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"some rites from a spring reckoning" - PNCA’s Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies Thesis Exhibition Series


  • Center for Contemporary Art & Culture  511 Northwest Broadway Portland, OR, 97209 United States (map)

A new series featuring the thesis exhibitions of Kelsey Hamilton Davis, Ryan Kitson, Madison Queen, Wade Schuster, and Douglas Wiltshire opens at 6:00 pm PDT Thursday, July 22nd at the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture (CCAC) galleries housed within Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA).

Each week, a new solo exhibition will open on Thursdays at 6:00 PM PDT with a reception for in-person viewing with installation documentation available on PNCA’s Online Gallery. In-person viewings will be available by sign-in at the PNCA security desk for a maximum of 10 visitors in the galleries at one time, Tuesday–Saturday, 10–4 PM, and Sundays, 10–2 PM, through August 22, 2021. 

/trəˈvərs/, Wade Schuster, July 20–25, 2021

The Four Seasons, Ryan Kitson, July 27–August 1, 2021

In the House of Weird Sisters, Kelsey Hamilton Davis, August 3–8, 2021

The Gallery of Metamorphics, Madison Queen, August 10–15, 2021

Cocooning, Douglas Wiltshire, August 17–22, 2021

The series some rites from a spring reckoning examines ritual processes, functions, understandings, and experiences through five solo exhibitions, asking what “spring” is this? Historically signifying life, novelty, fertility, redemption, a break from labor, a time for cleaning, and an anticipation of steadiness—“spring” colloquially signals new life. In light of 2020’s compounded institutional, racial, and governmental reckonings, is “spring,” or even its possibility, on the horizon? Our current global not-spring, suggests otherwise. Through paintings of liminal memory, subsistence-based sculptures, amassed environments of domesticated and bodily ceramic and found objects, still-life photographs of contemporary objects of desire, and jewelry and sculptural vessels of death, the exhibitions critically query how culturally-codified and everyday rituals alike construct perception, time, and our sense of self.


some rites from a spring reckoning is presented by the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies for the Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies and is organized by independent curator Laurel V. McLaughlin, with support from Aeron Bergman, Chair and Associate Professor of the Low-Residency MFA Program in Visual Studies, and Erin Dengerink, Program Coordinator for the MA in Critical Studies and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Visual Studies.

For more information, visit ccac.pnca.edu/events.


The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture is a platform for cultural production including exhibition, lecture, performance, and publication. Housed within Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), the Center throws open its doors to the greater public to foster conversation and community.

The Center is the steward of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft. A digitization project, designed to make images of and information about each of the objects in the permanent collection available to the public, was completed in May 2017. Access the Collection Browser here: https://mimi.pnca.edu/craftcollection

About Pacific Northwest College of Art
Pacific Northwest College of Art empowers artists and designers to reimagine what art and design can do in the world. Founded in 1909 as the Museum Art School in Portland, Oregon, PNCA offers 12 art and design Bachelor of Fine Art programs, eight graduate programs including Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts programs within the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, a Post-Baccalaureate program, and Community Education courses for artists and designers of all ages. Learn more at pnca.edu.

Earlier Event: July 18
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