RACC Blog

“Industry of Aloha,” an art installation by Kanani Miyamoto opens at the Portland Building, June 1 – June 24

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PORTLAND, ORE — Employing a unique color palette that ranges from vivid and natural to strange and artificial, artist Kanani Miyamoto has covered the Portland Building Installation Space with images of tropical Hawaiian flora. (Miyamoto paints and creates block prints on paper and then attaches the paper in sheets to the surface of the wall.) But what appears familiar and known at first glance transitions into something more uncertain upon closer inspection…something compromised. According to the State of Hawai`i  6,414,197 tourists visited the islands this last year. Hawai`i is a valuable commodity. Unfortunately, the tourist industry has altered and negatively impacted traditional Hawaiian culture and the environment. While many generations of Hawaiians have depended on tourism for economic stability, are they working seven days a week, eight hours a day selling a false Hawai`i?

About the artist: Kanani Miyamoto was born and raised in Hawai`i and now lives in Portland, Oregon. She is a recent graduate of Pacific Northwest College of Art’s MFA program in print media and has shown her work in Oregon, Idaho and Hawai`i. “I have lived in Portland for five years and visit Hawai`i as often as I can.  Returning to the islands as a visitor has really opened my eyes to the tourist industry.”

Meet the artist and make a lei: Join us for an “Aloha Friday” on June 24th at 3:30 pm at the Portland Building. Hele Mai, come meet the artist and talk story as you make a lei!

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday. Industry of Aloha is open now and runs through Friday, June 24th.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to  http://racc.org/installationspace.

Coming to the Portland Building Installation Space: “Industry of Aloha,” an installation by Kanani Miyamoto, May 31 – June 24

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Using a color palette that can range from vivid and nature to strange and artificial, artist Kanani Miyamoto will cover the Installation Space with images of tropical Hawaiian flora that she paints and block prints onto the walls. But what appears familiar and known at first glance can transition into something more uncertain upon closer inspection…something compromised. According to the State of Hawai`i  6,414,197 tourists visited the islands this last year. Hawai`i is a valuable commodity. Unfortunately, the tourist industry has negatively impacted traditional Hawaiian culture and the environment. While many generations of Hawaiians have depended on tourism for economic stability, are they working seven days a week, eight hours a day selling a false Hawai`i?

Each year the Installation Space series reserves several exhibition opportunities for art students at the university level. The format and presentation requirements for these installations are identical to those for established professional artists, RACC created this separate eligibility category to help introduce emerging talents. Kanani Miyamoto has just completed her MFA in Print Media at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday. For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to http://racc.org/installationspace.

Kanani Miyamoto’s installation at the Portland Building draws on her mastery of print media presented in large scale, as seen in here in Shrine Base from 2015.

Kanani Miyamoto’s installation at the Portland Building draws on her mastery of print media presented in large scale, as seen in here in Shrine Base from 2015.

Artist in Residence at the Portland Archives and Records Center

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RACC has tapped artist Sabina Zeba Haque to be part of a year-long residency at the Portland Archives and Records Center (PARC). The artist will collaborate with PARC staff to explore Portland neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue and to unravel the history of exclusion and inclusion in this community. This is the second in a series of public art residencies funded by the City of Portland Percent for Art Program administered by RACC.

For many years, 82nd Avenue served as the easternmost boundary of the city of Portland. In 1980s Portland expanded the city’s boundaries roughly to 182nd Avenue, annexing approximately 140,000 people. Long-time residents, neighborhood activists and an influx of South East Asian immigrants came together in this evolving geographical space in a decade marked by economic and political turmoil. Today, with a quarter of the city’s population and nearly 40% of its youth, East Portland is the most diverse and rapidly growing section of the city.

Through her residency, Haque will explore how the neighborhood’s identity has evolved over the last 35 years, and how Portland can preserve its past while fostering a more inclusive civic identity.  Using oral histories, archival sources, and theater workshops, the artist will create a voice-by-voice community portrait of the communities around 82nd Avenue via hand-drawn animation and video. The project seeks to give nuance and form to this vibrant neighborhood and works toward civic equity through art and creative community engagement.

Haque is an artist of South Asian descent raised in Karachi, Pakistan. Her work combines oral histories, video performance and hand-drawn animation to explore the turbulent transformations of identity and place. She received an MFA in Painting from Boston University and teaches at Portland State University. In 2015 Haque was a TEDxMtHood speaker and artist-in-residence.

UPDATE: Annexation & Assimilation: Exploring City Archives East of 82nd Ave

Haque’s project exhibition, Annexation & Assimilation: Exploring City Archives East of 82nd Ave, will be on display at Open Signal from February 16 – April 28, 2017. Public viewing hours will be Tuesday – Friday (10:00am -10:00pm) and Saturday – Sunday (noon – 8:00pm).

On April 20th, there will be a panel discussion: Policy and Imagination: Place-Keeping in Portland, How Artists and City Managers Can Envision the Future City at Open Signal.

For more information contact Kristin Calhoun at kcalhoun@racc.org or 503.823.5401.

First Thursday Night Lights

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Thirteen multidisciplinary artists enrolled in the University of Oregon’s BFA Digital Arts program in Portland, Oregon who call themselves Sunny Side Up, will project their work for the April 7, 2016, First Thursday Night Lights. Their work spans several medias, including graphic design, illustration, programming, animation, interactive design, photography, drawing, installation and beyond. They say, “We are visual communicators who use our imaginations to make the world a better place, one art experience at a time. After all, life is always better served Sunny Side Up!”

The group includes Jiana Chen, Kathleen Darby, Anthony Hou, Jonny Kim, Sam Lillard, Clara Munro, Anna Pearson, Alex Prestrelski, Brandon Rains, Marion Rosas, Deandra “Sweet Dee” Stokes, Justus Vega, Kendall Wagner.

First Thursday Night Lights
April 7, 2016, Sundown to 9:00p.m.
411 NW Park Ave- North Wall, facing Glisan Street

Coming to the Portland Building Installation Space: “Radical Positivity,” an installation by Larry Yes, April 25 – May 20.

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Picked for its punch of color and upbeat message, the Installation Space selection panel said “yes” to Larry, an artist whose work focuses on love and human connection, and can be described as a meditation on color and joy. The exhibition will cover the walls from floor to ceiling with “positive words” and symbols rendered on wood planks in the artist’s signature style—a combination of hand inscribed text, graphics, and color that scans the rainbow.

The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to http://racc.org/installationspace.

Jenna Reineking’s “Temporal Ecologies,” March 21 – April 15, heads up a new season of installations at the Portland Building

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PORTLAND, ORE – Artist Jenna Reineking’s upcoming installation in the lobby of the Portland Building, Temporal Ecologies, is designed to transform the architecture of the exhibition space into an activated environment; her choice of materials to accomplish this—the humble brown paper lunch bag: “I recently have become interested in creating systems using forms repeated in incremental units that can range from finite to infinite based on the constraints of the space.”

The choice to use inexpensive, readily accessible materials allows the artist to create environments that ask the viewer to revalue the mundane. Reineking’s process includes carefully manipulating or “sculpting” each bag and adhering them one by one to fit and transform the geometry of the Installation Space. She expects to use over 300 individual bags, “They will grow from the corners and utilize the walls, ceiling, and floor…and will be recycled upon completion of the exhibition.” In the process the artist hopes to transcend the “thing-ness” of these simple, overlooked manufactured goods and create a new set of biomorphic forms—design elements that are reminiscent of nature and living organisms but do not aim to directly reproduce them.

The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday. Temporal Ecologies opens March 21st and runs through April 15th.


A New Season at the Installation Space:  Jenna Reineking’s installation kicks off a new season of exhibitions at the Portland Building. Over the course of the next year, nine artists will present installation based and experimental media installations in the small gallery space adjacent to the building’s lobby. Each four week long installation has been chosen by the program selection panel to present challenging and diverse work that encourages visitors to reexamine their expectations of what art is and can be.

New Season Schedule and Project Descriptions:

Jenna Reineking  March 21 – April 15, 2016

Temporal Ecologies – Description above

Larry Yes  April 25 – May 20, 2016

Radical Positivity – Picked for its punch of color and upbeat message, the selection panel said “yes” to Larry, an artist who’s work focuses on love and human connection and can be described as a meditation on color and joy. The installation will cover the walls of the space from floor to ceiling with positive words and symbols rendered in every color of the rainbow.

Hannah Hertrich  May 31 – June 24, 2016

Delicate Home – Many of us think of home as our foundation, an extension of self that is a base of stability, but is that perception based on reality? Hertrich’s Delicate Home explores the “fragility of self” by focusing on our notion of home. The installation stages a series of model houses constructed out of mirrors perilously set below gathering clouds of stone.

Yalena Roslaya  July 5 – August 5, 2016

Visual Sound – Roslaya will record sounds that occur within the Portland Building and translate them into sound waves sketched visually on the wall and rendered aurally via ceramic sound wave sculptures. Five of these sculptures will fill the space, each with a mp3 driver enclosed in the heart of the vessel. “The idea of visually displaying sound is inspired by my experience with hearing-motion synesthesia…I would like to share this experience with viewers through my installation and hear their response.”

Bukola Koiki  August 15 – September 9, 2016

JJC (Journey Just Come) – Koiki highlights the challenges immigrants face by spotlighting the linguistic slang and vernacular that people often need to learn and employ when navigating the spaces between and within disparate cultures. “As a Nigerian-American immigrant myself, I am particularly interested in pidgin, which is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common…In Nigeria, a country of over 500 known languages, communication can be truly daunting at times.” To explore this idea of communication and miscommunication, the artist will fill the Installation Space with a profusion of brightly colored flags that showcase Pidgin English sayings extracted from the local language in Lagos, Nigeria.

Benz and Chang  September 19 – October 14, 2016

The Bridge, 1910 – Based on an archival photo of the Hawthorne Bridge under construction, Benz and Change offer a thoughtful and dynamic homage to the crews that built Portland’s oldest existing Willamette River crossing. The Bridge, a set of four, 8 foot by 6 foot, hand cut silhouettes crafted in wood, will extend from the back wall of the exhibition space to render a life-sized composite image of the historic photo.

Alex Luboff  November 14 – December 9, 2016

Pipeline Obstruction Pathway – Takes the form of large (one foot diameter), hand-build pipelines installed to purposefully obstruct and obscure entry into the exhibition space—a project that will get viewers thinking about all the energy infrastructure in our lives. Are the pipes, deftly assembled from plywood, a network of interlaced craft objects? Or are they elements of a dystopian “extractive energy landscape” we may be headed for?

Emily Myers  January 17 – February 10, 2017

Mechanical Rituals – A comment on just how industrial our food production cycle has become. Myers will install a set of computer controlled mutoscopes—mechanized flipbooks mounted on rotating cylinders—on a prominently positioned dining room table. The mutoscopes, which show scenes of the food we eat as it travels from farm to table, are animated automatically as viewers approach. “My proposal for Mechanical Rituals brings the process of industrialized agriculture, which is so far removed from society’s consciousness, into the modern dining room.”

Stephanie Simek  February 21 – March 17, 2017

Following on her work with optical illusions, holograms and science themes, Simek will create a custom built “table of holograms.” Optics hidden within her table will reflect images of common minerals upwards and cause them to appear to hover above the table surface. Simek sees her structure as a vitrine or a container for a kind of t​able of elements. ​“The choice of content is based on my previous work and interest in basic, elemental materials and their inherent potential. This often includes unusual and interesting physical properties like magnetic, electrical, and optical capabilities.  For example, I have built sculptural objects that are also simple radios, an invisibility cloak, a compass, and a levitating sculpture, all reliant on the special properties of familiar minerals.”

Location and Hours: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday.

A preliminary mock-up of Emily Myers’ Mechanical Rituals. This installation, along with eight others, is part of the new season of exhibitions at the Portland Building.

A preliminary mock-up of Emily Myers’ Mechanical Rituals. This installation, along with eight others, is part of the new season of exhibitions at the Portland Building.

For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, go to http://racc.org/installationspace.

Night Lights presents: “You Must Work in the Garden of Eden” by Jackie Davis

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Night Lights returns this month on Thursday, March 3, as a part of Feminist March programming with a live, avant-garde dance/Super-8 film performance presented by Portland-based artist Jackie Davis. You Must Work in the Garden of Eden displays the beauty of everyday routine and the necessity of interpersonal support as two foundations for building the lives we dream of living. 

A visual and auditory pattern of stylized actions, the film investigates daily habits and the profound effects these often subconscious choices have on shaping individual and community cultures. With this site-specific performance, Davis explores conversations and questions pertaining to our collective work and existence – With life as art, how can people look at their habits as repeatedly chosen and reaffirming acts? Who are we, as individuals, standing, breathing and moving around day-to-day? And what upkeep supports our communities/who is doing it? 

About the Artist

Jackie Davis loves to explore performance dynamics and destroy the myth that artists and audiences are distinct. She believes that art production is a deeply collaborative and reciprocal act. A fighter of the cult of the autonomous/exceptional individual, her work highlights regularity, the beauty of the ordinary and the necessity of cooperation. Additionally (and importantly), she views media construction as an act of self-creation.

Night Lights Presents: You Must Work in the Garden of Eden by Jackie Davis
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Dusk (6:30) -8:30
North side of RACC offices, 411 NW Park Avenue

About Night Lights
Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) and The Hollywood Theatre have collaborated to present Night Lights, a series of public art projections displayed monthly in Portland, OR. Join us each First Thursday in the Pearl District for a different projection on the North Wall of the RACC offices (411 NW Park Ave.).

Artwork by Northwest Artist Mary Henry donated to the City collection

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Known for her geometric abstract paintings, American artist Mary Henry (1913-2009) was one of the movement’s steadfast champions. Henry studied under Bauhaus instructor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in Chicago at the Institute of Design in the 1940s. She worked many years as an interior designer and muralist—while raising a family—before moving to Seattle in the 1970s and producing her largest body of work. Although Henry’s work received critical praise and has been collected in a number of museums, she has largely remained a regional cult figure the art world is still learning about. Remarking on the goal of her art, Henry said “I’ve always wanted to create that feeling in my work, of getting down to the nitty-gritty and getting rid of all the things that aren’t important, to get to the essence of life. What do I hope people get from my work? Honesty. Simplicity. I wanted it to be uncomplicated and direct.”

Baba’s Birthday (Diptych) acrylic on canvas (2 panels), 48” H x 72” W x 2.5” (overall), 1993 (pictured) is true to her style, the diptych is comprised of two panels of geometric shapes of black, blue, white, red and her signature yellow. RACC has also acquired a study drawing for this painting. Baba’s Birthday is a gift Suzanne and John Rahn, Henry’s daughter and her husband. Gifts such as this are reviewed by RACC’s Public Art Advisory Committee for their appropriateness to the public collection.

Currently: Mary Henry: The Fabric of Space at Jeffery Thomas Fine Art from March 9-April 30, 2016.