First Thursday Opening Reception: June 1, 6-9pm
Virtual Opening: Join us on Facebook Live: June 1, 5:30-6pm
Moderated Panel Discussion with New Members: Saturday, June 10, 2pm • Conversation with Don Bailey: Wednesday, June 14, 7pm
MAY 30 - JULY 1 — MAIN GALLERY
New Members Show
Limei Lai, Philip Stork, Laura Swingen & Hannah Theiss
Blackfish Gallery is delighted to introduce our four newest Artist Members. Limei Lai, Philip Stork, Laura Swingen and Hannah Thiess were selected after an extensive jury and interview process, designed to unearth promising, emerging and established artists with strong voices and diverse backgrounds and training. We hope you enjoy their debut exhibition at Blackfish and follow their work in years to come.
— Limei Lai —
Life in a Glance (2021) — Limei Lai, fabric and thread, 36" x 60"
Multidisciplinary artist Limei Lai is curious about what qualities memory can infuse into objects and how memory enhances aesthetic value. In her gallery-based, interactive and performative piece, Lai explores the topic of
childhood memories, assisted by gallery visitors and other community members. While conversing, humming, embroidering, writing and drawing, the artist and volunteer participants will create works that carry traces of significant moments from their childhood, especially connections between mothers and their children. Lai then arranges the works on a playhouse-like armature, enabling memories and meaning to accumulate. Throughout the
run of the exhibit, Lai will host a dozen or more conversation-and-making sessions. Her aim is to transmute the power of art into social value, reinforcing community.
— Philip Stork —
Afternoon (2023) — Philip Stork, pastel, mixed media, 11" x 14"
Philip Stork is an artist at the intersection of nature and the abstract using drawing, pastel, and ink to capture a reimagined world by combining color field and line. The addition of linear elements to the image provides a scaffold and a counterpoint to these elements. While his works presented in the New Members show have been a departure from his previous works, they reflect his need to be continuously challenged as an artist.
— Laura Swingen —
Double Putin (2022) — Laura Swingen, acrylic and ink on canvas, 6" x 12"
Laura Swingen is a painter and mixed media artist making introspective works that explore her feelings about contemporary life. Representation, narrative, and surrealism are key elements of her paintings and drawings. Laura’s work in the New Members show includes pieces from her 2022 thesis show, previously displayed at Portland's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, as well as recent works completed after graduating from her BFA program at Portland State.
— Hannah Theiss —
Mercurial VI (2021) — Hannah Theiss, relief monotype, 14" x 20"
Hannah Theiss is an artist exploring themes of the natural and the man-made by employing formal disciplines, including printmaking, painting, and drawing, alongside undefined experimentations with glue, ink, graphite, paper, and collage. Her work combines her own abstractions with referential natural textures, sometimes affecting them with ripping, cutting, and collage, amplifying the story of each material and texture into a larger, collective story.
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GALLERY 2
Past is Present — Don Bailey
Hupa/Yurok Woman — Don Bailey, oil, 40" x 30"
In my native Hoopa language, kiwhliw means “he who paints.” First and foremost, I am a painter. I create complex, richly colorful compositions. I am also Native American, born on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Northern California. Indian Land, where the past is always present, is where my paintings begin.
As a young child I drew the stories I could see in my Hoopa Valley landscape and the stories of our ancestors as told to me by my elders. When my family moved off the reservation and I first attended the white man’s school, I began to hear stories others tell about Native People. In the years that followed, I was drawn to new and varied stories: stories sung by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Gil Scott Heron; stories told by Native activists; and stories painted by T. C. Canon, Paul Gaugin, Vincent van Gogh, and Larry Rivers.
The paintings and mixed media pieces in this show contain elements of all these stories.
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GALLERY 3
“you dont have to go home,, but you cant stay here”
— Charles Siegfried —
You Don't Have to Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here — Charles Siegfried, acrylic on canvas, 15" x 20"
Paintings and text based works focused on Poverty and Hopelessness.
Blackfishers Doing Cool Stuff
See what Blackfish Artists are involved with outside the gallery this month.