PORTLAND OR, EXHIBITION Aug 22 2022

NOW ART SPACES / GARDEN GALLERY

This was an incredible project created by the partnership of NOWos & HOF

We hope to continue to work on many more projects in the future.

Hello Dear Friends

The events of the last few years may have delayed us but finally well overdue it’s here. Join us for a night of art, fun, and friends.
OUR STORIES  –  ARTISTS OF KENYA

NOW ART SPACES / GARDEN GALLERY

MONDAY Aug 22, 2022  6 PM
Curator Gina Hartmann 

We welcome Jamey Ponte & the HOF Kenya Artists.

All sales raise funds for the HOF artists and their community.

NOWOPENSTUDIO.COM
houseoffriendskenya.com
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We are so happy to announce the second leg of the Mini Salon tour is now in Nairobi, Kenya thanks to our friends & partners in this exhibition House of Friends Kenya. This is one of the first HOF pop up galleries. We’ve seen so many works already scooped up. The creativity in the curation of this show is in pure Kenyan style. Over a hundred works from Kenyan artists have been added to this leg of the show. We look forward to adding them to the 3rd leg of the show in Portland, OR, US later this year.

HOF Gallery – Opening Night! What a fun night. We had a great opening with several pieces sold during the event. We hope to see more visitors come through the gallery over the next two months. Show closes DEC 18.

A World Recreated

Upon meeting Jeff Casto some 20 plus years ago, I was overcome by his kindness and genuine nature. His work captured me and never let go. Casto is a mirror of his work, and both can only be described as being the epitome of humanness.

Casto’s work has carried many themes over the course of his career: acceptance, magnanimity & mortality, but above all the responsibility of stewardship has pervaded throughout. The concern for our world and the fragile existence we maintain upon its surface is never delivered heavy handedly. Casto allows the work to beguile it’s viewer. The work does not pontificate; instead it lures you in softly with its carnival of color and rallies us to ponder in our own nostalgia.

Casto realizes a world re-created, sometimes because of us and sometimes in spite of us. Each piece is a myriad of small creatures and findings seemingly strewn together, but on close inspection they are carefully curated and placed. Small worlds of harmony cleverly exhibiting a true nature of disharmony. Casto leaves us in a tangle of delight & dismay as we ruminate our own gross consumption whilst he dangles treasures from our past in front of our eyes. A World Recreated is an incredible body of work examining our role in re-creating the environment while finding our place in the world.

Casto lives what his work holds forth, maintaining a soft footed existence upon this earth. He has continued to rely on mass transit the whole of his life forgoing the benefit of owning a vehicle, hence being beholden to an urban life. Like his work, Casto’s live/work studio is occupied with carefully collected found objects, all having lives once lived decades ago. His living space is a magical collection of postmodern and pop. His world electing to entwine with his work. This being the very reason in choosing to curate A World Recreated at HOF Gallery, an over 100-year-old farm house some how surviving the encroachment of the city around it, a forgotten space reclaimed & renewed.

• Gina Hartmann, Curator  

Thank you to Jeff Casto & Jamey Ponte, HOF Gallery Founder.

Order now from our online store. Though these shows have been postponed til 2021, you can order your books today. Store

Due to the current conditions happening world wide and the continuing spread of COVID- 19 we have decide to postpone our current call to artist for the OCT 2020 Residency. Please follow us on FB and watch for updates here. For those who have already applied your entry will continue to be active until we can resume the call and new dates for the Residency have been decided. Thank you NOW & House of Friends, Kenya

Artists are invited to submit complete applications for the NOW•FRIENDS; Artist Residency, Kenya program. Applications will be reviewed on a competitive basis. One artist will be selected as the recipient. We encourage entering early judges will have opportunity to see work through out the entry submission period. Read more under RESIDENCY.        https://nowopenstudio.submittable.com/submit

Due to the current conditions happening world wide and the continuing spread of COVID- 19 we have decide to postpone this show. Please follow us on FB and watch for updates here. 

NOW would like to congratulate Erica Hanson; April 2020 NOW Masters Project recipient.

The NOW Masters Project is an invitational series in which artists are chosen to have professionally curated exhibitions in one of the incredible art venues that have been generously provided to NOW. It is offered to artists with a strong Vitae whose art displays museum-level quality. Artists are selected for their high level of craftsmanship, vision, and professionalism

“The Unseen World”  a recent series of hand-stitched embroidery pieces will be on exhibition in April 2020 at The Olympic Mills Building, in SE industrial Portland. 

Erica Hanson was born in rural Oregon and grew up amongst the local flora and fauna. She holds a Bachelor of Science in drawing, painting and printmaking from Portland State University. In 2017 Hanson was a recipient of the Oregon Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC): Professional Development Grant Award.

Hanson draws on her formal science and visual arts education, knowledge of textile design, sewing, cultural mythology, biology and spirituality. Her recent embroideries bring to the foreground, otherworldly moments in time while traversing realms of other existence. Many of the pieces are embedded with phosphorescent (glow-in-the-dark) thread. Inspired by the theory that matter can share space, being visible or not it is up to the perceiver to perceive what is in front of them at any moment, thus creating one’s own unique reality.  

Hanson chooses to work on found objects, table clothes and linens. Her artwork crosses the line between “craft” and “art” by using a needle and thread to paint a picture. The string is a line on a plane creating depth and purpose. Colored threads as a painting device: each stitch a brush stroke.

See more work EricaHanson.com 

What’s been going on with our friends from across the pond, House of Friends, Kenya:

November 2019, House of Friends, Kenya welcomed artist in residence  SARAH CAMERON SUNDE. HOF, Mombasa, Kenya hosted Sunde during the process of her time based art production 36.5 / A Durational Performance With The Sea.

36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea is a series of performance works and video works created by Sarah Cameron Sunde that engage people on personal, local, and global scales in conversations around deep time and sea-level. It is a complex, collaborative, evolving series of works spanning seven years and six continents.

Each work in the series consists of a live performance event, a time-lapse video, and a long-form cinematic video work from a different coastal location. For each: Sunde travels to a location threatened by sea-level rise to stand in a tidal area for a full tidal cycle, usually 12-13 hours; water engulfs her body and then recedes again.

“Sunde chose the Kwale Region along the Pangani Coast in Kenya as the African location for the series because the area is known for its historic landmarks, a melting pot of vibrant cultures, and a point of entry into Africa for the rest of the world. Coastal areas will face extreme flooding, and excess salt in the soil are predicted to make water importable and agriculture extremely challenging. At the same time, Kenya is working to develop a sustainable economy, and if the population is aware of the challenges sea-level rise will bring, there is hope for adaptation and mitigation. 36.5 aims to connect the Kenyan people to these issues, while raising global awareness about Kenya’s climate change challenge.”  – 36.5

This is the 7th work in the series below is location and time the event took place.

36.5 / Bodo Inlet, Kwale, Kenya                                                                                          November 8, 08:10 – 20:16.                                                                                                                 12 hours, 6 minutes  

“We had outstanding participation from the community of Bodo with over 50 people standing in the water and hundreds of people participating from the shore. Incredible singing and dancing from UKT group and Kwale Arts marked the passing of each hour and audience members planted 700 mangrove seedlings, throughout the course of the day to protect the Bodo shoreline.” – Sunde

Find out more about this project and see the video: http://www.36pt5.org/

2019 House of Friends, Artist in Residency, Mombasa, Kenya / SARAH CAMERON SUNDE