Photos by Mario Gallucci
2020 Artists
Featured
May Maylisa Cat is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans video, paintings, glass, and live performances. She grew up in Chicago and graduated from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, NY. Her work plays a critical role on the dominant discourses towards the community, the fantasy of the cultural “Other,” and how contemporary art appropriated social imaginaries, bringing them to a diluted universal conception of art. Her projects have received support from multiple grants including the Precipice Fund from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Calligram Foundation, the Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, the New Media Fellowship from Open Signal, and grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland, OR. May has attended residencies at Wassaic Project, Santa Fe Art Institute, Caldera Arts, and Pittsburgh Glass Center. In 2020, she will be in future residencies at the Chautauqua School of Art, New Media Gallery Residency at Jack Straw Cultural Center, and Bunker Projects. She has spoken as a guest lecturer for Carnegie Mellon University School of Fine Art in Pittsburgh, PA and as a teaching artist for Caldera Arts in Sisters, OR. She is currently based in Portland, OR.
Curtis Reid Henderson is a multimedia sculptor, printmaker, and potter based in St. Johns, Portland Oregon. His work, rooted in the use of found, salvaged, and recycled materials, reflects upon and adds commentary to the lack of transparency in consumer manufacturing; without readily available replacement parts & schematics, goods and machinery around us are abandoned rather than reused or repaired. This self forged reliance on consumerism and consumption affects our disposition towards the industrial materials Curtis uses in his work. Through extensive exploration, the hidden value of these discarded objects can be visualized and reinterpreted. Curtis’ sculptures, functional objects, and prints cultivate a narrative around our place in post-industrial society and capture how institutional infrastructure and capitalism have shaped our culture.
Christina Kemp is a Portland based mixed media artist. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Arizona State University in 2017 and a BFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2011. Central to her work is the contrast in speed between the profit-driven productivity and instantaneousness of our society with the slow deliberateness of her process. Kemp obsessively dwells on mundane artifacts of contemporary life as a means of questioning the expectations of how time is spent.
Cristina Niculescu is a visual artist, immigrant, veteran, divorcée, writer, educator, and marvel-maker. Born in 1981 in Romania, she immigrated to the US at the age of ten. Her multi-culturally informed work seeks points of social tension and connection through artful objects, photography, video and interactive installations. She designs props and participatory experiences for the tragicomedy of life, favoring humor, tenderness and multiplicity.
Niculescu holds undergraduate degrees in Spanish and Physiology from the University of Arizona, an MA in Spanish from Portland State University and an MFA in Applied Craft + Design from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She was elected leader of her class’ Pionieri Communist Organization at the age of eight, won the 6th grade school Spelling Bee in Texas, received a full-tuition college scholarship, and was a Distinguished Graduate of Air Force Intelligence Officer school in 2003. Cristina has thrived and struggled in Portland, OR since 2009.
Lynn Yarne is an artist and educator from Portland, Oregon. She works within animation and collage to address generational narratives & histories. She is curious about community, participatory works, magic, and rejuvenation. She currently makes art projects for and about the public education system. Lynn holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MAT from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.