This July – August our founder Gina Hartmann exhibited  ​Mortality and Twine​ a retrospective covering 20 years of work in SE industrial Portland. Whether sculpture or mixed media painting/drawing, each work was incredibly layered, often containing interwoven patterns melting into other mediums and colors. When first glancing at the walls lined with intricate, beautifully crafted works, the viewer is hit by a strong sense of curiosity, a deep desire to uncover every layer, every brushstroke, every strip of fabric caught in the complex, emotional mesh of the art pieces. This curiosity is almost morbid, for it soon becomes obvious that each piece holds a deeply personal significance, and to strip away the layers of paint and color would not only destroy the tangled stories held within each work, but violate some emotional sanctity barely restrained underneath the wraps of string.

There is no blatant narrative to the pieces, but this does not seem to be the point of them. To turn the gallery into one linear story would be disgraceful, for it is within the timelessness of the pieces that the viewer is enraptured, the feeling that each piece is a moment, a memory, or a forgotten emotion frozen in art that does not need to be placed in a specific context–in makes its own context. Staring at one piece to capture all of its details could take days, weeks, months, etc., for it is like staring at the entire life of a person up until the moment that artwork was conceived.
We thank Gina for gathering these amazing pieces into one place for our viewing pleasure. We hope that she will grace us with more art and sculpture in the near future and keep us wondering about the hidden details.

– SophiaValdez

We welcome Sophia Valdez to NOW Open Studio as the Blog Writer and Editor. Having an intense passion for sharing knowledge and creating accessible content, Sophia is eager to present the projects, programs and events NOW hosts to the public and provide emotional insight to the beautiful artist and creative world NOW presents.

Sophia will be a 2021 PSU graduate with a double major in English & Spanish. While she enjoys reading early English poetry and Spanish postmodern literature, Sophia also seeks to deepen her understanding of language and its effect on society by studying translation and improving her Spanish speaking skills. When she’s not listening to Hispanic pop music or writing sonnets, Sophia spends her time crying over children’s movies, particularly those directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and appreciating their incredible storytelling techniques. She also plays ukulele and happily pets neighborhood cats. We are excited to have her on our team.

NOW is happy to congratulate Chay Albright on her new job at OMSI, which means she will be moving on from her position as Marketing Research Assistant here at NOW. Chay started working for NOW in November 2015 and has helped share and illustrate the many wondrous adventures NOW has been a part of over the past few years. She took the time to go through the NOW cloud and pull down our photos that would have otherwise went unseen. She told our stories and shared our events to the world in her own voice.

Chay was able to balance school, work, and her time at NOW while giving her all in each setting. Without Chay, NOW would not have grown into the fantastic art organization it is today and we are so grateful for her multi-year commitment to help us expand and experiment. We hope that her time with NOW Open Studio will help her provide compassionate, thoughtful, and educational experiences for OMSI’s visitors.

Luckily for us, Chay will continue to volunteer at NOW from time to time. Thanks for the memories!

And the NOW 2018 Residency recipient is  …Christopher Hartshorne