Critical Conversations is a collaboration between The Ford Foundation’s Visual Arts Program and the University of Oregon, in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, and the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College.
Critical Conversations provides a space for artists and cultural producers that is rooted in exchange and inquiry. Organizing partners facilitate a year-round calendar of studio visits for Oregon artists by prominent visiting curators and arts writers, who also offer public lectures and other forms of engagement to our community. Recognizing the nexus between artists and those who reflect upon and present their work, Critical Conversations also sponsors a series of convenings, commissioned writing, and an annual publication that specifically engage Oregon’s curators and arts writers around currents in society and the field.
rubén garcía marrufo: Being Here
by Alejandro Espinoza Galindo The works of rubén garcía marrufo are an audiovisual fabulation of the awe-inducing instant, gathering phantasmagorical narratives, silences, and rituals which […]
Shields, Open Wounds and New Landscapes: And Artist’s Account of Creation
by Stephanie Gervais I made Shield in 2014, while living between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil. My friend Yuri modeled Shield in front […]
Hard to Describe: Alt Text and Artworks
by Laura Hughes Where it started: Sometime in 2018, about twenty minutes before teaching my Introduction to Drawing class, I found myself facing a page […]
No/And: Contemporary Conversations About Queer Art and Trans Art
by Sara Jaffe Ten or so years ago, I was feeling depressed about the word “queer.” It was everywhere, which was maybe the problem; it […]
Malia Jensen: “Nearer Nature”
by Sara Krajewski Editor Stephanie Snyder invited Portland Art Museum Curator Sara Krajewski to interview artist Malia Jensen about her major work, Nearer Nature. SARA […]
Greg Archuleta and Lifeways: Cultivating Resilence Through Education
by Steph Littlebird Tucked away just south of the Ross Island Bridge in a nondescript building off Barbur Boulevard is the Confederated Tribes of Grand […]
“Nobody’s Fool” at Carnation Contemporary
by Luiza Lukova Nobody’s Fool, curated by art historian, cultural worker, and writer Ella Ray (she/they), opened at Carnation Contemporary on Saturday, October 23, 2021. […]
In Memoriam: Lee Kelly (1932-2022)
Lee Kelly exemplified creative passion, clarity of vision, and dedication to process and practice. He was an extraordinary thinker, artist, poet, and adventurous spirit who […]
Activist Art and the Poetics of Junk Mail
by K. Silem Mohammad If you’re like me, and it’s a safe bet you are, you’re fed up with spam calls and texts. Recent surveys […]
Honey
by Ido Radon Do you remember it? Blown on the winds, on current and tide, its gas-filled float like a silicone potsticker on the surface […]
Retelling Stories: Sarah Farahat’s “Palestine Then and Now” and “Towards the Setting Sun”
by Amelia Rina In 1878, nine women stood in a river near Lawrence, Kansas. In 1961, Sarah Farahat’s grandfather took photographs of life in Ramallah, […]
Patterns of Protest: Pat Boas and the Making of “Sentinels”
by Prudence Roberts The five paintings in Pat Boas’s recent installation at the Sun Valley Museum of Art are testament to her brilliance as an […]
Lynne Woods Turner: Process and Patience
by Stephanie Snyder Lynne Woods Turner’s works on paper and canvas do not ferry images in any traditional sense; rather, they reveal the odyssey of […]
Mutual Adaptation
by Lumi Tan In the height of the COVID -19 pandemic in New York City, during which my ability to understand what art institutions should […]
CONDITIONS
CONDITIONS is a publication of The Ford Family Foundation. The annual arts journal (shifting title as it progresses) is part of the program element CRITICAL […]
FIGURING
FIGURING is a publication of The Ford Family Foundation. The annual arts journal (shifting title as it progresses) is part of the program element CRITICAL […]
Questioning Success: Reading and Thinking Together
By Bean Gilsdorf William Deresiewicz’s latest book, The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big […]
Phantom Limbs
When we look back on this time of the pandemic, it may be the confusion that we remember the most. We have been bombarded by […]
Julie Green: Flown
by Sarah Sentilles How do you represent absence? How do you depict loss? For two decades, Julie Green has been painting the final meals of […]
Radical Indigenous artist Natalie Ball is unapologetically moving forward — as mother and artist.
by Jeanine Jablonski When I first came across images of Natalie Ball’s work, I was floored. Who was this amazing indigenous artist living in Oregon, […]
Ludd or Lucifer: Felicity Fenton Considers Whether to Abandon the World Wide Web or Strike a Deal with the Devil and Use the Internet to Critique the Internet
by Richard Speer To post or not to post? In light of the “delete-Facebook” and anti-social-media movements, an increasingly vocal contingent of visual artists is […]
May It Always Be Legendary
by bart fitzgerald I. Santal 33. Boonk. A libation awaits—whether prepared, or freshly colliding due to the presence of its necessary ingredients—Hennessy and sticky-sweet pineapple […]
Sacred Threads at Great Vow
by Jovencio De La Paz Between Tank Creek and the hills of Clatskanie, Oregon, just south of the Columbia River, a Zen Buddhist Monastery nestles […]
Through Ancestral Lands, Reading An Infected Sunset
Editor’s Note: The following essay is composed of three excerpts from an audio diary recorded by Portland- based artist and poet Demian DinéYazhi’ while driving […]
The Image Collectors
By Samantha Wall and Stephen Slappe In the midst of the vast, world-changing events of the past year, we have been reflecting on the nature […]
What Comes after the Museum? Remembering PMOMA (The Portland Museum of Modern Art)
By Libby Werbel Is it possible to grow your own museum? What would it look like? How would it be different from the museums you […]
D. E. May and the Gift of Unknowable Intimacy
by Abigail Susik I One of the reasons for abstract art’s ascendancy over the last century is surely its simultaneous accommodation of the ego’s conflicting […]
Ocean X
by Prudence Roberts This is the story of one of Terry Toedtemeier’s most distinctive photographs, its place in his career, and how the image made […]
Jess Perlitz’s Tragicomic Practice
by Bean Gilsdorf Perlitz’s grounding in sculpture underscores the spirit of these practices, explicating the real and symbolic power of objects and their potential to […]
Laurie Danial’s Dynamic and Enigmatic Abstraction
by Patrick Collier Originally published May 2019 To the casual viewer, abstract painting may seem to lack coherence. Familiar epithets abound, usually because there is […]