BEAUTIES

Recent Drawings by Robert Hanson.

PNCA Faculty Emeritus Robert Hanson’s recent drawings are part of his long-term and ongoing fascination with the human head. Hanson employs a variety of lines, marks, and bits of subjective color to reinvent what he is seeing. The resulting drawing is not a portrait, but a surprising variation on the original. A long-time Professor of Painting and Drawing at PNCA, Hanson has remained a vital working artist in the Pacific Northwest since the early ‘70s.image: Robert Hanson, Eye Shadow, 2007.Photo Lommasson Pictures LLC

Ticket info: Free and Open to the Public

An Artist’s Look at Lascaux

George Johanson '50

Artist, alumnus, and Faculty Emeritus George Johanson ’50 will provide an artist’s look at the prehistoric cave art of Lascaux and discusses his recent trip to France. The lecture features images of these works and Johanson’s insight on what these mysterious images tell us about the nature of painting and the nature of homo sapiens as visual thinkers.

Ticket info: Free and open to the public.

MFA Chat: Sara Greenberger Rafferty

Sara Greenberger Rafferty received a BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, and an MFA in Sculpture and New Genres from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York. Her work has been exhibited in New York at venues including P.S.1, Artists Space, Museum 52, Mary Boone Gallery, Wallspace Gallery, K.S. Art, Andrew Kreps Gallery; at Sandroni Rey Gallery and Champion Fine Art in Los Angeles; PICA in Portland; Sutton Lane in Paris; ARTSPACE in Auckland; and in Pescara, Italy. She is the co-editor of the annual publication North Drive Press. Her own writing about art and comedy has been published in several notable art and culture publications. Sara Greenberger Rafferty lives and works in Brooklyn.

Ticket info: Free and open to the public.

Cascade Festival of African Films Lecture

Charles Burnett, Carl Lumbly, and Edwin Santiago in Conversation

Charles Burnett, Carl Lumbly and Edwin Santiago’s talk will focus their recent film “Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation” as part of the Cascade Festival of African Films. The screening is scheduled for 7pm on February 20 at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Ore. Burnett and Santiago have been working together for several years on such films as “Nighjohn,” “Warming by the Devil’s Fire,” and “Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation.”“Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation” follows the legend of Samuel Nujoma (Carl Lumbly), Namibia’s first president and a prominent leader in the struggle for independence from apartheid South Africa. The film opens when Nujoma is 16-years-old, the country is under constant oppression from South Africa, and the young man learns that he is the direct descendant of royalty. He sets out to live with an aunt, and befriends a religious man (Danny Glover) who has maintained a low profile after legal troubles stemming from a staged car accident. Eventually Nujoma, in the face of severe racism, forms the SWAPO political movement that, with the assistance of some foreign governments, eventually earns Namibia its independence. Later on, a boycott and massacre of protesters turn up the heat, forcing Nujoma into exile.Co-sponsored by PNCA, Portland Community College and the Cascade Festival of African Films.

Ticket info: Free and open to the public.

Photography Lecture by Craig Smith

Craig Smith presents a lecture entitled “Demonstration Image: On the Use of Photography in Relational Art.” Smith’s current research and practice investigates human-to-human interactivity in contemporary cultural production.
Smith teaches Photography Practice at the London College of Communication and is a research fellow of the Photography and Archive Research Centre at the University of the Arts, London.
Smith will be featured in an upcoming solo exhibition and monograph entitled: “Training Manual for Relational Art” with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council and the University of the Arts London.His photography, performance art and lectures have been featured internationally at venues including the PS1MOMA Contemporary Art Institute, The Tate Modern, The George Eastman House and galleries including Galerie Schuster Photo (Berlin), RARE Art (New York) and White Columns (New York).

Ticket info: Free and open to the public.

Andrea Merkx

Artist Talk

Andrea Merkx will talk about her work in the Feldman Gallery exhibit “I know nothing of the weather when I know it is either raining or not raining” as well as her other work in mediums like printmaking and photography.

Andrea Merkx (b. 1978, Albuquerque NM) is an artist and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in 2000, and her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2006. In works that mimic early video – from artist-made to MTV – she points to both the limited construction of self in popular culture and the essential narcissism implicit in the myth of the artist as autonomous producer. Experimenting with video in looping, repetitive formats, Merkx’s work draws from a decade of experience playing in rock bands. She has exhibited and performed at venues in New York such as Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art, The Armory Show, Jack Tilton Gallery, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, as well as the Bowery Ballroom and Irving Plaza.

Exhibition walk-through with curator Gabrielle Giattino

Starting off the exhibition entitled “I know nothing of the weather when I know it is either raining or not raining.” the exhibit curator Gabrielle Giattino will lead a walk-through of the Feldman Gallery + Project Space.

Gabrielle Giattino (b. 1975, New York) is a curator of international contemporary art, based in New York. Her studies in Art History began at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges where she focused on modern and contemporary art. She received her BA in 1998, followed by an MA degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London where she received her degree with high honors in Art History in 2001 focusing on early twentieth century European art with a thesis on French Dadaism. She worked on exhibitions and programs at the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art from 2002 to 2007 organizing and facilitating programs ranging from projects by established international artists such as Olivier Mosset, John Armleder, Ceal Floyer, Aleksandra Mir and Jim Shaw to producing new projects with emerging artists such as Mika Tajima/New Humans, Philippe Decrauzat, Bozidar Brazda and Loris Gréaud. Collaborating with curator Howie Chen she co-curated exhibitions and programs for the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and the Whitney Museum at Altria. In 2007, with Howie Chen, she co-founded DISPATCH, a curatorial office in downtown New York to focus on curatorial projects. They have created programs both for the Dispatch Office as well as for the Performa 07 Biennial the Festival des Urbaines in Lausanne Switzerland and the Present Future section of Artissima in Turin, Italy. She has received curatorial grants from NYSCA and from the Fonds Etant Donés for research in Paris. In 2008 she received a curatorial fellowship in residence in Malmo Sweden, and curated an exhibition, Subject Index, for the Malmo Konstmuseum.

Presentation by artist Ellie Ga.

In conjunction with the exhibition “I know nothing of the weather when I know it is either raining or not raining”, curated by Gabrielle Giattino, the artist Ellie Ga will give an hour-long presentation, animating her installation in the Project Space. Since spending nearly six months as artist-in-residence aboard the Tara, a polar schooner, sailing the Arctic Circle during the winter of 2008, Ga has been working with the material gathered from her experience and research into the terms and rituals of daily life of her and the other 9 crew members aboard the Tara. For the presentation, which will take place inside her installation in the Project Space of the Feldman Gallery, Ga will give an insiders look to life aboard the Tara.

Ellie Ga (born 1976 in New York City) lives and works in New York and is currently based in Palermo, Sicily. Her projects explore the limits of photographic documentation and spans a variety of mediums, often incorporating her exploratory writing, and generally culminating in lectures, slide-presentations, handmade books and instructional installations. After a year-long residency in the archives of the Explorer’s Club in New York, she spent the winter of 2007-08 as the artist-in-residence aboard the Tara, an arctic expedition in the North Pole. Her work from these projects has been exhibited recently at the Konstmuseum in Malmö, Galerie du Jour in Paris, Projekt 0047 in Oslo and at Dispatch in NYC. Ellie Ga is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse, an independent organization that publishes artistbooks and experimental poetry. She received her MFA from Hunter College in 2004.