Artists Archive
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Learn morePallace is a healing artist based in Seattle. She is director of Queer Astrology Club and teaches at Portland School of Astrology. QAC channel can be found on youtube for free lectures on ancient astrological techniques. She moonlights as a rope bondage specialist and hypnotist who crushes men psychologically and then cackles maniacally and writes poetry about it.
Learn morePatrick Long is an artist and illustrator, his simple and evocative pen and ink drawings mimic and mirror how we look and live. Through his eyes the hilarity of man is captured in a wry facial expression, the artfulness of a couture gown in the flourish of a sleeve. Long draws the awkward, the under-appreciated, the fashion forward and the utterly mundane with equal reverence . His illustrations have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, National Geographic Explorer, Vouge Nippon, Fantastic Man and Assouline. His work was featured in “Crossing the Line” an exhibition for the Heathman Hotel organized by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery. His famous drawings of “Cops in Love” were featured in Plazm Magazine and in Core Sample, a city-wide exhibition in 2003.
Learn morePortland State University's Art Department offers free public lectures every Monday night of the school year.
PSU MFA MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES ON VIMEO
Click on the events at right to view past artists and speakers.
Learn moreRobin Lane began studying dance, gymnastics, theater, and visual art as a child. At fourteen, she created her first evening-length performance at the Robert Frost Auditorium, combining her high school gymnastic team with the dance club and creating an original score with the school orchestra playing office equipment. As a director/choreographer/writer, her focus has always been telling stories, linear and nonlinear, bringing to life the visual images, metaphors, and stories she sees in her head. She uses whatever vocabulary the images demand. Her intent is always to hone each new work to communicate and connect with her audiences. Exploration, collaboration, and ensemble building are core elements of her creative process.
In 1977, Lane founded Do Jump to explore her unique genre. Lane has created 19 original, full‐length works and countless smaller site‐specific pieces, events, and spectacles.
In 1983, Lane and company renovated the Echo Theatre in southeast Portland, OR, creating a permanent home for Do Jump! The following year she opened the Do Jump Physical Theatre School, sharing her unique teaching style with children and adults, providing a training ground for the company. Lane has toured extensively with Do Jump, including multiple extended runs in the New Victory Theater in NYC, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Geffen Playhouse in L.A. “That Happened,” Lane’s first feature film, just had its first screening at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater in Portland, Oregon
Robin is the recipient of the Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship in Dance, three creativity grants from the NEA, and the 2010 Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Performing Arts. Lane attended a joint program between Reed College and the Portland Museum Art School. She studied the LeCoque Method and was a member of Theatre Elan Company. In 1973, Lane studied aerial dance with Terry Sendgraff in San Francisco and Bill & Arnie Zane in NYC. In Portland, Oregon, she created and choreo/directed original works for Storefront Theater, Tygres Heart Shakespeare, Portland Family Circus, and others.
Learn moreSara Ludy is an American artist whose work explores confluence of the physical and virtual. Her practice incorporates photography, Second Life, animation, video and sound. Past exhibition of her work have included Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; Berkeley Art Museum, California; Honor Fraser, Los Angeles; bitforms gallery, New York; Postmasters Gallery, New York; Klaus von Nichtssagend, New York; Interstate Projects, Brooklyn; Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, New York; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Western Front, Vancouver; Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Barbican Centre, London; Carroll Fletcher, London; and Xpo Gallery, Paris.
Learn moreShawna Lipton is Chair of the MA in Critical Studies Program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). She received her Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Theory from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a literary scholar whose work is fundamentally informed by interdisciplinary gender and sexuality studies.
Learn moreShayla Lawson is (and / or, at times, has been) an amateur acrobat, an architect, a Dutch housewife, & dog mother to one irascible hound. Her work has appeared in print & online at Tin House, GRAMMA, ESPN, SALON, The Offing, Guernica, Colorado Review, Barrelhouse, & MiPOesias. She is the author of: A Speed Education in Human Being, PANTONE, & the forthcoming I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean (Saturnalia Books, 2018). She is a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellow and resident of Portland, OR.
Learn moreSimon Liu (b. 1987, Hong Kong) is an artist filmmaker working between alternate documentary forms, abstract diary films, 16mm projection performance, and video installation. He has exhibited at film festivals and institutions globally including the New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam: Tiger Short Competition, Toronto International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, British Film Institute, The Shed, M+ Museum, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Cinéma du Réel, Sheffield Doc/Fest, “Dreamlands: Expanded,” and a solo-presentation at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Modern Mondays series. The M+ Museum and MoMA recently acquired Liu’s quadruple 16mm projection “Highview” with other recent works for their Permanent Collections. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a teacher at the Cooper Union School of Art, and a member of Negativeland, an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently editing his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.
Learn moreFresh out of the backwoods of sunny Tampa, Florida, S. Loper was educated in "The Greatest City in America," Baltimore, Maryland at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2010, degree in hand, Sloper stepped into the professional arena, pioneering as a toy expert and acting as a videographer, and sole animator for one of Tampa's finest cinematic enterprises. In result of a high-stakes bet, Sloper made the move to Portland, Oregon where all sorts of charm and adventure seem to follow in tow.
Learn moreStacey Levine is a poet and free-lance writer in Seattle. Her books include My Horse and Other Stories, which garnered her the 1994 PEN/West Fiction Award, and Dra---, both published by Sun & Moon Press in Los Angeles. Other collaborations with the Black Cat Orchestra include The Post Office, a radio play that she wrote and directed in 1995, about a narcissistic postal employee, a whining customer, and matters of the human heart.
Learn moreSteph Littlebird is an artist, curator, writer, and a registered member of Oregon’s Grand Ronde Confederated Tribes. She received national recognition as curator of This IS Kalapuyan Land (2020), an exhibition at the Five Oaks Museum in Portland, which was featured by ArtNews and PBS NewsHour. Other curatorial projects include Untold Parallels, Mata Art Gallery, L.A. (2020), which re-examined colonial histories of the so-called Philippines and Filipinx-American diaspora, and colonized people Indigenous to “North America.'' Most recently, Pʰot-Choch, an exhibition at Anita, Astoria, OR (2021) presented traditional and contemporary art of the original Chinook inhabitants of the North Coast.
Littlebird is the 2020-2021 Fellow of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A widely published writer, she is currently writing a series about Indigenous Resilience for Oregon Arts Watch Magazine with the support of the Oregon Cultural Trust. As an artist, Littlebird’s work combines traditional aesthetics with contemporary materials and subject matter to forge connections between our collective past and imminent future. Her works frequently engage issues related to present-day Indigenous identities, marginalized histories, and responsible land stewardship. Littlebird earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland, she currently lives and works in Las Vegas.
Learn moreSynth Library Portland is a collectively run arts organization that supports a diverse community of artists, centering access for marginalized folks to experiment, learn, and participate. We are an audiovisual art laboratory that provides Portlanders with access to a myriad of production tools and equipment, as well as practical workshops hosted by local and visiting artists. After having to close our physical space and suspend in-person programming due to Covid-19, we adapted to host remote workshops, launched our take-home gear lending program in 2021 and resumed in-person workshops a year later. We are committed to generating equity, opportunity, and freedom to explore and create in our artistic communities.
http://synthlibraryportland.com
Aaron Guice - artist in residence of Synth Library Portland (2023)
Yaw Evans - artist in residence of Synth Library Portland (2023)
Learn moreBorn and raised in L.A. but based in Portland, Alana Chenevert became left-field rapper/singer The Last Artful, Dodgr when she moved up the Left Coast. Chenevert grew up in the middle of Los Angeles, with one of her earliest memories being a drive-by shooting that left her brother bleeding on the porch. She was only three years old, and her brother survived, but this kind of crime drove the young MC indoors, where she recorded her debut mixtape, 199NVRLND (2013). That same year, she moved to Portland, where her tape caught the ear of the local Fresh Selects. In 2015, Dodgr released the Fractures EP with production from Neill Von Tally. A year later, she partnered with Australian beatmaker DJ WNTD for the single "Squadron" and released the collaborative EP Rare Treat with Myke Bogan. Preceded by the lead single "Oofda," Chenevert and Von Tally released the collaborative LP Bone Music in early 2017 via Eyrst. Her single "Win Is Enough" was released in July 2018 on her own PARTySIZE imprint.
Learn moreThomas Lauderdale (piano) was raised on a plant nursery in rural Indiana. He began piano lessons at age six with Patricia Garrison. When his family moved to Portland in 1982, he began studying with Sylvia Killman, who continues to this day as his coach and mentor. He has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras and ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, Chamber Music Northwest and Oregon Ballet Theatre (where he collaborated with choreographer James Canfield and visual artists Storm Tharp and Malia Jensen on a ballet based on Felix Salten’s Bambi, written in 1923).
Active in Oregon politics since a student at U.S. Grant High School (where he was student body president), Thomas served under Portland Mayor Bud Clark and Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt. He also worked under Portland City Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury on the drafting and passage of the city’s civil rights ordinance. He graduated with honors from Harvard with a degree in History and Literature in 1992. He spent most of his collegiate years, however, in cocktail dresses, taking on the role of “cruise director” … throwing waltzes with live orchestras and ice sculptures, disco masquerades with gigantic pineapples on wheels, midnight swimming parties, and operating a Tuesday night coffeehouse called Café Mardi.
Instead of running for political office, Lauderdale founded the ‘little orchestra” called Pink Martini in 1994 to play political fundraisers for progressive causes such as civil rights, the environment, affordable housing and public broadcasting. In addition to his work with Pink Martini, Lauderdale collaborates with international superstar and singing sensation Meow Meow, the surf band Satan’s Pilgrims and novelist/writer Tom Spanbauer. In Spring 2008, Lauderdale completed his first film score for Chiara Clemente’s documentary Our City Dreams, a portrait of five New York City-based women artists of different generations. In 2008, he performed as the featured piano soloist in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia with the Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland under the direction of Roger Doyle, and Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with the Oregon Symphony under the direction of Christoph Campestrini.
Lauderdale currently serves on the boards of the Oregon Symphony and Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreTonya Lockyer is the Executive/Artistic Director of Velocity, Seattle’s premier arts center and essential incubator dedicated to contemporary dance and movement-based art. Lockyer has overseen the significant artistic expansion of Velocity including: the development of Velocity’s first humanities programs, initiating an Artist-in-Residence program; commissioning and developing more than forty new works of performance, installation and film; and the presentation of over a hundred contemporary performances by established and emerging artists including zoe | juniper, Keith Hennessy, Faye Driscoll, Jennifer Monson, Ralph Lemon, Miguel Gutierrez, Amy O’Neal, Danielle Agami.
As an educator Lockyer has taught inter/nationally with a focus on her research at the intersections of performance, embodiment and social action. Lockyer is an Affiliated Faculty Member of Cornish College of the Arts since 2001. She has taught Art & Social Justice, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Movement Analysis, Somatics; as well as Dance Technique, Choreography, Improvisation, History, and Choreographic Culture since 1960. In 2010, Lockyer coordinated Cornish’s yearlong, citywide Merce Cunningham Project. Her course "Live Art and Choreographic Culture Since 1960" was an inaugural course of the Center for Performance Studies at The University of Washington. She is published in international journals, exhibition catalogues and the book Vu du Corps: Lisa Nelson Movement et Perception. Her essay "Quiet Riot: Modern Dance as Embodied Feminism" is required reading in the curriculums of Texas Women's University and Cornish College of the Arts.
Lockyer is an accomplished artist with more than twenty-years experience commissioned and presenting her work internationally. She has received awards and commissions from Arts International, The Canada Council, The Banff Center, Artist Trust and On the Boards among others, for projects including inter-cultural collaborations, 24-hour improvisations, and large-scale site-specific performances. She holds an MFA from The University of Washington, is a Certified Movement Analyst, and participated in the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance/Wesleyan.
Learn moreWeekend Leisure was founded in Vancouver, BC, in 2004 by graduates of Emily Carr Institute's Integrated Media program, to satisfy their mutual love of karaoke videos. Bridging their backgrounds in video and installation work with their involvement in design, music, and the art collective Norma, the group’s repertoire has expanded to include video art, short films, original music, and music videos, while critically analyzing the power each medium has over its audience. Their activities range from gallery exhibitions to weekly karaoke nights in Vancouver, BC.
Learn moreYo La Tengo is a critically acclaimed indie rock band from Hoboken, New Jersey. They’ve recorded twelve studio albums, written soundtracks to the films Junebug, Shortbus, and Old Joy, and provided a score for the surrealist aquatic films of Jean Painlevé.
Learn moreYOUNG JEAN LEE (Artistic Director) is an OBIE award-winning playwright and director who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, The Shipment and Lear) and by Samuel French (Three Plays by Young Jean Lee). She is currently under commission from Plan B/Paramount Pictures, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P and has an MFA from Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, NYFA, NEA, NYSCA, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Rockefeller MAP Foundation. She is also the recipient of two OBIE awards, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a 2010 Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award.
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