(Photo | Courtesy of Oregon Arts Commission)
Sidony O’neal, a writer and artist living in Portland, is the 2020 recipient of the Oregon Arts Commission’s honorary Joan Shipley Award. O’neal is one of a group of nine Oregon artists selected for the Arts Commission’s 2020 Individual Artist Fellowships. The 2020 fellowships support artists working in the visual arts; performing artists are awarded in alternating years.
The Joan Shipley Award is named for Oregon arts leader Joan Shipley, who passed away in 2011. Shipley was a collector, philanthropist and supporter of many arts and humanities organizations. In 2005, she and her husband John received an Oregon Governor’s Arts Award. Many in the arts community also counted her as a mentor and friend.
The Arts Commission’s Fellowship program is available to more than 20,000 artists who call Oregon home. Fellows are recommended by a panel of Oregon arts professionals who consider artists of outstanding talent, demonstrated ability and commitment to the creation of new work(s). The Arts Commission reviews and acts on the panel’s recommendations.
The following visual artists were awarded 2020 fellowships: Julia Bradshaw, Corvallis; Melanie Flood, Portland; Erik Geschke, Portland; Colin Ives, Eugene; Ruben Garcia Marrufo, Portland; Sidony O’neal (Shipley Fellow), Portland; Garrett Sluski, Portland; Maya Vivas, Portland; and Sarah Wertzberger, Portland.
Brief biographies follow.
Julia Bradshaw, Corvallis
Born in Manchester, England, and having lived for nearly a decade in Munich, Germany, Julia Bradshaw brings a heightened interest in intercultural modes of language to her research-based practice. Currently, history and technology of photography, scientific language and astrophotography inform her work, which results in new fictive imagery.
Bradshaw’s videos and photography have been exhibited in the United States, The Netherlands, Guatemala and Germany. Her artist book, Flying, is in the Getty Research Collection. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Communication at Oregon State University.
Melanie Flood, Portland
Melanie Flood’s arrangements use tools of still-life and commercial photography, while examining modern femininity and the female body. “Though the chosen materials are often cheap and flimsy relics of pop culture and mass consumerism (pantyhose, ThighMaster, toilet brush holder),” writes Fourteen30 Contemporary, “they are easily transformed into sensuous, refined reflections of the feminine experience through perfect lighting and the simple act of being photographed.“
Flood holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Portland State University. She directs Melanie Flood Projects, which began as an artists’ salon located in her Brooklyn residence. In 2014, the gallery relaunched in downtown Portland. She is represented by Fourteen30 Contemporary.
Erik Geschke, Portland
Erik Geschke is a mixed-media artist who has exhibited at venues including the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles, ZieherSmith Gallery and Knoedler & Company in New York, The Navy Pier in Chicago, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Tacoma Art Museum, Pacific Northwest College of Art and Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland and FIAC Contemporary Art Fair in Paris, France.
Geschke has received awards, grants and fellowships from the Seattle Art Museum (Betty Bowen Special Recognition Award); Seattle Arts Commission (Seattle Artists Award); Oregon Arts Commission (Individual Artists Fellowship and Career Opportunity Grant); and the Regional Arts and Culture Council, among others. He received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Rinehart School of Sculpture in 2001, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1996, and received a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 1993. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art and coordinator of the sculpture area at Portland State University.
Colin Ives, Eugene
Colin Ives’ media projects increasingly address ecological issues, in regard to technological consumption as well as our sense of place in the natural world. His project “Nocturne” was chosen for the International Symposium of Electronic Art 2006, and later exhibited at the Microwave International New Media festival in Hong Kong (2008). The project focuses specifically on the nocturnal lives of opossums, mice and kit foxes, animals that have found successful niches in sub/urban landscapes. The project asked viewers to re-envision urban spaces in terms of animal habitat, reconsidering what we think of as nature and wilderness.
Current projects include an event-based work addressing Salmon habitat in Oregon rivers; a robotic video camera project addressing location/dislocation and our constructed sense of place in the landscape; and a project that focuses on the world of ants. Ives holds an MFA and MA from University of Iowa and BA from Cornell College. Ives was recently included in the Portland2019 Biennial.
Rubén García Marrufo, Portland
Rubén García Marrufo is a Mexican filmmaker and artist. Their work focuses on borders and their aftermaths and bilinguality — work that finds its place between fiction and documentary forms with narratives that are rooted in hearsay and multiple languages. They have produced both feature-length, short and experimental films that have been exhibited in Mexico and the US, including work presented at Artists Space, abcontemporary, Kunstverein, Escritorio de Procesos, Echo Park Film Center and Mexicali Rose. marrufo was recently included in the Portland2019 Biennial, and has received grants from PICA’s Precipice Fund and the Regional Arts & Culture Council.
Sidony O’neal, Portland
Sidony O’neal is a writer and artist. In addition to solo work, they have performed as a member of performance projects DEAD THOROUGHBRED and DELICTO. O’neal has received recent exhibitions at Fourteen30 Contemporary and Portland Pataphysical Society. Their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, BATHHOUSE, SPOOK magazine, FUTURE CONCRETE, Women & Performance, and VARVVARV. They are the translator of “Prognosis: Descarga Poetica Decolonial” (Quilomboarte 2014) and author of “f a c e b o w l” (THE MINI CHAPBOOK PRESS 2013). O’neal has held a Literary In(ter)ventions residency at the Banff Centre, Canada, a Creative Exchange Lab Residency with PICA, a residency at Arteles Center, Finland and artist in residence in the Synth Library at S1 gallery, Portland. They are a co-recipient of two PICA Precipice Fund grants.
Kaj-anne Pepper, Portland
Kaj-anne Pepper is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, video, drag, installation, theatre and dance. Kaj-anne is alternately known as their celebrated drag persona “Pepper Pepper.” Pepper is a humorous and thoughtful gender-bending emcee, educator and entertainer. Through both a fine arts practice and a career in entertainment Pepper explores vulnerability, artifice, and identity.
Pepper has received recent residencies at The Macdowell Colony, Playa Summer Lake, Monson Arts Center, Caldera Arts, Space Gallery in Maine, Signal Fire, The Lucky Penny Workroom in Atlanta, Pelican Bomb in New Orleans, New Expressive Works Residency, CON/VERGE at PonderosaTanz and PICA’s Creative Exchange Lab.
Maya Vivas, Portland
Maya Vivas is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums such as ceramic, performance, painting, social practice and installation. Vivas has exhibited work, spoken on panels and hosted workshops throughout the United States including venues and institutions such as PICA, The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Luisiana State University and Yale. Vivas is also co-founder of Ori Gallery, whose mission is to redefine “the white cube” through amplifying the voices of Queer and Trans Artists of color, community organizing and mobilization through the arts.
Sarah Wertzberger, Portland
Sarah Wertzberger is an artist and designer with a multidisciplinary studio practice, working primarily across mediums of weaving, ceramics and painting. Her weaving practice spans hand, industrial and digital weaving. Her work touches upon the ideas of play, color interaction and the tensions that exist at the intersections of art, design, craft, technology and DIY. Her making processes are playful and provisional, allowing for a responsive way of working that embraces intuition, allowing the process of making itself to steer outcomes. Wertzberger holds an MFA in Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, and a BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland. She is represented by Holding Contemporary, Portland.