varying points of view and experiences, these artists have made art as part of their own healing and in order to enable the healing of others.”
THE MUSEUM
Sun Valley Museum of Art
191 5th St E, Ketchum, ID 83340HOURS
Tuesday - Friday
10:00 am—5:00 pm
Saturday
11:00 am—4:00 pmExhibition Page: https://svmoa.org/exhibitions/2024/bodies-of-work?mc_cid=83a204aee2&mc_e...
Read moreIván Carmona | 2024 Solo Exhibition at OSU
Iván Carmona starts the New Year with a solo show, Nostalgia, at OSU in Corvallis, Oregon.
Read moreJames Lavadour | Art Focus KBOO interview
James Lavadour was recently interviewed for Art Focus on KBOO radio.
"On Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 11.30 a.m. Joseph Gallivan interviews gallerist Jane Beebe about painter James Lavadour’s new show Planet Waves which is on now at PDX Contemporary Art through Nov. 28. Beebe talks about Lavadour’s use of color, the role of landscape in his abstract expressionism, and the way he works impulsively, tearing the paper from the pins on the easel. Lavadour from Umatilla is considered one of the best Native American painters working today. Beebe talks about the collectors who are attracted to his work at art fairs like the recent Armory Show which Beebe attended in New York https://www.thearmoryshow.com/ "
You can listen to the interview here: https://kboo.fm/media/118820-james-lavadour
Read moreHeather Watkins | Art Focus KBOO interview
Heather Watkins was recently interviewed for Art Focus on KBOO radio.
"On Tuesday, Nov. 7, at 11.30 a.m. Joseph Gallivan interviews artist Heather Watkins about her show Elemental Things which is on now at PDX Contemporary Art through Nov. 28. Watkins talks about turning line drawings into sculptures, her method of pouring ink on paper then cutting around the lines, and the values of lines in nature. "
You can listen to the interview here: https://kboo.fm/media/118655-heather-watkins
Read moreIván Carmona | Intuitive Nature: Geometric Roots & Organic Foundations, Schneider Museum of Art
Iván Carmona is included in Intuitive Nature: Geometric Roots & Organic Foundations at the Schneider Museum of Art.
This exhibition brings together the work of eight visual artists engaged in abstract, contemporary painting and sculpture. Each artist brings with them a personalized set of tools that reflects their intuitional play on geometric roots and organic reflections. Together, they form an exhibition that is visually stunning, revealing their brilliance and expertise. The artists are selected for their contrasting works as much as their complimentary ones to make the whole of the experience complex yet connected and rooted in like-minded histories.
There will be an opening reception on Thursday, October 5 from 5 to 7pm.
Learn more: https://sma.sou.edu/exhibitions/intuitive-nature-geometric-roots-organic...
Read moreIván Carmona | Black Artists of Oregon — Portland Art Museum
Iván Carmona is included in Black Artists of Oregon, currently on view at the Portland Art Museum.
Black Artists of Oregon, curated by Intisar Abioto, highlights and celebrates the work of Black artists in and outside of the museum collection.
“Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon. Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 69 artists and over 200 objects…”
The exhibition remains on view through March 17, 2023.
Learn more: https://portlandartmuseum.org/event/black-artists-of-oregon/
Read moreGeorgina Reskala and Stephanie Snyder in Conversation
We were pleased to host a conversation between artist Georgina Reskala and Stephanie Snyder, Anne and John Hauberg Curator and Director at the Cooley Gallery, Reed College.
They discuss time, memories, language, and practice around Reskala's current exhibition "Volver a ver / To see again" at PDX CONTEMPORARY ART.
Watch the full video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/jvWkyFH3ofo?feature=shared
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Volver a ver / To see again is on view at the gallery through September 30.Jenene Nagy | Artforum
Jenene Nagy was recently featured in an article published on Artforum, for her exhibition While navigating the distance around the sun, at the University of Wyoming Art Museum. The exhibition ran from April 22nd- July 29th, 2023. On view were 19 works by Jenene, from her smaller grid series of palm frond paper and imbued graphite, to her larger works of folded paper with graphite and silver. The exhibition echoed the wonderful subtleties and intricacies that make her work so inspirational.
Check out the link with the write up by Dan Beachy-Quick from Artforum
Link to article:
https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202307/jenene-nagy-90931
Read moreThe Armory Show 2023 New York | James Lavadour
We are excited to be exhibiting a booth at the 2023 Armory show by Native American artist James Lavadour. A brilliant painter, James Lavadour is truly revered in the Northwest and beyond. He lives and works on the Umatilla Reservation near Pendelton, Oregon.
We look forward to seeing you at Booth #F18
2023 Public Dates
Friday, September 8 | 11am–7pm
Saturday, September 9 | 11am–7pm
Sunday, September 10 | 11am–6pmJavits Center
Crystal Palace Entrance 429 11th Avenue New York, NY 10001Tickets available here: https://www.thearmoryshow.com/visit/plan-your-visit
Read moreVOLTA New York Art Fair 2023 | Nick Blosser
We are pleased to be exhibiting at VOLTA New York, May 17-21, 2023 with a solo booth by Nick Blosser.
Nick Blosser works primarily in egg tempera and watercolor and paints from small study-drawings that he creates while out in the woods and fields. He chooses places that might look quite ordinary at a cursory glance, but are ripe with intrigue that he can explore in his work. After receiving the Rome Prize in 1984, he spent time studying the Classical masterworks in Italy, and this knowledge of the art historical past has deeply influenced his work in both form and material.
Nick Blosser approaches the world quietly and carefully, observing and noting the patterns, colors, and magic of nature. His paintings capture the quivering aliveness of nature. The more time spent with a Blosser painting the greater the rewards as one notices the many subtleties of shading and abstract composition the trees, branches, brambles, hills, and sky make. The paintings continue to hold one's attention year after year.
Please join us at the fair with a complimentary ticket, courtesy of PDX CONTEMPORARY ART.
To receive your pass, follow the link below, click “Get Tickets”, and enter the code: PDXVNY
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/volta-new-york-2023-tickets-551518916927The passes will grant you access to the fair during the following hours:
General Admission
Thursday, May 18 | 12pm – 9pm
Friday, May 19 | 12pm – 8pm
Saturday, May 20 | 12pm – 8pm
Sunday, May 21 | 12pm – 5pmVOLTA New York, Booth #B4
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Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18 Street
New York, NY 10011Heather Watkins | Artist Talk Cooley Gallery and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Heather Watkins will have artist talks at the Cooley Gallery on occasion of her exhibition Dark Moves, as well as at Portland State University in conjunction with Blindspots and Throughlines in the Broadway Gallery at Portland State University.
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Dark Moves Artists Fabiola Menchelli +Heather Watkins in conversation
Saturday, May 6, 11:30 am, Reed chapelThe Cooley opens at 10:30 am before the event
Join Menchelli and Watkins with curator Stephanie Snyder as they discuss their individual and collective practices. Reed chapel, Eliot hall
Refreshments served!____
Heather Watkins: Blindspots and Throughlines Artist Talk
THURSDAY, MAY 11 | 6:00 PMRSVP : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/heather-watkins-blindspots-and-throughlines...
Since the beginning of Fall 2022, Heather Watkins has participated in a year-long residency at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, working with faculty and students in two Freshman Inquiry learning communities. Through workshops, guest lectures, studio visits, and other creative pedagogies, Watkins collaborated with students to create new avenues for understanding and experiencing Watkins’ two public artworks, located on the PSU campus: Score (2014), Lincoln Performance Hall; and Soundings: Opening, Fathoming, Grounding, Searching, Returning (2020), Vanport Building. In this artist talk, Watkins will deliver an overview of this initiative in community-engaged learning that has allowed her to reanimate previous artworks with special attention to artistic process and modes of interpretation. She will also talk about her role in the inaugural curricular exhibition Beautiful Questions, which is currently on view in the Broadway Gallery in Lincoln Hall. Finally, Watkins will discuss the development of a publication (which she received a RACC Arts3C grant to produce) that will encapsulate and archive this exciting and multifaceted project.
Lecture will be held in Lincoln Hall, RM 225. This program is free and open to the public. ASL interpreting will be provided.*
Read moreNancy Lorenz | Tiffany & Co
Nancy Lorenz was commissioned By Peter Marino to creat panels for the newly transformed flagship on Fifth Avenue, now known as “The Landmark”.
Read moreJenene Nagy | University of Wyoming Art Museum
Jenene Nagy’s solo exhibition “While Navigating the Distance Around the Sun” will open at the University of Wyoming Art Muesum on April 22, 2023 - July 29, 2023.
There will be an artist talk as well as an Artist led workshop in conjunction with the exhibition.
Salvagio Art Talk Series – Wednesday, April 26th - Free
Enjoy a reception at the UW Art Museum from 5:30–6 PM, Jenene Nagy’s Art Talk is from 6–7 PM.Artist-Led Workshop – Friday and Saturday, April 28th and 29th
4/29 – 10 AM-12 PM at the Laramie Plains Civic Center – Phoenix Ballroom. Space is limited.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/public-workshop-with-artist-jenene-nagy-tic...Through artist-led prompts and creative experiments, develop a personal symbol that honors and celebrates your identity. During this two-part workshop, participants will use lino-cutting techniques to create a personal flag.
More information about the exhibition and the programming can be found here:
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https://www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum/exhibitions/upcoming/jenene-nagy-exhibiti...Georgina Reskala | Artist Talk at SFAC Galleries
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
7:00 p.m. (Doors at 6:30 p.m.)
Free and Open to the PublicJoin Crossing Lines/Lineas que Cruzamos artists Arleene Correa Valencia and Georgina Reskala for a conversation about migration, materiality, and the power of memory. Moderated by Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography (SFMOMA).
APRIL 12, 2023
7:00 PM TO 8:30 PM
SFAC MAIN GALLERY
401 Van Ness, Ste. 126,
San Francisco, CA 94102Full information: sfartscommission.org/calendar/arleene-correa-valencia-and-georgina-reskala-shana-lopes
Read moreGeorgina Reskala | Woven Voices/Voces Entretejidas: A collective textile workshop with Georgina Reskala
Join Georgina Reskala at the San Francisco Arts Commissions for “Woven Voices / Voces Entretejidas” a textile workshop that brings people together to create a collective work.
“For this workshop, participants are invited to share their stories and write their fears, troubles, heartaches, and wishes on a piece of fabric and attach them to a larger textile work on view in the gallery. By joining in community and engaging in the act of sewing we can begin to mend ourselves and our world. Reskala invites you to ‘leave’ your troubles and wishes on the tapestry where she will hold space for them and for you.
Reskala started this project three years ago at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to stay connected with her loved ones. After seeing how impactful this simple gesture of holding space for others was, Reskala grew the project to include women’s voices from places far and wide. With this workshop, she continues to hold space and heal together with newfound community.Materials provided by the artist including hand-dyed fabric using avocados from Mexico. Refreshments also provided.”
The event will take place on MARCH 25, 2023 from 1:00 PM TO 4:00 PM at the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Main Gallery
401 Van Ness, Ste. 125,
San Francisco, CA 94102RSVP recommended but not required.
Full information on the workshop available here: https://www.sfartscommission.org/calendar/woven-voices-voces-entretejidas
Read moreJenene Nagy | Camp Colton Community Day: Session III
Jenene Nagy will be an artist-in-residence at Camp Colton as part of Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation’s printmaking residency.
There will be an open studio and community day on March 25, 2023.
Jenene will have an artist talk at 1:15 pm.
Full information and a list of events can be found here:
https://www.campcolton.com/events/communityday3Camp Colton
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30000 S Camp Colton Drive
Colton, OR
97017Marie Watt | New York Historical Society Friday March 10, 2023. 1 pm est
oin the New York Historical Society on Friday, March 10, at 1pm (ET) for On Being and Belonging in America: Recalibrating Dialogue and Gallery Space for American and Native American Art. This conversation centers on the Peabody Essex Museum’s new installation of Native American and American art, exploring the challenges and rewards of combining two collections to consider what it means to belong in America, and how artists have the power to transform what we see and how we think.
Read more
https://www.nyhistory.org/programs/on-being-and-belonging-native-america...
Photograph by Robbie McClaranJeffry Mitchell | "THIS Compost" Fairbanks Gallery
Jeffry Is a visiting artist at Oregon State University College of Liberal Arts|School of Visual, Performing and Design Arts. An accompanying exhibition of his ceramic, textile and works with and on paper artwork is on view.
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"THIS Compost"
02/27/2023 - 04/07/2023
Oregon State University - Fairbanks Hall
Monday-Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pmHeather Watkins | "Dark Moves" exhibition at The Cooley Gallery, Reed College
DARK MOVES
Fabiola Menchelli & Heather Watkins
February 16 to May 14, 2023
12 to 5 pm, Thursday to SundayFabiola Menchelli and Heather Watkins are artists deeply invested
in the sensory nuances and perceptual intricacies of luminescence, as well
as its orbital complement—darkness (and shadow). With methodologies drawn from poetry, cosmogony, and scientific experimentation, the artists transform materials through meticulous and embodied forms of touch and transference. After decades of engagement, the artists have become the mediums of these transmissions—receiving and reciprocating the energies that breathe through their work, and their bodies, turn by turn.Conceptually and physically, it is the infinite granularity of darkness that grounds their sight-lines. Shadow becomes a medium in the artists’ hands, multiplying the organic curves and honed edges of their work across the hemlock floors and deep, azure walls of the museum. Menchelli and Watkins synthesize color, line, and form in ways that dematerialize modernist geometries, diffusing planarity into soft-hued angles and flowing pours.
The artists are seekers of the indefinable in-between, where intentionality and unconscious meet—rising like a sunset on the other side of the earth.Working together over a two-year period, and working between Portland, Oregon and Mexico City, the artists studied one another’s processes and intellectual interests, discussing readings, and collaborating with the Cooley on the design of the exhibition. As they opened to one another’s work, and themselves, Menchelli and Watkins considered the phenomenology of the exhibition from artistic, as well as, personal perspectives.
Menchelli states: “Heather and I kept having conversations about blindness and the experience of darkness—not as a cold and distant place, but as a place to inhabit and observe.” The voids and folds throughout the exhibition become moments of reversal, refraction, and disappearance—particularly in the center of the Cooley, where a hexagonal room with open ends echoes the internal geometries and shadows of Menchelli and Watkins’ work. As viewers move through, and around, the hexagon, their bodies describe the lemniscate—the symbol of infinity (∞).
Fabiola Menchelli brings radical, new dimensionality to her most recent color photograms, transforming them into kinetic, sculptural events. This occurs when Menchelli mounts the completed prints onto a thin, stainless-steel plate that she bends, via machine, along the folds of the image. Menchelli explains:
"I make this work in complete blindness in the darkroom, folding the photographic paper and exposing it to various color filters, sometimes solarizing the prints in the developing bath, pushing the image to its limits.
The process feels like a blind choreography of unscripted motions—a set
of unrehearsed variables that I improvise each time. The uncertainty of the process frees me, and frees the work from the prejudice of preconception.
It is a process of learning and unlearning—of experimenting and ‘failing
better’ each time, to use Beckett’s phrase. This unraveling feels uncertain
and exciting. It has made me reconsider the fixed mechanisms of observation
that we impose upon the body, upon observation, and upon our perception
of ourselves. The act of observation goes beyond vision and can be a gentle and generous approach—pushing against the historical violence of the camera, shooting and capturing images that capitalize reality. Instead,
I want to turn the lens inward, even remove the camera all together, and let the physical structure of the medium define itself, expanded and unfixed—
liquid, open and multiple.’’The completed pieces become an abstract portrait of the interaction
between Menchelli’s body and the photosensitive paper, as they dance in
total darkness for hours at a time. We feel this choreography in the layers
of translucent color and shape that travel the peaks and valleys of the steel. The finished pieces exude strength and volition, yet retain the poetic lightness that characterizes Menchelli’s visionary, camera-less photograms. Fabiola Menchelli brings radical, new dimensionality to her most recent color photograms, transforming them into kinetic, sculptural events. This occurs when Menchelli mounts the completed prints onto a thin, stainless-steel plate that she bends, via machine, along the folds of the image.Heather Watkins’ refined, and weathered, standing sculptures resemble textiles and drawings deconstructed into dimensional form. The rising arrangements begin on low plinths, delineating plots where time slows to the pace of Watkins’ sophisticated dialogue with form, and its shadow. Watkins enacts and re-enacts the elements of each installation in situ, over days, and weeks, as though writing or interpreting a text. The work’s phenomenological grammar is her private poetry. In fact, her small, atmospheric ink drawings—Before Things—interpret the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. They are hidden within the space, on the cusp of luminescence. Atop the arrangements’ formal stacks of reclaimed wood and pedestals, designed by the artist, paper sculptures bend and arc. Their elegant and sinuous contours shimmer with the evidence of their past lives as drawings—gorgeous black ink-pours that Watkins held at the edges, and guided to resolution. Dark upon dark. To create the present-tense objects, Watkins excised the flowing lines, shifting them from darkness to light. Watkins offers a beautiful description of the process as it relates to her broader vision of perpetual creation:
"The works in the exhibition take the process of creation through multiple, successive actions and gestures, each move informed by the last. The ink drawings that I transform into sculptures, for instance, trace my body’s movements as I guide the liquid across the paper, working with, and against, gravity, and participating in their formation in a vulnerable, yet physically immediate way, with heightened senses. I return to them with a blade, tracing their edges, drawing them out, and lifting them into new realities. Freed from their grounds, the fluid lines become something else—spatial, precarious, open, and unbounded.’’
Processes of sustained transference have evolved throughout Watkins’ work over decades. In Dark Moves, they are accompanied by numinous gold reliefs, created by imperceptible forces that oscillate with a fluid lyricism, in dialogue with Watkins’ evolving, sculptural project.
Like cosmic sisters, Menchelli and Watkins embrace the dialectic of darkness and light as a dialectic of purpose—an illusion of permanence allowing the mind to pause and reflect: and beyond that, to survive. What cosmic phenomenon is more fundamental to how we imagine ourselves than our struggle for self-realization through the earth’s diurnal rhythms? We live this moment every night—the moment dark and light separate—and we are born, wondering. As the curator of the exhibition, it has been a remarkable experience gaining so much knowledge about, and supporting, these two brilliant and dedicated artists. I am full of, and shadowed by, enduring gratitude and affection.
— Stephanie Snyder, John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director,
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Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery
