Mary Campbell, Brenda Mallory, Benjamin Mefford and Jenene Nagy
Morphologies c3: Papermaking Residency Exhibition
March 31, 2018, through May 5, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 31, 2018 from 11—2 PM
Artist walk-through: Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 12 PM
c3:initiative Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6 PM & by appointment
Morphologies presents work from 2017 c3: Papermaking Residency artists Mary Campbell, Brenda Mallory, Benjamin Mefford and Jenene Nagy. Culminating from their experiences in the Pulp & Deckle studio, each artist utilized handmade paper as a primary medium to create new works that present ideas central to their art practice.
The morphology of papermaking is the story of fibers. Plants are harvested, cut up, cooked, and pulped. The cellular structure of the raw material is cajoled into a new state of being. It is not until the end of the making that we see the final result. As it is with many craft and art processes, the resulting product may be wildly different than the steps along the way.
Morphologies focuses on four different takes on the same process. A process that has seemingly infinite variations. The works examine an intersection of elements, a re-contextualization of everyday objects, abstracted landscapes that reference commercial photography and production sets, and an investigation of materiality and surface. By removing papermaking from its primary, ubiquitous function, this work subverts expectations about the role craft should play in object making and engages in deep play.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
April 21, 2018, from 1-5 PM: Paper + Print Workshop | A Design Week Portland Event
Learn how to make paper from varied fibers and use it to create a letterpress broadside. This hands-on event is part of c3: initiative’s public programming series that tie-in to the exhibition on view. You’re invited to make artworks in response to the concepts on exhibit. Try out new materials and tools while exploring your ideas. Drop in for a few minutes, or stay all afternoon. We encourage you to dive in, make new friends and connect. All ages are welcome; suggested donation $25, no one turned away.
May 5, 2018, from 2-4 PM: Panel Discussion: Seismic Shifts
This panel discussion will focus on the way an artist’s practice has the potential to transform when given time, space and resources. Join us for a conversation about the role and importance of residency programs. This public program celebrates c3: initiative’s five year anniversary and is the closing event of the exhibition, Morphologies.
ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
The c3: Papermaking Residency was established in 2014 to engage artists with little or no experience in hand papermaking, and offer them an opportunity to learn the craft and stretch the limitations of what the medium can do. Provided with instruction, guidance and technical assistance from a professional papermaker/artist at Pulp & Deckle studio, residents create and exhibit new work outside their usual area of practice. Upon completion of the studio residency year, a group exhibition is held at c3: initiative or a partnering location.
The residency focuses on illuminating possibilities within the medium of papermaking and encourages experimentation, risk, research, and collaborative learning. The group exhibition highlights hand papermaking as a contemporary art medium.
ARTIST INFORMATION
June 2017: Mary Campbell
Mary Campbell is an interdisciplinary artist living in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA in Printmaking in 2014 from the University of Oregon. Her work spans media encompassing painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. By stealing from her observed environment, the work borrows and recreates familiar objects of her surroundings, re-contextualizing them in compositions concerned with color, form, and pattern. Drawing inspiration from window-dressings, production sets, and commercial photography, the work simulates these commercial settings through abstract landscapes. The imagined history of the found and crafted objects influence the direction of the work and assign a personality to the things themselves.
July 2017: Brenda Mallory
Brenda Mallory’s work ranges from individual wall-hangings and sculptures to large-scale installations. She works with mixed media and organic materials such as cloth, fibers, and beeswax, creating multiple forms that are joined with crude hardware or mechanical devices in ways that imply tenuous connections and aberrations. She is interested in ideas of interference and disruption of long-established systems in nature and human cultures.
Mallory grew up in Oklahoma and is a member of the Cherokee Nation. She received a BA in Linguistics & English from UCLA and a BFA from PNCA. Mallory has received multiple grants including from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council. In 2015 she was an Eiteljorg Museum Contemporary Native Art Fellow and in 2016 she received a Fellowship in Visual Arts from the Native Arts and Culture Foundation. Residencies include Anderson Ranch, GLEAN at the Portland Metro Waste Transfer Station, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Arizona State University’s Map(ing) Residency in Printmaking.
August 2017: Jenene Nagy
Jenene Nagy is a visual artist living and working in the Inland Empire. She received her BFA from the University of Arizona in 1998 and her MFA from the University of Oregon in 2004. Nagy’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Portland Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Southern Exposure in San Francisco, Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin, and Samuel Freeman in Los Angeles, among others. Her work has been recognized with grants and awards from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, the Oregon Arts Commission, Colorado Creative Industries, and the Ford Family Foundation.
Along with a rigorous studio practice, Nagy is one half of the curatorial team TILT Export:, an independent art initiative with no fixed location, working in partnership with a variety of venues to produce exhibitions. From 2011-12 she was the first Curator-in-Residence for Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland, Oregon.
September 2017: Benjamin Mefford
Benjamin is an emerging artist with a focus on sculpture. His interests are visual balance and material study with gravity-defying results. He has advanced knowledge of stone sculpting and site-specific installations, having apprenticed with two masters over six years. His first monumental outdoor sculpture “Know Time” depicts seven links of an anchor chain standing 9ft tall by 1ft diameter, carved from a single piece of stone. It was completed and installed in October of 2016. Benjamin’s eclectic approach to creating organic structural forms often addresses the point of balance between order and chaos. He is influenced by the notion of “tensegrity”, proposed by Kenneth Snelson, the paintings and prints of Terry Winters, methods of unifying conscious and subconscious thought such as through Surrealist Automatism, and the approach of Dadaists to question the meaning of symbols.