"The Last Dream, The Task of the Future" was written and published for Carola Penn: A Retrospective in conjunction with X Gallery and the Carola Penn Studio in Portland, OR.
The posthumous exhibition "Landscapes Within: Works by Carola Penn" was hosted at X Gallery from May 31 to June 16, 2024 showcase a breadth of paintings by the late artist Carola Penn (1945-2019).
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Complexity seems to have an irresistible attraction for me; I decided not to eliminate any of the possibilities … I was testing my own tolerance for chaos to find what means I would arrive at instinctively.
Carola Penn, 1986
In a prolific career spanning upwards of fifty years, painter Carola Penn’s archive posthumously cements her legacy within a rich arts ecology in the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of works highlight a lifelong dedication to documenting enduring and evolving realities in and around Oregon, Washington and California. Her practice was deeply rooted in a love for the unknown and what she could quietly uncover within. She relied on continuous self-discovery; re-imaginings of ubiquitous narratives ultimately shaped her unique visual language. From childhood, her life and her practice fused an inseparable symbiosis that she exercised with unabashed drive and curiosity. Her move to Oregon in 1969 propelled an incredibly disciplined late career, casting her as a formidable, albeit often overshadowed, presence in the Pacific Northwest art scene until her death in 2019 at the age of 74.
Her works range from the fragmented to the more traditional—from abstract and tactile to figural and ephemeral. Formally trained as a studio artist, Penn experimented with collage and sculpture in provocative variations to devise her own style, one that was fiercely independent of any concrete signification. That is, she vehemently favored the fluid experience of the audience. Often, works would take new forms and shapeshift by way of color, mark, or physical orientation, granting her canvases multiple opportunities for viewing. In this manner, she skirted long-standing artistic canons as a self-imposed creative precedent that followed her well into adulthood.
Penn’s impressive range documents a devoted trust in her craft. Her landscapes, literal and abstract, served to galvanize dialogue around topics she held in high esteem: urban renewal, land stewardship, and family dynamics, among others. Gathering samples from a storied oeuvre, these works depict an intense connection to place, with Penn’s layered mark-making a self-referential index of time. A comprehensive understanding of the artist’s past elucidates the impact her upbringing and environment had on her creative endeavors. For this, one must start at the very beginning.
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The full text can be found in print, copies available at both X Gallery and the Carola Penn Studio.
Purchase inquiries can be directed here.
In the city where it’s always summer, the unflinching sun and the towering palms become her second best accessories. Poise remains the first, to be worn on one’s sleeve at all times. She is Mika.
In the city where the mornings luxuriate and the nights brim with potential, it's only to be expected that the days blur into one long, indistinguishable, yet fortuitous memory. The feel of being wrapped in that bright haze to be repeated again and again. One wherein the spotlight shines only on her and the mystique of her presence.
The rain may be freedom of another kind, but the heat gives her purpose. She’s effortless, timeless. She stretches out by a crisp body of water, a tall glass of something refreshing collecting condensation to her side. She’s reading Babitz or Didion, naturally, culling inspiration from her surroundings before she moves on to the next vision. The world is hers to dream—there’s little room for pause and far too much to experience in too little time.
This woman dresses only for herself. Her personal wardrobe spans decades and designers, shapeshifting to fit her mood alone. She’s Hollywood Hepburn on the way to the morning meeting, and Pretty Woman Roberts going out at dusk. She knows her worth and wears herself as such. This woman is you, and you are her. And it's in those moments, and in all of the minutiae of daily existence in between, that the magic catches up. When the small joys reveal themselves. The formation of boxes outside the warehouse, the way the light hits the fence at sunset, the smile of the man watering his flowers across the street.
Our path may not change, but we do. Every day comes with a new desire, and with each comes evolution. She, and you, and we are forever evolving.
To experience the world unencumbered, and live each day for ourselves is enchanting. It is unfettered joy and it is ours to hold.
“This Woman Only Dresses for Herself” was published in October 2023, accompanying editorial work by Cortney Morentin.
“Nobody’s Fool at Carnation Contemporary” was selected for the 2022 edition of Conditions, a Publication of The Ford Family Foundation Visual Arts Program and The University of Oregon Center for Art Research.
This essay was originally published in Oregon Arts Watch in November, 2021.
Read the full publication here; “Nobody’s Fool at Carnation Contemporary” p. 34-39.
Image courtesy of The Ford Family Foundation.
This essay was produced as part of the inaugural Stelo + Variable West Arts Writing Residency, funded with generous support from Stelo.
This work explores the intersection between visual art and language - how the two forms are inextricably, and powerfully, enmeshed within an art historical canon. Distancing themselves from mere definition, the works of makers such as Sophie Calle and Adam Pendleton outline a turn towards the internal. Wherein the intricacies of art-making channel that tension inherent in language, and use text not as a replacement for traditional materials but as an extension of an emotional impulse. In their isolated variations, each interpretation of language enmeshed in its respective visual representation holds influence, inviting the viewer to become voyeur. This writing explores how certain artists, within their significant craft, intentionally breach privacy as a bridge toward telling stories, celebrating culture, and forging community.
Read full essay here.
Documentation:
Image 1: Sophie Calle, Take Care of Yourself, 2007. Installation view, Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, San Francisco, CA. Courtesy of Arter. Photo: Andria Lo.
Image 2: Joseph Kosuth, Titled (Art as Idea as Idea) The Word “Definition”, 1966-68. Mounted photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of “definition”, 57 x 57 in. Image courtesy of the MoMA Permanent Collection, New York City, New York.
Image 3: Vo Vo, Things that have to do with fire, 2021. Installation view, Fuller Rosen Gallery, Portland, OR. 127 x 108 inches. Cotton canvas, embroidery, woven fibers, wool. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Mario Gallucci.
Image 4: Makaveli Gresham, “whether they did it or not”, 2022, cyanotype on silk habotai, 11 x 11in. Image courtesy of lowell / maya rose.
b&w
5.5 x 4.25”
165 pages
‘residual ghosts’ is a work of creative non-fiction weaving Lukova’s own ghostly experiences — the way in which certain moments and memories can come to haunt us — with the narrative of a romance falling into dissolution. Written in 2017 as a personal exercise of release, the full text is now published here. the translucent images that accompany the story and live within the pages were riso-printed on vellum at Outlet PDX. Each book is hand printed and bound, no two are completely alike, making each its own special object.
Book release: Friday, August 20, 2021 (6-9pm) at Nationale Gallery
Cover design by Esque Arts
Graphic design by Emma Christ and Luiza Lukova
Photography by Alexandra Gómez
Exhibited at Carnation Contemporary, The Extended Ear: An Artist Book Fair.
Exhibited at Oregon Contemporary, Form.a Art Press Fair.
Documentation by Cara Lindsay Photography
b&w
5 3/8 x 2 1/2”
175 pages
‘plated’ is a written compilation of vanity license plates collected between the years of 2016 and 2018. Presented in this simplified manner, readers can hope to find levity and humor in these single words chosen as vehicular adornments.
Cover design by Esque Arts
Graphic design by Joseph K. Ravetti
Printed at the Pacific Northwest College of Art
Exhibited at Carnation Contemporary, The Extended Ear: An Artist Book Fair.
Exhibited at Oregon Contemporary, https://www.forma.press/Form.a Art Press Fair.
Documentation by Cara Lindsay Photography
predictive texts was published by the Institute for Conceptual Studies in March, 2020.
I started this project one day after accidentally sending a message to a friend by using only predictive text, my phone being in my pocket. What I had sent them was so outlandish that it sparked an idea - what if I took myself out of the equation of answering texts? What if I let my phone, the object I keep on my person at all times, and essentially knows all my secrets, do my biding? And isn’t that we already do with technology, relinquish all of our power and autonomy?
They are small vignettes composed as a response to the last text messages sent to me by a myriad of individuals. From there, I let apple's predictive text capabilities take the wheel. The hysteria and hyper sensitivity that our phones are always listening to us is not misguided - I compose the predictive texts mainly by pressing the middle predictive text suggestion repeatedly, hitting the left or right blindly every once in a while to spice up the algorithm, and let the narrative build itself. I edit purely for grammar, punctuation, occasional redundancy, or misspellings. The results are comical, and scarily close to "real" texts that I could have possibly sent in response.
Read the full publication here.
“should, should not” published in the inaugural issue of Soft Surface Poetry Magazine, March 2019.
The piece presented here is part of a larger body of work created at the Sou'Wester Artist Residency Program in June 2018.
Read the publication here.
