The Recycled Rain Project is a PNW based invitational art show creating original works using rainwater to raise awareness of water issues.
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 June.
A portion of the sale of all works from RR2019 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 $3,500 to non-profits that focus on a variety of water issues.
Featuring Works By: Theresa Andreas-O’Leary Roberta Aylward Jane Levy Campbell Clare Carpenter Kindra Crick Nate Ethington Jenn Feeney Marilyn Joyce Karl Kaiser Jody Katopothis Thérèse Murdza Jesse Narens Kelly Neidig Amy Ponteri Candace Primack Maryann Puls Quin Sweetman Sara Sjol Nanette Wallace Laura Weigle Jon Wippich Karen Wippich Zeratha Monique Young
Ahuva S. Zaslavsky Fritz Koch Jemila Ann Hart Jenn Feeney
OPENING
Saturday, April 27th 6-9 PM
Under
Pressure: One of One is a group of Portland based printmakers that
has been working together for over eight years. In 2019, we founded
the Under Pressure: One of One collective in order to foster a
supportive community and space for our printmaking process. Our
mission is to create, encourage, collaborate and exhibit together.
In
the monotype process there are limitless possibilities. Works are
created by applying ink to a smooth plexi plate, manipulating the ink
using tools and our signature techniques, and then running the plate
and paper through a press which transfers the image to the paper
using pressure.
We
are passionate about our work and in sharing our techniques and
methods with each other. We see monotypes as a bridge between
printmaking and painting, and we love the playful quality of this
printmaking method.
Ahuva
S.Zaslavsky (1975-) was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and moved to
Portland, Oregon in 2010. Ahuva is a Printmaker and Painter. She
graduated from The University of the Negev, Israel with a B.A. in
Behavioral Sciences. Her art practice began when she moved to
Portland at the CE Program at PNCA and at Crow’s Shadow Institute of
the Arts.
Coming
from a diverse cultural background and having pursued studies in
Psychology, Sociology and Literature, Ahuva is constantly seeking to
understand the relationship between human behavior, the individual’s
motivation to be and create, and their interaction with the world,
society and culture. She is dealing with identity questions of the
subject in a group and as an individual.
Ahuva’s
current theme is movement and rhythm of the individual in private and
public spaces, the expression within those psychological and mental
spaces, and the ways to express these in two dimensional form.
Fritz
Koch creates monotypes that celebrate and reflect the spirituality of
landscape, particularly that of Central and Eastern Oregon. His work
is a meditation on textural landforms, geologic juxtapositions, and
atmospheric perspective. The work is presented as a medium for the
observer to vicariously commune with nature, and to find comfort in
the familiarity of real or imagined spaces.
Koch
was born in Detroit, Michigan and received his BFA from Michigan
State University, and now makes his home in Portland, Oregon.
Koch
is a member of Flight 64, a non-profit, cooperative print studio in
Portland, OR, and is a returning printmaker at Crow’s Shadow
Institute of the Arts, in Pendleton, OR. He has exhibited at the
Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), Flight 64, Bite Studio,
Crow’s Shadow and others. He also co-curated and installed
Reflections on the Columbia River Plateau, a traveling exhibit of
monotypes produced at Crow’s Shadow, coordinated through Pacific
Northwest College of Art.
Jemila
is often drawn to landscapes in the prints that she creates. She
uses landscapes to capture and investigate states of mind, nuances of
her own emotional life. While the landscapes that she chooses to
depict are often beautiful, they hint at human impact and the seen
and unforeseen consequences of our intentions and our delusions on
the environment and on each other. These subtle environmental themes
question the inequitable distribution of the natural world for the
sake of progress, question the squandering of our abundance and
question the drive to expand, colonize and use the earth’s
resources to depletion. There is much to be learn from paying
attention to the landscapes around us, she feels, they hold the
history of our humanity and tell stories about our relationships; our
relationships to ourselves, to others and our relationship with the
planet.
Jemila
was born in Michigan, but has lived in many places including
Washington State, Yemen, Niger and Alaska. She currently lives with
her partner Jeff and their two aged cats in NE Portland. She has a
great appreciation for the perspective that comes from traveling,
seeing new places and glorious new things.
Jemila
received her BS in Biology and Anthropology from Lewis and Clark
College and recently completed her Masters in Social Work from
Portland State University. Jemila currently works as a community
based social worker in Public Housing communities in Clackamas
County, is a member of Flight 64, a non-profit collective Portland
print studio and returns regularly to workshops at the Crow’s
Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton, Oregon to expand and
deepen her skills in monotype printmaking.
Jenn
Feeney’s prints are monotypes which are one of a kind prints, also
known as the painterly print. They are created by applying ink to a
smooth plexi plate, and then transferring the image to paper by means
of pressure through a press. Jenn enjoys the chemistry of the inks
and solvent and the effects created by using tools to remove and add
ink, layering color over color, texture over texture. While she can
anticipate what will happen with the print, she is surprised and
thrilled each time the print is revealed. Her works have been
described as organic, underwater scenes or other worldly, microscopic
views.
Jenn’s
childhood was spent around a commercial print shop, so being a
printmaker was inevitable… there’s ink in her blood! By chance,
when she joined the working world, she ended up working in print –
first as corrugated and then in business print and promotions, which
is still true to this day.
In
addition to printmaking, Jenn also paints in both acrylic and oil on
canvas or wood. She is involved in the Portland art community and
helps organize and participates in group shows and fundraising events
regularly. She is an honorary member of Bite Studio in SE Portland
and a returning printmaker at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts
in Pendleton, OR.
Alas! The 2018 Love Show is all full, and we can no longer accept any more submissions.
BUT WE STILL NEED YOU!
Are you interested in being one of our fabulous Love Show Volunteers? It takes a LOT of hands to make this show happen, and we’d Love to have you on our team! It’s a great way to meet new people and to be a part of the show.
And, while the walls may be full, we are still accepting submissions for performance/time based artwork so get ready to show your stuff on opening night!
After a six-year break, the Ford Gallery revives “The Love Show,” Portland’s answer to all the pink-themed greeting cards, heart-shaped chocolate boxes and candy hearts that every February brings with it– a place for YOU to make work about Love, and not the couple-focused, heterosexist shiny Valentine’s Day that gets shoved down our collective throats.
The reality is, love is complicated and messy, full of longing and sadness, full of confusion and hope, truth, lies, fakery, glee. Love can break you. So let’s explore love together- make work about loving your pet, lukewarm coffee, those new shoes, your sister, your spouse’s best friend, about not knowing how to love, or loving too much… it’s up to you, and all work is welcome. Your piece should respond to love, but how it relates needs to be clear only to you. So, make your piece as personal or abstract as you want to.
We are honored to invite the first 200 artists who sign up to make work about Love and to share it with all of us in darkest winter night, and be warmed.
With Love,
Sara, Ross, Ben Pink & All of us at Ford Gallery
Join us for this storytelling event about the dogs that have curled up in our hearts and meet some of the artists of the Dog Park show.
The Ford Gallery is hosting an early afternoon gathering of listening and storytelling. We’re inviting you to see the Dog Park show and join us with a story about a dog that wags its tail around your house or in your memories. Stories should be 3 – 5 minutes in length and child friendly. Though an informal event, please try to arrive near the beginning.
Well, the gallery is ready, but the fickle Gods of Winter Weather are not! : ( Due to safety concerns we have decided to cancel tonight’s opening reception for Divided We Stand.
But don’t worry! We will be hosting an Inauguration Day event on the 20th, in collaboration with Ford Food & Drink! With “Not our President: Women Writers Against Trump”, and more live performances & activities by our fantastic artists! So keep an eye out for details soon!
Opening January 28, 6-10 pm
With special opening night performances by
Rachel Mann Band and Free Thought Takeover
Show runs Jan 28 – Feb 25
Please donate $10 to help us cover opening night bands.
We have an extraordinary exhibit coming to the Ford Gallery at the end of January by Paul Rutz as well as special opening night performances by Rachel Mann Band and Free Thought Takeover. Below, artist Paul Rutz describes Around Corners and his vision for the opening.
—————–
Around Corners is a maze-like gallery installation that uses the physical heft of paintings to revel in the fact that when we view, we do it moving. Our hearts beat, lungs expand, and our eyes make continuous saccades, seeing not in single points of view, but in paths of attention that add memory and prediction to our sense of an unfolding now. We see with our feet as much as our eyes. How can painting celebrate that?
Since mid-2014, I have been working on several large, highly detailed paintings designed to be hung from the Ford Gallery’s ceiling. Each picture depicts one live model who moved between two poses in the studio—back and forth for months—while I constantly changed my point of view and measured every body part and prop, painting them at exactly life size. I call these canvases documentary motion pictures, and I’ll present them in a way that invites the audience to move, too. We’ll hang the paintings in the middle of the gallery at various angles, using the paintings a bit like shoji, Japanese paper room dividers. To see the full show, viewers will have to move around the paintings’ corners, encountering their material qualities, their heavy wood frames, copper nails and the shadow figures on semi-opaque stretched canvas—a focus on the craftsmanship that makes the image possible.
For the exhibit’s opening, I have invited performing artists Rachel Mann Band and Free Thought Takeover to perform an experiment. On January 28, these two Portland bands will each stage a musical set from inside the installation. The paintings will wall off each performer in his or her own little space, and I look forward to seeing how they choose to play with that problem. In the same way that revealing the backs of the paintings is an invitation to explore craftsmanship itself, I expect breaking up the band spatially might become a powerful way to reveal the band. With choreography and improvisation around and through the installation, Rachel Mann’s dulcet harmonies will set up Free Thought Takeover’s dance-inducing brass funk. To see the performance, the audience will be invited to move around in it, too.
Using the motions people are always doing anyway, we aim to shake up the viewing and listening habits that otherwise go unnoticed on a night out.
— Paul Rutz
About the artist
Paul X. Rutz received his Ph.D. in Theory and Cultural Studies from Purdue University in 2011 after writing a dissertation on combat art and the Iraq war. That year Rutz took his portrait painting practice to Portland, OR, where he works with live models to develop life-size oil paintings. His work has been featured on the TV show Portlandia, and recent exhibitions include solo shows at Gay Street Gallery, Washington, VA, and Jupiter Gallery, as well as group shows at Mark Woolley Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution. His series of dual-media portraits of combat veterans, titled Between Here and There, has traveled to galleries in Portland, Vashon Island, WA, and the Oregon Military Museum. Rutz also writes about visual culture, with recent publications in the Huffington Post, On Patrol,Military History Magazine and many others.
Free Thought Takeover has been taking over Portland since March 2015. This lineup is stacked with professional musicians from across the country (New York, Chicago, Honolulu, Boston, Miami) bringing Portland a unique blend of a dynamic horn section, tight rhythm section, and exciting vocal artists.
Free Thought Takeover has taken over venues such as Holocene, Alhambra Theater, Hawthorne Theater, Kelly’s Olympian, Star Theater, Graffitti Fest, Green Valley Music Fest, and many more.
They’ve been setting up stage with local Portland acts such as Glenn Waco, Elton Crey, Speaker Minds, The Sindicate & Dear Drummer, just to name a few.
Free Thought Takeover isn’t just a band name. The group has made notable efforts to enlighten and donate to causes concerning free speech, human rights, and media censorship. Eighty percent of the world does not have access to free press. All the news they read is altered. Free Thought Takeover wants to change that.
Before The Pearl was The Pearl, it was a forgotten industrial district and home to many burgeoning Portland artists whose work would help transform that entire section of the city. Richard Melloy is one of those artists. Now calling Foster-Powell his home, Melloy continues to build on his decades-long career as a painter and commercial illustrator.
Join us on August 27 at 6 pm at Ford Gallery for Richard Melloy’s “Present In Time” an exhibit of new works by the artist as well as a collection of his most popular prints.
“Melloy is more than an accomplished painter—he is an inspiration for creative longevity,” PDX Magazine wrote of Melloy. “[He’s] bullheaded enough not to quit and smart enough to adapt throughout a long career.”
And another article on last year’s “The Way I See It” exhibit HERE.
We will hold an artist tour at 7 p.m., and Melloy will join us that evening downstairs at the Mechanical event space for PDX Magazine’s Last Saturday Salon
The show will run from August 27 – September 17.
“My American Gothic” Diptych, Left Side, by Richard Melloy
“My American Gothic” Diptych, Right Side, by Richard Melloy
Jason Brown has dedicated so much of himself to supporting the Portland art scene recently as a gallerist/arts advocate at GoodFoot, Peoples Art of Portland, Po Boy Art, and elsewhere, that newcomers to Portland might not recognize this veteran’s work. To help remedy this, Ford Gallery has collected select works of Brown’s for this retrospective to celebrate the artist who has inspired so many others over the years.
Join us on Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 6 pm for an opening celebration. The show runs through August 13.
Jason Brown’s Artist Statement:
“Painting is my vessel of communication. Art becomes a social and personal dialectic for me aimed at resolving inner and public conflict while simultaneously celebrating humanity.
“Through irony, humor, bold and subtle imagery, I convey my vision to others. I place my characters in settings where the rooftops of society have been cut off and their idiosyncrasies become their vulnerabilities. By utilizing perspective, I place my characters into a realm that seems comfortable and inviting, but contains certain disjointed qualities. My characters explode out of their setting while remaining stoic, as though they are unaffected by their environment — a petty thief that steals the tip of a waitress left on the bar by a previous patron; the meat market patrons with their robust, crazed egos manipulating the masses with their decedent carnage.
“Some have suggested that my work has a masculine perspective, but I certainly do not represent or embody the masculine viewpoint. Ultimately, I paint individuals transfixed by their struggle, at times framing the daily lives of “Martyred Saints”, “Super humans” that have routines and transgressions just as anyone else. (The musician who forgets he is mortal for a brief second and the lightning bolt of god touches his forehead, knighting this saint a forbearer of humanity – the husband who goes into a strip bar for directions, and is coincidentally spotted by his wife.)
“I am intrigued by the situational moments that could be explained, but the individual finds himself trapped by the circumstances. Through observation and perspective I make an earnest attempt at painting the honesty of humanity.”
“Chance of Showers” is a collection of Chris Haberman’s latest work on display at the Ford Gallery April 30 – May 28.
Saturday, April 30, opening night, join us in the Ford Gallery from 6-8 pm and then downstairs at our underground lair “Mechanical” (Suite B27) from 8 onward for Last Saturday Salon featuring a reading by Chris Haberman.
Chris Haberman is a working painter, writer, muralist, curator and musician, native to Portland, Oregon. Aside from painting, he has published poetry, journalism and fiction; being awarded the Tom Doulis Fiction award, the Wilma Morrison award for excellence in journalism from Portland State University and is a lifetime member to the Academy of American Poets.
All of Chris Haberman’s artwork is created recycled objects, found material from the streets and alleyways of his hometown. A discarded cabinet door or table top quickly becomes the backdrop for an integrated puzzle-poem of figures and text, focusing on subjects like people, politics, the region, pop-culture, media, music, film and literature.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams said in 2009 that “Chris is the hardest working artist in Portland.” Chris’ first curatorship was a show for Adams in City Hall of Portland, Oregon, (Portland Pride, 2007). He has also shown art in hundreds of venues, including “Oregon Art Annual” and is a frequent contributor to local artwalks, school fairs and open studio tours. In July 2012, Chris recorded selling over 10,000 original works since 2001; and he was a feature artist for Oregon Art Beat on Oregon Public Broadcasting and awarded “Portland Artist of the Year” for Barfly Magazine. In Jan, 2011, he and fellow artist Jennifer Mercede won a national artist contest in Las Vegas, competing with artists’ from 10 other cities.
Besides making art, Chris is also a teacher and a fervent freelance curator and arts advocate, coordinating hundreds of Portland art exhibits with regional artists since 2001, founding first a non-profit (Portland City Art, 2009) and then Chris Haberman Presents and The People’s Art of Portland in Pioneer Place Mall (with fellow artist/curator/buddy, Jason Brown, The Goodfoot) both in 2010, to help local artists show their works.
In 2011, he illustrated a book with Oregon television icon, K.C. Cowan detailing a humorous selection of Catholic Saints. In the same year he also completed a 219 wood panel album reproduction for an office mural for record label Kill Rock Stars, and a 100 piece show of about the History of Oregon for Portland State University. In 2012/2013 he completed a 140 foot mural about “The History of Hawthorne Blvd.” for 50th SE Hawthorne on the Eagles Fraternal Lodge funded by a grant from Regional Arts and Culture Council; and currently is the Art Consultant/Curator/Art Department Staff for TV show Portlandia (Seasons 3, 4 and 5). In 2014, he helped present the 15th annual Oregon Art Beat exhibition of 350 artists with Oregon Public Broadcasting, and appeared as a working artist on Ovation channel’s reality show, “One Man’s Trash.” Summer 2015 Chris completed a large-scale outdoor mural for the City of Milwaukie, OR, in partnership with TriMet for the new Orange Line Train line.
Ford Gallery presents Artcest, a collaborative group show with works by Ali Schlicting, Emily Bates, Christopher Creath, Jennifer Griffo, and Matt Schlosky. The show is curated by Ali Schlicting.
Opening celebration Saturday, March 26, 6-11 pm — 6-8 pm in the Gallery, 8-11 pm in Mechanical, suite B27
Hello friends of Ford Gallery!
