The Gentle Revolution Presents: The Pre-Vinylettes’ Suffragette Centennial
Kelsey Dalton, Votes for Women, gold leaf and enamel on glass, 18” diameter
The Gentle Revolution is proud to present The Pre-Vinylettes’ Suffragette Centennial, an exhibition of hand painted signs taking place at Portland’s Ford Gallery between September 26 – October 25, 2020. The exhibition is the second iteration of the Pre-Vinylettes womxn sign painters’ event and features an international array of more than sixty five artists whose work displays the wide range of experience, skill, and technique evident in the sign painting world today. In addition to the exhibition’s focus on sign painting and its interpretations, the Pre-Vinylettes’ Suffragette Centennial is also a call to action to continue the necessary work of protecting and advancing the rights of all marginalized people.
Opening Reception and Viewing
The exhibition at Ford Gallery will include an invite-only, socially distanced opening reception on September 26th, with viewing appointments available upon request. The reception will be live streamed on various social media platforms and an online gallery will show all work for sale.
Exhibition Catalog
As a companion to the exhibition, the Pre-Vinylettes’ Suffragette Centennial also includes a sixty-four page, standard size exhibition catalog with an essay by co-curator, Meredith Kasabian and images and artist statements by forty-three of the show’s artists.
Catalog cover design by Anna Weber of Astoria Signs
Featuring performances by Alanna Fagan & Matthew Capurro and a Q&A with artist Austin Eddy
This Art is Not Safe
My 2020 started with the worst migraine headache I have ever had the displeasure of living through. In February, I was stricken with a migraine and fever that lasted six or seven days. This is of course also the time that Coronavirus started to spread across the world. While I was bed-bound with this headache and fever I was struck with the idea to paint Portraits on Knives. I don’t know if it was the sharp pain of the possible Coronavirus wreaking havoc on my body that gave me the vision but shortly after recovering, I set out to create the series of knife paintings. The original concept for the knife paintings was that a ‘look” can be as sharp as a knife’s blade and that getting “a look” from someone, can cut through you perhaps, even more sharply than a physical knife. However, as I started to make these paintings on knives it became clear that the connection between current events and the idea had more implications than I had originally realized. I’m forced to recognize that the idiom of the double edged sword or blade may have some meaning when it comes to the Pandemic. Now we must wear masks in public, limiting our perception of other peoples faces and emotions. Everyday life seems less safe. We must not touch each other. We must keep our distance. Other people have become dangerous to touch, much like a knife, if you are not careful you can get hurt. We are also seeing, what I hope, is the permanent cutting away of racism in our country and world. The Pandemic created a vacuum where the injustice of our system could take center stage. The people can chop down the old system and unite to slice away the injustice of the past and create a more just future for everyone.
The iPhone/iPad series is equally appropriate for the times. We are now more than ever attached to our devices. Some of us are desperate for connection, some of us were forced to be isolated from other people for perhaps longer than we have ever been before, often with a phone or other device the only window/portal to connect with others. This is also, somewhat of a double edged sword, as it allows a connection, but limits that connection to what is possible with technology. The idea of “Impermanence” is also a subject of my work. I endeavor to highlight the human condition. As we all grapple with our own impermanence and mortality in the world the concept of impermanence plays a central role in being human. Perhaps, impermanence is more tangible today than ever. These pieces intend to remind the viewer of that fact.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Bio
Austin Eddy was born in 1981 in Berkeley California and was continually recognized for his talent in the visual arts as a child. As Austin continued his education he was encouraged to pursue art as a career. In 2001 Austin was awarded a scholarship to attend the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where he got hooked on animation and later received his BFA in 2005. After art school Austin had the opportunity to work as an animator on some of the most successful films in the last decade. You have probably seen his work in Avatar, The Hobbit, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and other films. After 10 years working in the film and animation world and living abroad in Wellington New Zealand, Austin returned to the United States and decided to focus on his original passion of painting and fine art. Austin currently works and resides in Portland Oregon where he teaches college level art classes as well as workshops in fine art techniques.
Artist Statement
I am committed to making the beauty and unique mystery of the human experience tangible and accessible. The world around me and my experience of life inspire the visions that are conveyed in my work. The value of what is created and presented is found in its aesthetic quality. My visual language is formed from moments stumbled upon, ideas emanating from personal interactions, history, philosophy, science, art, music, religion, spirituality, politics, culture, and technology, or to put it more simply, contemporary life. The feeling of discovery, no matter how subjective, that a viewer finds in my work is what drives me to create art.
THIS SATURDAY MAY 2nd! The Virtual Recycled Rain Project goes live! Check out the website for this year’s stunning contributions and to learn about our fantastic artists!
Due to the current COVID-19 Outbreak the 2020 Recycled Rain Project Will Be Held Virtually.
FEATURING: Clare Carpenter, Nate Ethington, Karl Kaiser, Kindra Krick, Jody Katopothis, Kelly Neidig, Hilary Pfiefer, Amy Ponteri, Sara Sjol, Nanette Wallace, Jon Wippich, Jackie Wood, Samyak Yamachi, Zeratha Young.
And follow along on Facebook & Instagram at @therecycledrainproject for process shots and more!
ABOUT THE RECYCLED RAIN PROJECT
Since its first show in May 2012, The Recycled Rain Project has been dedicated to its mission to increase awareness of local artists and to engage and educate the community on water issues.
Each spring a group of Portland artists come together to create original works with collected rainwater. This all leads up to the big event, which takes place the first Saturday in May. A portion of the sale of all works from RR2020 will be donated to Columbia Riverkeeper.
Over the last seven years The Recycled Rain Project has supported over 100 local artists and have donated over $4000 to non-profits that focus on a variety of water issues.
In the contemporary world, we tend to live and breathe narrative. The connective tissue of the Story has threaded into much of our cultural consumption. Whether we are digesting the news of the day, taking in the entertainment media, or sharing anecdotes with loved ones, we’ve learned to mimic the narrative arc perpetuated in our histories and our fictions, as we learn and re-tell.
This collection of artists serves as a cross-section of creative production that activates our intuitive sense of narrative as a means to engage with their work. Often snapshots, and at times borrowing from the tools of abstraction, these pieces empower the viewer to consider questions pertaining to the information left off the canvas as a means of connecting with the artwork itself. At times creating art speaking to social questions, personally lived experience, or the captured moments of a photograph, the selected works of these artists deploy the viewer’s narrative faculty in accessing and finding dialogue with the piece.
Featuring works by:
Marie Conner Kyle Lee Hector Ornelas Tatyana Ostapenko Mami Takahashi
Guest Curator: Cass Gray
Opening Reception February 29th, 6-9 PM
With a performance by Marie Conner at 7 PM Music provided by BHOLT in Ford Food & Drink
Bios
Marie Conner
Marie Conner is living her best life as a Portland based inter-disciplinary artist, non-fiction writer, and educator with a focus on disability aesthetics and otherness theories. She received a BA in Liberal Arts, Sculpture and Writing in 2015 and an MA.Ed in Postsecondary Educational Leadership and Policy from Portland State University in 2017, followed by an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019. She has exhibited across the Pacific Northwest and in Antwerp, Belgium. Her work asserts that the non-normative body can be seen through the lens of the sublime and beautiful, and that every body is actually non-normative. She has a pedagogical philosophy grounded in experiential learning, with a focus on personal narrative. Her work also asks what access really means and strives to establish a framework and language with which to open lines of communication concerning difference and acceptance.
Kyle Lee
Kyle Lee was born and raised near Tampa Bay, Florida. After traveling around the United States in his early twenties, he made a move to Portland, Oregon and began his studies in art at Portland State University. He received his BFA in 2013 and MFA in 2016. He has exhibited in galleries around Portland including Littman Gallery, B10 Gallery, Blackfish gallery, and he is a recipient of the 2016 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize. Kyle has remained in Portland for nearly nine years and never got a tattoo.
Hector Ornelas
Hector Ornelas is a first generation Mexican American who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. He has received a BFA from Portland State University. Primarily he works in painting and photography, and currently experiments with larger scale work and mix medium. Ornelas takes inspiration and imagery from both American and Mexican culture to create work, and uses his work as a way to better understand himself and his identity as a Mexican American.
Tatyana Ostapenko
Tatyana Ostapenko makes history paintings to record the lives of people who will never make into official historical records. She was born and raised in Soviet Ukraine and currently lives in Portland, OR. She holds a BFA in Studio Practice from Portland State University.
Tatyana’s work has been exhibited at the 5th Geoje International Art Festival (South Korea), Odessa Contemporary Art Biennial (Odessa, Ukraine), the Governors Island Art Fair (NYC), Cape Cod Art Museum (Dennis, MA), Littman Gallery (Portland, OR) Locker 50b (Richmond, VA) and Site: Brooklyn (NY, NY).
Mami Takahashi
Takahashi received her MFA in Contemporary Studio Practice from Portland State University in 2013. She earned a BFA in Japanese painting from Joshibi University of Art and Design (Japan) where she was awarded a prize for her thesis work. Takahashi also obtained an Associate of Fine Art in Aesthetics from Aoyama-gakuin Women’s College (Japan).
Takahashi’s practice includes both traditional craft techniques and technological approaches, such as chemical reactions and digital modulated sound systems. In addition to being a visual artist, Takahashi is also a research scholar at the University of Oregon focusing on the conceptual understanding of Japanese aesthetics. Her work has been collected and exhibited internationally.
Through playful exploration of the emotional, mythical, morbid, and psychedelic, “Deep Down” invites viewers to delve into the waters of the subconscious.
We often attach a negative morality with the concept of being “down”. “Deep Down” aims to embrace the dark and mysterious beneath the palpable. It is often beyond the visible where brilliant changes take place and from which new life and insights are born. As there is light, so there is darkness. This exhibit honors all that dwells in the dark, under the surface, and under the flesh. We celebrate these shadowy spaces for the seeds that they germinate, the dreams that they sew, the strength that they build and the secrets that they hold. We are born from these deep dark places and we will return to them. With this body of work, we’ve chosen to surpass the shallow depictions of our daily lives, and dive deep down into a kaleidoscope of simultaneity, where the doors of perception become unhinged.
Jonathan Steele will be providing tea services the night of the opening. Steele hosts a delicate and magical tea experience by serving with his own beautifully hand-crafted tea-ware, at a mystically ornamented tea table set to enchant and inspire those who come to sit and sip together.
Ila Rose’s work is colorful, dark, complex, layered, luscious and surreal. She plays with symbols which emerge from a combination of research and subconscious exploration. Ila is constantly concerned with improving her technique -as well as researching topics ranging from psychology, mythology, spirituality and science- so that she may be a better vessel for articulating potent and relevant information as it flows through her. Rose has been painting all of her life and considers herself an art activist. She strives to use her privilege, to be a voice for social injustices as well as an advocate for the value of art in our lives and uplifting the value of the working artist. Rose believes art practice is vital to invoking collective creative thought and a necessary and positive transformation in our world. The process of art-making is symbolic to the process of forging our own personal paths; there is much to be learned, in any creative practice, about enduring and transmuting struggle.
Lindsay Swing is a self taught artist, her background in science heavily influences her work and style. Captivated by the art of biological illustration, Swing strives to capture the beauty of all things around her by exploring non-traditional mediums. Her love of abandoned treasures led to an obsession with vintage windows, which she uses as her primary canvas in her illustrated work. She employing freehand etching and inking techniques to create each one of a kind piece. Her sculptural work focuses on recognizing the magic around us. Swing mixes found biological oddities such as bones, insects, and botanicals, with clay and grown crystals to create surreal worlds designed to highlight the natural beauty of the object with attention to detail and respect for conservation. Swing believes in the importance of art and expression. She is interested in helping to raise awareness of the value of art in the community by encouraging individual artists to recognize their own worth, by finding ways to point out the significance of art culturally and collectively.
Ford Gallery celebrates our beloved Ford Building this holiday season, featuring the many talented artists and makers who call the Ford Building their home! Get original works, artist prints, and handmade goods from Ford Building residents. Find unique and locally-made holiday gifts for friends and family.
Join us Saturday, December 7th, from 6-9 PM for an opening celebration and mixer!
Featuring Works By: Alexandria Levin Alicia Schultz Amy Ponteri Arletha Ryan Jan Rothermel Kenneth Sellen Leah Samour Midge Williams Nicki Beiderman Ryan McAbery Sara McCormick Thérèse Murdza
Chasing Jessie Applegate, a new solo show at Ford Gallery, is a visual art exhibition of work created by Portland artist Kirista Trask. Through the abstract exploration of place the artist seeks to reconcile her genealogy as a seventh generation Oregonian in relationship to her families long struggle with inter generational trauma. Chasing Jessie Applegate visually speaks to how trauma does not dissipate in its effect but rather can trickle down from generation to generation. Chasing Jessie Applegate will also allow the artist to share the stories of the women in her family visually as often words are out of reach. Generating a visible representation of pain that is often unspoken or invisible. To give pain a place to rest and to allow stories of hope and resilience to stand alone in its place. Chasing Jessie Applegate features twelve paintings that each represent the untold story of a women in her genealogical line. These twelve paintings span eight generations of women, going all the way back to the Oregon Trail.
Opening Reception Saturday, October 26th 6-9 PM
Coming up this Saturday at the Ford Gallery! Kirista Trask discusses her current solo show, Chasing Jessie Applegate, and the process she went through creating a body of work that is so intimate and personal yet so important. During the talk you will learn a little more about each of the women in her family and how trauma directly affected their lives. Kirista will be breaking down how each plate relates to the symbols in each of the paintings, as well as spending a good amount of time talking about how important it is, especially for female artists, to tackle difficult and somewhat painful subjects in their art.
Artist Talk Saturday, November 16th 3 PM
About the Artist Kirista Trask translates subtle moments and landscapes into swirling abstraction, blending saturated, opaque colors with translucent washes to evoke moment as an emotional experience. Her work is created using a variety of materials, including acrylic, ink, charcoal, pencil, oil pastel, chalk and coffee, in order to react to the spirit of the location at the moment. These abstract works exist somewhere between presence and memory, giving the viewer a moment for pause. Her best work is done plein air style in stunning locations all over the world and especially in the Pacific Northwest. As a seventh generation Oregonian Kirista finds a deep connection to place and incorporates that into her work.
Kirista Trask was awarded a project grant from Regional Arts Cultural Council which provided the funds for this project.
Just in time for the autumnal equinox, Ford Gallery is excited to present “From the Forest, From the Furrows, From the Field”, a group show inspired by folk horror, a sub-genre of horror in which rural, isolated communities assume their folklore and superstitions to be true, often revealing the continued practice of sinister, ancient pagan beliefs. In some folk horror tales, creatures said to lurk in the woods are very real, hexes and enchantments have genuine effects, and the old gods do indeed grant bounties and bring punishments, but often the community’s rituals reflect only the failings of tradition, and evil in the human heart.
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 28th 6 – 9 PM
Participating Artists Include: AJ Hawkins Alicia Justus Alison Grayson Angela Myers Arún Joseph Ragan Caren Rockwood Dusty Ray Elizabeth Massa-MacLeod Elodie Kahler Erika Rier Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle Heidi Elise Wirz Holly Cappello Lisa Laser Liv Rainey-Smith Lorren Ashley Lowrey Maria Mangus Mavis Leahy Melissa Monroe Mrrranda L. Tarrow Natalie Wood Pip Simon Ramon Martin Rebecca Artemisa Sam Hutt Tera Stenzel Trisha Shozuya Troy Hileman Woodland Shrine xochi_pilli
Curated by Mrrranda L. Tarrow
Live music by May Dirt 8 PM
“An experience like crawling on your belly through moist fertile soil with a bone rattle clutched in one hand and a book of faerie tales in the other.” https://www.facebook.com/pg/MayDirt23/
Custom faire-style cutouts, as designed by over a dozen local artists.
F.A.C.E. will exhibit roughly 15 large-scale pieces, each designed by a different local artist. Each piece features a roughly face-shaped hole somewhere on the canvas, where you and your pals can join the composition and selfie yourself into oblivion.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Justine Verigin Matt Hopkins Amanda Baker Keith Henderson Beth Austin YouCantSitWithUs Maddison Bond Hannah Bearden Cynthia Reinhold Logan Welliver Jamie Middleton Chaya Bogorad YaPouring Kate Straube
Curated By Anya Bogorad
All Ages, though 18+ recommended.
Come for the novelty, stay for the music, “gift shop” (small items table), and of course Little Red’s Bakeshop cookies! We’ll open our door at 6:00pm, and then kick alla y’all out so the artists can chillax and high five at 9:00pm.
Entry for opening night will be $5 at the door – CASH PREFERRED.
“The curation of local artists for this exhibition was really fun! The array of styles, processes and design separate each artist from one another in so many ways, but all in the name of art.
The majority of these artists you can see street side or within a gallery setting across Portland and beyond.
This exhibition has a wide selection of artwork styles which will consist of but not be limited to illustration, abstract, stencil, print making, screen printing, mixed media etc… all focusing on each artists specialty craft and medium of choice.” -Mad One, Curator
