Artists Archive
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Allison Akootchook Warden is an Iñupiaq futurism artist that resides in Fairbanks, Alaska, and is a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik. She translates her traditional values through the mediums of installation, music, performance, visual art, poetry, and dance. Her most recent contribution took form as poems as a part of a hyphen-labs project for Google Arts and Cultures. She is the recipient of a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in the field of traditional arts. She is most excited to work with Aqqalu Berthelsen, an Inuit producer and beat maker from Greenland.
Learn moreAndy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in a two-room row house apartment at 73 Orr Street in Pittsburgh. His parents, Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants Andrej and Julia Warhola, had three sons. Andy was their youngest.
Warhol attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) from 1945 to 1949. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Pictorial Design with the goal of becoming a commercial illustrator. During these years he worked in the display department at Horne’s department store.
Soon after graduating, Warhol moved to New York City to pursue a career as a commercial artist. His work debuted in Glamour magazine in September 1949. Warhol became one of the most successful illustrators of the 1950s, winning numerous awards. He had a unique, whimsical style of drawing that belied its frequent sources: traced photographs and imagery. At times Warhol employed the delightfully quirky handwriting of his mother, who was always credited as “Andy Warhol’s Mother,” Julia Warhola left Pittsburgh in 1952 and lived with her son for almost 20 years before her death in Pittsburgh in 1972.
In the late 1950s, Warhol began to devote more energy to painting. He made his first Pop paintings, which he based on comics and ads, in 1961. The following year marked the beginning of Warhol’s celebrity. He debuted his famous Campbell’s Soup Can series, which caused a sensation in the art world. Shortly thereafter he began a large sequence of movie star portraits, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor. Warhol also started his series of “death and disaster” paintings at that time.
Between 1963 and 1968 Warhol worked with his Superstar performers and various other people to create hundreds of films. These films were scripted and improvised, ranging from conceptual experiments and simple narratives to short portraits and sexploitation features. His works include Empire (1964), The Chelsea Girls (1966), and the Screen Tests (1964-66).
Warhol’s first exhibition of sculptures was held in 1964. It included hundreds of replicas of large supermarket product boxes, including Brillo Boxes and Heinz Boxes. For this occasion, he premiered his new studio, painted silver and known as “The Factory”. It quickly became “the” place to be in New York; parties held there were mentioned in gossip columns throughout the country. Warhol held court at Max’s Kansas City, a nightclub that was a popular hangout among artists and celebrities. By the mid-1960s he was a frequent presence in magazines and the media.
Warhol expanded into the realm of performance art with a traveling multimedia show called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured The Velvet Underground, a rock band. In 1966 Warhol exhibited Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds at the Leo Castelli Gallery.
Warhol self-published a large series of artists’ books in the 1950s, but the first one to be mass-produced was Andy Warhol’s Index (Book), published in 1967. Two years later he co-founded Interview, a magazine devoted to film, fashion, and popular culture. Interview is still in circulation today. His later books include THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (1975), Exposures (1979), POPism (1980), and America (1985). Most of his books were based on transcribed conversations.
In 1974, Warhol started a series of Time Capsules: cardboard boxes that he filled with the materials of his everyday life, including mail, photos, art, clothing, collectibles, etc. The artist produced over 600 of them and they are now an archival goldmine of his life and times.
In 1984, Warhol collaborated with the young artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. Warhol returned to painting with a brush for these artworks, briefly abandoning the silkscreen method he had used exclusively since 1962.
In the mid-1980s his television shows, Andy Warhol’s T.V. and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes were broadcast on New York cable television and nationally on MTV. He created work for Saturday Night Live, appeared in an episode of The Love Boat and produced music videos for rock bands such as The Cars. Warhol also signed with a few modeling agencies, appearing in fashion shows and numerous print and television ads.
Warhol was a prolific artist, producing numerous works through the 1970s and 1980s. Warhol’s final two exhibitions were his series of Last Supper paintings, shown in Milan and his Sewn Photos (multiple prints of identical photos sewn together in a grid), exhibited in New York. Both shows opened in January 1987, one month before his death.
Read more at warhol.org
Learn moreGray and Paulsen are artists who live and work collaboratively. Their idea-based practice fuses history, fiction, autobiography, and artistic commentary into a wide variety of material works. Their work has been shown and published internationally. They live and work in Portland, where they are represented by PDX Contemporary Art.
Selected Press
Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nat Andreini, Shift.jp, June, 2011.
Review: Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen at PDX Gallery, DK Row, The Oregonian, July 15, 2010.
Learn moreAnna Martine Whitehead does performance from the homelands of the Council of the Three Fires; the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations; as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Meskwaki; the Kiikaapoi, Peoria, and the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) Nations. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, IL; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San José Museum of Art, CA; Links Hall, Chicago; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has developed her craft working closely with Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, BodyCartography Project, Julien Prévieux, and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, among others. She has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, MAP Fund, Dance/USA, PICA’S Creative Exchange Lab, Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago, 3AP (3Arts Projects), Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Whitehead has written about Blackness, queerness, and bodies in action for Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, Frieze, and Art Practical. They have also contributed chapters to a range of publications, including Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford University Press, 2017), Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements (Sobsercove, 2016), and Platforms: Ten Years of Chances Dances (Gallery 400, 2016). Whitehead is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016).
Learn moreConsidered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.
In a New York Times review of her retrospective, Holland Cotter wrote, “Ms. Weems is what she has always been, a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible."
Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain.
Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the prestigious Prix de Roma, The National Endowment of the Arts, The Alpert, The Anonymous was a Woman, and The Tiffany Awards. In 2012, Weems was presented with one of the first US Department of State’s Medals of Arts in recognition for her commitment to the State Department’s Art in Embassies program.
In 2013 Weems received the MacArthur “Genius” grant as well as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also received the BET Honors Visual Artist award, the Lucie Award for Fine Art photography, was one of four artists honored at the Guggenheim’s 2014 International Gala, a recipient of the ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography, The WEB Dubois Award from Harvard University, as well as Honorary Degrees from: California College of the Arts, Colgate University, Bowdoin College, the School of Visual Arts and Syracuse University.
She is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Tate Modern, London.
Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008, and is currently Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue Armory. She lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone who is Executive Director of Light Work.
Learn moreClaude Wampler works at the intersection of art installation and performance; engages and experiments with liveness and the art object, concealment and revelation, the performance of the spectator, and the productivity of failure.
Using video, painting, photography, lighting, sound, sculpture, costume, and texts, to explore the possibilities and the value of grafting performance technique onto visual expression and vice versa, Wampler creates an experience of immediacy/excess in which the viewer leaves with a sense of mystery or magic.
Claude has had solo exhibitions and performances at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, New Museum for Contemporary Art, and P.S. 122 (New York); The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and in many international institutions including the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Witte de With & Schouwburg Theater (Rotterdam), the Yokohama Triennale, Kaaistudios (Brussels), and many others.
Learn moreWojnarowicz was an American artist whose work provoked bigotry and sustained campaigns by the religious right to revoke funding for the arts during the 'Culture Wars' of the late 80s and early 90s. His art--and A Fire in My Belly, in particular--dealt eloquently and powerfully with the issues of being an openly gay man in America, and the harsh realities of living with HIV/AIDS. Wojnarowicz died in 1992 of AIDS-related complications.
His estate is represented by PPOW Gallery.
Learn moreYou seen her on BET comic view, and also she was a finalist in funny is Mom’s in America. She has been in the business over 30 years and has open for all the fellow comedians such as Jamie Foxx,Sinbad, And recently perform at the Northwest black comedy festival with Marsha Warfield that is just a few. She believes laughter is a healer and is known as comedy nurse because she knows the power of laughter, she is the diva Comedy Debbie Wooten.
Learn moreFox Whitney’s queer black mixed transgender point of view is at the heart of his performance project, Gender Tender. GT engages a team of artists trained in Fox’s unique methods modeled on visual art practices, cults and riots. He is also a filmmaker, actor, dancer and teaching artist. Melted Riot, a Gender Tender performance inspired by the Stonewall Riots of 1969, was presented at Velocity Dance Center on the 50th anniversary of the uprising. His work has been commissioned and produced by the Henry Art Gallery, On the Board’s NW New Works Festival and Solo Festival; Velocity’s Next Fest NW and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation; the Seattle International Dance Festival; Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival and was selected for the inaugural season of Seattle’s Gay CIty Arts. He has performed in work by Will Rawls, Heather Kravas, keyon gaskin, Morgan Thorson, CommonForm Dance Project, Malic Amalya and Gabrielle Civil and has exhibited his dance films and visual art nationally. He is currently working on a new project called Melted Riot: Spectra that will premiere this June 2022 co-produced by Velocity Dance Center and On the Boards.
Learn moreFrancesca Capone is an artist working at the confluence of visual art and experimental literature. Her last solo exhibition, Oblique Archive took place at Peninsula Art Space in Brooklyn in 2014 and was reviewed by The Brooklyn Rail and The Wild Magazine. Capone recently co-curated Interrupt 3, a conference that highlights intersections of art, literature and digital media at Brown University.
Kristen Mueller is an artist and publisher (& So) whose works often intervene with existing texts, pages and books. Recent publications include 3b (ongoing); Partially Removing the Remove of Literature (Feb 2014); and Language to Cover a Page (Jan 2014). Her work has been exhibited in shows at Artists Space (New York), LUMA Foundation (Zurich) and Motto (Berlin).
Laura Warman is a performance poet based in Amherst, MA. She is the author of How Much Does It Cost? (Cars Are Real Press), DRONE LOVE (Gauss PDF), and WILL GO FAST (Hysterically Real). She is the founder of GLASS PRESS, a publisher of art and poetry on flash drives. Warman has had work in shows at MOCA Cleveland, Flying Object, and Open Engagement.
Learn moreUnder midnight street lamps and the big dipper, Hannon was raised on the Valley of the Hudson with her three sisters. She educated herself in performance studies at Sarah Lawrence College; Art History, Conservation, and Restoration of the Italian Renaissance in Florence, Italy; and Modern Art and History at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. Graduating with a BA the spring of twenty twelve, Hannon transplanted herself to Portland, OR.
Learn moreHolcombe Waller is one of America’s most distinct voices in music theater. He is a 2011 United States Artists Berresford Fellow in Music, an award which noted his mournful, folk-inflected style, and his approach to music “as total theater.” He is a Creative Capital artist, a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, and a 2013 Joan Shipley Fellow of the Regional Arts and Culture Council. Waller has been presented and commissioned by numerous theaters, arts institutions, and festivals. Holcombe Waller "Hardliners" Music Video from Two Penguins on Vimeo.
Learn moreJacob Wren makes literature, performances and exhibitions. His books include: Families Are Formed Through Copulation, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed and Polyamorous Love Song, a finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose and one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2014. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created the performances: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information and Every Song I’ve Ever Written. He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art.
Learn moreJaeda is an extremely gifted Master Makeup Artist, Lash Technician, Entrepreneur, and dancer who has provided her renowned artistry to a wide variety of clientele. Jaeda was born in the Dominican Republic and brings a multi-cultural perspective to the world of beauty and dance, she has the ability to connect with people from all walks of life. After being relocated to Birmingham, Alabama as a child, Jaeda went on to start her dance career with Alabama Ballet company at the age of 7. she trained with the company until she was 15 and that's when she was introduced to the world of majorette style dancing. Jaeda has taught multiple high schools and colleges (Jackson olin High, Caver High Woodlawn High Parker High Alabama State University, Miles College, Stilman college) just to name a few the art of majorette-style dancing. In 2008 she became the coach of Birmingham city school system summer camp and later on the assistant director of Jackson olin auxiliary department. Jaeda has judged many Competitions in the south and still has a love for dance.
Learn moreJennifer West was born in Topanga, California and lives and works in Los Angeles. Significant commissions and special projects include High Line Art, New York (2012), 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium (2011); The Aspen Art Museum (2010); the Turbine hall at TATE Modern (2009) and she was Artist in Residence at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2011. Solo exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Essex, England and Vdrome.org (2014); High Line Art, NY and S1 Artspace, Sheffield, England (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Western Bridge, Seattle and Kunstverein Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2010); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2008); White Columns, NY (2007). West has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally including Nottingham Contemporary, England; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria; Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London; White Columns, New York; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Drawing Center, New York; Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York; Tel Aviv Museum of Art ; CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and Tate St. Ives, England. West has published 12 Zines that she gives away at her exhibitions. West was shortlisted for the 2012 3rd Annual Nam June Paik Center Award in Korea. She is an Asst. Professor of Fine Arts Practice at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles.
Learn moreWade is an American choreographer/dancer based in Berlin. He premiered his first evening length work titled Glory at Dance Theater Workshop (New York) in 2006, for which he received a New York Bessie Award. His most recent performance works include …and pulled out their hair (2007), Throwing Rainbows Up (2008), I Offer My Self To Thee (2009), and There Is No End To More (2010). Wade’s ongoing interest in curation evolved from his experience as a vibrant host of many parties in New York City during the early 90s to becoming a founding member in 2003 of Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn. He recently curated the Politics of Ecstasy Festival 2009 at the Hebbel am Ufer together with Meg Stuart, Eike Wittrock, and Brendan Dougherty. Wade is currently curating a queer performance series titled Creature Feature at Basso, Berlin. In 2013 Wade will construct three pieces: a choreography/group experience for an audience called Common Prayer, a new duet with Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu, and a solo vocal concert project for the AAAARRGH Festival at Gaîté Lyrque in Paris.
Selected Press
Without the Surrender You are Just a Robot – Abby Crain interviews Jeremy Wade, Abby Crain, The OFFcenter, January 21, 2012.
Learn moreJohnny Woods is an animator, video artist, and editor based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared at the Museum of Moving Image, the Sydney Opera House, MoMA, LACMA, the Hirshhorn Museum, ICA (Philadelphia), Imagine Science Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. Currently, Johnny is working primarily on short-form experimental films. He is co-founder of Ghosting.tv, a monthly screening event in Los Angeles featuring experimental animation and video art, programmer for Animation Breakdown at The Cinefamily, and director of Undervolt & Co., a label for experimental video artists.
Learn moreKnowledge of Wounds is the collaborative curatorial practice of S.J Norman (Wiradjuri) and Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation). Since its first iteration in Lenapehoking/NYC in 2020, and currently operational as a hybrid live/digital program, KoW is continually evolving in its mission to foreground the work of Indigenous creators and knowledge workers across hemispheres and disciplines. www.knowledgeofwounds.com / IG: @knowledgeofwounds
Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree sound artist approaching sound as a mode of connection. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound.
DB Amorin (b. Honolulu, Hawai'i) is an artist addressing audio-visual non-linearity as a container for intersectional experience, often focusing on the role error plays as a generative opportunity. His media-centered installations are the result of DIY methodologies, lo-fi translations, and persistent, inquisitive experimentation of available materials.
Learn moreBorn in Los Angeles, USA in 1979, Leilah Weinraub currently lives in New York. She is an artist and director and also CEO of the Hood By Air fashion label. Her work focuses on the themes of race, class and gender with a particular interest in queer communities and people of color.
Learn moreFounded in 2012 by Libby Werbel, Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA) is an investigative project focused on the lack of major contemporary and modern art institutions within a growing metropolis. PMOMA has produced more than 50 exhibitions and events within the context of a self-actualized and community-grown modern art museum.
Learn moreLinda Wysong is an interdisciplinary visual artist who works at the nexus of social practice and public space. Examining the relationship between the built and the natural environment, her practice is not centered in object making but rather utilizes place, space and experience. Participating in the civic dialogue, Wysong has contributed to numerous design and planning teams. She has public art installations in Seattle’s Northgate district, and at the Interstate MAX, Springwater Trail and RiverEast Plaza in Portland. In 2011, she was invited to be part of an international trans-disciplinary team to revitalize the historic Ute Ulay mine in Lake City, Colorado. Wysong’s work has been shown nationally and internationally. Her video Beneath Our Feet was included in Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s (PICA) TBA:05 and her performance/tour Backyard Conversations in TBA:08. Selected exhibition venues include: Exit Art in New York, Southern Exposure San Francisco, the National Building Museum, Washington DC, and Kunst en Complex, Rotterdam. Wysong has been a part-timePNCA faculty member since 1990, teaching Sculpture, Art Theory, Professional Practices, and Art History.
Learn moreAU is the work of multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland. Begun back in 2005 while finishing up his degree from the Massachussetts College of Art, Wyland moved the band across the country to find its roots in the thriving community of Portland, Oregon. It’s now a working live band with an ever changing roster of players that currently includes Dana Valatka (Jackie-O-Motherfucker) on drums, Jonathan Sielaff (Parenthetical Girls, Nick Jaina) on guitar, clarinets and saw, and has been blessed by the help of Mark Kaylor (Hamor of Hathor, CexFucx), Becky Dawson (Saw Whet, Ah Holly Fam'ly) and Sarah Winchester (A Weather) on its recordings.
Au’s sound is vast and “deftly treads a narrow bridge between the loose-associations of the backwoods freak-folk crowd and the more formalized concoctions of art-poppers like Brian Eno.” Both on record and on stage Au “manages to erase the high art/low art boundary between American contemporary classical music and American pop music, blending them into a simple, compelling, verse-chorus celebration…[and] is the rare band that can reinvent its songs live and still manage to match their recorded quality.”
Learn moreMandy Harris Williams | Image from https://www.mandyharriswilliams.com/
Mandy Harris Williams is a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, and internet/community academic. She is from New York and currently living in Los Angeles. In a nutshell, Mandy’s work seeks to get everybody the love that they deserve. She graduated from Harvard, having studied the History of the African Diaspora, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, and other contemporary black issues. She received her MA in Urban Education and worked as a classroom teacher for 7 years. She integrates a holistic didactic style in to her current creative practice. Her creative work has been presented at Paula Cooper Gallery, Navel Gallery, Knockdown Center and Women’s Center for Creative Work to name a few. She has contributed writing work to Dazed Magazine, MEL magazine, ForHarriet, and The Grio and is a frequent radio and podcast guest. Follow her at @idealblackfemale on Instagram.
TBA:20 Institute
A RESCREENING OF MANDY HARRIS WILLIAMS’ 2018 home school TALK
September 11, 2020
Learn moreMartha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, who over the past four decades created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. She began making these videos and photo/text works in the early 1970s while in Halifax in Nova Scotia, and further developed her performative and video-based practice after moving in 1974 to New York City, embarking on a long career that would see her gain attention across the U.S. for her provocative appearances and works. In 1976 she also founded and continues to direct Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums. In 2008 she had her first solo exhibition in New York at Mitchell Algus Gallery, “Martha Wilson: Photo/Text Works, 1971-74.” In 2009, “Martha Wilson: Staging the Self,” an exhibition of Ms. Wilson’s early photo/text work and one project from each of Franklin Furnace’s first 30 years, began international travel under the auspices of ICI (Independent Curators International); and in 2011, ICI published the Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces. Martha Wilson joined P.P.O.W Gallery, New York, and mounted a solo exhibition, “I have become my own worst fear,” in September, 2011.
Learn moreMeg Whiteford writes books and makes theater. Her writing on visual art and performance has appeared in Artforum, Aperture, and X-TRA. She is the author of The Shapes We Make With Our Bodies (Plays Inverse, 2015), the Curator's Choice for the 2017 BAM Next Wave Festival Reading Room, and Callbacks (&Now and Northwestern U. Press, 2018), recipient of the 2016 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Prize. She has performed at Pieter, PAM, REDCAT, Machine Project, Coaxial, and Project Utopia. She is currently the managing editor of the Art Book Review and teaches dance and performance theory and history. Her ballet, Overture, a response to the drawings of artist Beau Rhee, will be published with Gravel Projects this fall. She is interested in creating wild rides.
Learn moreWolfe’s work has been presented at venues including REDCAT, Live Arts Exchange Festival, FRESH Festival, the New Original Works Festival, Off Center Festival/Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s, Dia Center for the Arts, The Kitchen, The Living Theater, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has performed in the works of Vicky Shick, Jérôme Bel, Molissa Fenley, Clarinda Mac Low, and Susan Rethorst. Wolfe has had residencies at REDCAT, Performance Works NorthWest, the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Program, and the Hothouse Residency program at UCLA, among others. She is the founder and director of Show Box L.A., and was a founding co-editor of itch dance journal.
Learn moreProducing since 1997 and MCing since 1993 the Ohmega Watts resume includes two solo records on Ubiquity Records, The Find (2005) and Watts Happening (2007). MC/producer of the group Lightheaded (Tres Records) and a 7" under the name M64, which was comprised of Ohmega on production and Ragen Fykes on the vocals, released on Record Breakin (2009.) Ohmega is also an avid DJ who has toured extensively in the U.S. and abroad including Australia, the E.U. and Japan all the while expanding his record collection, and musical influences. He's performed, DJ'd alongside and supported artists/bands including: Galactic, Lifesavas, The Breakestra, De La Soul, Quantic, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Waajeed, Ge-Ology, Kon & Amir, DJ Spinna, Bobbito Garcia, Rich Medina, Cosmo Baker, and the list goes on. He's also a freelance Graphic Designer/Photographer making him a full-time creative.
Learn moreOmari Weekes is an assistant professor of English and American Ethnic Studies at Willamette University where he teaches courses primarily on gender and sexuality in African American literature. He is currently working on a book project that thinks through the affective dimensions of sex and spirituality in contemporary black literature. Other research interests include black popular culture, black religious studies, and representations of African Americans in Latin America. His writing (both scholarly and otherwise) has appeared in Public Books and Post 45.
Learn moreBorn in Seattle when the last person leaving was supposed to turn out the lights, Omar Willey has been an experimental filmmaker and photographer since 1989. He has made six feature films and a dozen shorts that have been shown locally as well as broadcast internationally. He is currently finishing up a five year project in hyperphotography dealing with the human use of public land.
In 1988 he began writing about performing arts for KCMU radio (now KEXP). Shortly thereafter he started his first magazine, Free Forum, dedicated to literary arts and cultural analysis. After this he began another zine, Lines of Sight, dedicated to photography and film and featuring interviews and articles about contemporary artists as well as photography. After this he moved on to freelance writing for Earshot Jazz, 5/4 Music, Tablet Magazine, and other local magazines. In 2010, he joined the staff of the online blog, Seattlest, where he remained till it shuttered.
For the past three years, he has been known as the publisher of the online journal of arts and culture, The Seattle Star, in which he has continued his interest in writing about performing arts, science, experimental film, and open culture.
Mr. Willey is an alumnus of both Western Washington University and the University of Washington. He volunteers time to open source software movement, Project Gutenberg, and Creative Commons projects across the country. He teaches free workshops in critical writing and photography around town. He is interested in everything.
Learn moreLarrakia language. Born 1938. Died 2OO2.
Known as Midpul to his Larrakia kin, there is some debate as to how Prince of Wales acquired his royal epithet. Some suggest it was because he danced for Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Darwin in 1963. More likely is that it was because he was the son of King George (Imabul) and grandson of King Miranda, the recognized leader of the Larrakia at the time of the British arrival in Darwin. Midpul never ascended to King because by the time he became leader of the Larrakia, the patronizing colonial practice of “crowning” Indigenous leaders had been eliminated. Irrespective, Midpul was a proud and important leader of his people. In 1971, he and his brothers mounted a public protest to have parts of Darwin declared a Larrakia reserve, and later he was actively involved in the successful Kenbi Land Claim. Despite suffering a stroke that paralyzed most of his left side, Midpul began painting in 1995, drawing his inspiration from the body markings used in ceremonial rituals. Although the Larrakia had a long artistic tradition, Midpul was the first artist to seek a sustained engagement with the contemporary art world. Without any template to work from, he produced works of singular poetry and grace; restrained yet visceral; tremulous yet compellingly assured. Compared to the tight-knit dot- paintings of the Central desert, Midpul’s paintings were a revelation. Across stark, unmodulated grounds, his marks hover like ghostly fingerprints. Haptically direct, these marks offer a stark evocation of the body in movement, creating a haunting metaphor for the memory ancient rituals burnished into the ether of time. In 2OO1, Midpul was awarded the general painting prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. His works are held in most state collections in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Learn moreReggie Watts made his name playing and singing in the band Maktub, a central part of the Seattle music scene throughout the 1990s. Embarking on his solo career in 2004, Watts has focused on developing a unique comedic style that synthesizes elements from R&B, beatboxing, alternative theatre and video. A prolific artist, Watts has completed projects with The Yes Men, collaborated with SOULLIVE and Yunchen Lhamo, and appeared at SXSW, the Montreal Comedy Festival, Cape Town and Edinburgh Comedy Festivals, TBA Festival in Portland, The Fuse Box Festival in Austin, Bonaroo, Sasquatch Festival, plus several BBC live radio events. He is winner of the 2005 Malcolm Hardee Oy! Oy! Award and the 2006 Andy Kaufman Comedy Award. In 2006 he was also a recipient of the Seattle Mayor’s Arts Award.
Learn moreRhea Wolf is feminist, witch and astrologer whose life purpose is to help people awaken their inherent creativity, activate their authentic selves and deepen their connections to the larger world. Rhea is motivated by a vision of an emerging culture based on respect, beauty, justice and relatedness.
Rhea Wolf has been a workshop facilitator for fifteen years, bringing creative writing, theater arts and The Work that Reconnects to a variety of groups, including at-risk youth and women in prison. After her Saturn Return, she began her journey as a professional astrologer and a mother of two daughters.
Rhea has worked as the Program Coordinator for Write Around Portland and was a performing artist and teacher with Sowelu Ensemble Theater. Rhea has a BFA in Theater Performance from Wichita State University. In addition, she has studied theater and deep ecology at the Naropa Institute, and trained extensively with world-renowned author Joanna Macy. After 4½ years of intensive study, she graduated from Colette Gardiner's Blue Iris Mystery School in 2009.
Rhea is the author of The Light That Changes: The Moon in Astrology, Stories and Time. Her articles have appeared in The Mountain Astrologer, hipMama, Perspectives, and VoiceCatcher. For the past seven years, she has offered workshops on astrology, spirituality and creativity to groups large and small throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Rhea’s passion for astrology began in childhood when she was given an impromptu tutorial of the zodiac by her hippie teen-aged babysitter. She remembers feeling a sense of wonder and also familiarity. Since then, she's devoured countless books on astrology and has received training and guidance from astrologers such as Demetra George, Emily Trinkaus and Steven Forrest. Rhea brings her love of the Earth, the spirit of wonder and her desire to deepen relationships to all that she does. She enjoys helping people find ways to claim more beauty and magic in their daily lives.
Rhea is a Leo Sun, Leo Rising, Taurus Moon and North Node in Scorpio. Full chart information is available upon request for students and potential students.
Learn moreRobbie Wing is a sound artist and musician from Tulsa, OK. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. His practice focuses on acoustic geographies, ecological sound art, installation, and composition. He is a multi-instrumentalist, field recordist & researcher. He has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Sustainability and a master's degree in Urban Design from the University of Oklahoma.
Learn moreRobert Wilson is a phenomenon whose range and importance has no parallel in contemporary theater. As both a designer and director, Wilson was a leading figure in the New York avant-garde theater scene of the sixties.
He has dominated European theater for the past twenty years with his original productions and unique adaptations of theatrical and operatic works.
His monumental multi-media epic, the CIVIL warS, commissioned for the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, has never yet been performed in its entirety and has become a legend in the theater.
Wilson's art works have also been shown extensively in museums and galleries throughout the world, including major retrospectives at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno in Valencia.
Composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson's first collaboration, Einstein on the Beach, was heralded as one of the most important and innovative operas of this century and catapulted both artists into the international spotlight. A dazzling explosion of movement, music, design, rhythm, voice, language, sound and light, Einstein completely overwhelmed its audience when it premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1976. Twenty-two years later, their newest collaboration, Monsters of Grace, promises to do the same.
Learn moreRoland Dahwen Wu is a filmmaker whose work explores migration, race and memory. His films and installations have been shown at CalArts, Portland Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival, Northwest Film Center, and numerous galleries. His films span nonfiction, experimental, and narrative genres, and are commonly marked by poetry: from his first documentary about the whistling language of the Canary Islands (There are no birds in the nests of yesterday) to his recent short film about 20th century Asian migration (Haft-Seen).
Learn moreRonaldo V. Wilson, PhD, is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man (University of Pittsburgh, 2008), winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Prize, Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books, 2009), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry in 2010. His latest books are Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2015), finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and Lucy 72 (1913 Press, 2017). Co-founder of the Black Took Collective, Wilson is also a mixed media artist, dancer and performer. His Off the Dome: Rants, Raps, and Meditations, an online album, exists on The Conversant. His short films “Grey,” “White,” “Blue,” “Red,” “Green,” “Brown,” “Pink,” “Black,” can also be found online at the Center for Art and Thought. Wilson is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program, and co-directing the Creative Writing Program. He splits his time between Santa Cruz, CA and Long Island, New York.
Learn moreThe son of folk singers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright has achieved success by carving out his own singular sound in the worlds of rock, opera, theater, dance and film. He has released seven albums and three DVDs, as well as collaborating with artists including Elton John, David Byrne, and Burt Bacharach. Wainwright was nominated for a Grammy for the live recording from his Judy Garland tribute concert, Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall. His opera, Prima Donna, premiered at the 2009 Manchester International Festival, and has been presented as part of Toronto's Luminato Festival and at London’s Sadler’s Wells.
Selected Press
A flair for the popular, Andrew Clark, Financial Times, July 13, 2009.
How We Met: Janis Kelly & Rufus Wainwright, Rhiannon Harries, The Independent, March 21, 2010.
Learn moreSasha Wortzel is a visual artist and filmmaker working between South Florida (Miccosukee and Seminole lands) and New York City (Lenape lands). Blending the archival and the imaginary, Wortzel uses film, video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how the past haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary American life. Projects examine queer place-making, geographies of resistance, and the systems that marginalize, extract, and erase communities, peoples, and histories.
Wortzel’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, True/False Film Festival, DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest, Blackstar, New Orleans Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Berlinale, among others. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Kitchen, New York; and SALTS, Birsfelden. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, Art Matters, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Wortzel has participated in residencies including Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, Abrons Arts Center, Watermill Center, New York; AIRIE (Artists in Residence in the Everglades) and Oolite Arts, Miami Beach. Wortzel’s film This is an Address (2020) is distributed by Field of Vision. Happy Birthday Marsha! (2018; co-director Tourmaline) won special mention at Outfest and is distributed by Frameline. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami Dade County Art in Public Places. She has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and New York Magazine. Wortzel received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.
Learn moreTashi Wada is a composer and performer based in San Francisco. His recent work focuses on various aspects of sound perception as a basis for direct processes of listening. Wada’s work has been performed throughout the United States and Europe in a variety of venues, and for several years now he has performed alongside his father, Yoshi Wada.
Learn moreWith legendary bits like their signature audience participation costume changes and Guns n Roses trapeze act, The Wau Wau Sisters are widely recognized by their peers for revolutionizing circus aesthetics and carving out a new niche for circus events – where high physical skill, comedy chops, burlesque and outright nudity mix with just the right splashes of chaos and irreverence are so close and palpable you can see the tear in their fishnets, the sinew of their muscles and the sweat on their skin! Don’t miss them as they fly through their trapeze routines with all the adrenaline and abandon of a rock concert, deconstruct the humor and paradigms of country and heavy metal music, while playing matching guitars and barely sitting on one another’s shoulders! They do it all in a festive, freewheeling hour that keeps the audience guessing every second, who’s in control and for how long?!
They have made appearances at these fantastic festivals and venues: The World Famous Spiegeltent,(VAC, Edinburgh, Auckland, Sydney, NYC), Lincoln Center (NYC), The Mayan Theater (Los Angeles), The Roundhouse (London), Olivia Cruise Lines, Feast Festival (Adelaide), Soho Bar (London), El Cid (Los Angeles), The Grammys (Los Angeles Staples Center), Irving Plaza (NYC), The Palms (Las Vegas), CBGB’s (NYC), The Hammerstein Ballroom (NYC), Joe’s Pub (NYC), The Bowery Ballroom (NYC), The Henry Fonda Theater (Los Angeles), The Pica Festival (Portland, OR), Edinburgh Fringe Festival/The Pleasance (Scotland), The Jermyn St. Theater (West End, London) , The Art House, Crown & Anchor (Provincetown, MA), Philadelphia Fringe Festival (Philadelphia, PA), Sydney Festival, Auckland Festival among countless other cities and venues!!
They’ve been profiled or featured in the pages of: The Village Voice, The New York Post, Time Out New York, Time Out London, The New York Times, Jane, BUST and New York Magazine, The Guardian, Metro, VENUS, The Sun, LA Weekly, GONYC, French Vogue, Spectacle, The Australian, The Times (London, Scotland), Sydnay Morning Herald and countless others!
Television & Film exploits include the feature film “Shortbus” by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), the film “Who’s the Top?” by Jenny Livingston (Paris Is Burning), ABC Australia’s “Sideshow”, Nipon TV’s “Good Morning Japan”, “The Isaac Mizrahi Show” w/ Rosie Perez, NPR’s “The Next Big Thing”, “Live From Downtown”, “The Sharon Osbourne Show”, and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Learn moreThe Wooster Group is an ensemble of artists who make new work for the theatre, dance and media. The Group has created over 40 pieces since its first in 1976.
Elizabeth LeCompte, a founding member of The Wooster Group, has directed all of the company's works. Her honors and awards include a NEA Distinguished Artists Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in American Theater, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a US Artists Fellowship and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Selected Press
Two Experimentalists Under One Roof, Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, March 26, 2010.
Learn moreTimothy White Eagle is a mixed race artist. He graduated from the University of Utah with a BFA in theater. His art practice rises from a decades-long exploration of traditional ritual and embodiment practice. His preferred mediums include objects, photography, durational performance, storytelling, and installed space.
He has served as an artist-in-residence at Town Hall and On The Boards in Seattle, as well as La Mama ETC in NYC. Timothy was the recipient of the WAA/AIP Launch Pad award in 2019 as well as a Seattle City Artist award in 2020.
Timothy toured internationally as one of the artistic directors and a performer with MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize finalist “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music.”
Timothy’s new ritual performance work, “What To Do When The Air Returns,” will premiere at LaMama in November 2021.
Learn moreTyler Wallace is a Portland-based artist working in video, installation, and performance to investigate concepts of identity and personal history. Nicole Dill is a Portland-based artist whose work interrogates the function of celebrity culture in contemporary society through photography, performance, audio, sculpture, and installation. Both Wallace and Dill recently defended their theses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and received their BFAs in May 2009.
"Between Us," Leah Bobal, PNCA UNTITLED.
Learn moreTyler White is a young, black, De La Salle North Catholic High School student, community organizer, blogger and cultural enthusiast. White has spent his last year interviewing Portlanders, exploring the nuances of gentrification and recently, producing a show with OPB, The Future of the American Dream. He formally holds the titles of Project Coordinator and Chief Blogger for the I Love This Place Project, Youth Outreach Coordinator for the CENTER (part of Catlin Gabel’s PLACE program), along with being a member of many other organizations and boards.
Learn moreW.A.G.E. (WORKING ARTISTS AND THE GREATER ECONOMY) WORKS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT EXIST IN THE ARTS, AND TO RESOLVE THEM.
W.A.G.E. HAS BEEN FORMED BECAUSE WE, AS VISUAL + PERFORMANCE ARTISTS AND INDEPENDENT CURATORS, PROVIDE A WORK FORCE.
W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES THE ORGANIZED IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE ART MARKET AND ITS SUPPORTING INSTITUTIONS, AND DEMANDS AN END OF THE REFUSAL TO PAY FEES FOR THE WORK WE'RE ASKED TO PROVIDE: PREPARATION, INSTALLATION, PRESENTATION, CONSULTATION, EXHIBITION AND REPRODUCTION.
W.A.G.E. REFUTES THE POSITIONING OF THE ARTIST AS A SPECULATOR AND CALLS FOR THE REMUNERATION OF CULTURAL VALUE IN CAPITAL VALUE.
W.A.G.E. BELIEVES THAT THE PROMISE OF EXPOSURE IS A LIABILITY IN A SYSTEM THAT DENIES THE VALUE OF OUR LABOR.
AS AN UNPAID LABOR FORCE WITHIN A ROBUST ART MARKET FROM WHICH OTHERS PROFIT GREATLY, W.A.G.E. RECOGNIZES AN INHERENT EXPLOITATION AND DEMANDS COMPENSATION.
W.A.G.E. CALLS FOR AN ADDRESS OF THE ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES THAT ARE PREVALENT, AND PROACTIVELY PREVENTING THE ART WORKER'S ABILITY TO SURVIVE WITHIN THE GREATER ECONOMY.
W.A.G.E. ADVOCATES FOR DEVELOPING AN ENVIRONMENT OF MUTUAL RESPECT BETWEEN ARTIST AND INSTITUTION.
W.A.G.E. DEMANDS PAYMENT FOR MAKING THE WORLD MORE INTERESTING.
Learn moreFor several years, Wally Cardona created group works that demanded highly controlled working conditions in order to be made. His current cycle of work cultivates a practice of undoing, creating intimate yet crowded collaborative conditions.
Honors: Bessie award, Guggenheim Fellowship, NYFA Fellowship, Asian Cultural Council Fellowship and Doris Duke Artist Award. Works: The Set Up, an 8-part series with Jennifer Lacey and 8 masters of traditional dance forms; Ponder Nothing, with composer Ned Rothenberg and an existent score by Ben Johnston; TOOL IS LOOT, with Lacey and composer Jonathan Bepler, resulting from games of aesthetic disorientation with “non-dance experts,” including a sommelier, astrophysicist, architect, social activist; Movements within Stream, an outdoor mini-myth made for a hillside sculpture; Really Real, a people piece for 100 individuals, including the Brooklyn Youth Chorus with music by Phil Kline; and A Light Conversation, a physical dialogue on aesthetics vs. ethics, love, commitment and sacrifice, with Swiss choreographer Rahel Vonmoos.
Learn moreWa Na Wari is committed to the ideas of Black artists from all over the diaspora and partnering with TBA in 2021 offers us the opportunity to work even more closely with Black femme artists who are lifting up Black joy, Black resistance, and Black power.
TBA has long been the reason Seattlietes have traveled down the I-5 corridor to experience performance art from all over the world. This year is no different. Our work together will be to hold space for intense conversations about Black land and autonomy, Black bodies and historical erasure, all while combating the physiological and psychological effects of gentrification on Black people all over the Northwest
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 moreWeird Allan Kaprow (WAK) is a post-colonial conceptual karaoke band comprised of artists Mariah Carrie Mae Weems, Yoko Bono, Jasper John Lennon, and Joseph Beuys II Men.
WAK projects have been featured in the Agitprop! exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York; the Out Of Sight Survey of Northwest Art in Seattle, Washington; the Writ Large festival at The Great Wall of Oakland, California; the Auto Body exhibition in Miami, Florida; the Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Shine a Light at the Portland Art Museum, the POW Film Fest, the Converge 45 art fair, and the Hollywood theater in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreWendy Red Star was born in Billings, Montana just outside of the Crow Indian reservation where she was raised. She grew up in a multi-cultural family. Her mother is of Irish decent, her father a full blood Crow Indian and her older sister is Korean. Wendy left the Crow Indian reservation when she was eighteen to attend Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana where she studied sculpture. She then went on to earn her MFA in sculpture at UCLA. Wendy has worked as an adjunct professor of fine art at Portland State University for five and a half years. In 2012 to 2013 Wendy was the manger of Chief Plenty Coups State Park located within the Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana. The park preserves the log home, sacred spring, museum, and farmstead of Chief Plenty Coups and is a National Historic Landmark. Wendy is currently the Program Associate for the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.
Wendy Red Star’s work explores the intersection between life on the Crow Indian reservation and the world outside of that environment. She thinks of herself as a Crow Indian cultural archivist speaking sincerely about the experience of being a Crow Indian in contemporary society.
Her work has been shown at the Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula, MT, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, The Fondation Cartier L’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, The CSULB gallery, Long Beach, CA, Research & Development, Chicago, IL, The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, And/Or gallery, Dallas, TX, The UCLA New Wight gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The L.A. Municipal Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France, The Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown, MA, The Plush Gallery, Dallas TX, The Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, The Luckman gallery, Los Angeles, CA,The Volitant gallery, Austin, Texas, Eiteljorg Museum of Native American & Western Fine Art, Yellowstone Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Studio Visit with Wendy Red Star in Portland Oregon from Amelia winger-bearskin on Vimeo.
Learn moreWendy's Notes on Soph
When I was growing up on the South Side of Chicago on Essex Avenue, every Shabbos my mother, various aunts, uncles, bubbes and zadyes would have brisket, kugel, green bean mushroom soup casserole, and challah and French pastry brought by my rich Uncle Julie, who drove an aqua 1957 Thunderbird, was a bachelor, knew Hugh Hefner, dated shikses and later stole the family fortune, etc. Oh, but I digress. Anyhoo, at these serene and deeply spiritual Friday night dinners, after discussing my weight problem, after my performance of the Nutcracker Suite Ballet in which I played all the parts dressed in a pink tutu, my family would settle down on the plastic covered white brocade fringed furniture and we would listen to the great Sophie Tucker on the Hi Fi. Soph was gutsy and loud and she sang specialty songs about men, sex, adultery and female independence. Some songs were talked, some were sung, but all of them made us either laugh or cry. Even at nine years old, I loved her because of her voice, her glamour, her individuality and her zaftig shape. I never forgot her through the years. She mean a lot to me and reminded me of those countless Friday night dinners, and the Ed Sullivan Show on Sundays where she often appeared, scarf in hand, diamonds and furs dripping.
Skip to 1984 -- I had been living in Portland, Oregon for nine years as an active member of The Storefront Theatre. Having just completed the original Angry Housewives, I wanted a project that would be creatively challenging and really stretch me as a performer. My darling, talented friend Vana O'Brien, knowing I was Jewish, thought it would be most appropriate for me to do a one woman show about Sophie Tucker, the great Jewish singer/comedienne. Vana, a lovely, gentile girl, had gone to only Catholic schools growing up and Soph and I were the only two Jews she'd ever known or heard of. Well, I loved the idea, I went wild. How could that goyishe gal have known Soph was my hero! So Vana and I researched, we listened to recordings, we wrote, we rewrote, we ate bagels, went to New York, ate cheesecake from Zabar's, ate corned beef at Katz's, wrote some more, she walked much faster than me, I complained a lot and we wrote.
Finally, Soph was presented at The Storefront Theatre on November 25, 1984. My best friend and mentor, Ric Young, directed it and after many performances to sold out crowds, many would-be producers with shetls on their heads, many magic and not-so-magic moments, Ric made me dinner at his fabulous apartment. He said in a dramatic fashion, that only he could pull off and which was quintessential Ric, "Wendy, you must go to LA and perform Soph. You've grown past Portland. I will miss you, but you must try. It's time for you to go." Oh, brother! "You must go and be a star." Oh, for God's sake!
So, I left in my pink 1957 Rambler, and cried for two years from homesickness, but finally Soph was produced at the Callboard Theatre in Beverly Hills, California. This director, however, was no Ric Young. His favorite expression was (say this in your head as bitchy as possible) "Is there a problem?" Oy Vey! Anyway, Soph went very well, critically acclaimed, busloads of retired Jewish people from Laguna Beach, agents, etc. I stayed in LA for six years.
Skip to now -- I've been home in Portland for five and a half years and turned fifty this September. And guess what? I met this darling little pitzle Kristy Edmunds. She believes that PICA people need to see this great vaudevillian Sophie Tucker, this predecessor of performance art, and this Wendy Westerwelle, a genre unto herself, as Kristy puts it. I trust her. I really like this little Kristy. I think she's such a doll. We have breakfast together, Kristy and I. Well, I have breakfast, she has coffee and a cigarette. Not since Ric have I met someone with this kind of drive and charisma. I want to do this show again, to share Soph with a new audience who has yet to meet to his grand and glorious dame, and for an old familiar audience who has met her and wants to embrace us both again.
I'm just so thrilled at the age of fifty to be performing Soph again and I'm ready to give her and my audience all they deserve. My hoe is that everyone really enjoys themselves and is entertained. Soph has always been and continues to be my special gift for all of you. It's a way for me to say thank you for all you have given me and to pay homage to the great legendary Sophie Tucker, who paved the way for this zaftig Chicago girl and gave me the courage to be exactly who I was meant to be. Thank you.
—Wendy Westerwelle
Learn moreWendy White has had solo exhibitions at Leo Koenig in New York, Galeria Moriarty in Madrid, Van Horn in Düsseldorf, and Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago. She has participated in group exhibitions at Harris Lieberman Gallery, Nicole Klagsbrun, Fredericks & Freiser, and John Connelly Presents, all in New York; Country Club Projects in Los Angeles; The Bemis Center in Omaha; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art; CCA Andratx in Mallorca, Spain; Fred Gallery in Leipzig, Germany; Galerie Markus Winter in Berlin; Aschenbach & Hofland in Amsterdam; and Motus Fort in Tokyo. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, Artpapers, Time Out New York, New York Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail. White holds a MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and a BFA from The Savannah College of Art & Design. She received a 2008 grant from The Artists' Fellowship in New York, a 2005 George Segal Painting grant, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation studio grant in 2004. Her work is included in Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting, published by Phaidon. White is represented by Leo Koenig and lives in New York City.
Learn moreWhite Rainbow is Portland, OR electronic music producer Adam Forkner. With a storied past in the experimental/psychedelic/electronic underground, White Rainbow explores the full spectrum of psychedelic sound production.
Learn moreWhoop Dee Doo is a non-profit community project led by artists living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. The group has created commissioned projects for organizations including the Bemis Center for contemporary Arts (Omaha), Deitch Projects (New York), the Smart Museum (Chicago), The Kemper Museum for Contemporary Arts (Kansas City), Loyal Gallery (Sweden), and others.
Selected Press
Interview with Jaimie Warren of Whoop Dee Doo, Jacob Gaboury, Rhizome.org, August 25, 2010.
Role Model, Marisa Meltzer, NYLON, March 30, 2010.
Learn moreWill Bryant is an artist and designer based in Austin, TX. His work weaves together humor with commerce, fun, and positivity. In his sculptural installations, photographic still lives, and commercial illustration projects, there is always a sense of exuberance at play with a colorful palette.
His work has been plastered across advertising campaigns, t-shirts, record sleeves, posters, magazines, furniture, snowboards, underwear, and also exhibited internationally. In 2013 he was awarded as a Young Gun by the Art Directors Club. His whimsical food-themed graphic and environmental designs were memorably used for the TBA Kitchen at THE WORKS during PICA's 2013 and 2014 Time-Based Art Festivals.
When not working, he enjoys hanging out with his daughter and wife, reading about”sports”, shooting hoops, or lounging in expensive sweatpants.
Learn moreBasinski has been working in experimental media in New York for over 25 years. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork and Artforum selected The River, his transcendental 2-disc shortwave music experiment as one of the top ten albums of 2003. His concerts, installations, films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker James Elaine have been presented internationally, most recently at The Venice Biennale of Music. Basinski's latest albums, 92982 and Vivian & Ondine were released in 2009 on 2062/USA and distributed internationally. The Wire selected 92982 as one of the top 50 releases of 2009.
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William Pope.L was born in 1955 in New Jersey. He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Kunsthalle Wien and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. MIT Press published a monograph to accompany The Friendliest Black Artist in America, his 2002-2004 traveling survey exhibition. His work has been exhibited and performed at Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The New Museum in New York and the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Recent exhibitions and performances include Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; Flux This! With Pope.L and Special Guests at Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY; and The Long White Cloud, Te Tuhi Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand. Learn moreWill Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has created a solo exhibition for Adams + Ollman Gallery (2022) and a multi-part installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Everlasting Stranger (2021), as well as presenting work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.
Learn more at will-rawls.com
Learn moreDJs Speedy and Salama (TBA:09 alumnus Johanna Ketola, with Reeta Sironen) are two friends and visual artists based in Helsinki, Finland. They share an enthusiasm for the sounds of Balkan and Eastern European folk and gypsy music, whether traditional or pop, old or contemporary, rural or urban. Their DJ set was collected through travels in Eastern parts of Europe, where they also found visual inspiration. Wonderlust mixes local styles with playful, imaginative and invented elements in their visuals, objects and costumes, creating a new visual world unique to itself.
The duo has known each other since 1987, and since 2005, they have performed in Finland, Holland, Italy and the US. Their visual DJ practice is the latest form of “Landia,” their mutual imaginary world.
Learn moreWoodrow Hunt is a Klamath, Modoc, and Cherokee artist who was born and raised in Portland, OR. Woodrow's film practice is focused on documentary and experimental forms. His experimental work explores the functions and relationship between digital video and memory and the ways digital video can communicate issues related to the Native community. Woodrow’s films have screened at the Portland Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, MoMA Doc Fortnight, and other festivals internationally. His work has been featured in Artforum, Boston Art Review, and Hyperallergic. Woodrow is a featured artist of COUSIN Collective and was a 2022 Sundance Institute Non-Fiction Intensive Fellow.
Learn moreWoolly is an aesthetically-inclined, trans-pop-culture, dance-therapy performance group formed in Portland, OR in 2006. They have performed in venues ranging between burned-out buildings, black box theaters, Mexican bars, fields of llamas, cowboy dance halls, and downtown alleyways. Traversing between hilarious absurdity and a dark intensity, they bring audiences to the precipice of tantalizing confusion.
Selected Press
Ultra Q: Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner, Lisa Radon, ultrapdx.com, January 14, 2008. (PDF)
Learn moreWU TSANG is a Los Angeles based artist, performer, and filmmaker. His projects have been presented at the 2012 Whitney Biennial and New Museum Triennial in New York, the ICA Philadelphia, MOCA Los Angeles, the Gwangju Biennial (South Korea), and the Tate Modern and Liverpool Biennial (UK). He was named one of 2012's “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, and is currently a Film Independent Project:Involve Fellow. His first feature WILDNESS won the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Documentary at Outfest 2012 [World Premiere: MoMA Documentary Fortnight (New York, NY), SXSW (Austin, TX), Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada), SANFIC8 (Santiago, Chile)]. He has received grants & support from Good Works, Frameline, Wexner Center for the Arts, IFP, Film Independent, Art Matters, Tiffany Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Contemporary Art Foundation.
Selected Press
"25 New Faces of Independent Film: Wu Tsang," Scott Macauly, Filmmaker Magazine.
Learn moreWynne Greenwood is a queer feminist artist who incorporates video, performance, music, and object-making to practice, in the artist’s words “culture-healing.” Greenwood’s performances, installations, and object-based works have been included in exhibitions at independent and institutional spaces across the globe including: the Tate Modern, London; the 2004 Whitney Biennial, NYC; The Kitchen, NYC; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles; Soloway, Brooklyn; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and Lawrimore Project, Seattle. From 1999–2006, Greenwood performed the celebrated multimedia
art band Tracy + the Plastics. Since 2006, Greenwood has shifted her focus to installation and object-based work. Most recently, Greenwood participated in Anti-Establishment, a group exhibition at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies, and released the full-length music album A Fire To Keep You Warm. Greenwood teaches performance and video in colleges and schools in Seattle and across the country.Selected Press:
Review of Soloway, Kristan Kennedy, Artforum, June 2014.
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