Alumni Stories & Careers
Our alumni go on to successful careers in art and design as artists, curators, and creative directors.
Tabor Robak
Tabor Robak, who works in new media, has been commissioned by Microsoft to develop a work of scale for the facade of their flagship store on 5th Avenue. Robak's works have been acquired by a number of major museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Albright-Knox Art Gallery. He is represented by Team Gallery.
Brenda Mallory
Brenda Mallory is an accomplished, award-winning artist with a busy exhibition and residency schedule. She holds a BA in Linguistics & English from UCLA in addition to her BFA. She has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. She is a recipient the Eiteljorg Contemporary Native Art Fellowship and the Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship in Visual Art. She lives in Portland Oregon but grew up in Oklahoma and is a member of the Cherokee Nation.
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Cris Moss
Cris Moss is an artist, curator, and arts administrator who has served as the Director and Curator of the White Box gallery at the University of Oregon's Portland campus and Gallery Director at Linfield College and Adjunct Professor of Design and Electronic Media. Moss received his MFA from NYU and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
Julia Fish '76
Julia Fish was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Fish’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Fish lives in Chicago, where she is Professor of Studio Arts in the School of Art and Design, College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago. She is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
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Justin Gorman ’08
Justin Gorman is a digital designer and creative director who has worked with firms including Cinco and Instrument. In 2016, he launched Index, a library of contemporary photographers and filmmakers—a digital tool for finding talent from around the world.
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Portland Institute for Contemporary Art Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival
Students are embedded in this international art festival of contemporary art. They participate, perform, volunteer, and attend performances. And in this way, they gain unique access to the artists as well as a behind-the-scenes view of the production of the festival. In addition, one of its curators, Erin Boberg, teaches performance at PNCA. And each year PNCA hosts exhibitions and performances for the festival.
Leland Iron Works Residency
Located just east of Oregon City, OR Leland Iron Works is the home and studio of sculptor Lee Kelly and his family. For years, Leland Iron Works has been home to artists, activists, musicians, writers, climbers, architects, poets, and dancers. The Residency at Leland Iron Works is an expansion of that legacy. With a generous grant from the Ford Family Foundation and with the continued support of the Kelly family and PNCA, Leland Iron Works offers free month-long residencies for emerging visual artists, writers or musicians.