A Changing Thing
Jodie Cavalier and Alex Deets
Curated by First Brick at The Envelope
Soft opening Third Thursday, July 19, 2018
Opening reception: Saturday, July 21, 2018, from 6-8 PM
A Changing Thing is a pop-up exhibition exploring the themes of lineage, both ancestral and culturally emergent. These works explore those lineages via the specters within our everyday lives. Objects create a space in which unseen forces merge with unspoken histories. How do bodies encounter the remnants of lost and rediscovered narratives?
Jodie Cavalier is a project-based artist working with research, residuals of daily life, objects, and language. She earned her BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. She has participated in residencies at; the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, Utah in 2014, Wassaic in 2016, and AZ West Wagon Encampment in 2017. Her work has been exhibited at the Schneider Museum (Ashland), the DeYoung Museum (San Francisco), Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), CoCA (Seattle), EXO Project Space (Chicago), Städelschule (Frankfurt), among others.
Alex Deets is an interdisciplinary artist working in Portland Oregon. Their current video installation explores narratives of transgender embodiment through questions of privacy, permission and the body as a site of expectation. They are a candidate for a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Portland State University and are a recipient of the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts prize. They have exhibited work at the Cleaners at Ace Hotel, Portland Museum of Modern Art and participated in the art collective Subject to Change in New York City. Their work has been featured on the cover of Bitch Magazine and as part of Alien She/Personal Best zine collection.
The Envelope is an artist-run space with a mission to create a platform for emerging contemporary artists. In between utilizing the space for our studio practice, we hold monthly exhibitions that feature artists in the region who are making significant contributions to the medium(s) of work in which they are engaging. These connections are made in hopes to build relationships between artists and community that promote and strengthen critical dialogue. This network creates an inclusive environment that generates broader discussion from a larger demographic. We believe an inclusive ideology is essential in representing the diversity of work being produced in the Pacific Northwest.
First Brick is the curatorial collaboration of Molly Alloy, Allynn Carpenter, James Knowlton, and Eric Long. First Brick offers a platform for those individuals who resist assimilation within heteronormative white supremacist patriarchy. The first brick can be a brave act of dissent against the establishment, or the first gesture towards a new foundation.