Future Event
Tuesday, 2 December 2008, 7 p.m.
Laura Vandenburgh’s drawing-based practice has encompassed drawing installations, wall drawings, and works on paper, which explore our relationship to and within the natural environment. Her work has been exhibited at the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto, the Portland Art Museum, the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, PICA and the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY among other venues. The work has been supported by grants and residencies from the Ucross, Ragdale and Saltonstall Foundations. Vandenburgh received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City, following BS in Zoology and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degrees from the University of California at Davis. She lives and works in Springfield, Oregon, and teaches at the University of Oregon.
Future Event
11 September through 7 December 2008
Balancing environmental, social, economic, and aesthetic concerns, sustainable design has the potential to transform everyday life and is reshaping the fields of architecture and product design. Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art explores the influence of this design philosophy on artists who combine a fresh aesthetic sensibility with a constructively critical approach to the production, dissemination, and display of art. The exhibition includes existing works, commissions, and previously presented work that has been “recycled,” spotlighting ways in which artists are building paths to new forms of practice. Many of the artists work collaboratively and leaven serious social aims with playful, off-the-grid spark. Their approaches range from the metaphorical to the pragmatic, sometimes serving as models for audience activism.
The exhibition runs from September 11 to December 7, 2008. An opening reception will be held at the gallery, Thursday, September 11, 5-7 p.m.
Future Event
14 October through 7 December 2008
Orlo, the environmental arts organization based in Portland, has facilitated a new exhibition of artwork currently on display throughout the first floor of the Miller Center for the Humanities on the Lewis & Clark College Campus. Titled The End of Death and Taxes, the exhibit features the work of Portland artist Ryan Pierce. These large-scale acrylic paintings completed between 2006 and 2007 depict humans rebuilding the world after the end of industry.
The End of Death and Taxes is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art, currently being shown at the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art.
The Pierce exhibition will be on display through December 7.
Past Event
Tuesday, 18 November 2008, 7 p.m.
John Grade will speak at 7:00 pm, in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
“Grade is a master at transforming experience of place into material manifestation. Earlier work involved travel to far-flung places to see how different cultures celebrated and preserved life forms: the pyramids, funerary towers in Peru and burial mounds in Jordan near Petra. The resulting works captured mood without resorting to the representation of actual objects. His current body of work still requires the artist to travel, but his works have begun to get in on the act too, as Grade exhibits, displaces and re-positions his work in new, often radically different territory”. -Suzanne Beal, August 2008, Sculpture Magazine
John Grade is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Award (NY), A Pollock Krasner Foundation Award (NY), and a Tiffany Foundation Award (NY); his work has been featured and reviewed in Art in America, Sculpture, the Boston Globe, and on NPR’s All Things Considered and Studio 360.
Past Event
12 through 14 November 2008
This two-day event, bringing together leading academics from across the country, will focus on why people migrate, how it affects culture and identity, and the socio-political issues tied to migration. The annual Multicultural Symposium, in its fifth year, is designed to help the community explore the personal and public face of race, culture and ethnicity in a local, national, and global context.
Events will take place at various times, in different locations within Templeton Campus Center. Consult the symposium website for details.
Past Event
Tuesday, 11 November 2008, 7 p.m.
Sue Taylor will speak at 7:00 pm, in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities. The title of her talk is “Grant Wood, Truth and Lies.”
An art historian, curator, and critic, Sue Taylor received her B.A. in art history from Roosevelt University, and her M.A. and Ph.D., also in art history, from the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty at Portland State University in Oregon, she served as Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and as Associate Curator at the David and Alfred Smart Museum at the University of Chicago.
Formerly a critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Taylor is corresponding editor for Art in America and has published articles widely. With fellowships and grants a number of prestigious institutions, she has brought feminist and psychoanalytic insights to the art of Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse, and numerous other modern artists. She is currently at work on a book on “Grant Wood beyond Regionalism.”
Past Event
Thursday, 23 October 2008, 7 p.m.
Heidi Preuss Grew will speak on October 23 at 7:00 pm, in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
Grew’s sculptures combine animal and human imagery that straddle real and fictional worlds. Her works are often accompanied by large-scale drawings, wall installations, or porcelain paintings. Her figurative sculptures have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in the Portland Art Museum, Contemporary Crafts Museum in Portland, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, the Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan, the Keramion Museum in Frechen, Germany, FuLe International Ceramic Museum in Fuping, China, and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. Preuss Grew has participated in numerous international symposia and was honored in 2007 with election into the International Academy of Ceramics. She is presently an Associate Professor of Art at Willamette University and divides her time between Portland and Salem, Oregon.
Past Event
Thursday, 16 October 2008, 7 p.m.
Sam Gould, of Red76, will speak on October 16 at 7:00 pm, in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
Begun in January of 2000 in Portland, Oregon, Red76 is the moniker for collaboratively based initiatives conceived, most often, by Sam Gould, and fleshed out by a group of like-minded folks, who include, or have included; Khris Soden, Zefrey Throwell, Paige Saez, Colin Beattie, Jen Rhoads, Laura Baldwin, Gabriel Mindel Saloman, and many others. Red76 has initiated projects, large and small, that have been realized in North America, and internationally. The guiding principle between many of these initiatives is the facilitation of discussion, thought and action within public space, as well as the examination of what that space can be, and where that space may reside at any given time.
Past Event
Tuesday, 7 October 2008, 7 p.m.
Judy Cooke will speak on October 7 at 7:00 p.m. in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
One of the Northwest’s most influential abstract painters, Cooke has investigated abstract imagery and the structure of painting for more than 30 years. Her new body of work explores a highly physical painting process, working on the surface of found aluminum plates, rubber, and wooden panel surfaces. Irregular in shape, sometimes staggered when assembled, Cooke’s work continues to cross the precipice between painting and sculpture. The split or division in the individual paintings reflect the artist’s ongoing formal process, as well as correspond with the artist’s personal perceptions of current politics. Cooke’s awareness of, and frustration with, the war is subtly made manifest within her dark, somber palette, use of rubber, and use of the black line throughout the work.
Judy Cooke received her degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the early 1960’s and moved to Portland in the late 1960’s. She was recently awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting from the Oregon Arts Commission.
Past Event
Tuesday, 30 September 2008, 7 p.m.
Jenene Nagy will speak on September 30 at 7:00 p.m. in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
Nagy is a visual artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Blurring the boundaries of painting, sculpture, and installation, Nagy’s work aims to simultaneously reference where we are and where we wish we could be.
Nagy received her BFA from the University of Arizona in 1998, and her MFA from the University of Oregon in 2004. Her work has been exhibited as numerous venues including arthouse in Austin, TX, Brewery Project in Los Angeles, CA, Dam Stuhltrager in NY, and Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin, Germany. She has had solo exhibitions at Dinnerware ArtSpace in Tucson, AZ and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. Lisa Radon of Ultra has called Nagy “a force to be reckoned with on all fronts.” Nagy’s work has been reviewed in the Willamette Week, PORT, the Oregonian, and the Portland Mercury. Along with a rigorous studio practice, Nagy is also the Director and Co-Curator of Tilt Gallery and Project Space, a venue for experimental and difficult to show work.
Past Event
Tuesday, 23 September 2008, 7 p.m.
Holly Andres will speak on September 23 at 7:00 p.m. in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
Andres approaches her art in a multidisciplinary manner, and has worked in film, photography, sculpture and installation. Andres’ newest body of photographic work, Sparrow Lane, recently premiered at Quality Pictures Contemporary Art in Portland OR, and this on-going series will exhibit at the Robert Mann Gallery in NYC in Oct.
In 2007 her much acclaimed narrative photo series, Stories from a Short Street exhibited at the DNJ Gallery in LA, the Jen Bekman Gallery in NYC, in ‘Girl Machine’ at the Honfluer Gallery in Washington DC, and at her hometown, The Missoula Art Museum. In 2006 she was represented in the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum and at the Annual National Juried Exhibition at Newspace Center for Photography. Andres’ photo work has been showcased in Elle Magazine, the Portland Modern, on the cover of the Portland Mercury, PDX Magazine, and Art Ltd.-who recently profiled her as one of 15 emerging West Coast artists under the age of 35.
Andres has also collaborated with performer/filmmaker Grace Carter to create the short films Nora, Dandelion and Brave New Girl. Their work has been featured in the 31st Annual NW Film + Video Festival, Best of the Northwest Touring Program, the Portland International Film Festival, the Portland Experimental Film Festival and the Perpetual Art Machine in New York. Andres currently teaches studio art classes at Portland State University and Pacific Northwest College of Art. Andres received an MFA from PSU in 2004.
Past Event
Thursday, 18 September 2008, 7 p.m.
Matt Wagner will appear on September 18 at 7:00 p.m. in Miller 105.
With an extensive career in comics, Matt Wagner introduced one of comicdom’s most respected creator-owned characters—the mastermind assassin, Grendel. Best known for this epic creation and his other, more personal, allegory, Mage, Wagner has also worked on a variety of established characters. His more recent efforts in this vein have included writing the Dr. Mid-nite mini-series for DC Comics and serving as the regular cover artist on the Kevin Smith-penned relaunch of Green Arrow.
This year sees the 25th anniversary of Grendel, and Wagner is hard at work on a variety of projects to commemorate this significant milestone. His appearance is co-sponsored by the Department of English and Watzek Library Special Collections.
Past Event
Tuesday, 16 September 2008, 7 p.m.
Lucinda Parker will speak on September 16 at 7:00 p.m. in room 102, Miller Center for the Humanities.
Parker creates energetic paintings inspired by natural forms. She works vigorously within the boundaries of abstraction while exploring formal issues of geometry and figure/ground: the relationship of foreground objects and background. During the last year, Parker’s studio was dominated by a large commission project (sponsored by the Washington State Arts Commission) that was recently installed at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington.
Often characterized as a regional painter, her work has been exhibited at numerous one-person shows throughout the West as well as in many exhibitions nationally, including the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Seattle Art Museum, the David Findlay Gallery and the Sue Ellen Haber Gallery, both in New York. The Portland Art Museum honored her with a mid-career retrospective in 1995, and the Boise Art Museum gave her a one-person exhibition in 2002. Parker’s work is well collected throughout the Northwest. Major public collections include the Boise Art Museum, Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University, the Portland Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum. Public projects include the Lower Columbia College, Longview WA; the Oregon Convention Center, Portland; Midland Library, Gresham, City Hall, Portland; and Southern Oregon University, Ashland.
