2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards
Feb 13, 2016 – May 8, 2016
The Museum’s fourth biennial awards exhibition, 2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards features eight outstanding artists including a two-person artist’s collaborative. Four of the eight artists are immigrants, coming to the Northwest from Asia and Europe and contributing to the exhibition’s conceptual strength with a fresh view of America. Works in the exhibition address global and regional humanist issues —prejudice, belonging, war, the evolution of power, omnipresent technology, and the environment. Ranging from large-scale installations to intimate ceramic portraits, the multimedia exhibition showcases works in combinations of neon, video, glass, drawing, painting, and clay with innovative approaches to both new and traditional media.At the opening reception one artist will receive the $10,000 Arlene Schnitzer prize selected by the Museum’s curatorial staff. From nomination to final prize, the biennial awards process delivers a two-fold benefit: It allows the Portland Art Museum to identify a number of the Northwest’s exceptional talents, and it provides the museum with a far deeper understanding of the new work taking place in the region by both established and emerging artists. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog, artists’ lectures and other exhibit related programs.Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art, and invited curatorial advisor Jessica Hunter-Larsen, curator of IDEA Space, Interdisciplinary Experimental Arts, at Colorado College, received over 200 nominations from respected regional arts professionals of outstanding contemporary artists from Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Nominees were selected on the basis of quality, innovation, relevance to community or global issues, continuity of vision and dedication to studio practice. Hunter-Larsen and Laing-Malcolmson reviewed the applications to select 24 four finalists, from which the group of seven award winners was chosen.
Organized by the Portland Art Museum and curated by Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art.
Using drawing and video, Haven employs words and geometric spatial relationships to illustrate the fragmented bombardment of technology on the human psyche in the new millennium. With language and mixed media, she binds together two- and three-dimensional imagery to create elegant modernist objects that suggest unanswered questions.
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Lead Pencil Studio, Seattle, Washington
Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo use video, sculpture, drawing, installation and photography to reveal spatial qualities of the built environment that influence human behavior. This combination of styles expands the understanding of the constructed surface, which scripts a large portion of human movement and perception.
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Dana Lynn Louis, Portland, Oregon
Louis is inspired by the human body and its connection to timeless and fascinating systems of the natural and constructed worlds—linking time, space, and energy through dynamic multimedia installations. Creating spaces with intimate and large-scale drawings, light projections, and sculptural objects, she uses glass, light, and shadow to achieve a glitteringly magical environment.
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Helen O’Toole, Seattle, Washington
O’Toole creates a prolonged moment where the painting’s vast space evokes an image with a resonating emotional depth. Metaphorically employing the moody landscape of rural Ireland, she channels a deep-seated pain and misery resulting from a past lived amidst a compilation of grudges, suspicion, and violence.
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Akio Takamori, Seattle, Washington
Takamori’s new, 40-foot-long, lyrically painted clay installation addresses the war torn world through the faces of its threatened children. In our contemporary society of a great mix of people, these diverse faces remind us that life begins unblemished by clashing ideologies. Additionally, a series of serene ceramic landscapes quoted from historic Japanese and European paintings provide a hopeful and contemplative view of the natural environment.
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Willem Volkersz, Bozeman, Montana
Volkersz has an immigrant’s fascination with America. Arriving in Seattle from Amsterdam shortly after World War II, he began photographing a newly discovered landscape of billboards, vernacular architecture, and neon signs. Over time, he became fascinated with roadside art and pop culture: larger-than-life advertising figures, postcards, and travel souvenirs. Volkersz creates a charmingly critical narrative around his Dutch heritage and American citizenship.
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Samantha Wall, Portland, Oregon
Wall seeks to communicate the interior emotional state that separates one’s sense of self from their body. Growing up as an ethnically diverse child in South Korea and the American South, she learned to navigate between social and cultural boundaries. Her quietly powerful work utilizes modest materials, such as graphite or charcoal, to build a supple, interlaced texture of marks which are suspended on the surface of paper.
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In This is the Future, artist Hito Steyerl combines storytelling, video projection, sculpture, and spatial intervention to envision a potential future of empowered plants evolving through artificial intelligence. The exhibition opens with a short film about the long-held human desire to predict the future and the failure to achieve this using AI. Join us for this opening talk, where Steyerl looks more closely at how so-called AI art has regressed in the meantime.
Hito Steyerl (born 1 January 1966) is a German filmmaker and writer, and lives in Berlin.
Purchase ticketsCo-sponsored by Reed College Art Department and the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery
This is the Future, by the film and new media artist Hito Steyerl, explores a vibrant, imagined garden through an immersive environment of video projection, sculpture, and architectural intervention. Steyerl is one of the foremost artists offering critical reflections on the complexities of the digital world, global capitalism, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for society. Join us for an educator program to deepen your understanding of Steyerl’s work, make connections to your teaching, and prepare for a class visit.
5:15 – 5:50 p.m.
Main Museum, 2nd floor
Self-guided visit to This is the Future. Please enter the museum on the courtyard side by the gift shop.
6 – 7:30 p.m.
Miller Gallery, Mark Building
Presentation and discussion with Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, and Learning and Community Partnerships staff.
Admission is free. Light refreshments provided. PDU credits available.
Reserve tickets
Artist Instructor: Heather Dunaway Smith
Cost: $50 – Get $20 off if you also register for Immersive Ink // Bridging 2D to 3D with Augmented Reality
This course will cover the unique capabilities/constraints of AR, the current AR landscape (technologies/tools), as well as AR design principles (including visual design, interaction design, and audio design.) We will also cover the workflow, best practices, and how to go about building and learning in an emergent field. This course is designed for everyone, but may be especially helpful for folks working in another creative field.
Artist Instructor bio:
Heather Dunaway Smith is an award-winning interactive artist that blends storytelling, illustration, animation, sound design, and interaction design into immersive art experiences. After a childhood spent in the theater (performing and playwriting), she became interested in blurring the line between art and audience, by creating experiences where the participant is the protagonist.
After receiving her B.A. in Interactive Multimedia from Columbia, she began working with a diverse range of clients, from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies (Snap, Adobe, Meta, Harley Davidson, The Art Institute of Chicago, Highlights), on a wide range of projects, including websites, apps, mobile games, immersive museum exhibits, and AR/VR artworks. In 2020, she was awarded an AR artist residency at Adobe. In 2021, she became a Snap partner and began designing and developing experiences for their AR glasses, the Next Spectacles. Her art has been exhibited around the globe (Paris, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Vancouver, Denver, and Portland) and in 2022, she curated and produced the AR Art Gallery at Adobe MAX.
Ages 18+
Artist Instructor: Heather Dunaway Smith
Cost: $300 – Get $20 off if you also register for AR // Navigating a New Medium
Transform your artwork into a spatial AR art experience!
The workshop will start with an introduction to Aero, Adobe’s free AR software. Then, we will cover AR workflow, best practices, and design principles, including visual design, interaction design, and audio design. Students will then build their own AR experiences using their original artwork as the anchor for the AR experience. At the end of the day, we will create a gallery of the artworks and will share the newly created AR experiences together.
Required Materials:
- A digital artwork (to be printed & used as the image anchor for the AR experience)
- A laptop with your favorite art creation software (Photoshop, After Effects, Blender, etc) and Adobe Aero installed.
- A mobile device (phone or tablet) with Adobe Aero installed.
- PAM CUT can provide if necessary
Prerequisite:
comfort with digital art-making tools
Artist Instructor bio:
Heather Dunaway Smith is an award-winning interactive artist that blends storytelling, illustration, animation, sound design, and interaction design into immersive art experiences. After a childhood spent in the theater (performing and playwriting), she became interested in blurring the line between art and audience, by creating experiences where the participant is the protagonist.
After receiving her B.A. in Interactive Multimedia from Columbia, she began working with a diverse range of clients, from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies (Snap, Adobe, Meta, Harley Davidson, The Art Institute of Chicago, Highlights), on a wide range of projects, including websites, apps, mobile games, immersive museum exhibits, and AR/VR artworks. In 2020, she was awarded an AR artist residency at Adobe. In 2021, she became a Snap partner and began designing and developing experiences for their AR glasses, the Next Spectacles. Her art has been exhibited around the globe (Paris, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Vancouver, Denver, and Portland) and in 2022, she curated and produced the AR Art Gallery at Adobe MAX.
Enjoy free admission all day in celebration of the special exhibitions special exhibitions Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe and Jeffrey Gibson’s They Come From Fire and To Name An Other. Families and children are invited to storytelling sessions and art making activities with Indigenous educators, Karen Kitchen and Sunshine Guzman, along with an array of presentations, performances and activities planned in collaboration with Future Generations Collaborative, a community-centered organization that offers support to those impacted by FASD.
More information on special programs and Free Day schedule to come! You may reserve your free admission tickets online beginning the Wednesday prior to the free day. A limited number of tickets are also available for walk-in visitors on the day of.
Annually, 1/3 of all visitors enjoy the Museum for free or receive admission at highly reduced prices.
Since 2008, the Museum’s quarterly Miller Family Free Days have welcomed the community to visit for free and enjoy special exhibitions and programming.
Other options available year-round include free admission for children 17 and under, plus more here: Admission Access Programs
Miller Family Free Days are generously supported by Sharon L. Miller and Family. Museum access programs are generously supported by the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation, Bank of America, the William H. and Mary L. Bauman Foundation, the Lamb Baldwin Foundation, the Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation of the Oregon Community Foundation, the Pamplin Foundation Endowment for the Arts, Members of the Portland Art Museum, and the Citizens of Portland through the Arts and Education Access Fund.
In this one-and-a-half-day event, artists will join academic and community scholars to explore ideas about Oscar Howe’s life and legacy introduced in the Dakota Modern exhibition and book. Speakers will discuss the role of cultural authority in Howe’s practice as well as his art in relation to Native American politics. Other topics include the impact of Howe’s work as an educator through the summer workshop for Native students he founded, and the ongoing expression of his legacy through the work of Dakota and Lakota artists today. The symposium will begin with an inspiring keynote lecture by Lakota artist Dyani White Hawk the evening of April 14.
Speakers and other details coming soon.
Purchase tickets
Enjoy free admission all day in celebration of youth arts and the long-standing community partnership between the Museum and Portland Public Schools HeART of Portland: K-12 Student Arts Showcase. Information on special programs will be shared as the date gets closer. You may reserve your free admission tickets online beginning the Wednesday prior to the free day. A limited number of tickets are also available for walk-in visitors on the day of.
Annually, 1/3 of all visitors enjoy the Museum for free or receive admission at highly reduced prices.
Since 2008, the Museum’s quarterly Miller Family Free Days have welcomed the community to visit for free and enjoy special exhibitions and programming.
Other options available year-round include free admission for children 17 and under, plus more here: Admission Access Programs
Miller Family Free Days are generously supported by Sharon L. Miller and Family. Museum access programs are generously supported by the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation, Bank of America, the William H. and Mary L. Bauman Foundation, the Lamb Baldwin Foundation, the Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation of the Oregon Community Foundation, the Pamplin Foundation Endowment for the Arts, Members of the Portland Art Museum, and the Citizens of Portland through the Arts and Education Access Fund.
Enjoy free admission all day in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in collaboration with Oregon Rises Above Hate. Free admission to select local museums will take place throughout the month of May. Information on special programs will be shared as the date gets closer. You may reserve your free admission tickets online beginning the Wednesday prior to the free day. A limited number of tickets are also available for walk-in visitors on the day of.
Annually, 1/3 of all visitors enjoy the Museum for free or receive admission at highly reduced prices.
Since 2008, the Museum’s quarterly Miller Family Free Days have welcomed the community to visit for free and enjoy special exhibitions and programming.
Other options available year-round include free admission for children 17 and under, plus more here: Admission Access Programs
Miller Family Free Days are generously supported by Sharon L. Miller and Family. Museum access programs are generously supported by the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation, Bank of America, the William H. and Mary L. Bauman Foundation, the Lamb Baldwin Foundation, the Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation of the Oregon Community Foundation, the Pamplin Foundation Endowment for the Arts, Members of the Portland Art Museum, and the Citizens of Portland through the Arts and Education Access Fund.
The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art