This event is part of Portland Textile Month

For more information, please CCAC’s Website at https://ccac.willamette.edu

The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at Pacific Northwest College of Art is excited to invite the public to the October First Thursday Art Walk in the North Park Blocks for a series of exhibition openings, performances, live music, drop-in activities and refreshments!

Welcoming our neighbors from near and far, First Thursdays in the North Park Blocks are an opportunity to come together in celebration of art, joy and community. First Thursdays are a vital part of the cultural ecosystem of Portland. For decades, these monthly events have been a highlight of nightlife in the Pearl District and North Park Blocks, increasing cultural connection and retail activation downtown. With the aim of revitalizing turnout and public engagement for the First Thursday Art Walks, PNCA is accelerating dynamic collaborations with our neighbors in the North Park Blocks through expanded public programming including exhibitions, music, performances, artist-led special events and more!

“Arts and culture speak to the spirit and soul of our community. We are excited to partner with PNCA on furthering the arts in the North Park Blocks and throughout our neighborhood.” Stan Penkin, President of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association

North Park Block Neighborhood Partners Include:

Adams and Ollman, The Black Gallery, Blackfish Gallery, Blue Sky, Oregon Center for Photographic Arts, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Froelick Gallery, Laura Vincent Design and Gallery, Stelo Arts, The Writer’s Block and more!

October Events at PNCA 

Live Printmaking!

In collaboration with Demian DinéYazhí and Stelo Arts - join us for a live printmaking event as a preview gathering for a reading/performance & book launch for We Left Them Nothing on October 20th, at Stelo Arts and the North Park Blocks!

Live DJ set and Outdoor Dance Party w/ DJ Lapaushi! 

Inés Paulina Ramírez- aka Lapaushi- was born in Ecuador. She is a Portland based multidisciplinary artist and DJ. Her sets highlight the music that brings the sounds of the Latinx/Indigenous/Caribbean/African diaspora to the dance clubs, and the spaces interested in upraising and celebrating the joy of BIPOC communities through music and art. Her mixers are usually a playful collage between dembow, cumbia, house, techno, reggaeton, hip hop and global music. She is also part of The Latinxs Dj Collective Noche Libre, Pdx-OR.

Photo Booth with Photographer Ash Stone!

Bring some friends and get your photo taken by photographer Ash Stone at our pop-up Photobooth!

Yo Buri and NourishmentPDX with FREE warm beverages and refreshments!

Visit Yo’s food & beverage cart in front of PNCA for free coffee and tea and come inside for a variety of free nibbles and beverages!

PNCA Graduate Student Art Sale! 

In the Dorothy Lemelson Innovation Studio: Prints, Zines, Clothing and more from PNCA students!

Celebrate the Art of Sparkling with Argyle Winery and PNCA

Each year, three talented Pacific Northwest College of Art student artists are selected for the Argyle internship program. The students immerse themselves in the Argyle story and their experience serves as inspiration for their artwork. Their work is then turned into the labels for the Art of Sparkling 3-bottle set. Please join us on Thursday, October 5th at 5:30 - 8:00 PM in the PNCA Mediatheque to celebrate the 2023 Art of Sparkling artists, Emily Thomas, Ellyse Egan and Grace Feucht. The artists will give talks about how they created their label designs, wine tastings will be offered, and the Art of Sparkling boxed sets and art prints will be available for sale.

UNLIMITED 2023 - 6th Annual PNCA Alumni Salon Exhibition (RM 136)

For seven years, PAGE Space, or PNCA Alumni Gallery and Exhibition Space, has been dedicated to showcasing alum work. It is a hub for the alumni community to connect with each other as well as with students, faculty, and staff. UNLIMITED continues to be a spotlight in our alum programming, and this year we are fortunate to offer the salon gallery in person and online. We are proud to feature PNCA alums from the past 50 years in our exhibition.

PAGE Space is currently curated and managed by Alum Board Member Lauren Stumpf (MFA VS ’16).

Location: PNCA, 511 NW Broadway, RM 136

Virtual Gallery: https://pnca.willamette.edu/gallery

Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday 10am - 4pm

Exhibitions on View in PNCA’s Galleries:

Additional Gallery Hours: Mondays - Saturdays, 10a-4pm

Garabatos by Rodrigo Valenzuela w/ Converge 45 – 511 Gallery, PNCA

ASSEMBLY w/ Converge 45 – Ed Cauduro and Dane Nelson Collection Studies Lab + Dorothy Lemelson Innovation Studio, PNCA

PNCA Student Exhibitions

Quip n'Craft Claire
Frances Spaulding – PNCA Atrium

Could the strongest of shapes be the sheared edge hexagon of a die-cut form of pure reflection and refraction? Where does embellishment and critical inquiry intersect? How can all that glitter be something more than gold?

Quip n’ Craft: Bless this Niche is an exhibition exploring themes of craft, kitsch, critique, and permanence. An ode to embellishment, the featured artwork is fibers based and inspired by an adolescent fondness for Klutz Kits. Showcasing bedazzlement and word play, the work draws attention to the historic and stereotypical understanding of “kitsch” or “craft” synonymous with dismissal and devaluation. Introducing glitter as an art material worthy of elevation brings in the aesthetic archive of kitsch and Age of Plastics. In focusing on these aesthetics within art history, critique forms through opulent ornamentation - being a little too much feels just right.

fragmented cantos//returning ensueños
amoqiix-araceli - 157 Gallery

ragmented cantos//returning ensueño is an exhibition of mixed-media works by amoqiix-araceli, 2nd year MFA Applied Craft + Design candidate that engages themes of migration, intergenerational dreaming, family separation and the inheritance of chronic longings that protect the survival of the creative heart. Within this exhibition amoqiix-araceli brings a focus to grieving the losses and embodied pains that arise when familial dismemberments sanctioned by Police-State systems disrupt cultivations of the creative self and sever kinship relations, centering the experience of their father who is a writer, musician and composer. Through song recordings, relational interviews and a series of collaged poems, they attempt to recollect and transmute memories of editing and burning their fathers musical compositions onto cd’s, a process that became a site of meditative alchemy where they witnessed the transitions of written lyrics and recorded sound enter the reflective rainbows of the cd. Deeply impacted by this process, amoqiix-araceli aims to portray the overwhelming strength that intergenerational dreaming carries amidst separation, dismemberment and dislocations.

High Stakes
Bryce Frimming - B10 Gallery

High Stakes is a solo exhibition featuring the works of Bryce Frimming which focuses on themes such as death, racing, ego, and dread. The materials used are a bunch of mixed media most being ink/oil sticks onto canvas and audio. Bryce is excited to show this high contrasted fueled work. Spending most of his childhood and teenage years in Southern Indiana, NASCAR imagery has been ingrained into his mind alongside the dirt tracks of TriState Speedway. Formula 1, USAC, Sprints, WRC, and Indycar are a few other examples of the racing culture he is inspired by. Bryce uses oil sticks and attacks the canvas with aggression. The canvas pieces are complex and they contain many layers of canvas that convey the highs and thrills of racing confronted by the lows in a mask of dread.

We Are All Made of Stars
Rosie Hebert & Eva Younkman - Commons Gallery

It’s true we are all made of stars, each atom in our body is a little sparkly star. We have stars in our eyes, smiles, fingers, toes, and everywhere in between. We wake in a bed of stars and live out the dreams from the stars we wished upon. We take star showers. We eat stars on toast and put them in our coffee. Stars fly when we kiss, love, and touch. Stars are grass between your toes. We paint with stars.. It’s on our brushes and on your walls. Stars implode but not before they show us the light.

ROTARY 5
BFA Group Exhibition - Holt Project Space

Exhibiting Artists: Megita Denton, Mychelle Moritz, Liz Borowski, Angel O’Brian, Jolyn Fry

Exhibition Statement: 5 Artists mimic the childhood game of 'Telephone' with their preferred artistic medium.

Exhibitions on View in the North Park Blocks:

Richard Mosse's Occidental (install view) at Blue Sky, Oregon Center for Photographic Arts

You Ni Chae and Brad Mildrexler - Adams and Ollman, 418 NW 8th Ave, Portland

"Remembering", Clint Brown + "In and Out of Darkness" Barbara Black and Linda Neufer - Blackfish Gallery, 938 NW Everett Street, Portland

Hip Hop Lives The Remix: An Ode To The Culture – The Black Gallery by DSPDX, 916 NW Flanders Street, Portland

Occidental by Richard Mosse – Blue Sky, Oregon Center for Photographic Arts, 122 NW 8th Avenue, Portland

Contours of Instinct and Nuance by Willy Heeks – Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Avenue, Portland

28th Anniversary Group Exhibition – Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street, Portland

Unladed by Micah Kassell – Laura Vincent Design and Gallery, 824 NW Davis St, Portland

ASSEMBLY, Converge 45 Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship – Stelo Arts, 412 NW 8th Avenue, Portland

Photography by Jason Quigley + 20/10 - A Music Retrospective - The Writer’s Block, 818 NW Flanders, Portland

Save the Date for upcoming First Thursdays!

November 2**
December 7
January 4 
February 1 
March 7 
April 4** 
May 2**
June 6**

(** Expanded special programming at PNCA on these dates)

About CCAC and PNCA: 

The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture is a platform for cultural production including exhibition, lecture, performance, and publication. Housed within Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), the Center throws open its doors to the greater public to foster conversation and community.

Pacific Northwest College of Art is the leading professional arts and design school in the Northwest; and the second largest college of Willamette University. We are the heartbeat of learning and experimentation in Portland’s vibrant cultural ecosystem.  We spark curiosity and sharpen skills so students can build creative careers anchored in innovation, justice and civic imagination.

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