Introducing the Ground Beneath Us Mentorship Program

Session 1 April 2026 ends June 2026

Session 2 August 2026 ends November 2026

The Ground Beneath Us mentorship program is designed for artists who are seeking guidance, feedback and mentorship for their studio practice. The program consists of 8 biweekly, one hour zoom meetings from April to June 2026. Are you an artist at the beginning of your career? Are you trying to find a new path in your studio work? Are you not ready to go to art school but want feedback and community? Are you looking for structure after getting your BFA or MFA? Each meeting will be tailored to your questions and goals. In addition to our one-on-one meetings, you will be connected with others in your cohort for group critiques.

You can expect:

  • Feedback and critique on your work

  • Readings and artist suggestions

  • Tailored guidance for your studio practice, meeting you where you are

  • Connection with a cohort

  • Guidance for finding grants, fellowships, residencies etc.

Tuition: $1200

Register here

Work featured in group exhibition at Museum of Northwest Art

I am thrilled and honored to be included in a group exhibition of Pacific Northwest ceramic artists. From the curator: “ Build Me Up, Tear Me Down, Why Don’t You Love Me Babe Like There’s No One Around is the title of this inaugural Invitational. The exhibition features 12 remarkable artists from Oregon and Washington whose engagement with clay offers a seductive account of the expressive possibilities of the medium: Iván Carmona, Emily Counts, Daniel Duford, Claudia Fitch, Ariana Heinzman, Holly Hudson, Ryan W. Kelly, Dirk Staschke, Chris Theiss, Timea Tihanyi, Tip Toland, and Patti Warashina. Inaugurating the Museum’s new series of thematic exhibitions, the MoNA Ceramic Invitational 2025 offers a window into the contemporary Northwest landscape of ceramic sculpture which, modeled by hand and time, becomes an extension of the artists’ body and mind—with its conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motivations—and the embodiment of the historical moment we live in.”

January 25th - May 11, 2025

Fermentation Chamber, 2024

American Underland opens Sept. 16 at Archer Gallery

I am so excited for the opening of American Underland at the Archer Gallery at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. Also check out this Studio View at Mark Moore Fine Art.

The works making up the series American Underland are meditations on deep, geologic time and its gravitational pull on history. The works– comprising landscapes, large narrative drawings and ceramic sculptures–arise from the tangled myth and history of American land. They are attempts to reveal the crackling, animist life that exists in the rocks, trees, myths and memories of the nation. I wanted to address the deep time of the American continent to counter the shimmering surface of present politics. The works are meant to address the larger-than-human climate from an almost shamanic perspective.

 The motifs filling these new works are the Janus head, coyotes, the Tarot and landscapes. Janus is the Roman god of doorways, of ending and beginnings. The double faced god presided over city gates marking times of war and peace. Old Man Coyote, too, has many faces. He is the Changeable One. Coyote the deity created death, the stars and bumbled through many episodes of fertile chaos. His stories are bawdy, absurd and alive with the electricity of a living landscape. The landscapes are made up of caves, fallen trees and entrances into the underworld. These are core samples into the chthonic energies rumbling beneath the ground and lava flows animating the collective unconscious of the nation.

When: Sept. 16- Dec. 20, 2024

Opening Reception: Oct. 1, 2024, 3-6PM

Artist Talk: Oct. 15, 2024, 1-2PM PUB 161

Saturday Reception: Nov. 2, 2024 3-6PM

Address: Archer Gallery, Clark College,

1933 Fort Vancouver Way
Vancouver, WA 98663

info@archergallery.space
(360) 992-2246

Coyote’s Travels: Strength, 2024, 40 by 51 inches, oil pastel, graphite and conte crayon on paper

Nostos: The Long Way Home

For anyone interested in taking the drawing and storytelling workshop Nostos: the Long Way Home at Building Five in 2024 (details below) we’ve changed the dates from the original announcement. For the month of January, the workshop will be $1600, that’s $300 off of the full price. This workshop will be a rich and deep exploration of storytelling, drawing and visual narrative. We give the story of the Odyssey lots of time to open up, expand and allow you to enter into it. Ultimately you will tell your own story about home; whether that is as a native, an immigrant or a refugee. Join me in 2024 to inaugurate this workshop. Go here to register.

The Odyssey is one of the most iconic of Western stories. We look at what the story has to say about leaving home, coming home, and being a migrant in the world. What does that longing in our stories say about our own longing? Who is a migrant, a refugee, or a native? Our stories root us to the ground and allow us to travel over great distances. How do we define home? Can we find stories in the ground beneath our feet that welcomes newcomers and honors the ancestors?

Over the course of the five sessions we dive deep into the story of the Odyssey through oral storytelling and book discussions.

This course connects one’s innate creative spark with deep-time storytelling and straightforward drawing exercises. Oral storytelling, themed readings, and image making exercises are braided together into each session. This course is for teachers, writers, cartoonists, artists, or anyone interested in unlocking their visual storyteller. This is not about technical prowess, but storytelling and expression. The drawing exercises do not require drawing skill or previous training. Participants come away having created their own story based in image and text; gaining tools for telling stories with pictures and thinking in mythic time.

Each weekend begins with a Friday night lecture.

Saturday is a full day of storytelling, drawing exercises and workshops.

Sunday is work time and presentations.

Building Five, NW Marine Artworks,

2516 NW 29th Ave., Portland, OR 97210

APRIL 12-14, 2024:
Leaving Home
The journey begins. War comes to Ithaca. What causes us to leave home in the first place. Odysseus goes off to war. Telemachus grows up with the weight of an absent father, Penelope takes on leadership and grows into her role. It is springtime. Are we setting out with excitement and possibility? With a heavy heart? With regret? We consider the traveler, the wanderer and the tourist. After each storytelling session you draw. We go from quick intuitive drawing exercises to longer more reflective pieces. 

JUNE 28-30, 2024:
Out at Sea
Now that the initial excitement of setting off has settled into the day to day, how do we move through the days? Telemachus tries to be a man, Penelope fends off the suitors, Odysseus heads home and is thwarted. What does it feel like to be a refugee and cast from home? More quick exercises, we build on images from the previous session. 

APRIL 12-14, 2024:
Leaving Home
The journey begins. War comes to Ithaca. What causes us to leave home in the first place. Odysseus goes off to war. Telemachus grows up with the weight of an absent father, Penelope takes on leadership and grows into her role. It is springtime. Are we setting out with excitement and possibility? With a heavy heart? With regret? We consider the traveler, the wanderer and the tourist. After each storytelling session you draw. We go from quick intuitive drawing exercises to longer more reflective pieces. 

SEPT. 7-8, 2024:
Dreams of home fires
We’re right in the middle. Everyone tries to hold the line and survive. Immigrants and natives consider what home means. New materials, longer exercises after the storytelling sessions.

NOV. 2-3, 2024:
The Land of the Dead
Odysseus consults the dead. Underworld musings, ancestors from the other side of the veil come to have a word. One long project after the telling. 

DEC. 13-14, 2024:
Homecomings
Odysseus comes home as a nobody. Penelope starts to waver and Telemachus gets a hint from Athena. Not all homecomings are happy. Who are you when you return after a journey? One final work session and a mini-exhibition. 

The Traveler and the Housewife at Mark Moore Fine Art on Artsy

I am honored to be represented by Mark Moore Fine Art. The featured exhibition The Traveler and the Housewife is up at Artsy from August 30 to November 5. The suite of prints was created in 2013 and published as a newsprint broadsheet. They have been editions at last with the help of the excellent Mullowney Printing Companying.com/contract-printing in Portland. The edition of 10 is available as a full suite or individual artist proofs are available.

Creative Director at Building Five

I am so honored to be chosen to be the next Creative Director of Building Five. The key to Building Five's mission is to provide opportunities for the exhibition of large-scale, site-specific installations and extend opportunities for growth or expansion of artists' careers and practice. Artists participating in either an exhibition or residency receive stipends and additional resources to complete their projects.

The program was started in 2019 with co-founders Dana Lynn Louis and Ken Unkeles. Through Covid and the instability of the past three years they have been able to mount an impressive program. I am looking forward to building a robust and diverse program.

Meet Me in a Year and a Day

After cancellation due to covid in December 2021, Meet Me in a Year and a Day will premiere at Building Five at NW Marine Artworks. Meet Me in a Year and a Day is a shadow puppet retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Everything is looking good and coming together. Hope to see you there!

Music by Mark Orton

Character and set designs by Aidan Saunders and Geoff Coupland

Narrated by Ramiz Monsef

Written and Directed by Daniel Duford

When:

June 21, 2022, 9PM

Where:

Building Five

NW Marine Artworks

2516 NW 29th Ave.

Portland, OR

Meet Me in a Year and a Day shadow puppet performance

On December 30, 2021 I will do a workshopped performance of Meet Me in a Year and a Day a shadow puppet performance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at Building Five at NW Marine Artworks. Music by Mark Orton, images by Zeel Esquire and Aidan Saunders of The Golden Thread Project and printed matter and text by Tracy Schlapp of Cumbersome Multiples.

Meet Me in a Year and a Day

A Shadow Puppet telling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

12/30/2021, 6PM

Building Five

NW Marine Artworks

2516 NW 29th Ave.

Portland, OR

John Brown's Vision on the Scaffold: two openings and a catalog

It’s been a wild ride this year and we are entering the darkest, hardest part of the year with a vital election one week away. However there is some movement forward from the studio. We just got the beautiful 60 page catalog for the JSMA@PSU show. With a design by Tracy Schlapp of Cumbersome Multiples and essays by Cyrus Cassells and Linda Tesner it beautifully captures the breadth of the series. The catalog is available here in the website store. It is also available until December at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU.

The exhibition at PSU reopened October 15th with limited access for the PSU community. The second part of John Brown’s Vision on the Scaffold opens at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland on October 29th. The second part of this body of work includes the 30 page visual poem “John Brown’s First Vision” and portraits of black artists who meditated on the meaning and legacy of John Brown such as W.E.B. DuBois, Jacob Lawrence and Robert Hayden. This new work was made in the wake of a year of social and environmental upheaval.

Tune in for my gallery talk on Thursday November 5 at 12:30.


Schneider Museum of Art
555 Indiana Street
Ashland, OR 97520
Modified hours: Tuesday & Wednesday, 10 am – 4 pm • Thursday, 10 am – 7 pm 

John Brown's Vision on the Scaffold at JSMA@PSU

So excited for the opening of John Brown’s Vision on the Scaffold at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU on First Thursday March 5th. This will be the second exhibition at the new museum.There will be 25 new works in the exhibition. It’s such an honor to help inaugurate the space. The exhibition closes May 15, 2020.

Where:

JSMA@PSU

1855 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

When:

Thursday March 5th, 2020 6-8PM

Earth Songs, Body Songs: A Conversation with Camille Dungy and Daniel Duford

If you’re around Santa Ana in Orange County next weekend please join me in my conversation with poet Camille Dungy at Orange County Museum of Art. I chose works from the permanent collection for the exhibition An Earth Song, A Body Song: Figures with Landscape from the Permanent Collection. Camille and I will discuss the works on view in the exhibition. The show considers the landscape as inhabited, worked, and experienced through the viewpoints of marginalized people. We will discuss the shifting of artistic perspective and the consequences of an inclusive, multi-voiced approach to the living world. 

Where and when:

Jan 11, 3:00 PM

Orange County Museum of Art, 1661 W Sunflower Ave, Santa Ana, CA 92704, USA