Nia Musiba, We Are Not One Hundred Percent Ourselves, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36” (left) and Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 46 x 36”, (right). From “The Impossible Art of Coming Together Pop-Up,” March 2022.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University is pleased to present the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize exhibition from February 28 – April 29, 2023. A public reception will be held on Thursday, March 2, 2023, from 5 – 7 pm. To mark the prizes’ decade-long establishment, please join the PSU School of Art + Design in celebrating the work of our 2022 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize recipients: Johanna Houska (BFA Art Practice, ‘22), Shelbie Loomis (MFA Art + Social Practice, ‘22), and Nia Musiba (BFA Graphic Design ‘22).
“As a leader of art and culture in Portland, my late mother Arlene inspired my lifelong passion for art and the desire to share art from my collections with diverse audiences. This annual prize is a fantastic opportunity to honor her memory and legacy while lifting up the next generation of artists. Congratulations to this year’s recipients! We look forward to following your careers and enjoying your art for years to come!” said Jordan Schnitzer, President of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation.
PSU School of Art + Design is extraordinarily grateful to the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation for their support in creating the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize. It was established by Arlene Schnitzer in 2013 to recognize student achievement in the School of Art + Design and to raise awareness of the quality of art education at PSU. To learn more about how the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize has offered PSU students a springboard for a career in the arts please visit pdx.edu/arts/news/arts-artists-making
About the Recipients:
Johanna Houska (she/her) received her CHE in Fashion from London College of Fashion in 2018 and her BFA in Art Practice from Portland State University in 2022. In her practice, Houska specializes in developing textiles for use in garments, furniture, and fine art. Houska aims to utilize a radically responsible perspective on textile design and application through ethical and sustainable sourcing, design, and construction. A strong belief system guides her work that design and craft are tools for problem-solving, as a way of recognizing and questioning what materials can bridge our relationship to nature, and improve connections between people and products.
"Networks" considers how textiles can establish links between objects of varying utility. Each piece in this series is connected through its materials and techniques but differs in use and visual narrative. The physicality of the textiles elevates how these handmade pieces can communicate craft while serving a purpose on our bodies or in our space. This body of work considers craft as webs between design and functionality, and textiles as the means of storytelling.
Shelbie Loomis (she/her) is a neurodivergent social practice and studio artist. Since graduating with her MFA in Art + Social Practice from Portland State University, she has founded "Park Arts AIR of Jantzen Beach" on Hayden Island, North Portland. Her artwork explores the Hayden Island community and history, the value of time and labor, relationship building, and grief. She uses her drawings and digital 3D rendering to explore the ephemera of her engagement with her neighbors in hopes that it will bring attention to the lives of a changing neighborhood.
"Park Arts AIR of Jantzen Beach" is an arts organization founded by Shelbie Loomis as a continuation of a socially engaged art project called The Art We Value (2022). Loomis continues her collaborations with the residents of Hayden Island by highlighting neighbors in the RV Park & Mobile Home Community to cultivate public programming for others to share. By activating her neighbors as artists that already reside on the island, she aims to bring community recognition and value to their passions and publically celebrate the people living on an island under gentrification threat.
Nia Musiba (she/they) is a multidisciplinary creative based in Portland, Oregon with a lifelong commitment to diversifying art and design spaces. Since 2019, this has manifested primarily in community-based projects, public art, and taking up space within her personal practice in an attempt to inspire other people who hold marginalized identities to take up space of their own. Nia is interested in collaboration, experimentation, question-asking, friend-making, and above all else, dreaming big. She views her depictions of Black and brown bodies as a way to reclaim the tenderness and complexities of her own identity as well as an opportunity to hold space for other people of color who historically have been misrepresented in overly flattened, brutalized, and hyper-sexualized ways within art and media.
"This is A Sign" explores the human instinct to seek out signs as a way to place meaning on otherwise arbitrary words, symbols, and circumstances in the pursuit of finding answers. In questioning what a sign is, or can be, it allows space to consider instead what signs do for us. Through this series of posters, objects, and found images, "This is A Sign" invites viewers to experience signs for all that they are – deeply specific yet somehow universal, intensely meaningful yet completely meaningless, childish and intellectual and exciting and mundane and everything in-between.
The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation:
The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation was established in 1998 as a result of the sale of the historic Claremont Hotel, which provided the Schnitzer family a way to support the community that long supported them. Harold, Arlene, and Jordan always believed in the importance of giving back and the family is honored to join those who also believe that the riches of our cities are our citizens and the cultural, social, religious, educational, and medical institutions that provide so much for all of us!
The mission of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation is to support arts & culture, youth, education, medical, social services, and community activities that enhance the quality of life for the citizens in the community. The Foundation operates two programs: The Care to Share program which anonymously serves low-income and medically fragile children and their families through a partnership with Oregon Health & Sciences University. And CommuniCare, the Foundation’s primary operating program, which was established to encourage youth philanthropy.
For more information on the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation please visit
www.schnitzercare.org
Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am - 5 pm with extended hours until 7 pm on Thursday.