Mesh brings greater visibility and recognition to the artists we support. These four artists deepened their artistic practices through our Mentor Artist Fellowship program, and NACF is honored to make this investment in the next generation of Native artists.
― Laura (Cales) Matalka (Chickasaw Nation), NACF Program Manager
This 20 foot temporary mural in the Mesh Exhibition located in Portland Art museum is now open for for reservation! You can buy ticket online or in person. The “Mesh” exhibit at the Portland Art Museum features work from four contemporary Native artists touching on current social issues including the ongoing fight against racial injustice and conflicts over Indigenous land rights.
Ka’ila Farrell-Smith is a Klamath Modoc artist from Chiloquin, Oregon, whose selection from her recent, vibrant painting series Land Back draws from the aesthetics of graffiti as well as petroglyphs, using text and imagery as urgent messengers of warning and resistance. Embedded in the use of the customary Native Hawaiian practice of using ʻohe kāpala (carved bamboo printing tools), kapa (bark cloth), and natural pigments, Lehuauakea (Kanaka Maoli) a mixed-media artist from Portland and Hawaii, creates delicate yet powerful works that address racism and protest. The luminous photography of Leah Rose Kolakowski, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, channels strength, beauty and cultural resilience in the face of cultural and existential threats. Painter Lynnette Haozous, a Chiricahua Apache artist and member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe with Diné, and Taos Pueblo ancestry, will install a temporary 20-foot mural in the gallery, created for the exhibition.
Together this dynamic art, which meshes together tradition and contemporary culture, ancient techniques, and modern materials, presents a powerful statement about the next generation of Native artists.
The said exhibition featuring the works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera will be open on February 19 and run through June 5, 2022.
And since we are still in the midst of pandemic masks are required for all visitors ages 5 and older. You can visit the Portland Art Museum website in you want to find out more details.
Portland Art Museum Campus and History
The Portland Art Museum is the largest art museum in Oregon and one of the oldest in the country. Located in two historic buildings on Portland’s South Park Blocks, the museum is central to the city’s cultural district and houses a large and wide-ranging collection of art.
First organized in 1892, the museum’s first exhibition was a set of magnificent plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture, now displayed in the upper hall of the city’s library. In 1932, the museum moved into the primary building, designed by Pietro Belluschi: a gracious contemporary update of the Georgian style, sleek-lined and advanced in its ideas. The museum’s renovation of the Masonic temple to its immediate north added more exhibition and office space to the campus in 2005.
Belluschi’s original design was ahead of its time. It was airy and admitted natural light into the museum’s galleries, especially the court beyond the entryway, and the visitor today experiences that grand space as a sort of surprise, given the museum’s relative scale. More wings were added, first to house the Pacific Northwest College of Art then known as the Museum Art School and ultimately separated into its own institution) and then a warren of smaller galleries. The old Masonic temple has become the Jubitz Center of Modern and Contemporary Art, though its old, ornate meeting rooms have been retained.
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