Focused on mid-career media artists expanding their creativity across multiple platforms
PAM CUT // Center for an Untold Tomorrow, the Portland Art Museum’s film and new media arm, is pleased to announce the 2026 Sustainability Labs. Now in its fifth year, PAM CUT’s Sustainability Labs program uniquely prioritizes holistic career advancement and sustainability. It is part of PAM CUT’s Artist Services, a range of services designed to help support the sustained creative, financial, and personal growth of creative storytellers working across multiple media arts platforms.
Serving five mid-career storytellers working in a variety of mediums, the Sustainability Labs were created to help artists in search of guidance to harness and expand their creative and business talents across multiple platforms. Rather than focusing on a singular project, PAM CUT’s Sustainability Labs act as a spark not only for select artists but also for our larger media arts community and the ecosystem at large.
The program focuses on embracing artists’ multiplicities and de-siloing modes of storytelling to provide greater opportunity and access. Focus areas will include individual, bespoke support for each artist on business plans, project and personal financial planning, creative brand expansion, and growth opportunities, as well as small group sessions on mental health, balance, and personal sustainability.
The Labs will culminate by pitching to a wide variety of industry professionals at Wieden + Kennedy as well as attending PAM CUT’s Cinema Unbound Awards at the Portland Art Museum the evening of May 29th, honoring polymath artists not content to be contained including
Titus Kaphar, Emma McIlory, and Maria Bamford. Learn more about PAM CUT’s Cinema Unbound Week, May 27–31.
This year’s Sustainability Labs Fellows are:
Kamari Bright, Seattle WA, Kamari Bright is a St. Louis-born videopoet and multimedia artist heavily inspired by human psychology and the desire to remove the vagueness of the growth and healing process. Leaning into the mechanisms of communication through the interplay of imagery and language, her works have been received at the International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia, the Academy Award-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, Seattle Art Museum, TriQuarterly, Moss, International Video Poetry Festival of Athens, and more. The 2024 Artist Trust Innovator Award recipient is currently exploring the influence of Christian folklore on present-day misogyny, as well as the impact of the environment on collective well-being. She is a community-taught creator and advocate who lives, loves, and eats on the land of the Duwamish.
Peter Burr, New York City NY, Peter Burr is an artist from Brooklyn, NY who transforms complex computational systems into emotional, sensory experiences through large-scale immersive environments. Drawing from early experiments with computational graphics in the mid-nineties, Burr’s practice has evolved to incorporate techniques that merge fundamental computing operations with modern real-time rendering systems. His work frequently explores the relationship between human-machine interfaces and the underlying systems that drive them. Previously Burr worked under the alias Hooliganship and founded the video label Cartune Xprez through which he produced hundreds of live multimedia exhibitions and touring programs showcasing a multi-generational group of artists at the forefront of experimental animation. His practice has been recognized through grants and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Grant, and a Sundance New Frontier Fellowship. His work has been presented at major cultural institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, The Barbican Centre, Documenta 14, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre Pompidou. Throughout his career, Burr has maintained an active presence in the computational arts field, with exhibitions in over 25 countries. He regularly presents his research at institutions including past keynotes at Yale University and Ars Electronica. He is a current PhD candidate in video games at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Asuka Lin, Chicago IL, Asuka Lin is a Japanese-Taiwanese filmmaker known for their shorts ‘Into the Emerald Sea’ (Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival), and ‘A.I. Mama’ (London Short Film Festival). Their hybrid work shifts from anarchic cyberpunk to meditative folktales, united by stories of yearning and conflicting realities. They earned their BFA at the California Institute of the Arts in film/video, currently based in Chicago. Lin is developing an apocalyptic short titled ‘Fumikomi’ with Prima Materia Pictures, about two sisters confronting their lost cultural heritage as they evacuate their Chicago home before a flood.
Mai Ide, Portland OR, mai ide is a Japanese-American artist from Tokyo, now based in Portland, OR. Her multidisciplinary approach investigates her own cultural intersectionality and deep ambivalence of race and gender as a non-immigrant, mother, and woman. As a non-native speaker of English, ide’s practice is expressing discomfort of being classified or perceived by society as an “other” or “forever foreigner” in the U.S. ide’s use of salvaged fabric and Sashiko stitches conveys her simultaneous vulnerability, fragility, and ferocity under a constrained, violent, and volatile society. ide holds a BFA in Art Practice from Portland State University (OR) and an MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, as well as degrees in sewing, pattern making, and textile design in Japan, where she worked for twelve years as a material designer. Her previous exhibitions and performances include the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Kyoto in Japan, and Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Oregon.
Veronica Graham, Portland OR, Veronica Graham is a visual artist working across digital media and analog print publishing. Her practice centers on poetic world-building, creating artifacts and interactive experiences that explore the fictions we internalize to make sense of the world. In 2010, she founded Most Ancient, a design studio focused on experimental comics and exploration games. Her work is held in collections at MoMA, the New York Public Library, and SFMOMA.
As with each year, the fellows get to work with a life coach, bespoke year-long mentors, and industry leaders across media arts, film, television, advertising, animation, new media, and gaming to expand their creative practice.
Mentors for this year’s program include:
- Sam Green, Sam Green is a documentary filmmaker. He’s made many movies including 32 Sounds, a live cinematic collaboration with electronic musician JD Samson. Previous “live documentaries” include A Thousand Thoughts (with the Kronos Quartet), The Measure of All Things, and The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (featuring the indie rock band Yo La Tengo). Sam’s documentary The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Green recently presented his latest feature film, The Oldest Person in the World, at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater.
- Scarlett Kim, Scarlett Kim is a director and producer innovating the intersection of live performance and immersive media. A polymath, Scarlett creates participatory experiences through the lens of collaborative worldbuilding, drawing from theatre, XR, game, and ritual. Scarlett was recently honored on the XLIST 2025, a celebration of the 100 most creative visionaries in the experiential economy. Scarlett is Executive Creative Producer of Center for Unclassifiable Technologies & Experiences (C.U.T.E.), Co-Founder of Worlds in Play, and Co-Founder of Independent XR Distribution Coalition at MIT Open Doc Lab. Scarlett serves on the board of Los Angeles Performance Practice, and mentors for NEW INC. Recently, she was an Interdisciplinary Fellow at Royal Shakespeare Company and Visiting Artist at Stanford Arts. As Director of Innovation & Strategy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Scarlett led the transmedia department of the largest repertory theater in the US. MFA, CalArts. BA, University of Chicago.
- Rose Bond, Rose Bond expands cinema — drawing new audiences into under-explored spaces. Her public animated installations co-inhabit a site, navigating its allegories of place, emanating glimpses of the everyday to illuminate layered accretions of memory so often overlooked. Bond’s cinematic work spans from indie animation to site-based installations to live immersive projection to VR theatre. She recently collaborated with composer inti figgis-vizueta and sound designer Massimiliano Borghesi on two communal VR-Dome pieces, Earths to Come (2024) and 1968 (2025), both of which premiered in the Venice Biennale Cinema Immersive exhibitions. Rose Bond likes to break the frame. Illuminating urban spaces, her past large-scale projections portray stories often overlooked. Installation sites include Toronto, Utrecht, Zagreb, Exeter, New York City and Portland. With roots in independent film, Bond’s paint-on-film animations are held in the MoMA Film Collection and have been screened internationally. Her media projects have received support from the American Film Institute, The Princess Grace Foundation, The Venice Biennale College Cinema Immersive, the Oregon Community Foundation, the British Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Bloomberg LP, the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the National Endowment for the Arts. Canadian born, Bond lives and works in Portland Oregon.
- Lance Weiler, Lance Weiler is a storyteller, artist, and pioneer in immersive and interactive narrative. His work spans film, theatre, games, and emerging technologies, exploring how stories can unfold across platforms and in collaboration with audiences. He is widely recognized for pushing the boundaries of traditional storytelling through participatory experiences and large-scale narrative experiments. Weiler is the creator of award winning projects such as Pandemic 1.0 and Where There’s Smoke, which blend live performance, digital media, and real-time audience interaction. His work has been presented at institutions and festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Art Basel, World Economic Forum events, the Tribeca Film Festival, and Lincoln Center, as well as multiple interactive programs with PAM CUT and its Tomorrow Theater. He serves as a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he is the Director of the Digital Storytelling Lab. Through both his creative practice and academic work, Weiler continues to shape the evolving landscape of immersive storytelling and narrative innovation.
- Julia Calabrese, Julia Calabrese is a multidisciplinary artist working with video and performance. Drawing on her background in visual art, she combines elements of theatre, dance, set design, and community engagement to create her distinctive visual language. Her work explores the absurdity of the female experience while engaging in conversations on authorship, identity, and media consumption. Calabrese was a PAM CUT Artist in Residency in 2024.
Fellows during the labs also work with a number of guest speakers on a variety of subjects including personal brand building, funding strategies, creative project case studies, mental well-being in the industry, and more.
Speakers and workshop leaders for this year include:
- Myriam Achard, Myriam Achard is the voice and face of PHI internationally. Her mission is twofold: to promote the development of local and international artistic avant-garde, while paving the way for new creators.
- Since 2006, she has worked with Phoebe Greenberg to promote PHI’s creative impulse, driven by an ambitious message: to develop and promote artistic innovation in the world. Thanks to its efforts, the group today occupies a prominent place in the artistic avant-garde, both as producer and distributor. PHI exports its creative impulse to three continents, from New York to Tokyo, via Venice.As head of new media partnerships and public relations, Myriam Achard travels the world in search of the most innovative and immersive works in order to present them in Montreal.
- Suzanne Donaldson, Suzanne Donaldson is an internationally regarded branding and content leader, celebrated for her expertise in art production—a progressive field that blends photography, video, animation, and more, all driven by her impeccable visual taste. With a major focus on visual storytelling and a powerful command over multidisciplinary production, Suzanne’s work transcends traditional boundaries, integrating elements of art direction, creative curation, and innovative execution and provides the human crafted POV that bridges the multi-dimensional requirements of a modern brand that compliments AI.
- Melanie Coombs, Melanie Coombs is a producer of award-winning film and television including Oscar® winner Harvie Krumpet, Annecy Grand Cristal winner Mary and Max and Co-Producer on Oscar® winner Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, produced by animation powerhouse ShadowMachine. She is Producer on In The Know, for Peacock NBCU at ShadowMachine. Melanie is an Ambassador for Screenrights, a member of Women in Animation, Women in Film and is a member of the Animation Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences®
- David Cress, David Cress is an award-winning media producer who has worked across nearly every corner of the entertainment industry, from feature films and television to commercials and documentaries. His credits include producing Portlandia, Shrill, Documentary Now!, and the Oregon-shot first season of The
Rehearsal. Earlier in his career, he worked with director Gus Van Sant on the films Paranoid Park and Restless. Advertising folks may also know him as the founder of the award-winning commercial production company Food Chain Films. Along the way, his work has earned a Peabody Award, multiple Emmy Award nominations, and honors from the Clio Awards and The One Show, as well a festival recognition at SXSW Film & TV Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and the Cannes Film Festival, plus a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award. Despite decades in the advertising and entertainment industry, he somehow remains optimistic—not jaded—and still believes a good story is worth the trouble. He likes to think he’s the kind of producer who can take a great idea and actually turn it into a finished project. That may mostly be true.
- Milton Lim, Milton Lim is an award-winning Canadian game designer, media artist, and performance creator based between Vancouver and Montréal. As a technologist, systems architect, programmer, writer, director, and performer, Milton’s research-based practice entwines public data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of rampant gamification, big data, and algorithmic culture. Often cheeky and audience/participant driven, his work challenges standard performance traditions including duration, linearity, and repeatability. Milton holds a BFA (Hons.) in theatre performance and psychology from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Concordia University in Montréal, researching the rampant gamification of civic life and the future of storytelling. He has created works for and performed in various international festivals and venues including PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), CanAsian Dance Festival (Toronto), Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), Carrefour international de théâtre festival (Quebec City), Seattle International Dance Festival, Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), The Institute of Contemporary Arts (Boston), Festival Internacional de Teatro Universitario / FITU at Teatro UNAM (Mexico City), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, Mayfest (Bristol), artsdepot (London), Battersea Arts Centre (London), New Theatre Royal (Portsmouth), Strike a Light Festival (Gloucester), Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Humboldt Forum (Berlin), Inteatro (Ancona), Hong Kong Arts Festival, Seoul Performing Arts Festival,soft/WALL/studs (Singapore), Sydney Festival, and more.
- Patrick Blenkarn, Patrick Blenkarn is a Canadian artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. He is a director, writer, programmer, animator, musician, and polyglot, whose research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and democracy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. He is the co-founder of STUDIO FUNFUG. His work and collaborations have been featured in performance festivals, galleries, museums, and film festivals, including Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), Seoul Performing Arts Festival, NYU Skirball (New York), Under the Radar (New York), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Humboldt Forum (Berlin), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, the Humboldt Forum (Berlin), IF Festival (Barcelona), UMS (Ann Arbor), and many more. In 2020, he was nominated for Best Projection Design at Toronto’s Dora Awards. His video game performance projects, asses.masses (with Milton Lim) and 2021 (with Cole Lewis and Sam Ferguson) have both received investments from the National Creation Fund of the National Arts Centre of Canada. Patrick has frequently been an artist in residence at galleries and theatres around the world, including USC Games (Los Angeles), The Arctic Circle (Svalbard), the Spitsbergen Artist Center (Svalbard), GlogauAIR (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver), Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Iceland), VIVO Media Arts (Vancouver), and The Theatre Centre (Toronto). Patrick is also the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan, Canada’s video archive of performance documentation. He has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King’s College and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. His writings on the politics of theatre have been published in Performance Matters, Theatre Research in Canada, GUTS, SpiderWebShow, and Canadian Theatre Review.
- Jody Arlington, Jody is an in-demand industry veteran with a wealth of experience in entertainment PR, issue advocacy and special events. She has helped launch several new business entities (Snagfilms, indiegogo) and currently consults on festivals, narrative and documentary independent film projects, books, and congressional education activities. She also has an impressive track record designing and implementing successful research-based and strategy-driven integrated public education campaigns inclusive of hill briefings, special events and performances. Along with Jamie Shor, and Kimball Stroud, Jody co-founded and sits on the Board for the Impact Arts + Film Fund. She served as Festival Director for the 2008 and 2012 Impact Film Festivals at the National Political Conventions. She serves on the Executive Committee for the IFP Festival Forum, the professional alliance of film festival professionals. Jody was a VP at Fleishman Hillard and a Manager at Burson-Marsteller, recognized for her award-winning work for the US Treasury and US Mint. Recent clients have included Sundance Institute/Sundance Film Festival, The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, Applegate Farms, The American Film Institute/AFI-Silverdocs, Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Futures without Violence, Snagfilms, Indiegogo, and dozens of independent narrative and documentary films at all stages of their distribution cycle. Jody has been quoted about the industry in the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. She has been published in the Washington Post featured in Washington Post Magazine, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” ABC’s “Let’s Talk Live” NBC News and NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She has covered the business of entertainment for International Documentary Magazine and Washington Life, and reviews graphic novels for NPR Books. Jody holds a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from Georgetown University and is the Director of the Georgetown Entertainment & Media Alliance, DC. She teaches Entertainment PR and Film Festival Studies at Georgetown University.
- Ryan Leverenz, Ryan Leverenz is the founder and principal consultant of Levernenz and Associates, a Portland-based brand strategy and public relations firm advising organizations at the intersection of business growth, community impact, and cultural engagement. With more than two decades of experience in strategic communications, his firm helps organizations tell stories that deepen public connection, assert cultural relevance, or increase shareholder value. The firm works in healthcare, private equity, education and the arts with clients like Hillsboro Medical Center, OHSU, Endeavor Capital, Perkins Coie, The Eight Seconds Rodeo, L’Echelle Bistro, and others. Ryan’s past work in the arts has included The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Portland Creative Conference, The Launch of PDX Live, and the launch of PICA’s TBA Festival. Born and raised in Portland before working in New York and San Francisco, Ryan is passionate about exporting the story of the city and its people to the world.
- Ryat Yezbick, Ryat Yezbick is a visual artist who explores the body, memory, and the politics of witnessing in the era of digital surveillance and decentralized global conflict. Figuring their lived experience centrally in their work, Yezbick addresses a complex set of questions around security, gender, home, family, love, violence, power, and responsibility within the context of the crumbling U.S. empire. They work in a variety of mediums – notably live performance, experimental documentary, installation, new media, and drawing – that have garnered support from audiences and curators internationally. They are a published author, multi-time grant recipient, and faculty member in the Narrative and Emerging Media Program at Arizona State University. They are a former MIT Open Documentary Lab Fellow and a current ONX Studio Fellow. Their work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Melbourne, Glasgow, and Athens, and in notable group exhibitions and performances at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Los Angeles), REDCAT (LA), Materials & Applications (LA), Human Resources (LA), The Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), Tribeca Immersive (NY), Glasgow International 2018 (Glasgow), The Banff Center for the Arts and Creativity (Banff), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Space One (Seoul), the Bangkok Biennial MAHA Pavilion (Bangkok), LAXART (LA), Craft Contemporary (LA), the Queer Biennial (LA), TRIBECA Immersive (NY), and New Images (Paris).
- Sue De Beer, Sue de Beer’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY; the MuHKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CA; and the Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the New Museum, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; the Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany; the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany; the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Austria; the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; and the Museum of Modern Art, Busan, South Korea. De Beer’s two-channel video installation, Hans & Grete, was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has also completed numerous commissions of public art works at locations around the world, including: 1331 Yonge Street, Toronto, Canada; the High Line, New York, NY; and Public Art Fund, Times Square, New York, NY. De Beer’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; and the Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2016 and received a prestigious Pollock Krasner Foundation Artist’s Grant in 2025. De Beer received her B.F.A. from Parsons School of Design in 1995, and her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1998; she lives and works in Cold Spring, NY.
- Lauren Wittels, Lauren Wittels’ career at New York gallery Luhring Augustine spans decades, illustrating a deep commitment to the institution and the artists it represents. She initially joined the gallery in 1989, serving as its sole full-time employee, a testament to her early involvement in its operations. After six years, she departed in 1995 to establish her own gallery, gaining further entrepreneurial experience within the art market. Her return to Luhring Augustine in 2011 marked a significant reunion. Wittels resumed her leadership role within the gallery, contributing to its continued development. Her dedication and expertise were recognized in 2019 when she was made a partner, solidifying her integral position within the gallery’s management structure. Wittels has been a vocal proponent of the gallery’s artist-centric approach and its emphasis on fostering long-term relationships with both artists and collectors. She has articulated the importance of maintaining this focus, particularly in an evolving art market where sustained engagement can be challenging. Her perspective underscores a foundational ethos that she has actively helped to cultivate and maintain throughout her tenure.
- Oved Valadez, Oved Valadez, IDSA, is a founding partner and creative director of INDUSTRY. He is an accomplished product designer and brand storyteller. Throughout his career he has led category busting design and marketing initiatives with results. Valadez is an expert at crafting the Big Idea, shifting markets and delivering impact to people. As a creative director, he has collaborated with companies that include Nike, Starbucks, IHG Hotels, Samsung, Autodesk, TDK, Coca-Cola, and Intel among others. Formerly a lead designer at IDEO, Ziba and Kaleidoscope—Valadez’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, Hypebeast, Wall Street Journal, Wired and Cool Hunting.
- Joe Bowden, Joe Bowden is a mixed-race Japanese and Korean writer, director, and cinematographer. Born in Denver, Colorado and raised in Anchorage, Alaska he started making films as a teenager in the late 1990s on a Sony Handicam he’d used to make skateboarding videos. After dropping out of high school and losing his father in 1999 he moved to Portland, Oregon to pursue film and music co-founding record label Bladen County Records in 2007 and playing in various bands. In 2016 he founded Desert Island Studios a production company dedicated to creating entertaining and challenging films with equity and inclusion at the heart of the process. In 2020 he directed and was the cinematographer of the award winning short film Private Chat starring Ashley Song. In 2021 he wrote and directed Two Detectives, a short film starring frequent collaborator and avant-garde filmmaker Noel David Taylor that premiered at the Austin Comedy Film Festival and was a Finalist for Best Director at the Portland Comedy Film Festival. In 2021 he was the cinematographer of the feature film Song of Summer directed by Kelly Godell. In 2022 he wrote, directed, and was the Director of Photography for Planet #5, a sci-fi short/music video that won the award for best music video at Oregon Short Film Festival. Later that year he was the cinematographer for Color Theories Directed by Devin Febbroriello, which has screened at Dances With Films NY, FilmFort, BUFF Malmo, Local Sightings Film Festival in Seattle, and Portland Film Festival. In 2023 he was the cinematographer for At Skyview Enterprises a short Sci-fi thriller produced by Portland’s Catalyst Film Collective, which premiered at Screamfest LA. In the summer of 2024 wrote and directed a romantic comedy sci-fi short called Empano Gleasium, which stars Ashley Song, Noel Taylor, and Treasure Lunan and premiered at Portland Panorama Film Festival.
- Dejana Peric, Dejana Peric is a Brand Director at Wieden+Kennedy. She graduated from the University of Georgia and started her career in Advertising at Atlanta agency Fitzco (though she credits working at a bridal store through high school and college as her first foray into account management). In addition to partnering with the Portland Art Museum, Dejana has worked with brands like Fisher-Price, Autodesk, Expedia Group, DoorDash, and more. She loves helping craft powerful, creative points of view that can change hearts and minds. One enduring POV of hers is that cats are the perfect animal.
- Heather Smith Harvey, Heather Smith Harvey is a Group Executive Producer at Wieden+Kennedy. She specializes in art and photography production and has worked with brands like Nike, Expedia, Eli Lilly, Old Spice, and more over the course of her two decades at W+K. Heather also helps curate and produce gallery shows at W+K, partnering with artists and brands alike. She loves to spend her free time hanging with family and friends, indulging in fashion, and creating floral arrangements for her pop-up shop, Fleur.
- Jazia Hammoudi, Jazia Hammoudi is a curator and XR producer specializing in contemporary art and immersive technologies. She holds degrees in art history and museum studies from the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), and has held positions at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, the Barbican Centre, the Newark Museum, and Artnet. She got her start in XR as studio manager and researcher for Jakob Kudsk Steensen, and has brought projects to SXSW, the Venice Biennale, and Serpentine Galleries. On the side, Jazia leads art and architecture tours in her native Morocco as part of a larger effort to bring exposure to North African artists.
Ultimately, the program is focused on improving equity, creative diversity, and sustainability for cinematic storytellers making work in many forms. In PAM CUT’s ongoing commitment to inclusion, a minimum of half of the participants in the Sustainability Labs are artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, artists of color, women artists, trans/nonbinary, or disabled artists. The program also brings together both Northwest artists and international artists, uplifting the region’s talent to a global scale and creating lasting interconnected cohorts that can support one another now and into the future.
“Having overseen this program in its last four iterations, I have seen the impact the in-depth week of Sustainability Labs has had on these talented makers,” said Ben Popp, PAM CUT Head of Artist Services. “They start the week off by talking about themselves and their projects in one way, however after hearing from so many professionals and working with their mentors, come Friday, despite being tired, they will have grown in confidence, determination, and an even stronger understanding of how they present themselves as storytellers and artists. What might have seemed only a potential avenue for securing the ability to make a project turns into a very real opportunity to put themself forward as a storytelling force of nature.
“Now, in the fifth year of Sustainability Labs, we have been able to isolate particular segments of the program which allow the fellows to focus their attention on growing their confidence and voice as they put themselves forward as the incredibly unique and talented storytellers they are to some very respectable and professional industry leaders.”
A Lasting Impact
Multidisciplinary film and new media artist Angela Washko, who participated as a fellow in PAM CUT’s inaugural Sustainability Labs in 2021, has spoken of the program’s benefit to her artistic career. “There were actual tangible results from that lab, which I can’t say is always true for every professional development workshop I’ve participated in,” Washko told Willamette Week before a screening of her film Workhorse Queen at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater in 2024. “Sustainability Labs for me was nothing short of incredible.”
Other past fellows also speak of the lasting benefit of participating in PAM CUT’s Sustainability Labs:
2025 Fellow Ronak Shah: “The Sustainability Labs changed me in ways that I didn’t recognize right away. The transformation was gradual and almost quiet, but it became undeniable over time. I began to trust my voice and talents in a deeper way. I learned to believe in myself more, value my abilities, and let myself imagine dreams bigger than I had previously allowed myself. More importantly, I followed through on them. The mentors I met through the Labs remain an essential part of my life. Their guidance, generosity, and belief in me continue to inspire, encourage, and challenge me.”
2025 fellow Ariella Tai: “Overall, I got a lot from this experience and am grateful for the connections I was able to make with other artists through my participation in the Labs. Being able to learn more about the career journeys and struggles of other artists working in similar fields and troubleshoot both personal and professional roadblocks was really generative and productive for me during a transitional stage in my own career.”
2025 Fellow Paige Wood: “It’s one of the few fellowships that looks at moving image storytelling as a multi-medium practice, making it the best equipped for also training / teaching artists and filmmakers how to expand their work beyond just a single screen.”
SUPPORT:
The 2026 Sustainability Labs are supported in part from generous contributions from Joan Cirillo and Roger Cooke. Major support for PAM CUT is provided by Mary and Don Blair, LAIKA, James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, Business Oregon, Holly Levow, and the Ritz Family.
Learn more about PAM CUT’s Sustainability Labs at portlandartmuseum.org/artist-services/sustainability-labs
