Blue Sky Art Walk-n-Talk Recap
February 03, 2023
We were spared from rain and the sun broke through as we began our very first Art Walk-n-Talk where graduate students from across all programs (Visual Studies, Creative Writing, Print Media, Applied Craft & Design and Collaborative Design) are invited to join Simone every other Friday to a local gallery in Portland to learn about their current exhibitions and future programming.
We were greeted by exhibitions & outreach coordinator Yuyang Zhang, MFA Visual Studies '19 alumni, and M Prull gallery manager who talked about Blue Sky Gallery's origins as one of the first photo galleries in the states. Founded in 1975, Blue Sky has been exhibiting photography for over 48 years making the gallery a long-standing cultural cornerstone of the Portland art ecology.
Students learned about the current exhibition "The Community" by Eli Durst and the memorial exhibition "The Architecture of L'Ancien Village" by David Pace. Yuyang discussed the PNW drawers project (open to students every year!) and No Strings, a dedicated wall space within Blue Sky —located on the wall to the left of the Pacific Northwest Drawers— a non-juried exhibition opportunity in which Blue Sky invites the community to showcase their photography for a period of a week and a half, so that they may gain valuable experience and recognition.
