Bravo Alumni - May 2017

* Alumni, we love hearing from you! Send any updates or news to alumni@pnca.edu so we can brag about you in our next issue of Bravo!
** Listings are organized by graduating class year.

 

2017

AQNB featured an exhibition curated by the Nat Turner Project, an ongoing curatorial project run by MFA in Visual Studies candidates Melanie Stevens MFA ‘17 and maximiliano MFA ‘17. The Nat Turner Project defines itself as “an uncompromising radical space — filling a void in Portland” and is dedicated to presenting work “borne of marginalized perspectives to a dominant culture.” One of the Nat Turner Project curators, Melanie Stevens, was also featured on KBOO’s Art Focus talking with André Middleton who invited her to talk about her art and practice. You can listen to the segment here. Melanie is also one of the co-founders of Miss Anthology, which introduces racially and economically diverse female and genderqueer youth to the comics and the art industries. 

WeMake loves to showcase and support the future of the arts in their Student Spotlight Series. Most recently, they profiled current PNCA student Subin Yang ’17 about her about her process and journey as a digital illustrator.

 

2016

Lauren Stumpf MFA ’16 was recently a contributor to a newly released book entitled Living the Dream...The Morning After Art School written by John Watson and Brian Horner and published by Kendall Hunt.

Anastasia Greer MFA ’16, Tom Cramer ‘82, Kendra Larson ‘04, Ruth Lantz, Jennifer Pepin, Samantha Wall MFA ’10, Yoshihiro Kitai ‘02, Sherrie Wolf ‘74, Michelle Ross ‘87, Lee Kelly ’59, Gabriel Liston ‘98, Fritz Liedtke ‘02, Michael Hensley ’95, and Annie McLaughlin ‘16 all contributed art works to the juried Cascade AIDS Project art auction on April 29^th.  Congratulations to Sherrie and Anastasia who were picked by Jessica Nickel for her Curator's Choice selection. Former professor Robert Hanson was also selected.

Annie McLaughlin ’16, whose solo show is currently up at Nationale, will be releasing a limited-edition silkscreen print with the gallery’s offshoot project, Le Oui, before the show closes on May 19. Get your copy before they all disappear!

Kalaija Mallery ’16 recently showed a series of photograms at NeverLab Coffee.

 

A post shared by Tate (@tate) on Apr 13, 2017 at 1:39pm PDT

When Joshua Bryant ’16 tagged one of his Instagram videos #Hockneyinspired, he probably didn’t expect the post to be picked up by the Tate Art galleries to promote alongside the David Hockney retrospective at London’s Tate Britain. Josh’s post has been viewed more than 41,000 times. You can follow more of Josh’s work via Instagram at @mx_joshua.

Joseph McGehee ’16 curated the recent Canio’s Mirror, which opened April 1 at Jimmy’s in Ridgewood, NY. The exhibition features a text by Matthew Layng.

 

2015

Nick Patton MFA ’15 just contributed the illustrations to It Feels Good to Feel Good: Learn to Eliminate Toxins, Reverse Inflammation and Feel Great Again, which was published in April 2017 and is now available on Amazon.

Reese Bowes MFA ’15 had his work in the PDX Contemporary Window Project for the month of April. You can see Reese Bowes's work on his blog! And so did...

... Bukola Koiki MFA ’15, who will be the featured artist for the PDX Contemporary Window Project for May 2017. Her work tackles difficult and occasionally uncomfortable topics such as homesickness, cultural hybridity, and dislocation and where they intersect with our ideas of memory, family, and home.

Everyone’s favorite Show Show is back with top comedians performing live on stage with animations of their jokes, but this time there’s an added twist for Design Week Portland! Show Show is produced by Melody Rowell MFA ’15 and features storytelling and animations from notable Portland designers, complete with visual installations galore. The April 25 show featured animations by Grayson Bear ‘18, Erik Hoofnagle ‘15, Maddie Loftesnes ‘16, Theo Patton ‘18, Melody Rowell MFA ’15, and Victoria Wells, among others, and stand-up from Jason Traeger ’07, who placed in Portland’s Funniest Five 2015.

 

2014

PNCA recently teamed up with KEEN to tell the story of paint, pixels, and passion in Portland. KEEN turned to PNCA alumna Molly Mendoza ’14, as well as to current students Travis Geohegan, Savanna Youngquist MFA ‘17, Aruni Dharmakirthi MFA ‘17, and Sherry Jankiewicz MFA ‘18 to develop visual identities for their new UNEEK shoes. Check out the fabulous (really) results here in this great video.

Iris Williamson MA '14 and John Knight MFA '13 of Williamson | Knight are celebrating the opening of their first exhibition—Sheida Soleimani's Social Learning Theory. Williamson | Knight is located at 916 NW Flanders St and gallery hours will be Thursday–Saturday 12–5pm. 

fresh paint, a temporary mural pilot project, begins in mid-May, 2017- April 2018 as part of a new professional development initiative of RACC’s Public Art Murals programming. For the first year, three artists have been selected to paint a mural on an area of the exterior west wall of Open Signal, 2766 NE Martin Luther King Blvd., Portland.  Each mural will be up for a period of four months and then painted over in preparation for the next mural. The first artist will be PNCA alumna Molly Mendoza '14.

Elizabeth Leon '14 and other members of Pochas Radicales, a queer Latinx art collective located in Portland, will present a timely, site specific installation in the exhibition space at the Portland Building beginning May 2. The project will transform the compact gallery adjacent to the building lobby into a platform that offers an engaging narrative of a young, queer Latinx living in Portland. "The intention of this installation is to personalize the stories of so many people whose lives go unnoticed because they are often reduced to a flash on the evening news with very little context.”

 

2013

From May 4-7, MFA Visual Studies alumnus Takahiro Yamamoto MFA ’13 is presenting “Direct Path to Detour,” a new dance work choreographed by Taka and commissioned by PICA. Grounded in the idea that a sense of who we are is rooted in our embodied experiences, this dance evokes mental and physical states at the intersection of value systems, social pressures, expectations, and personal experiences. Taka is a member of Physical Education, a performance group that was the 2016-17 artist-in-residence at PNCA’s Center for Contemporary Art & Culture. Says Taka, “This residency was great, meeting students here and there, and also it provided a valuable support for rehearsal space for this very project since last September.” Don’t miss this! … especially as PICA is offering $5 ticket for people under 25 deal for this performance!

William Matheson ’13 will present his third solo show at Nationale in May and June 2017. Catch a sneak peek of the work here.

 

2012

Last month, Jodie Cavalier MFA ’12 was invited to be an artist-in-resident at Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West Wagon Encampment in Joshua Tree. There, she’ll be researching experimental recipes with native plants with The High Desert Test Kitchen.

In January, Vadim Makoyed ’12 opened a creative studio called Vadimages with 4 full-time and 4 part-time designers and developers. They are crafting websites and apps for world class brands as well as local businesses, startups, and nonprofits.

 

2011

Morgan Ritter ’11 performed at the April 18 opening of Susan Cianciolo’s Run Restaurant Untitled for the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

 

2010

Rainmaker Artist Residency, a non-profit organization founded by PNCA alumna Jane Schiffhauer MFA ’10 in 2013 to provide low-cost studios and professional development education to recent MFA grads, will transition in August 2017 to become a collective of artist studios and gallery in Northwest Portland. Over the past four years Rainmaker Artist Residency has helped more than 20 artists further their practice and careers. The new Rainmaker Studios and Gallery will continue to provide studio and exhibition space to established artists in Portland.

If you've been thinking about starting a collection but don't think you have the budget, check out this new Delaney Allen ‘10 print released in honor of Nationale's Young Collectors Event last month. Delaney's photographs are usually available only in very small editions ($600–1650) so this should make a lot of people's day. The image itself is mesmerizing. Email May Barruel to reserve yours! Also worth some applause: Ollie Blue Allen was born on March 16. Congratulations, Mindy & Delaney!

In a few short years, Tabor Robak ’10 has become a breakout digital artist known for vivid, mesmerizing dreamscapes. His work has graced solo shows, international galleries and MoMA PS1, an affiliate of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. But on Thursday, Tabor debuted a new piece on his biggest, most prominent canvas yet: The 800-square-foot digital façade fronting the flagship Microsoft Store in New York. Displayed high above bustling Fifth Avenue, the cinematic piece, called “Sundial,” is part of a new collaboration between the five-story retail store and local artists. Read more on Microsoft News. Tabor was also one of a handful of artists invited to do a project for the Public Art Fund 40^th Anniversary Benefit Thursday April 20.

Patrick Cruzan ’10 was last seen in the basement of PNCA, preparing to enter a previously unknown room and muttering about a maze. He has not been seen since.

 

2009

Brenna Murphy ‘09 is one half of MSHR. Their Nested Transmuted Cycle is currently on view at Interstitial in Seattle and is reviewed in The Stranger.

Thom Wheeler Castillo ’09 is an AIRIE (artist-in-residence-in-Everglades), where he collected field recordings that engage the landscape through the soundscape. A selection of these recordings and reinterpretations by other sound artists were arranged. AIRIE invites visual artists, scholars, composers and writers to seek both solitude and solidarity in the inspiring environment of Everglades National Park. Artists are provided a furnished apartment for the length of the residency, usually four weeks. Interested? Thom’s sent along this link to the application, due June 1.

 

2007

Maile Thiesen ’07 just started a new job as the Digital Asset Management Technical Specialist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Congrats Maile!

ArtForum recently reviewed the newest show from Nickolaus Typaldos '07, now showing at Marvin Gardens in NYC through May 14. Nick's exhibition, they write, "evokes a future time, in which synthetic objects have become petrified along with their organic counterparts...Although these cast objects recall archaeological specimens, their uncanny surfaces and prop-like appearances take us into an imaginative, science-fictional space." Read the whole review here.

 

2006

Eliza Fernand ’06 offered an improvisational quilting workshop at Rare Bird in Oakland and then travelled north to the redwood forests, to spend the month of April as the resident artist at The Sanctuary Arcata. Then she’s headed to Oakland to host her workshop, Practice Saying NO: A Patchwork Workshop, at Kosa Arts, a gallery and boutique in Oakland. She’ll teach participants how to make the "NO" patchwork she designed, and have a conversation about the things we say "no" to in our personal and public lives.

 

2005

Ryan Alexander-Tanner ’05 has been busy these last few years: he recently released an illustrated article with The New York Times. He’s also made comics for BuzzFeed, Medium, The Nib, Talking Points Memo, and a few others. If you’re feeling bewildered by geopolitical whiplash, you might enjoy Ryan’s most recent comic essay for The Nib, where he offers some advice for activism in the age of Trump. Other updates worth some attention: Did you know that Ryan drew the Dave's Killer Bread logo? Well, he did. He also illustrated and co-authored a graphic novel about progressive education for Columbia University’s Teacher's College Press called To Teach: The Journey, in Comics. He regularly contributes illustrations to The Mercury, including the author portraits that run every week, and has taught for PNCA’s Continuing Education program for the past 3-4 years in a row. Bravo, Ryan!

 

2004

Lindsey White ’04 was named a 2017 SECA Award winner by San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. SECA, an acronym for the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, grew out of a group of collectors that formed in 1961 with the goal to educate their members about contemporary art, and to help in the growth of the SFMOMA permanent collection. The award comes a monetary award and a summer exhibition at the museum. Lindsey has already been working on much of the work that she will show at SECA, creating an industrious installation of photographs, fiberglass and aluminum sculptures, photographic banners and oversized potholders—all of which are inspired by the professional and amateur worlds of magicians and comedians.

Don’t miss this upcoming talk by Brenda Mallory ’04 (Cherokee Nation) at the Portland Art Museum. She’ll offer a close look at her installation Recurring Chapters in the Book of Inevitable Outcomes. Mallory’s work is inspired by a rereading of Cherokee history and addresses ideas of disruption, repair, and renewal. Her work in Arizona State University Art Museum’s biennale exhibition, Map(ing) (Multiple Artists Printing Indigenous and Native Geographies), was reviewed in Hyperallergic. She was also awarded an artist papermaking residency at Pulp & Deckle for 2017.

 

2002

We’re excited to announce the second year of Swale, a floating food forest on a barge in NYC from artist and alumna Mary Mattingly ’02. Swale will return to Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 6 on April 29 to open its 2017 season. Swale was conceived as an interactive public artwork that reconnects New Yorkers to nature and welcomes visitors to forage fruits and vegetables for free. Through its tours, workshops and events, Swale calls attention to the collective use of New York City’s land and waterways. Last season, Swale hosted over 60,000 visitors and 100 programs at locations at Concrete Plank Park in the Bronx, Governor’s Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park. “At its heart,” says Mattingly, “Swale is a call to action. It asks us to reconsider our food systems, to confirm our belief in food as a human right and to pave pathways to create public food in public space.”

 

1999

Steve Orlando ’99 is heading in a new professional direction and just completed a Project Manager Professional certification course at Saint Louis University. He has a fabulous and fascinating career record behind him: collaborative project director, photography registrar, art consultant, papermaker, project director at Dieu Donné, and printmaking faculty at Pratt.

Fertile Myrtle, a new film from filmmaker Julie Orser ’99 is still on the festival circuit. It won a Jury Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival last month and will be showing at the 19^th Annual Maryland Film Festival from May 3- 7, 2017. She also has a solo show up at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, CA.

 

1998

Spirit Medicine, a healing project for the waterways, is the most recent work from Cydney French ’98. Just as our consciousness as humans remains entwined with one another so too is the water of the world: one rain drop, one river, one ocean. The project includes a narrative and visuals, beginning with an intentional ceremony on the Deschutes River. Follow along via Instagram at @cydneyfrench.

 

1995

Holly White-Gehrt '95 is currently Artist in Residence at the Hill Country Art Foundation, and preparing to open a new program at HCAF, The Hill Country Atelier. She will be teaching classical realism in a one or a three year curriculum.

Glynnis Fawkes ’95 recently won a silver medal at the Society of Illustrators annual Comics Festival MoCCA for her book Greek Diary. This book is an account of working on a dig as illustrator, traveling to islands with her family (two cranky children), and a flashback to a romance on Santorini that was the beginning of this family. Last year, Glynnis won a MoCCA award for excellence for another book, AllleEgo, also set in Greece, but 20 years earlier. Greek Diary was also short-listed for the Slate Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Web Comic of 2016, and winners of that award will be announced next week. For more information about her work, visit Glynnis’ blog. You can read Greek Diary online here!

 

1992

The Global Art Affairs Foundation selected Portland photographer (and PNCA alumna!) Susan Seubert ’92 for inclusion in “Personal Structures,” an exhibition on view at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy, during this year's Venice Biennale, May 13 – November 26, 2017. Can’t make it to Venice? You can see her work at Froelick Gallery through May 27. At both venues, Susan will exhibit a recent body of work titled Not a Day Goes By. These photographic prints on metal surfaces meditate on a highly prevalent means of suicide in the United States: Self-asphyxiation using a plastic bag. All the more harrowing for their ordinariness and ready availability, Susan placed plastic over the heads of her models (whom she crowdsourced via social media) and relied on each individual's instinctual posture to convey a face-on personal aspect to broader, tragic statistics. The results are ghostly, simply composed, eerily beautiful in their veiled view of the people underneath whose features are blurred, creased, partially obscured by the folds and light-glancing planes of the bag. Don’t miss it.

 

1981

Michael Curry ‘81 is working with Carlos Kalmar and the Oregon Symphony to present Stravinsky’s Persephone. The production is part of the Symphony’s SoundSights Series, presenting symphonic collaborations with visual artists. The innovative and impactful puppetry for which Michael is famous will be used to explore the journey of Persephone between the underworld and the world above. As designer and staging director, Michael will transform the stage into a world of shadow and light.  Residing in this world will be puppeteers clad to resemble Greek statues, accompanied by the Portland State Chamber Choir, the Pacific Youth Choir, the tenor Paul Groves, the narrator Pauline Cheviller, and the conductor Carlos Kalmar with the Oregon Symphony.  Performances will run at 7:30pm daily from Saturday, May 13 through Monday, May15, 2017 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

 

1974

Sherrie Wolf’s (BFA ‘74) studio is filled with art history books. One of her favorites describes a large set of simple paintings done by Manet while he was quite ill at the end of his life, of the flowers that friends brought to him. These are known as "the last flower paintings," and her upcoming show at Boston’s Arden Gallery is meant to honor these and the vast history and tradition of flower painting. You can see a few of the paintings on view

 

1973

Take it from one who knows: Steve O’Hare ’73 says that life after retirement is great. “PNCA helped me to go from a grunt in the art department to the head of the art department and retire after 40 years and live my dreams. My wife and I live on a large acreage in a house that we designed and built and now basically live of the land, we have a huge garden and orchard and I have seven bee hives that I process the honey from by hand and sell in town. The orchard is in full bloom right now and the bees are happy as can be. Life is good if you work hard and have a dream.” Steve and his wife recently established a scholarship that will be awarded for the first time to a PNCA student in the fall.

1959

Lee Kelly ’59 was featured on OPB's State of Wonder on the occasion of the installation of Akbar's Elephant at Fox Tower. You can listen to the whole story here.

 

FACULTY

Modou Dieng has curated TRANSPARENCY SHADE: SEEING THROUGH THE SHADOW, which opened on April 7th, 2017 at projects+gallery in St. Louis. The exhibition features work by Philip Aguirre y Otegui, Zoe Buckman, Kendell Carter, Kahlil Irving, Ayana Jackson, Michael Riedel and Hank Willis Thomas. Don't miss this review of the exhibition in Hyperallergic.

On April 5th, faculty emeritus Paul Missal was in Salem to attend the unveiling of the Official Portrait he was commissioned to do of Justice Edwin Peterson. The event was held at the Supreme Court Building in Salem, Oregon where the painting will be installed. Justice Robinson served as the Supreme Court Justice for the State of Oregon in the late 80's and early 90's and is now retired. "I am utterly delighted with this painting," said Peterson. (Fun additional fact: PNCA alumnus Todd Putnam ’83 framed the portrait!)

Curator Prudence Roberts recently looked back at the very first days of the Portland Art Association (which became the Museum Art School, and then Pacific Northwest College of Art). Curious about those early days? Read more about Anna B. Crocker and the First Decade of the School of the Portland Art Association.