LUIZA LUKOVA

One Grand Gallery is pleased to announce our debut exhibition with Portland-based painter Lúkas Kubeja.

Diary is a series of oil paintings seeking to understand how personal and collective identity is lost and altered by impetuous image archiving. The work reflects the past year of Kubeja’s painting practice, unified by an unsentimental realism that foregrounds the subjects’ commerciality. With a quiet background in photography, Kubeja melds mediums to channel an inherent and instinctive nostalgia.

This show will span the main gallery at 1000 E Burnside and will also, for the first time, extend into the auxiliary exhibition space above. With this in mind, each space will offer contrasting moods and visual stimuli. While the concurrent theme will span both floors, the experiences will be tailored to the different environments. The viewer is invited to question their own relationship to media archives as they encounter hallucinatory memories, unanimously defining working-class life in the 21st century.

Lúkas Kubeja is an artist born in Tacoma, Washington, raised in Portland, Oregon, and educated in New York City. His body of oil paintings and wax pencil drawings investigate the contemporary realities of life as it blends increasingly with digital media, exploring themes of isolation, longing, and grief.

May 15 - June 19, 2026

Programming for this exhibition included a Book Release and Reading Night hosted Lúkas Kubeja and Kaya Noteboom on June 5, 2026.

All documentation courtesy of Single File Studio.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present our first exhibition with Oregon-based artist Zhanna Tsytsyn.

Where Roots Refuse Borders is a solo exhibition by Zhanna Tsytsyn exploring migration, memory, and transformation through a visual language that merges human, plant, and mythic forms. Drawing on the metaphor of soil as a living archive, the work considers identity not as fixed, but as something continuously shaped by movement and exchange. Hybrid figures - part human, part vegetation, inhabit expansive, steppe-like spaces, embodying porous boundaries between species, geographies, and histories. Through layered patterns and rhythmic repetition, the compositions echo the unseen systems that sustain both ecological and cultural life, inviting viewers to reflect on how inherited narratives and behaviors might be reimagined.

Rooted in animist traditions and informed by Siberian heritage, the work incorporates masks as sites of transformation; thresholds between the visible and invisible, the ancestral and the emergent. These figures resist containment, much like wild plants that grow beyond imposed borders, offering a vision of coexistence grounded in interdependence and reciprocity. Through these hybrid forms, the exhibition proposes a vision of belonging rooted not in borders, but in dynamic interconnection.

Zhanna Tsytsyn is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work exists at the intersection of personal history, myth, ecology, and speculative imagination. Born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and raised between her father’s Russian homeland and her mother’s roots in Kobuleti, Georgia, she immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. This layered, multicultural upbringing shapes a practice deeply attuned to questions of identity, displacement, and ways the environment informs consciousness. Through her work, Tsytsyn invites viewers into a space of stillness, reflection, and mythic possibility—a return to the body, the ecosystem, and the elemental forces that shape both personal and collective futures. She lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.

April 3 - May 8, 2026

Programming for this exhibition included an Artist Talk hosted by Soho House Portland.

Two limited edition time-released prints are available exclusively during the exhibition.

In Passing Light Fine Art Print
In Lingering Shadow Fine Art Print

Press:
Cultivating Memory with Zhanna Tsytsyn
April PADA Art Guide Cover
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Single File Studio.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present gallery artist Savannah Baker at the 2026 The Other Art Fair in Los Angeles. Baker debuted a collection of stoneware works in her signature palladium glaze.

Savannah Baker is a Portland, Oregon based ceramic artist whose sculptural work explore the intersection of grief, nostalgia, and the quiet beauty of everyday life. Born and raised in Boise, Idaho her works are rooted in deep emotional inquiry, pulling inspiration from childhood, as well as her personal trials and triumphs. Baker received a BFA in Ceramics in 2019 from Boise State University before making her way to the Pacific Northwest. Savannah’s practice is equally defined by its technical precision and her commitment to expanding the expressive possibilities of clay. Her hand-built ceramic sculptures reflect an intimate relationship with the material.

Through hand-built forms, Baker pushes the boundaries of traditional ceramics by challenging expectations of the medium. Her sculptures are inspired by 90’s childhood imagery, traditional tattoos, sentimental objects, and her experiences with loss. Scale, subtle symmetry, and structural balance are all elements considered within her designs. Her pieces embrace softness with sharpness, light with shadow, and a quiet femininity that gives each form both delicacy and strength. Baker’s objects draw viewers in through a sense of familiarity before revealing layered emotional depths, pressed into the surfaces of each piece.

Baker’s process begins with traditional hand-building techniques like slab construction, coil and pinch methods. The clays surface is altered through careful hand sculpting, slowly building up the material to create layered textures. The fired clay is then finished with hand painting or airbrushed glaze. The spontaneity within Baker’s process allows her to shift fluidly between precision and play. The attention to surface detail deepens the emotional resonance of each intricate piece.

While sculptural in nature, many of her works are intended to live within the rhythms of daily life. Her sculptures invite quiet rituals through which memory, loss, and tenderness are intertwined. The flick of a light switch, a glance in the mirror on the way out the door, the soft glow of a candle invite gentle encounters which blur the lines between art and utility. Baker’s sculptures become points of contact where function enhances intimacy, these moments of use are not separate from the work’s emotional weight.

Savannah Baker’s work redefines ceramics as a vessel for emotional storytelling in which process, material, and memory are held in equal regard.

Booth 154
February 26 - March 31st

All images courtesy of the gallery.

TeaRoom_01 is a mobile site installation—an adaptive structure that can be assembled and activated in shifting contexts. Conceived as a place to gather, it offers a container for mindfulness and shared presence. Through the simple act of sitting for tea, listening, or reading, guests are invited to slow their pace and attune to the moment.

From February 20st through March 27th, the structure is hosted at Portland’s One Grand Gallery. Within TeaRoom_01, guided tea experiences unfold alongside open periods for quiet reflection—holding space for conversation, contemplation, and sensory awareness. Visitors are welcome to experience and engage with TeaRoom_01 from 12:00-5:00 each day.

Artists Timme Lu and Damien Heller-Chen will share a selection of works in alignment with those purposes. A selection of literary material by Chess Club available for reading in TeaRoom_01. 

February 20 - March 27, 2026

Programming for this exhibition included a movie night with Timme Lu, a tea ceremony with Veronika Vogler of Bardo Tea, and a live ambient recording during the Closing Reception on March 27, 2026.

All documentation courtesy of Earth\Studies.

The title of this exhibition Ingress speaks to the entry into an ephemeral state, an opening. From the artists’ maternal side comes a saying "all souls cluster" which is to say "I will see you again.” The phrase has been spoken by those in their dying time and carried forward as a reminder, passed through generations in their family.

For the artists, it names a belief that what connects us does not end at death—that there is a gathering, a closeness, a returning. Through sculpture utilizing wire, paper, and watercolor mediums, Ingress is a visual meditation on that idea: a liminal place where we meet again. A threshold. A sill. A portal. Accompanying this presentation is a video animation in the adjoining gallery produced by artist and co-collaborator Rowan Walton. 

Gracen Bookmyer and Coco Bookmyer are third-generation, born and raised in the Columbia River Gorge. Their work centers on relationships—to place, to family history, and to the experience of growing older. Using natural and found materials, they create worlds and faces inspired by their ancestors, drawing on memory and close study of the textural landscapes they grew up in. Gracen holds an M.A. in Gerontology and supports older adults throughout rural southeastern Oregon. Coco lives in Chicago and has a background in clay earth building.

This exhibition was made possible courtesy of the Guest Curatorial Program at the Center for Contemporary Art at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

February 5 - March 24, 2026

All documentation courtesy of Mario Gallucci.

We are excited to announce the upcoming solo exhibition Reverence of a Dream by Gabriel Collins of Laudrige Studio.

Larger works on canvas explore scenes of playful exuberance using saturated oils reminiscent of childhood folly. In contrast, works on paper and panel are largely form focused, alluding to a maturation towards structure. Here, biomorphic shapes and color motifs float across ruled grids and muted fields, playful dreamscapes meeting a draftsman’s discipline. Collins is interested in the saturated chaos of youth and the considered restraint of adulthood with the dreamworld as the through line connecting them.

The opening reception will take place of Thursday February 12, 2026 at Daydream from 7-10p.

February 12 - April 21, 2026

All documentation courtesy of Taylor Davis.

We are excited to announce the upcoming solo exhibition Time as a Friend by Joni Young at Daydream Bar. Young will be unveiling new paintings, works on paper, as well as textile pieces that pay sweet homage to the privilege of watching time pass.

The opening reception will be held on December 13, 2025 from 7-10p at Daydream on Clinton St. The opening pairs up with Daydream’s DJ set that evening.

December 13, 2025 - February 10, 2026

All documentation courtesy of Taylor Davis.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to announce the solo presentation Noir by Portland-based Forest Wolf Kell at the 2025 SCOPE Art Show. 

The title of this collection of work is a reference to the genre of film and fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism and moral ambiguity. Kell’s nontraditional use of found and provocative imagery and its subsequent filtration and reference on the canvas emphasizes shadows, contrast and dramatic lighting—elements typically noted in noir narratives. The works are largely tonal, the use of black as a singular color an immediate vehicle for emotion, both for its boldness and the connotation surrounding the color itself.

This most recent series of paintings on linen continues on the artist’s path of using primitive (in the artistic sense) mediums. Kell uses Markal Oil Paint sticks, primarily made for industrial factories and fabrication, as his solitary mark-making tool. They are also used by graffiti artists and hobos as a tool to create monikers and markings on freight trains. The artist is connected to the way these paint sticks execute on canvas and to their use in these other capacities. The simplicity in choice of resource allows for a deeper focus on the created composition without the distractions of elaborate color and mixing of techniques. These aesthetics and styles are synonymous with angst, dissatisfaction, subversion and rebellion—relatable feelings in Kell’s life.

Forest Wolf Kell is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Portland, Oregon. Primarily his works are collections of objects, images and icons arranged in ways meant to provoke thought.

Booth A003
December 3 - 7, 2025

Watch Forest’s interview with the gallery here.

All images courtesy of Taylor Davis.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Portland-based ceramicist Damien Heller-Chen. In our largely commodified world, machines have gradually improved our efficiency in producing objects until the human element is depreciated to maintaining these machines or rendered unnecessary altogether. In direct response to this ecosystem, A Meditation On Labor is a return to the human made processes where we strive for quality, efficiency, and ultimately, perfection, but discover that it is in the imperfections that make the object beautiful.

On display in the One Grand Gallery Loft, Heller-Chen presents 1000 meticulously crafted tea vessels, each uniquely hand thrown in porcelain and finished in a singular, white glaze. Presenting in a strong and uniform fashion, Heller-Chen calls into consideration the desire for automatization in the art-making process, and instead channels the loving and meditative labor of producing each ceramic work by hand.

Damien Heller-Chen is currently a studio art and Chinese literature major at Reed College, and as such, their surroundings have changed each year. Their work is a constant reflection of their immediate environment, and the constraints that come with it. They draw inspiration from the sterile campus studio, from their constrictive dorm room, and now from the basement of their house.

This project was supported in part by Greenberg Steinhauser President’s Discretionary Fund. 

November 7 - December 12, 2025

All documentation courtesy of Taylor Davis.

Generative Love is an exhibition that transforms paper— from a material historically wielded as an instrument of control—into a site of renewal, expression, and celebration of ancestral roots. Through vivid, abstract compositions informed by Northwest Coast formline design, the work reclaims this surface from the bureaucratic logics that seek to fix identity and place it under surveillance. Here, paper becomes a ground of freedom, a medium of agency, and a space for imagining futures that cannot be contained by the past.

The histories embedded in these works are layered and personal, shaped by the legacies of forced assimilation and the will to endure. Native relatives of the artist survived mission boarding schools designed to sever language, culture, and kinship. Mexican relatives navigated systemic discrimination that demanded adaptation as a means of survival. These intertwined narratives reveal assimilation as both a tool of oppression and a complex site of strategy and care—where communities negotiate, resist, and reimagine what it means to live and thrive within imposed borders.

The exhibition moves through these tensions with both urgency and grace. The paintings radiate with bright neon tones, refusing erasure through the strategic use of vibrancy as a form of safety and presence. Sculptural works speak in quieter registers: a cassette tape, adorned with shredded tools of measurement, becomes a vessel of ancestral memory; a terracotta vessel, broken into three and planted with Native flora, affirms the right to take root and flourish on one’s own terms.

A suspended screen of archival documents physically divides the space, compelling viewers to pass through the residue of state and institutional power in order to encounter the work on the other side. This gesture underscores a central premise of Generative Love: archives are never neutral, and histories of categorization must be disassembled and disengaged.

At its core, Generative Love asserts self-determination as both inheritance and practice. Through abstraction, material intervention, and layered storytelling, the exhibition honors the endurance of ancestral knowledge while insisting on the right to imagine and build liberated futures.

Kimberly Fulton Orozco is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, printmaking, and conceptual installation. Her practice interrogates the psychic aftershocks of assimilation and the social architectures that shape—and fracture—our sense of belonging. Drawing from Kaigani Haida, Mexican immigrant, and Scottish ancestry, she uses bright color, abstraction, and ancestral knowledge as acts of presence and resistance. Rooted in visual language as a vessel of shared understanding, her work reimagines systems of power while honoring cultural continuity. Fulton Orozco holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a designer for the United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program.

October 30 - December 12, 2025

Programming for this exhibition included an Artist Talk hosted by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

Press:
December PADA Art Guide Cover

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Single File Studio.

Claire Elliott's debut exhibition with One Grand Gallery opens on September 19th, from 6-9p. Afterbloom explores the life cycle of poppies, amongst a variety of flora, as a bridge towards a larger dialogue surrounding the split between ornamental and functional nature. Elliott’s vivid landscapes address ever-growing concerns about human relationship with the natural world and how we define it. Her paintings focus on the physical structures and cultural origins of gardens, and the plants that are given permission to grow there. In landscaped spaces, there is often an illusion of control, a space carefully tended to. However, much like in works such as “Garden Encounter” or “The fantasy of perpetual abundance lying fallow” one can witness how things can quickly go awry, either from the persistent encroachment of weeds or through the confusion of shifting cycles in foliage. This combination can lead to surprising, unsettling encounters in the garden—plants that feel unfamiliar or unidentifiable. In these situations, as viewers we begin to question their mystery presence in the garden, are they foe or friend, a faded beauty or a spiky intruder.

Elliott selected poppies as her pivotal bloom for this collection of works for their abundance globally, their striking color, and their rich history. Prominent in ancient myth and modern culture, poppies have become symbols of resistance, fertility, and sacrifice. The genesis for the poppy pod sculptures displayed in tandem with this suite of paintings was a desire to capture, in a new medium, a different stage of the blooms. After witnessing these surprising stalks in a neglected corner of a garden, Elliott became fascinated with recreating this personally transformative moment. They are an exercise in futility and hope, echoes of how in an inhospitable climate, many plants will exist only in memory and facsimile.

Certain plants are only identifiable to the typical observer when they are in their most iconic blooming phases, not the unshowy seedheads or tender sprouts. In Afterbloom, Elliott seeks the moments when familiar plants can appear alien, like quavering poppy pods, or surprising, as with the dark, seed-filled remains of last summer’s zinnias. Understanding that a garden is built through control and exclusion, she examines the ways in which nature refuses to comply.

Claire Elliott (b.1985)  is an artist who lives and works in Portland, OR, where she is a member of Wave Contemporary.  Elliott’s work addresses concerns about the relationship between humans and landscape, how we define ‘nature’, and the idea of painting as a medium. Elliott received her BS from Skidmore College in 2007 and an MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2014. Her work is represented in public and private collections nationally. Recent exhibitions include What’s Left on the Stem at Never Coffee,  Rituals at Wavelength Space, the WAVE Collective shows En Motion and The Nexus of Here, and A Creeping Normality at 1122 Gallery.

September 19 - October 24, 2025

Programming for this exhibition included a movie screening with PAM CUT, an all-ages Family Morning with coloring pages drawn by the artist, a Poppy Making Workshop, as well as an Artist Talk. The closing reception will feature a dance performance choreographed by Susi Mendler and the debut of a new commissioned painting by the artist for Rubato Wines.

Press:
September PADA Art Guide Cover
“Afterbloom”—Claire Elliott’s color whirlwind at One Grand Gallery

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to be working with Benjamin Ewing again for this three week pop-up exhibition that references his 2023 solo exhibition with the gallery, When We Met.

This new work speaks to the ongoing backstory in creating his solo with the desire to create a sculpture that is accessible to a larger public. INVENTORY tracks this two year journey while unveiling the intricacies of art-making while navigating an ever-shifting art market. “Clasp” (2023) was originally sculpted of aerated autoclaved concrete at its final size of 12 x 23 x 8”. The 100 reproductions currently on display in the gallery were shrunk down to 3.5 x 2.25 x 7.25” in an effort to both create a formidable visual scene when displayed all together and remove the financial barrier to purchasing artwork. “Clasp” original sculpture sold for $3,800 and these plaster reproductions are priced at $125 as a result of the labor and hours of a large group of people. Benjamin Ewing as artist, as well as Jesse Kamerzell, stonemason, was brought on to manage the casting; Steve Christman and his team at Form 3D Foundry managed the 3D scans and mold making; Jim Calgano and team at Calgano Foundry for the single bronze reproduction; Javier Montes d’Arce managed the documentary; and Luiza and Jordan and interns at One Grand Gallery for managing the exhibition. The single original sculpture gave room to facilitate the grand scale of this auxiliary endeavor, one which explores the relationship between what it takes to create and exist within the machine of art economics.

INVENTORY is an interactive exhibition wherein viewers are encouraged to purchase and collect their piece the day of. These transactions will be documented and showcase the physical edition of the work incrementally disappearing over the course of the show. As such, now 101 individuals can own a piece of work inspired by a single sculpture.

Benjamin Ewing is a multidisciplinary artist located in Portland, Oregon. With a background in editorial photography and print design, his transition into painting and sculpture is rooted in the same visual principles. He continues to sift these concepts through new mediums. In the attempt to better understand the power of materials and the way in which they can inform one another. Ultimately, providing a language in which we may better understand ourselves.

August 8 - 28, 2025

Programming for this exhibition included the screening of a short film on INVENTORY directed by Javier Montes d’Arce.

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is delighted to welcome Sophia Baraschi-Ehrlich for her first solo exhibition. The Moment Held explores the conversation between self and the natural world through the artist’s practiced emotional, spiritual, and psychological lenses. Her canvases carefully manipulate color, light, and touch, employing monochromatic and limited palettes to harness a charged energy. In this exhibition, dreams and trees are at the forefront of the works on display while intimations of windows call into question portals, both tangible and abstract, as bridges into different planes of understanding.

Having grown up in Manhattan, with limited access to forests, rolling hills, and open skies, Baraschi-Ehrlich was left with a constant yearning to be “elsewhere.” Whether from life, photographs, or dreams, she searches for references that connect her to this longing for nature. This is informed by the artist’s Sufi upbringing and early Waldorf education, both of which made her attuned to the dialogue between inner and outer worlds. As such, each painting on display is rooted in a romantic feeling of yearning for something unnameable and magical. Figuration—particularly self-portraiture—initially emerged as the most genuine way to communicate this relationship. In recent years, however, the artist has been experimenting with restructuring that narrative. The trees, meadows, and sunlight in her canvases instead emerge as the protagonists, while the human presence takes on a supportive role. Shadows of figures are obscured or poke out between layers of paint and foliage such as in “As spring flowers bloom” whereas in “Blue like a tree,” the figure does not appear at all. In window works such as “Looking out, reaching in” nature remains the focal point through compositional framing while retaining a similar tinge of melancholy. Windows, like dreams, often hint at something beyond immediate reach. The scenes Baraschi-Ehrlich paints are both familiar and distant at the same time. As a result, The Moment Held intentionally restructures our understanding of perception—each of these paintings lets the light in, making space for curiosity and communion.

Sophia Baraschi-Ehrlich is an emerging artist from New York City who currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from Skidmore College and has further developed her practice through studies at The Art Students’ League (NYC), The New York Studio School (NYC), Studio Incamminati (PA), and Studio Escalier (FR). From ‘24-’25 Sophia was a cohort member of New York City Crit Club’s Canopy Program with Victoria Roth and in the Fall of 2025 is headed to the UK to pursue her Fine Art MA at City & Guilds of London Art School.

August 1 - September 5, 2025

Programming for this exhibition included a Drawing Night with Sophia Baraschi-Ehrlich.

Press:
Variable West, Cliff Notes
Oregon Art Guide, August 2025


All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

Following his memorable solo exhibition earlier this year, One Grand Gallery is delighted to present abstract works on canvas and sculptures by Ukrainian artist Viktor Kobylianski at the Seattle Art Fair for the fair’s 9th edition.

Viktor Kobylianski (b.1995 Kyiv, Ukraine) employs a visual practice rooted in the synthesis of pigments, mineral matter, and fabric. Through a tactile and intuitive process, he creates compositions that rest between painting and sculpture. His mark-making is expressed with fading pigments, muted surfaces, and blank spaces achieved through the mixing of non-traditional mediums. His work reflects on memory, incompleteness, and the impermanence of perception.

Alongside our solo presentation with Viktor Kobylianski, please find us at Booth D08 with the Portland Art Dealer's Association! We're pleased to present work by three gallery artists: Olivia Harwood, Nia Musiba, and Benjamin Ewing. 

Founded in 2012, One Grand Gallery is a contemporary art and design gallery, publisher, and agent of creative instigation. Featuring world-renowned, established, and emerging talent, our programming stresses the importance of bold, underrepresented voices that speak to the times. It has been our mission to provide opportunities for artists of all skill levels and mediums to deeply explore their craft. Through exhibitions, art fairs, community partnerships, and collaborations, we hope to serve as a source of inspiring work while influencing lasting relationships with artists, collectors, and the community at large.

Booth C16 & Booth D08
July 17 - 20, 2025

Available works please inquire with luiza@onegrandgallery.com.

All images courtesy of the gallery.

One Grand Gallery is excited to welcome Portland-based artist Adelina Ruvalcaba for her first gallery exhibition after graduation from PNCA with her MFA. Rooted in themes of cultural heritage and communal gathering, this exhibition transforms the familiarity of a traditional dining setting into a reflective and unique site-specific experience. From pozole to arroz con gandules, the artist’s dinnerware immortalizes the most intimate aspects of her identity. She is not only preserving the foods, but the memories of those who passed down the recipes.

Most of the work in the exhibition is what the artist has tenderly named her “fossils”. She takes cultural food ingredients and seasons her clay, allowing the food to choose its final resting place before firing. She follows this process by firing the work with the dried ingredients embedded into the clay in a burnout firing, subsequently immortalizing them. This glazing style is directly influenced by real tree fossils she has seen at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro, OR. The beauty of this style is that it can never be replicated. Every single plate, bowl, and ceramic foods featured in the installation are like a fingerprint. No molds are used when replicating foods like conchas, chips, oranges, plantains, or coffee beans. Each object was individually made to hold its own identity and story.

For the show title I Am de Mis Antepasadas, Ruvalcaba has subverted the grammatically correct "antepasados" or “forefathers” and made it feminine, ending in an "a" to shift focus to the maternal lineage that raised her. In this sense, the work reflects resilience, a sense of belonging, and the complexities of identity. She invites her audience to sit among the dinnerware, experiencing the feast at its apex; where stories are shared, laughter is contagious, and love is abundant.

Adelina Ruvalcaba is a mixed media visual artist and emerging curator in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys reading fiction novels and exploring the forest with her dog, Misia (named after the great Baroque artist, Artemisia Gentileschi). She was born and raised in the Central Valley of California and is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. After moving to Oregon, she found herself at a loss with her identity. This realization sent her down a path of rediscovery. Adelina’s creative practice highlights the labor of love from one’s home, especially the kitchen. Influenced by her deep-rooted love for prehistoric cave art, she reimagined fossils by transforming them into ceramic dinnerware. She also creates immersive installations that help tell the intimate stories of her fossils, offering viewers a sense of belonging and space for reflection.

June 26 - July 25, 2025

Press:
Q&A with Variable West
At the table with Adelina Ruvalcaba
Arcade NW

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Portland-based artist Viktor Kobylianski. HIDDI is an exploration of internal reckoning through the use of mineral dust and pigment on canvas. Abstract paintings and sculptures in soft pastel tones appear almost obscured, hinting at possibilities of figuration or interpretation. Kobylianski’s background in music production further informs his visual practice through a sensitivity to rhythm, layering, and atmosphere.

You are right.
Let it stay. Let it stain.

A hidden night.
Memories—almost bright,
almost found.

Mesmerized
by how you keep the heat
up my feet
through the night.

Memory and hidden meaning serve as the emotional foundation for the artist’s visual expression. Works such as “bubbles” inspire a hopeful sentimentality, the blue shapes taking form on the surface of the canvas alluding to an unbridled effervescence rising to the top. In turn, works such as “eraser diptych” perhaps inform the opposite, a scrubbing or erasure of signification across the large swaths of pink pigment. What remain are the contours of an assumed structure left up to the viewer’s imagination.

Viktor Kobylianski (b.1995 Kyiv, Ukraine) employs a visual practice rooted in the synthesis of pigments, mineral matter, and fabric. Through a tactile and intuitive process, he creates compositions that rest between painting and sculpture. His mark-making is expressed with fading pigments, muted surfaces, and blank spaces achieved through the mixing of non-traditional mediums. His work reflects on memory, incompleteness, and the impermanence of perception.

May 16 - June 20, 2025.

Programming for this exhibition included an Artist Talk with Viktor Kobylianski.

Press:
Q&A with Variable West
Variable West
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present Clay Bodies, a group ceramics show with Portland-based artists James Alby, Savannah Baker, Miranda Karson, and Calvin Wong. This will be the first occasion in which these four makers are presenting work in conversation with one another, melding their distinct styles and mediums.

In ceramic communities, “clay bodies” refers to the specific mixture of clay types used by an artist to achieve a desired effect. Firing temperature, workability, and fired density are all taken into account as the maker formulates and hones their unique technique. For this exhibition, each ceramicist has considered the manner in which fine art intersects with craft and functionality. The artworks on display range from free-standing figures to wall mounted designs, as well as decorative vases, candelabras, and miniature sculptures. This combination of varied ephemera naturally creates moments of interiority within the space of the gallery, allowing viewers to fluidly move between the individual pieces and narratives.

James Alby is a ceramic artist based in Portland, OR, originally from the island of Guam. He began his pottery journey in July 2023. His wheel-thrown creations—sometimes sculptural, chaotic and sometimes flat, calm—are as much about the form as they are about the technical work in the creation of the piece. He often creates in the moment and feels his way through the process rather than planning ahead. He is also a professional skateboarder and creates in many other ways but pottery is his main focus.

Savannah Baker graduated from Boise State University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in ceramics and currently resides in Portland, OR. Although her main medium tends to be ceramics she enjoys everything from drawing and painting to film photography. Her works are inspired by imagery from childhood, think Hot Wheels meets Lisa Frank, mixing hyper feminine pastel colors and soft shapes with more masculine imagery and symbolisms.

Miranda Jesse Garcia Karson is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis in hand built ceramics. Miranda builds both real and realistic, queered imitations of everyday objects: mugs and stools, apples and pencils, flowers and sculptures of sculptures. They are inspired by magical realism, trinkets, loneliness, thresholds, the body, dream, memory, ritual, and play.

Calvin Wong is an artist based in Portland, Oregon.

Read more here on James Alby’s process in creating the work for Clay Bodies. 

April 11 - May 9, 2025.

Press:
Arcade NW

Programming for this exhibition included a hand-building clay workshop with the artists.

Watch exhibition video here.

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

after / time is pleased to announce AFTER IMAGE 003, the third iteration of its annual group exhibition that questions the status and future of the image in the fine arts. AFTER IMAGE 003, curated by Luiza Lukova, features 21 local and national artists each responding through their respective studio practices the state of the question regarding the image, its traces, its inherent non-neutrality, its topography, its relation to space and its possibilities in a mediatized world awash with claims to the concept of the image. 

The status of the image in art has invariably been a subject of debate in art criticism, and ever more in recent years. In turn, the image has been fully subsumed into the circulation of production and consumption. Images have become ubiquitous and permeate a  daily life wherein propaganda, ideology, advertising, entertainment, and spectacle commingle and implicate each other.

As Contemporary Art in all of its manifestations is saturated with the circulation of images, the question of "What is next, if anything?" and "What strategies might be employed to create the image that is not so implicated?" and "What are the limits, if any, to an artist's genre of artmaking?" have increased in salience. In response, the twenty one artists on view challenge how their image-making might oppose traditional perception and where, in fact, it might insist on it?

“Patterns emerged organically—shadows, distortions, color play, and a tangible mark-making link these disparate works and artists. The visceral desire to push against expected boundaries of visual representation allows these works to appear simultaneously wondrous and meticulously calculated. On view in the gallery space, they present as a unified force eager to call upon symbols and references and turn them on their heads.”

In this third iteration of our annual group exhibition, these 21 artists, with the careful curation of Luiza Lukova, respond to these states of affairs with all their social, political, and aesthetic implications. Foregrounding after / time’s research-forward focus, each of these artists bring to the fore their insights into the image. By turns whimsical, tragic, industrial, poésie concrète, and definitionally-defying, these works of art make us wonder why image provokes beyond itself, why a limitation for one person is an alternate universe for someone else, or to what extent image is inherently open-ended, even with the weight of its history as window, frame, mirror, concept, idea, and representation. Image as the possible and the no-place of utopia. It’s all there, and more.

Andrea Bagdon
Megan Bainbridge
Brooks Cashbaugh
A.J. Cincotta-Eichenfield
Carolyn Hazel Drake
Bryce H. Frimming
Häsler Gómez
Thomas Huston
Viktor Kobylianski
ESO MALFLOR
Isaac McKenna
Ruth Meijer
S. Proski
Sydney Milan Roberts
Jacob Romero
John Walker
Nicole Williford
Ahnika Wood + Karina Rovira
Wang Yiming
Yuyang Zhang

This exhibition was made possible through the generous support from RACC, Prosper Portland, PICA and the Ford Family Foundation.

Press:
Artforum
Art & About PDX

All images courtesy of the gallery and Mario Gallucci.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to announce the solo presentation idk, i think there’s something there by New York-based Brock Saunders at the 2024 Scope Art Show for the fair's 23rd edition from December 3rd through the 8th, 2024 in Miami Beach. 

Drawing from family photo archives and bygone tales of cryptids, this collection of airbrush paintings is as mysterious as it is nostalgic. Saunders draws parallels between the contemporary search for creatures rooted in folklore and cautionary tales as well as a personal investigation into his familial past. Scenes of dark, inscrutable landscapes alternate with lighthearted memories of the artist's inherited generational narratives. A blazing red circle in select works highlights the cryptic undertones of what hides in the shadows—or, that which doesn’t.  

Brock Saunders (b. Virginia, 1996) is a contemporary multidisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon known for his satirical approach to art that blends pop culture with moments of stillness and intimacy. Saunders uses the airbrush to subvert and recontextualize viral imagery, creating new visual narratives that challenge our perceptions. His work often contrasts the digital and the organic, inviting viewers to reflect on what their relationship to media consumption is.

Founded in 2012, One Grand Gallery is a contemporary art and design gallery, publisher, and agent of creative instigation. Featuring world-renowned, established, and emerging talent, our programming stresses the importance of bold, underrepresented voices that speak to the times. It has been our mission to provide opportunities for artists of all skill levels and mediums to deeply explore their craft. Through exhibitions, art fairs, community partnerships, and collaborations, we hope to serve as a source of inspiring work while influencing lasting relationships with artists, collectors, and the community at large.

Booth A01
December 3 - 8, 2024

Available works please inquire here or with luiza@onegrandgallery.com.

Press:
Vogue México

All images courtesy of the gallery.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to welcome Portland-based artist Olivia Harwood with a collection of new paintings and three dimensional works. Huntress unapologetically explores self-defense mechanisms in nature through evocative self-portraiture and sculpture.

What transformations happen within the hour of the dog turning into the wolf? Are there scales glistening in the moonlight? Are there quills and coarse hairs protruding through skin? Does a mother’s teeth sharpen into points preparing to defend her cubs? This metamorphosis encapsulates the feelings I want to display in my work. Within my self portraits, I reveal and depict my own experiences to create a platform for discussion about bodily autonomy, reproductive rights and self defense. I rewrite and take control over my own traumatic events and memories by surrounding my body with household and natural objects of protection.

Recently studying self defense mechanisms found in nature, I have noticed an overlap of these animalistic behaviors to my life as a woman in the city. Camouflage, armor and safety in numbers are just a few that can easily translate into my daily life. How am I interacting with the city in a similar way crows are? Do they get threatened? Do they find shelter in groups? Intertwining femininity, animalistic rage, girlhood and anger creates relatable monstrous feminine archetypes that I hope inspire and light fires within my audience.

The barbs on a blackberry bush, the quills on a porcupine and the poison on a tree frog not only protect against natural predators, but defend against man. The empathy and fondness I have with flora and fauna inspires me to write love letters in the forms of paintings. Deer, rabbits, fish, birds and dogs accompany my figures, creating a bond and companionship. I fondly caress them with my paint strokes to display them in a loving manner. Inspired by board games, girlhood wonder and folklore, my compositions pull the viewer in with eye contact and intensity. Household objects, trinkets and scavenged sea glass swirl around my surreal paintings and sculptures to catch the eye of the viewer like the shine of an earring on the asphalt.

I look at Oregon ferns the same way I look at my collected shells from the beaches of Florida where my family lives. My dreamscapes are often inspired by the locations I reside in, Wisconsin, Oregon and Florida are where I call home. The rich color palette of the work will transport the audience to these familiar terrains, providing both nostalgic and unsettling emotions. These environmental niches meld together in my phantasmagorical scenes. They are doors to my interior worlds that display trauma, rage and deep emotions.

Themes of motherhood and bodily autonomy are dispersed throughout the works .The monstrous feminine swallows me whole when it comes to my reproductive rights, and I will do anything I can to protect them. The paintings on display will dive deeper into the companionship between animals and women. I aim to bridge the protective and wild force of a mother defending her offspring alongside a woman who is defending herself against man.

Olivia Faith Harwood (b. 1999, San Diego, CA, she/her) is a painter who currently resides in Portland, OR. She received her BFA in Painting at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2021. Harwood has recently received a Regional Arts and Culture Council Spring 2024 Arts3C Grant. She recently has been published in the 2022 Portland Critics Pick in Artforum, Spring 2022 Art & About Portland Blog and the Buckman Journal Issue 011, Uncanny. Harwood exhibited a solo show at Fuller Rosen Gallery in 2022, with two upcoming solo shows at One Grand Gallery in Portland, OR in October 2024 and a second solo show with Fuller Rosen Gallery in April, 2025.

October 4 - November 8, 2024.

Limited edition ceramic candelabras were produced with the help of Mudshark Studios.

Programming for this exhibition included an Artist Talk with Olivia Harwood and two Self-Defense Classes with G.I.R.L.S. Gym.

Watch Olivia’s interview with the gallery here.

Press:
Portland Monthly - Portland Artists and Curators on their Favorite Shows from 2024
Willamette Week
October PADA Art Guide Cover
Variable West
Travel Portland
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Mario Gallucci.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to welcome back Portland-based interdisciplinary artist Nia Musiba for her second exhibition with the gallery.

Unseasonably Warm builds on Musiba's distinct world-building and distills the varied lived experiences of the artist’s past few years into dreamy, tangible works on paper. Stars, flowers, figures, and spirals outline a natural world in primary colors. Dark figures bend and flex and curl, taking shape around the etched forms, becoming one with the tall grasses and the sunshine. Colored pencil as the primary medium on raw edge paper imbues these works with a wild and urgent tactile quality. The narrative they weave is overflowing and as observers, we bear witness to this private story-telling. Glimpses into Musiba’s musings can be spotted as easter eggs tucked between sweeping figures and gestures—swift phrases as mementos of bygone moments. Accompanying these works on paper are several ceramic sculptures made in collaboration with Sara Victorio of Hotel Ceramics.

This show is a follow up to my first solo with One Grand in 2022, The Impossible Art of Coming Together. For nearly two years, I could sense I was working towards something that hadn’t quite made itself known yet. A few weeks out, it has finally revealed itself to me.

Unseasonably Warm encompasses all that has transpired since my previous exhibition and the often silent, and at times glaringly loud, thread that has weaved itself throughout it all—my first heartbreak and subsequent search for myself; graduating from my undergrad; questioning the meaning of life and finding the answers in friendships and experimentation and new love. This show investigates cycles, completion, repetition, symbols, patterns, freedom, structure, discipline (and lack thereof) coming undone and then coming together again. Unseasonably Warm is about the balance of it all. It is about falling in love again even though it is scary. About saying goodbye to your childhood home. About the time it takes to heal a broken heart. About finding a method to all of the madness. About the strength it takes to regret nothing. It is about coming home to oneself, about yearning for sunshine, the unpredictable nature of an upcoming season, a world full of sweetness, a life of freedom, the endless spiral, the art of wrapping a gift, and the undoing of it all. 

Nia Musiba is a multidisciplinary creative based in Portland, Oregon with a lifelong commitment to diversifying art and design spaces. Nia is interested in collaboration, experimentation, question-asking, friend-making, and above all else, dreaming big. She views her depictions of Black and brown bodies as a way to reclaim the tenderness and complexities of her own identity as well as an opportunity to hold space for other people of color who historically have been misrepresented in overly flattened, brutalized, and hyper-sexualized ways within art and media.

August 8 - September 13, 2024.

Programming for this exhibition included a Still Life Drawing Night and a Live Figure Drawing Night with Nia, a flash tattoo day with Portland-based tattoo artists, and an Artist Talk with Nia Musiba and Sara Victorio.

Press:
Attempting to achieve creative autonomy: Nia Musiba interviewed
Nia Musiba’s spirals of expression
readymag
Variable West
EverOut
Travel Portland

Watch Nia’s interview with the gallery here.

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present Valentina, a new collection of airbrushed works by painter Brock Saunders. Pulling inspiration from an archive of personal and sourced imagery, this series sheds light on the signifiers of loss and how some of these reminders can take on new life over time. Saunders channels a deep grief through painting as a means to process the passing of his and his partner's beloved companion and dog, Valentina. 

When the crows stop coming to the yard and the rats return, you begin to recognize the nature of consequence following the butterfly effect. The echoes of the loss of something that was once attached to your hip. The paintings on display amplify these simple moments recounted by Saunders, and create intrigue in recontextualizing digital images as works on canvas. Objects, such as the bath in "Cool Tile", or the chewed dog’s bone in "Bone", create intrigue and are raised on a pedestal within the context of the exhibition and the artist’s memory. No stencils and no true lines attribute a dreamy, out of focus feel to the canvases, further blurring the lines between photo and painting. As the methodology of creating these paintings, the subjects that were once solemn reminders of loss have transformed into warm reminiscences and a memorialization of the time spent with Valentina. 

Brock Saunders (b. Virginia, 1996) is a contemporary multidisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon known for his satirical approach to art that blends pop culture with moments of stillness and intimacy. Saunders uses the airbrush to subvert and recontextualize viral imagery, creating new visual narratives that challenge our perceptions. His work often contrasts the digital and the organic, inviting viewers to reflect on what their relationship to media consumption is. 

May 17 - June 21, 2024.

This exhibition is a joint event coinciding with a vinyl record release and listening party for “GOOSE” by Crusty Cuts, featuring cover artwork by Saunders, and supporting merchandise.

Programming for this exhibition included two film screenings, a live Airbrush & Listening Party event, and a Painting Workshop with the artist.

Watch Brock's Interview with the gallery here.

Press:
Variable West
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

Everyday we make art.
A piece created from an occupation.
Everyday we make art.
A piece inspired by Christine Miller, David Hammons, Faith Ringgold, Anders Delbom, and Tehching Hsieh.
Everyday we make art.
A piece made from time based endurance work.
Everyday we make art.
A piece advocating for Palestinian human rights.
Everyday we make art.
A piece of anti-war activism.
Everyday we make art.
A piece meant to be educational and informative.
Everyday we make art.
A piece meant to inspire advocacy.
Everyday we make art.
A piece calling for national liberation, never elimination.
Everyday we make art.
A piece of solidarity.
Everyday we make art.

“Truth Alone Triumphs”

One Grand Gallery presents an endurance and protest art installation by Portland-based maker Aaron Hankins. Ceasefire will open on April 5th, with an artist reception from 6-9p, and run through May 10th, 2024. For each day of the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza, Hankins has painted a watermelon, a self-appointed symbol of the Palestinian people, on the backs of empty USPS mailers. The seeds of the watermelon are painted in such a pattern as to denote numerical order and serve as a physical log of the days at unrest. Hankins displays these individual works as a cohesive unit stitched together in a 50 ft and growing banner. Seen in this stature, the overwhelming message for an immediate ceasefire cannot be overshadowed.

For the duration of this exhibition, the artist will be participating in active demonstrations at the gallery and continuing his daily painting until the war is over. He invites viewers to join in, watch, engage in conversation, and learn from each other.

Aaron Hankins is a self taught, time based, endurance artist based in Portland Oregon. "We Make Art Everyday” is the artist’s mantra to inspire people to view the world and our actions through a new perspective. Classically trained as an engineer, Aaron works using the philosophy of ISRU (in-situ-resource-utilization) which involves repurposing discarded materials (ready-made) to create something greater.

April 5 - May 10, 2024.

A limited edition “Ceasefire” zine with resources and historical literature was released in tandem with this solo.

Programming for this exhibition included a meditative sound bath with practitioner Rabiah Troncilleti and a community Letter Writing Event.

Watch exhibition video here.

Press:
Variable West
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation and Erika Johnson.

One Grand Galleryis pleased to announce Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days by UK-based designer and artist Another Department (Bo Matteini). Matteini’s debut exhibition with the gallery is a culmination of a year’s worth of creative exercises. Born of a pandemic lockdown in 2022, the project began as a personal challenge giving attention to the melding of graphic design and personal passions and creating a unique design for each day of the year. Over the course of 12 months, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, and 31,525,600 seconds. Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days took the form of a deeper mindset rooted in repetition and experimentation. Ultimately, this practice revealed an immense capacity to grow, change, and develop when tasking oneself to create with such diligent intensity.

Matteini’s online presence, Another Department, was created as a vessel to house this creative idea—a space to make and post for the sake of sharing. In our digitally heavy world, the artist shares that expectation can often lead to fear and procrastination. Fortunately for Matteini, Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days’s steady routine of idea generation and implementation fostered a motivation to continue pursuing his self-appointed goal. Early designs such as “Day 20: Slow Down” and “Day 29: Ungodly Women” are a heavily collaged melangé of typeface, archival images, and calls to action. The text is bold and commanding and the colorways bright and grainy. These works make for perfectly capturing the attention of even the fast-paced rate of social media consumption. As Matteini continued refining his style and source ideas, later works take on a particular stylized aesthetic. As in “Day 189: You Are Going To Die” and “Day 326: We Are All We’ve Got” viewers can note the similarities shared with earlier designs while appreciating a turn towards sharper composition and simplified themes. For the artist, inspiration is culled from both the profound and the mundane—movies, music, artists, books and even one’s own notes app. Like a well-oiled design factory, the works on display for this exhibition show the full range of Matteini’s crafted technique. And now that this project is over, he asks, “Where do I go from here?”

Bo Matteini is a Designer and Artist from London UK. Another Department was started by Matteini in April 2022 as a 365 project. A melting pot of vintage ephemera, graphic design, sarcastic affirmations and cliche. His graphic work is led by experimentation, thematic links, composition and colour theory. His design is also greatly inspired by DIY punk posters, nostalgia and vintage design. Matteini studied at Camberwell College of Art with a degree in Illustration. He is currently the Art Director and Designer at UK brand SCRT and is taking freelance clients.

January 5 - February 2, 2024.

A limited edition Portland-tribute screen print “City of Roses” was released in tandem with this solo.

Programming for this exhibition included a DIY collage day with the artist, featuring digitally reproduced and printed assets from Matteini’s original posters created for the show.

“City of Roses” was featured at the 2024 Seattle Art Fair with Portland Art Dealer’s Association.

Press:
The Oregonian
Cliff Notes: Oregon Picks on Variable West

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Cloud X, a romantic reflection anchored by absurdity and artificiality, by Portland-based visual artist Leslie Vigeant. This body of work mirrors warped experiences regarding relationships, home, pleasure, excess, falsehood, jealousy, and the engrained and naive ways in which we compare ourselves to those around us. By way of large scale collage, painting, sculpture, and immersive lighting, Cloud X invites you to spin with your spinning thoughts. Works such as “The Stage” span an impressive 19ft expanse on the gallery wall. Its inclusion of bright neons and collaged objects lend this piece a layered presence that demands a viewer’s full attention. Yet, the additional imagery of soft clouds and a plush bed in an ornate, Rococo setting imbues the piece with a dreamy and calming presence.

Leslie’s studio practice pokes at the perceived hierarchies of social expectations. Cloud X is no exception. She plays with the clash of expectations versus reality—the romantic notions of what someone, or something, "should" be versus what it actually is, resulting in work that holds humor and sadness, seduction and repulsion. With the ever-present doom scrolling on TikTok and Instagram, where do we, the everyday people, fit in in a world that is presented as beautifully curated houses, couture cakes, cocktails, and clothing—all under the umbrella of seemingly effortless snapshots of perfected, peaceful living?

Leslie Vigeant (vee-junt) knows how to sweat. Based in Portland, OR, her practice is filled with artificial skyscapes, big-box store cakes, colored lights, and spreadsheets galore. She is the Director of Marketing and Communications at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Manager of the GLEAN Residency, and she plays with the hierarchies of social expectations in her studio.

Leslie received her MFA in Applied Craft + Design from Oregon College of Art and Craft / Pacific Northwest College of Art and has a BFA in 2D Studies and Painting from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Leslie has exhibited at the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Canada; Woodbury Art Museum, UT; AIA, San Francisco, CA; Cambridge College, MA; University of Missouri, MO; Marchutz School, Aix en Provence, France; Stephanie Chefas Projects and beyond She has received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Portland’s Regional Art and Culture Council, the Oregon Arts Commission, and Massachusetts Arts Council. Residencies with Recology, Artspace, Penland School of Crafts. Leslie was a founding member of the artist-run space Carnation Contemporary and the Interim Board President of the Contemporary Art Council (CAC) at the Portland Art Museum.

November 17, 2023 - January 1, 2024.

Programming for this exhibition included a meditative sound bath with Portland healer & practitioner Susan Hare.

Press:
Oregon Live

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery welcomes Portland-based Timme Lu for his debut solo with the gallery.

i did not want to be here so I left is a collection of ten abstract paintings, prints, and sculptural furniture highlighting shadows, mundanity, angles, lines, and intersections. The exhibition’s title and conception stem from feelings of uncomfortableness. Of not belonging, being seen, or possibly even existing. Countering this hardship, the artist is questioning space as a generalized societal pressure. What might come of pushing against set norms? In leaving, what might remain in the absence of one’s physical body?

The works guide visitors in an intentional loop from the entrance, through the gallery, and back out as if following a presence that was once there. Behind this essence, there lies a deeper consideration, and ultimately ownership, of the self. Vinyl motifs on the wall and ground allude to shadows both staged and literal. The inclusion of mirrored details give pause for a deeper, more personal introspection. Stylistic choices of black and white, raw canvas, and plywood as palette and mediums reflect a bent towards the soft spoken and minimalistic. The four wood and mirror sculptural works are recognizable as furniture yet abstracted in their utility to create an unevenness in form and function. As we walk, we encounter a table as a place to gather, a stool as a place to sit. Yet their presence in the gallery setting is unnerving—the expectation is that we’re still not allowed to touch. The two dimensional works on display highlight entrances, linear intersections, and exits. Texture, light, and opacity further give depth to a tenderness at play.

In recreating a scene of pseudo-domesticity, Timme invites viewers to find comfort in a traditionally uncomfortable space. This exhibition serves as a reminder that leaving is always an option.

Timme Lu is a Chinese-American artist and designer currently based in Portland, Oregon. Born on the east coast, raised on the west, and occasionally drifting in between. His work sits in nostalgia, shapes, senses, and an abundance of self-doubt. With a focus in letterpress and graphic design, most pieces take the form of a book, but recently he has been exploring furniture making. He is inspired by shifts/constants in spaces, soft/hard edges, reflections, and shadows. He is afraid of the dark, heights, and socializing. He loves snacking, fibrous scents, sound/body waves, textures, and staring out windows.

October 6 - November 9, 2023.

This exhibition was made possible with funding and resources from Regional Arts & Culture Council, Independent Publishing Resource Center, and the Asian Pacific American network of Oregon.

Programming for this exhibition included a series of furniture building workshops with Lu hosted in the gallery.

The limited edition risograph zine “…so i left” was released in tandem with this solo and featured at the 2023 Form.a Fair in Portland, OR.

Original prints “so” and “i” were featured at the 2024 Seattle Art Fair with Portland Art Dealer’s Association.

Press:
Variable West
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

Share is a visual and olfactive installation that expresses reverence for what grows at Foglight. As Artist-in-Residence at Foglight Farms, Tatiana Godoy Betancur has been documenting the people, produce, animals, and happenings of the 2023 season. The works in the exhibit capture close encounters with the life that grows and thrives on this land, and depict patterns of nourishment and care. Select photographs are scented to evoke a closeness with the subjects of these works and to inspire attendees to interact with the works through memories. As guests move about the barn and the wind blows in, subtle whiffs of tomato, shiso, hay, douglas fir, and lavender bring the external farm into this constructed space.

Godoy Betancur’s photographic work embraces a desire to create visual opportunities for healing and communion. This practice creates expansiveness from the scenes captured, freezing in time intimate moments of connection. From the miniature leaves on a beet leaf to the swirling tuft of hair on a goat’s head, glimpses of these carefully framed details hint at a larger ecosystem at play. What scenes might these images evoke for you? Do the scents remind you of anything?

This exhibition was produced in tandem with Foglight Farms’ farm-to-table dinner series “Late Night Foglight”, September 24-October 15, 2023.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition of Portland-based artist Forest Wolf Kell. Mirrors presents a series of work honed from a considerable personal library of reference imagery. Culling inspiration from literature, contemporary happenings, music, and daily life these graphite collages reflect back to viewers an amalgam of information free of a cohesive narrative. When constructing each composition, Kell considers depth, proportion and shading to carefully free associate the images that most acutely resonate with him. In this manner, the focus shifts from object to a balance of the elements.

The interplay between density and negative space, between light and dark, creates the harmony amidst Kell’s employed style of realism. He considers each canvas an opportunity for the viewer to seek out that which they are independently looking for. A cigarette fuming in an ashtray, the time face of a melting clock, a figure in exaltation, or the face of Charles Bukowski, Mirrors demands the audience to pick their own brand of poison. This series serves as a reflection, not only of Kell’s relationship to the collected material, but as a window into what most intrigues, or repels, one’s eye. This individual interpretation, inherently influenced by external experience and bias, lends an ever shape shifting quality to both canvas and exhibition.

Forest Wolf Kell is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Portland, Oregon. Primarily his works are collections of objects, images and icons arranged in ways meant to provoke thought.

August 24 - September 22, 2023.

Programming for this exhibition included a closing reception for produced in tandem with Portland-based musician Mreens and dancers Uno and Sophia.

Press:
PSU Vanguard
Buckman Journal
Variable West
EverOut

All documentation courtesy of Matt Gaston.

When We Met opened at One Grand Gallery on May 26th, welcoming painter and sculptor Benjamin Ewing for his first exhibition with the gallery. This new body of work marries Ewing’s sculptural practice to his polished oil paintings for an oeuvre that contemplates origin, relativity, and interconnectedness. In consideration of how the artist ultimately comes to be removed from their final work, so does When We Met invite viewers to extend their own language to these pieces and contextualize them within a familiar understanding. Abstract, hand-chiseled figures and soft planar undulations rendered in oil morph into recognizable figures such as two hands coming together, or a breathtaking horizon at the sun’s moment of departure. The suite of works freezes time with the desire to encourage kinship, both internal and external.

Work such as “Virtue” commands the space by way of stature and strong use of red, a dominant color evocative of power. The amorphous form gives viewers pause, questioning this shape’s existence and intention, and serves as foil to “Antare” which instead makes abundant use of its negative space. In focusing our attention to the red orb glowing in the canvases’ center, the sharp cutouts that frame the lower quadrants of this work leave much to free imagination. Ewing’s capacity to create this interwoven symbiosis similarly extends to his series of hand-formed sculptures done in autoclaved aerated concrete. The completed works retain a memory of the rigorous carving process by way of their porous material—the hewn chunks and sanded edges celebrate each executed gesture and ground these sculptures in their physicality. Both methods of expression root their origin story within a space of learning, begun by the artist and to be sustained by the viewer. In conversation with one another, the works on display seek to provide avenues for intimate reflection and response in communion with their audience.

Benjamin Ewing is a multidisciplinary artist located in Portland, Oregon. With a background in editorial photography and print design, his transition into painting and sculpture is rooted in the same visual principles. He continues to sift these concepts through new mediums. In the attempt to better understand the power of materials and the way in which they can inform one another. Ultimately, providing a language in which we may better understand ourselves.

May 26 - June 30, 2023.

The prints “Ipsum” and “Bode” were released in tandem with this solo and featured at Form.a Fair in Portland, OR.

“Bode” was featured at the 2024 Seattle Art Fair with Portland Art Dealer’s Association.

Programming for this exhibition included an intuitive drawing night with Ewing and a meditative sound bath with Portland practitioner Susan Hare. The closing reception for When Wet Met was produced in tandem with Portland pop-up collective Ethereal Reflections.

Press:
Exploring the Intersection of Art and AAC
Variable West
EverOut
Variable West

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to welcome Los Angeles based textile artist Angela Anh Nguyen for her first solo exhibition with the gallery. How We Hegemony documents the reaching effects of authority and positions of power on news, culture, and ideologies in our contemporary society. The bright, bold tufted rugs on display are inspired by the chaos of our modern age, speaking to a cultural status quo and a general state of anxiety. A certain playful levity is fused to these conditions by way of the artist’s insistence on a portrayal so sincere it becomes comical, and so detailed it becomes difficult to look anywhere else but head-on.

In her practice, Nguyen creates works that reflect the larger socio-cultural happenings of the world via colorful, audacious personages. Her figure rugs are a tongue-in-cheek ode to the convoluted rhythm of life, often exaggerated and never serious on the surface. Caricatures such as “I’m From Portland” or “Counter Culture among other things…” bring to the surface the ridiculous, albeit true, stereotypes we’ve come to accept as routine. In turn, her larger collaged rugs portray the situations individuals often land themselves in. For How We Hegemony, Nguyen specifically explores the effects of media consumption wherein individuals are forced to respond to agenda setting, trends and norms, ultimately creating a cyclically suffocating status quo. She explains how the attempts of counter-culture and counter-hegemonic practices result in obstacles that fall prey to what they try to oppose. Does counter hegemony exist? How do you counter hegemony if not with hegemonic norms? Beyond this messaging, the show is a light-hearted and amusing attempt to encourage artistic agency in a fine art setting with an installation of works that are as functional as they are visual.

American fiber artist Angela Anh Nguyen (b. 1995 California) reinterprets the technique of tufting as an anti-establishment medium of self-expression. Anh Nguyen’s meticulously tufted rugs subvert archetypes of American society from a working-class perspective. Her figurative rugs present life-size caricatures drawn from our chaotic modern age, from a bitcoin obsessed stockbroker to a flattened police officer bleeding blue, that speak to our general state of anxiety with a sense of humor and understanding. Her more traditional rectangular and circular “rug-shaped” compositions collage together cartoon characters, newspaper headlines, viral memes, and sports themes – playfully giving form to the mythologies that constitute the cultural ground beneath our feet.

April 7 - May 19, 2023.

The publication “How We Hegemony” was published in tandem with this solo exhibition.

Press:
Juxtapoz
Hypebae
PSU Vanguard
Demystification
Variable West
EverOut
Art and About PDX

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

There are two ways you can treat the surface of steel: chemically, or physically. I prefer brushing the blemishes of my past life with an angle grinder. The dizzying combination of wire bristles, 60 grit faces and speed wipe away the detritus to reveal the slick and shiny guts (of the) internal. (I practice this exercise in the comfort of my studio where I’m able to reckon with each task and emotion as they appear to me. This process is as methodical as it is vulnerable to the unexpected). If your power goes out, you can drive down to American Scientific, where you can ask them for a quart of nitric acid to chemically etch your steel. They will question your motives but just tell them you're an artist, but that won’t comfort them at all. When you get home, pull out your 4x8 foot acid vat and prepare the bath. My mentor didn’t wear chemical gloves but told me to keep some baking soda nearby, just in case, because it neutralizes the acid. See? It doesn’t hurt, but eight years is a long time. Gently, very gently slide the steel into the acid until it is fully submerged. You can watch time pass though the rust particles that begin to unravel, the surface (like an apparition), revealing those slick guts I warned you about. During the biggest transition of my life, I photographed my way through it because I can’t see anything until it's a photograph. I printed it on steel so I won’t have to tell you twice.

“just wait until next year” reads as both mantra and title of conceptual artist and photographer Simone Fischer solo exhibition, opening April 6th in conjunction with after/time collective. The suite of works on display reflect Fischer’s arduously detailed practice of etching imagery onto large-scale steel plates as an exercise of reflection and healing. The nuanced hues of blacks and grays reveal careful subtlety even in their neutrality while Fischer’s own hand in the craft expertly navigates the tenacity of the process. This exhibition exists as a reminder to remain resilient and see the beauty in one’s surroundings, in moments of spiraling uncertainty. While the present may at times appear obscured, much like revealing the layers in a steel etching, there is light underneath the surface. This exhibition is inspired by femme mobility and supports women and families seeking safety and independence from domestic abuse. just wait until next year has partnered with the Raphael House of Portlandand 50% of all proceeds from this exhibition will be donated to the organization.

This exhibition was generously supported by The Hallie Ford Foundation and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA).

April 6 - May 3, 2023.

Programming for this exhibition included an artist panel hosted on April 25th with Simone Fischer & Raphael House of Portland.

Press:
PNCA
Prosper Portland

All documentation courtesy of Mario Gallucci and the gallery.

I may not have been a writer at sixteen, but I was most emphatically a dreamer, and felt deliriously happy to be free…
– Mary Ruefle, My Private Property (pg. 56)

In a contemporary context heavily inundated with and advanced by the art of commodification, what does the making of work rooted in honest connection and authentic self-perception continue to be? This exhibition considers work generated at the intersection of new media and craft—artwork that is made with intention, with careful hands, and that speaks to collective experience.

Given a current “attention economy” heavily concerned with optics and speed, the influx of pre-deterministic AI-generated content is challenging our traditional understanding of creative capital. Do these advanced systems of building offer further creative freedom, or serve as barriers to the intuitive process of art-making? What forms can those avenues of expression embody, and how are they symbolic of our innate connective threads?

My Private Property was a group show of 16 artists pooled from a national open call hosted at Carnation Contemporary in Portland, OR. The exhibition encompassed a myriad mediums, ranging from painting, sculpture, textile, ceramic, installation and text.

March 4 - March 26, 2023.

Exhibiting Artists:
Itala Aguilera
Epiphany Couch
Claire Elliott
Simone Fischer
Eila Gustina
Carolyn Hazel Drake
Socascetica/Viktor Kobylianskyi
Erin Langley
Nicholas Moler-Gallardo
Wade Schuster
Victoria Smits
Júlia Sodré
Salomée Souag
Kelsey Tynik
Brittany V. Wilder
ahuva s. zaslavsky

Between Lines is the joint exhibition of Portland-based artists Sebo Walker and Noah Smith. The duo first connected through a mutual love of skateboarding and shortly thereafter began making photographs. This natural friendship allowed for a freeform coming together that fed their to approach art-making through multiple avenues. Between Lines melds Smith’s photography with Walker’s painting to build out a vision for their work that is as reflective of them individually, as it is collaboratively.

The collections on the gallery walls are spaced to allow for a natural flow between the respective mediums of each artist. Sebo Walker’s large gridded and color-blocked paintings expand upon the artist’s playful engagement with form and color contrast. Paired in conjunction are a suite of smaller works offering a more focused attention to detail and shape. These paintings are further accentuated by the addition of the hand-painted mural to the gallery wall on which they’re displayed. Swaths of pastel colors provide a fitting background to the canvas pieces, at times intentionally blurring the hard edges of the works and allowing for a broader interpretation of Walker’s artistic range. Noah Smith’s skate photographs move away from the abstract and pull on a deep understanding of light and motion to frame his central figures. The final vision captured is a dynamic control of composition and depth of field—skaters executing tricks, balancing in mid-air, and gliding effortlessly within each image. The deep reds and blues of night photography are made richer by the manipulated bright of streaking lights. A playful use of angles and lenses imbues the works with the classic nostalgia of skate photography.

The heart of this collaboration is friendly and experimental. Hung on the back focal wall of the gallery is a collaged display of twelve images captured by Smith, and subsequently painted on by Walker. Walker’s bold line work and vibrant colors contrast and complement Smith’s photography by interacting with subjects and the world surrounding them. These pieces, alongside several other reworked images, three skate decks and a painted VX camera make up the body of partner work on display. The show title is inspired by Walker’s ability to work with lines to enhance shapes, subjects, and colors beneath and between them. It is also a reference to both skaters' drive to maintain these artistic passions between filming lines and documenting skateboarding through photo and video.

Sebo Walker is a professional skateboarder and artist based in Portland, OR. Sebo’s primary medium is painting, but he is anything but a conventional painter. From creating customized grip-tapes to building-sized murals, Sebo’s signature style is eye-catching and inventive, whether it be a pair of sneakers or a series of canvases. His artwork plays with color and line—using abstract shapes, bright colors, and active line work to create bold, vibrant pieces brimming with movement and energy. Skateboarding and art making go hand-in-hand for Sebo, and he seeks to bring his creativity to all of his work, on and off the board.

Noah Smith is a skateboarder and photographer born in Texas and raised in New Jersey. Currently residing in Portland, OR with his fiancée and their two cats, his work shooting product photography and his love of skating with friends lead him to capture skateboarding through photos and to obsess over light and motion. He embraces the fact that shooting skateboarding can be precise and calculated, or loose and somewhat unpredictable. Noah strives to push his skills and continues to learn with every click of the shutter.

December 9, 2022 - January 31, 2023.

The exhibition was accompanied by a live screening of the Cal’s Pharmacy new video, “LAND”, followed by a game of S.K.A.T.E. in the gallery.

Mujer opens at Well Well Projects in Portland, OR with new photographic work by Los Angeles-based photographer cortney morentin. This series moves to highlight the beauty and range of femininity that can often be overlooked or overshadowed in our day-to-day society. Soft forms, moving water, and graceful poses find their balance and replace the virility of sharp angles, harsh shadows and forceful lines often lauded in a masculine-centric world. In Mujer, morentin demonstrates the ease with which the feminine, in alls its wonderful fluidity, can come to flourish exquisitely when afforded the unbounded space to do so. With this in mind, the artist pursues a collaborative relationship with her subjects, forming a deep well of trust from which these powerful images can be made. The four women captured here are empowered to lean into the potential of their own beings - to trust their intuition, to turn towards tenderness, and to seek an untapped depth within themselves. Bodies carrying bodies, bodies swimming through water, and bodies at rest here demonstrate a delicate emotional expression, one that hopes to capture them at their most true and vulnerable essence.

This collection of work was born of a personal project aimed to uplift a balance between the soft and the strong. The mediums on display range from print, textile, video and installation, and their interconnectedness in themes mirrors the inherent connection morentin sees between the force and awe of her subjects. She envisions a future wherein this unbounded femininity can continue growing, and aid in the unburdening of the patriarch so deeply rooted in everything. She invites viewers to see this potential, to honor the feminine that has graced their life, and in turn channel their own energy and never let it settle.

cortney morentin (b. 1991, Long Beach, CA) is an artist ever evolving in shape and form. Currently, she is a photographer based in Los Angeles with a nomadic spirit grounded by the relationships nearest and dearest to her. In her many avenues of care and craft, she has sowed the seeds and tended to her love of the arts. She draws inspiration from living authentically, diving deeper within, researching how to better communicate, having a lot of feelings, dancing with abandon, and roaming a city or trail with no agenda. Behind the lens she feels a deep desire to capture the truth, experience a full-bodied life, and nurture sacred relationships.

December 3, 2022 - January 1, 2023.

The book “i believe in us” was published in Los Angeles in tandem with this solo exhibition and featured at the 2023 Form.a Fair in Portland, OR.

All documentation courtesy of Mario Gallucci Photo.

Symbol. Tool. Weapon.
By any means necessary.

Machete Factory opens at One Grand Gallery with a group exhibition fundraiser named after its benefitting party. This show will host the work of 40 artists, each of whom has created a unique design for a personalized machete, which has then been laser etched to their specifications. The lineup of participating artists is staggering in its capacity and talent, bringing a wide range of artistry to the wall of work installed in the gallery.

While the machete has gained mainstream popularity as a result of its association and proximity to violence, its primary and rudimentary use has always been for agriculture. The Machete gathers. The Machete gives. The Machete provides. The Machete nurtures. Machetes are not a tool of the bourgeois. They are a tool of the people. Machete Factory wants to exist outside of the common structure of individualism and focus on community and accessibility.

This fundraiser is aimed to generate support for Machete Factory Tattoo - a cultural, educational, and social hub that will house the most influential and sought-after tattoo artists in the United States. It provides artists the best venue and support and provides tattoo clientele the highest level of professionalism and artistry. Inclusivity and representation are at the forefront of the vision for both the forthcoming Machete Factory Tattoo as well as this group exhibition. While the main focus at Machete Factory Tattoo will be on tattooing to keep the lights on, the collective will stay malleable and open to new concepts of how a space can be used - as a rotating merchandise pop-up shop, a gallery space, and an accessible tattoo school - to feed the greater needs of the community. Decolonization will be a priority, especially in the realm of tattooing within Portland. The tattoo school aspect of Machete Factory will prioritize giving opportunities to marginalized groups that haven’t customarily had access to tattooing thus far in Oregon. Creating careers and accessible education is a solid foundation for reparations as opposed to capitalizing on the high demand of a sacred practice.

November 4 - November 26, 2022.

All documentation courtesy of Aaron Wessling / Portland Art Documentation.

Dream Girl by Portland-based Sa’rah “Rah" Melinda fields an intimate conversation between the artist and her grandmothers, neither of which she was ever able to meet. In this dialogue, Rah imagines what it would be to live out the dreams of her ancestors. Presented at One Grand Gallery this exhibition incorporates selected multimedia works in the form of painting, sculpture and installation that each dig into the artist's heritage and invite viewers to wonder what it means to dream out loud. Blue painted arches across the main wall hold each of Rah’s vivid, circular self-portraits. Each rendering of her likeness means to reimagine a context that pairs the celebration of femininity with a reckoning of one’s personal history. Rah paints herself into these revelatory moments with bright colors evocative of traditional Moroccan patterns, while wearing American basketball jersey’s as converted hijabs. This pointed visual blending brings to a head the cultural relevance the artist’s upbringing in the US has had in her artistic practice. In “Wrapped in the American Dream (Magic)”, Rah gazes at the crowd through a blue and black striped Orlando Magic jersey, a Champion logo above her eyes which remain the only part of her body exposed to the public. Across the bottom of the canvas is the Arabic word for “girl” - as in, a daughter; a granddaughter; as in, Rah herself. The command of the audience’s attention through this intentional focus here expresses the artist’s fluid and internal journey of enmeshing her two varied worlds. Within these paintings, she envisions herself as a child, playing dress-up to live up to and beyond her grandmother !s dreams.

This expression “dream girl” comes from an intentional distancing from objectification - instead of becoming someone else’s dream, this works calls on the feminine power of dreaming and the tenderness of that action. As the daughter of an immigrant and a first generation American, Rah never had the opportunity to connect with a deeply important part of her family. Pulling from this emotion, she uses the liberties afforded by the American Dream to make her mark and to make work highlighting the internal tension of being mixed race and existing in a threshold between two worlds. Three painted basketballs sit as relics within the larger context of the space, displayed on silk pillows to hint at their fragility while the exteriors resemble centuries old artifacts. They rest on wood cargo containers designed to mimic realistic export crates. Printed in Arabic on each of those basketballs are the words that evoke the delicacy of dreaming - fertility, love, and a safe place. Dream Girl thus prevails as a transportation into Rah’s realized space, with an intention that the show itself feel as if it has been shipped in from across the world, as if it could exist in two places at once. In this manner, the artist addresses the frailty of aspirations by voicing hers to exist loudly within the gallery. Each work has been carefully considered for its ability to sport a double life, much like Rah herself, constantly re-examining what it means to live within a profoundly entrenched cultural crossroads.

Sa’rah Melinda Sabino is a Moroccan-American multimedia artist from Boston, MA, currently residing in Portland, OR. As a mixed-race woman, Rah’s work explores identity through the charged lens of identity. As a result of belonging to two differing worlds, her work aims to create a space for those who might similarly experience a tension of disparate races. That space hopes to inspire a feeling of belonging, claiming space within the duality and encouraging community.

September 9, 2022 - October 22, 2022.

All documentation courtesy of Anthony Jordan.

One Grand Gallery is pleased to announce The Impossible Art of Coming Together, an exhibition of paintings, mural work and weaving by Portland-based artist Nia Musiba. Curated by Luiza Lukova, the works selected for this show consider a myriad of motifs that ring close to the artist: identity, origin, community, balance, growth, and contrast. Musiba’s work explores Blackness through history, pulling from her own heritage as the daughter of a Tanzanian immigrant. Her canvases are bold and large - pulled towards primary colors and aggrandized depictions of bodies, these pieces hold weight in their details. The inclusion of texture to individual components within her paintings adds a visually stimulating element to the viewing experience. Where one figure receives a slick coat of paint, its counterpart protrudes slightly from the foreground, gritty sand melded with paint creating the illusion of the narratives coming alive and endlessly unfolding.

Hands stretch across canvases, hold flowers, hold space, hold each other. Each work achieves a calming balance, alternating shapes in black and white contort and dance with one another, at times even moving with or through their partner. Just as these imagined personalities extend themselves and reach beyond the constraints of their frames, so too does this evocative gesturing mimic Musiba’s intention to push the work further, to dream even bigger. Each piece hides within its creation an underlay of text born of the artist’s internal drafting process. Painted as the initial base of each work, and subsequently covered in multiple realized coats of paint, these textual complements remain hidden to the visible eye. To unveil a glimpse into this thorough and intimate practice, the gallery will be publishing an interactive zine in tandem with the exhibition.

The Impossible Art of Coming Together challenges artist and viewers alike to find moments of respite - to imagine new avenues for care and familiarity in times that may feel overwhelmingly heavy and burdensome.

Nia Musiba lives and eats and sleeps and goes to school and creates work and makes new friends in Portland. Her identity as a queer Black woman and the daughter of a Tanzanian immigrant continue to inspire her exploration of Blackness throughout history. Her creations are about being human, about hands and feet and bodies and love and sadness and flowers and sunshine. Nia views her depictions of Black and brown bodies as a direct response to the hyper-sexualization, brutalization, and overall negative depictions of BiPoC individuals within art and media.

August 12 - September 2, 2022.

Programming for this exhibition included a BIPOC Open Mic and a Manifesto Writing Workshop hosted by Musiba. The publication of the zine “The Impossible Art of Coming Together” was realized in tandem with this exhibition and debuted at the closing reception.

All documentation courtesy of Portlxndiia Photography.

One Grand Gallery presents Come Back Soon, an exhibition of new multi-media paintings by artist Brit Abuya, and curated by Luiza Lukova. The works on display approach making as a way to dig deeper into the self - they encapsulate specific moments in time within the artist’s life. Synonymous with coming out of the last several years of isolation and navigating the transitional space left in its wake, captured here are notes on a constant state of metamorphosis. Like the inclusion of the moths in “Untitled Diptych”, or the birthday balloons in “Talk To Me Nice”, each of these pieces are markers of a growth that is thoroughly personal. The appearance of doors as a recurring theme are linked to Abuya’s manner in expressing deeply consequential events, such as the loss of a loved one, that have transformed them and their practice. The doors are symbols to note both a feeling of passing through, as much as a feeling of purely passing by. There is no right and there is no wrong, there are only lived experiences that shape our daily perception.

In this manner, the suite of works in Come Back Soon stands as a metaphorical home for the artist, a whirlwind of color, experience, and emotion that evolve with each viewing. The abundance of self- portraiture is a steady subject matter for Abuya, as is the desire to communicate feelings kept close to the cuff. Knives, skeletons, shells, and clouds similarly hold relevant significance for Abuya, and make an appearance here as hints to a subconscious understanding of the artist’s process.The paintings are embedded with hidden, intricate text details necessitating viewers to come up close and personal in order to decode the messages. As the artist considers how those statements will be received by a larger audience, the viewer is left to wonder how the artist has moved through those scenarios. Encapsulating highs and lows in abundance, sharp revelations exist in multitudes within each painting.

Brit Abuya (b. 1994, Long Beach, CA) is a Trans Non-binary tattoo artist and painter from the Filipinx diaspora, currently based in Portland, OR. They grew up in Las Vegas, NV, which they consider their hometown and where their early life experiences with systematic oppression as a brown person, experiencing houselessness and living well below the poverty line left a forceful impact. Their practice is confessional and intimate, unpacking their past and present experiences, in an attempt to connect with others who might have parallel or similar experiences. They work in painting, tattooing, drawing and baking. The way these different art forms meld and intersect is in a state of constant re-imagination, and their personal practice reflects that ongoing expansion.

July 15 - August 5, 2022.

All documentation courtesy of Erin L.J.

A preview exhibition of Portland-based Nia Musiba’s new and works-in-progress alongside sketches, poetry and an interactive zine component.

This show was executed in tandem with the planning of an exhibition and zine release set to debut Summer ‘22.

All image documentation courtesy by Aaron Wessling.

In Mirror Mirror, Mira Mira, Portland-based artists Laura Camila Medina and Angela Maree Saenz present a compelling suite of unreleased paintings, drawings and monotype prints that inspire conversation around community, care and connection. Medina’s otherworldly watercolor illustrations depict anthropomorphic qualities - a face, a body, a hand - that help situate the image while also transporting viewers to a magical, indistinct space entirely of her crafting. In turn, Saenz’s honest and vibrant oil on canvas portraits instantly place viewers within a comfortable frame of intimacy, evading hyper-realism with their freeform, monochromatic backgrounds and stylized brush strokes. Separately and in tandem, the artists present to viewers world-building techniques that create meaningful narratives meant to reimagine and question the world they inhabit.

Medina and Saenz harness a power of transformation with these pieces that reflects inwards, pulling from intimate thoughts and emotions, and outwards, hoping to channel a similar self within their audience. They imply the familiar manner in which faces, objects and patterns can transport the gallery-goer to a dreamlike place and state. The works seem to ask, how do we all relate? What might be possible if we experienced no barriers or obstacles to our personal dreams?

January 8 - 30, 2022.

This exhibition was graciously hosted at Well Well Projects in Portland, OR and curated by Luiza Lukova after being selected for their January 2022 Open Call.

Portland-based artist Heldáy Benjamín de la Cruz transforms homebase Gallery with an exterior mural and a series of illustrations inside the gallery space as part of his exhibition Ni De Aquí, Ni De Allá. The title, taken from Spanish, de la Cruz’s native tongue, translates to “neither from here, nor from there.” This phrase speaks to the artist’s complicated and oftentimes intense ties to his own heritage and culture, and what it means for him to have been raised apart from the earth that shaped his ancestry.

The mural and small illustrations on view expound on themes of home, environment and the artist’s bicultural identity, with imagery stretching from El Volcán de Colima in México to Wy’east in the Pacific Northwest. The works are subtle, recalling topographical maps that outline boundaries that are, at varying times for the artist, imagined, felt or physically crossed. These pieces have a desire to rectify the physical and emotional distances between home and homeland, between past and present, and between heart and mind.

A hand-held book featuring de la Cruz’s poetry and illustrations was published in conjunction with this exhibition.

Following the success and support after the second event hosted by Power to the Dreamers entitled Una Vida Mejor: A Tribute to the Original Dreamers, our group hosted a reunion show to extend the visibility of the visual work we had on display.

Graciously hosted by Marrow PDX , our four undocumented artists came together for this “Una Vida Mejor: Reunion Show” which featured all of the works for the original event. Additionally, never before shown together, this reunion show features the 11 large illustrations by one of the artists that were the centerpiece of We The Dreamers: An Art Show to Benefit DACA back in 2017.

At Marrow, these works will have the opportunity to co-exist and be on view from November 2019 through January 2020, which will be the longest they will have ever been displayed.

Visit for more information here.

All documentation by Caroline Lee Photography.

Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Katelyn Nicole Kilburg presents I haven't forgotten anything despite how I pretend to at homebase gallery. The mural realized for this occasion on the wall immediately outside of the gallery expounds on Kilburg’s own grapplings with memory and creative release. Here, the painted flowers stand as a humble offering in the act of devotion, as a tribute even to that which has gone. Undercurrents of greek lore flow through the work, highlighting the column, the amphora, calla lilies, and the greek eye which serve to tell stories both very old, and stories quite new and tender.

The projection featured inside the exhibition space serves as a literal time lapse of the artist’s musings, grief, and eventual acceptance of a time past. Filmed on 8mm during a trip to Greece, where Kilburg heralds ancestral ties, the video is filled with a hopeful longing for something that just barely escapes her capture. The works presented as a whole wishes to lay bare the ways in which memory may be warped over time, and the subsequent emotional shift that naturally follows. As one wanders first past the mural to enter the exhibition space, the artist leads them through a visual mind map of her own experience with nostalgia. Additionally, viewers are encouraged to locate the clear balloons within the space of homebase and pop them for an unexpected surprise. Contrasting with the soft tones and feelings evoked by her work, the startling loud pop of the balloons reveal, tucked inside, snippets of Kilburg’s written practice. Each clear balloon holds an ephemera of her intimate thoughts and motivations underlying the foundation of this exhibit. Should one take part in this ritual, one may find clues that something soft, almost raw, is typically still close beneath the surface. Ultimately, what we may come to realize is that the most freeing act of all may be to release, or pop, the careful care we put into nurturing certain memories.

A twelve-page risograph zine featuring images and poetry by Kilburg was published in conjunction with this exhibition.

Last year Power to the Dreamers, an arts & activism organization based in Portland, OR, put together our first event as a group. We The Dreamers: An Art Show to Defend DACA raised $16,000 to give back to organizations doing on the ground work for the immigrant community.

This May, we hosted our second event Una Vida Mejor: A Tribute to the Original Dreamers. This year, we shifted the focus from DACA to a different part of the undocumented community: the original dreamers, the parents of DACA recipients.

The gallery consisted of work exclusively by undocumented artists working in the Portland metro area. The works ranged from original illustrations, photography, painting, collage and a floral installation, as well as a live screen printing booth.

Accompanying the visual art was music and live performance throughout the evening by undocumented and Latinx artists.

Visit for more information here.

Art From All Angles was one-night interdisciplinary Art Festival hosted at the Mission Theater, in Portland, OR in March 2019.

Live dance and music, short film screenings, and visual art from 50+ artists.

Images courtesy of Art From All Angles and Brett King Photography.

Blue on Blue on Blue opens at Nationale as a month-long pop-up series curated by Luiza Lukova and Emma Christ. Divided into three parts, each week-long exhibition seeks to transform the gallery space with regards to materiality, presence, self-portraiture, and the color blue. The three artists featured present a variety of mediums and means of expression, while still succinctly embodying a unified theme that allows their shows to live sequentially in the gallery space.

Marguerite Bailey I August 9 - August 14

The sensation of weightlessness, of floating in a body of water while softly gazing at the sky, is at the forefront of the paper pulp works created by Marguerite Bailey. This liminal space is the essence Bailey captures in her paintings, along with the meditation that occurs when in between these two seemingly infinite and formless plains, both of them blue. Marguerite Bailey is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in Portland, OR. Her work involves a deep connection to the material, most often the pulp of paper. The handmade papers are compilations of many objects into one -- an act similar to the compression of time into memory.

release:

https://www.nationale.us/blue-on-blue-on-blue-2018

press:

http://www.artandaboutpdx.com/pdx-exhibition-events-calendar/blue-on-blue-on-blue

http://www.artandaboutpdx.com/blog/highlight-lukova-christ

Blue on Blue on Blue opens at Nationale as a month-long pop-up series curated by Luiza Lukova and Emma Christ. Divided into three parts, each week-long exhibition seeks to transform the gallery space with regards to materiality, presence, self-portraiture, and the color blue. The three artists featured present a variety of mediums and means of expression, while still succinctly embodying a unified theme that allows their shows to live sequentially in the gallery space.

Maggie Heath I August 23 - August 28

Driven by a desire to make visible the structure that exists beneath the surface, Maggie Heath’s installation serves as an entry into the unseen skeletal system that supports and at times muddles our existence. Also working within the themes of layering and unveiling, Heath draws inspiration from ice formations, foggy Minnesota winters, and the physical reactions of the body to certain external pressures. By considering and manipulating light, stability, and perception in her installation she breaks past the visible surface of the gallery space to expose the most minute materials of our existence. Playing with textures, movement, and fog, she highlights the simultaneous ephemerality and vitality that can be imposed by boundaries, just as easily as it can be dismantled. She asks, how is weight bared? How does emotion linger? How can we experience both at once? Maggie Heath is a sculptor, and an installation and multi-media artist working in Portland, OR.

release:

https://www.nationale.us/blue-on-blue-on-blue-2018

press:

http://www.artandaboutpdx.com/pdx-exhibition-events-calendar/blue-on-blue-on-blue

http://www.artandaboutpdx.com/blog/highlight-lukova-christ

Blue on Blue on Blue opens at Nationale as a month-long pop-up series curated by Luiza Lukova and Emma Christ. Divided into three parts, each week-long exhibition seeks to transform the gallery space with regards to materiality, presence, self-portraiture, and the color blue. The three artists featured present a variety of mediums and means of expression, while still succinctly embodying a unified theme that allows their shows to live sequentially in the gallery space.

Brit I August 16 - August 21

Evoking strong resonances of self-portraiture, the paintings by Brit are an amalgamation of collage and text-based art. Painting directly onto found materials, layering images atop one another and illustrating everyday recognizable objects, Their canvases act like capsules or journals of a specific time and mindset. The pieces illustrate the internal processing of the world around them and their position within it. In offering a more raw and process-based approach to painting, these paintings serve as intricate depictions of the complex internal mechanism at play in daily life. Using this self-referential structure, the artist explores themes of identity, poverty, and the simple desire to understand the complications that abound among us all. Brit is a painter and found artist based in Portland, OR. Their work focuses heavily on depicting shifting states of transition.

release:

https://www.nationale.us/blue-on-blue-on-blue-2018

press:

http://www.artandaboutpdx.com/pdx-exhibition-events-calendar/blue-on-blue-on-blue

http://www.artandaboutpdx.com/blog/highlight-lukova-christ

Power to the Dreamers (now Undocu-PDX) began as a local, grass roots art activism group that continually sought to elevate the undocumented narrative and immigrant voices through art, community and events in the Portland area.

In December 2017, we curated We The Dreamers: An Art Show to Benefit DACA which featured a gallery, a live screen-printing event, a silent auction, live music, food & drinks, and more. All funds raised were donated to benefit United We Dream, Oregon DACA Coalition, and Pueblo Unido.

Visit for more information here.