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MFA CD Lecture: Christopher Phillips The MFA in Collaborative Design present Christopher Phillips as part of the 2012-2013 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series. The United States needs constitutional change, but how to get it done? Christopher Phillips has the right answer. Get Americans talking to Americans about how we can improve our nation. Phillips has combined the approach of Socrates and the wisdom of Jefferson to show us the way. To this end, Phillips has inaugurated Constitution Café and Socrates Café dialogue groups, and is the founder of the nonprofit Democracy Cafe. You can also read 3 Questions with Christopher Phillips. Download

Inventor, entrepreneur, futurist, Jay Harman thinks big, outside the box but inside of nature. He is one of the world’s leaders in biomimicry research and development as well as founder of several companies that create industrial solutions that are clean and green and based on mimicking nature’s design solutions. Harman has just published his first book The Shark’s Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature Is Inspiring Innovation. Harman’s Portland lecture focuses on what he sees as the immense potential for biomimicry to change business as usual and create a shift from a resource depleting and pollution spewing economy to a clean and green economy. Entrepreneurs and scientists are turning to nature to find inspiration for future products, and how to build them in a way that is not only more energy and cost-efficient but friendlier to the environment. Harman has been at the forefront of this movement as a nature-inspired designer of boats, fans, pumps, propellers and mixers, and founder of several companies to bring these products to market. His book, The Shark’s Paintbrush is equal parts memoir, explanation of biomimicry breakthroughs, and business advice. Photo by Joseph Greer ‘16. MFA CD Lecture: Jay Harman A native of Australia and now a U.S. citizen working out of San Rafael, California, Harman is a gifted storyteller and successful businessman. Best selling author Paul Hawken says of Harman and The Shark’s Paintbrush, “Imagine Indiana Jones, Huckleberry Finn, and Erasmus Darwin rolled into one person, and you will have some sense of what it is like to roam and see the world through Jay Harman’s biomimetic eyes.” Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers have built things by a process now known as “heat, beat, and treat.” They’d start with a raw material, use enormous amounts of energy to heat it, twist it into shape with heavy machinery, and then maintain its design, strength, and durability with toxic chemicals. Harman encourages government and industry to consider biomimicry, to respect nature’s talent as the ultimate designer of more effective, efficient, powerful, profitable, and cleaner technologies not to mention profound biotherapeutic discoveries made by applying nature’s secrets to biotech and the business of public health. A force of change in industries as diverse as construction, biomedical devices and pharmaceuticals, transportation, and information technology, biomimicry is inspiring a new industrial revolution that will dramatically alter the landscape of the business world. Read UNTITLED’s interview with Jay Harman here. Download

Luc Tuymans Lecture The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space is pleased to present an exhibition of prints by the influential artist, Luc Tuymans. “Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works - Kristalnacht to Technicolor” runs from Mar 6- June 14 2014. Download (mp3) Though he is known primarily as a painter, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) continues to produce extraordinary work in the discipline of printmaking. Graphic Works - Kristalnacht to Technicolor brings together an array of Tuymans’ printmaking works. The pieces were produced between 1992 and 2013 and range in technique from color photocopy of Kristalnacht, 1992 to the twelve stone color lithograph of Gene (Plant), 2004. The exhibition will also feature examples of Tuymans’ experiments in printing on non-traditional surfaces such as Transitions A-B-C-D, 2008, which was produced with multi-colored screenprints on PVC plastic. Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works - Kristalnacht to Technicolor is curated by Feldman Gallery + Project Space Director, Mack McFarland and PNCA faculty member, Modou Dieng, in direct collaboration with the artist. About Luc Tuymans: Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is widely credited with having contributed to the revival of painting in the 1990s. His sparsely colored, figurative works speak in a quiet, restrained, and at times unsettling voice, and are typically painted from pre-existing imagery which includes photographs and video stills. His canvases, in turn, become third-degree abstractions from reality and often appear slightly out-of-focus, as if covered by a thin veil or painted from a failing memory. There is almost always a darker undercurrent to what at first appear to be innocuous subjects: Born in 1958 in Morstel, near Antwerp, Belgium, Tuymans was one of the first artists to be represented by David Zwirner. He joined the gallery in 1994 and had his first American solo exhibition that same year. In 2013, Luc Tuymans: The Summer is Over was on view in New York and marked his tenth solo show with the gallery. In 2013, a solo presentation of the artist’s portraits, Nice. Luc Tuymans, was hosted by The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. His work was recently the subject of a retrospective co-organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It traveled from 2010 to 2011 to the Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Previous major solo exhibitions include those organized by the Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden in 2009 and Tate Modern, London in 2004. Other venues that have presented recent solo shows include the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2011); Haus der Kunst, Munich; Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (both 2008); Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest (2007); and the Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2006). A catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings is currently being prepared by David Zwirner in collaboration with Studio Luc Tuymans. Compiled and edited by art historian Eva Meyer-Hermann, the catalogue raisonné will illustrate and document approximately 500 paintings by the artist from 1975 to the present day. In 2001, the artist represented Belgium at the 49th Venice Biennale. His works are featured in museum collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Gallery, London. Tuymans recently donated his portrait of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He lives and works in Antwerp. Image: Luc Tuymans, The Valley, 2012; screenprint; 71 x 72,5 cm; Edition: 75; Courtesy of the artist. Download

2014 PNCA Commencement Spencer Beebe, Chair of Ecotrust’s Board of Directors, delivers the 2014 Commencement Address at the May 25 celebration for the graduating class of 2014, with students in PNCA’s undergraduate Studio Arts, Media Arts, and Design Arts programs and three of the graduate programs of PNCA’s Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies: MFA in Visual Studies, MFA in Collaborative Design, and MFA in Applied Craft and Design. Download

In conjunction with Tear-Sheet: The Daily Grind of Illustration, the Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space presents a public conversation with Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann. Nicholas Blechman, illustrator and Art Director of The New York Times Book Review will be in conversation with Berlin-based author and illustrator Christoph Niemann about the ups, the downs, current trends and gossip in illustration today. Feldman Gallery Lecture: Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann In conjunction with Tear-Sheet: The daily grind of illustration., the Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space presents a public conversation with Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann. About Nicholas Blechman: Nicholas Blechman is an internationally recognized illustrator, designer and art director, based in New York. His award winning illustrations have appeared in GQ, Travel + Leisure, Wired, and The New Yorker. He is currently the Art Director of The New York Times Book Review. Since 1990, Blechman has published, edited, and designed the award winning political underground magazine NOZONE, featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s Design Triennial. He has taught design at School of Visual Arts and illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Blechman co-authors a series of limited edition illustration books, One Hundred Percent, with Christoph Niemann. His latest project is the children’s book Night Light. About Christoph Niemann: Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, graphic designer, and author. His work has appeared on the covers The New Yorker, Time, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, and American Illustration, and has won awards from AIGA, the Art Directors Club, and The Lead Awards. Since July 2008, Niemann has been writing and illustrating the whimsical Abstract City, a New York Times blog, renamed Abstract Sunday in 2011, when the blog’s home became The New York Times Magazine. For his column he draws and writes essays about politics, the economy, art and modern life. He has drawn live from the Venice Art Biennale, the Olympic Games in London, The 2012 Republican Convention and he has drawn the New York City Marathon — while actually running it. Niemann is the author of many books, most recently Abstract City. Download

PNCA, in partnership with The Art Gym and the Department of Art at Marylhurst, welcomes Miguel Petchkovsky to give a presentation on the activities of Netherlands-based Time_frame Foundation and NIMK in taking video beyond the confines of a gallery or theatrical setting. Examples of video beyond the screen to include: Visual Dome, Video Guerrilha, immersive new media technology, monumental video art, urban projection mapping, as well as an introduction to related projects from Time_frame partners, SAT Montreal and Currents Santa Fe. The Immersive Showcase and Video Beyond the Screen Pacific Northwest College of Arts welcome artist Miguel Petchkovsky, International Media Arts Curator, of the Time_frame Foundation.     Download

Feldman Gallery Lecture: AL Steiner In concert with the exhibition Feelings and How to Destroy Them in the Feldman Gallery + Project Space, A.L Steiner will present an artist talk delving into her solo and collaborative projects. In concert with the exhibition Feelings and How to Destroy Them in the Feldman Gallery + Project Space, A.L Steiner will present an artist talk delving into her solo and collaborative projects with Chicks on Speed, robbinschilds, A.K. Burns, and Zackary Drucker. A.L. Steiner uses constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, writing, performance, and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of an activated skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne. The exhibition, Feelings and How to Destroy Them, is presented in conjunction with PICA’s TBA:13 Festival.   Download

MFA VS Lecture: Ann Hamilton The MFA in Visual Studies welcomes Ann Hamilton as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Ann Hamilton is a visual artist recognized for her large-scale multi-media installations, as well as her work in video, sculpture, photography, textile art, and printmaking. Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She has represented the United States in the 1991 Sao Paulo Bienal, the 1999 Venice Biennale, and has exhibited extensively around the world. This event is co-sponsored by Elizabeth Leach Gallery.       Download

Photo by Micah Fischer ‘13. CraftPerspectives Lecture | Namita Gupta Wiggers and Benjamin Lignel on Contemporary Jewelry Museum of Contemporary Craft and the MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcome Benjamin Lignel and Namita Gupta Wiggers.   Contemporary jewelry is doing OK. It does not need another pat on the back in the form of a 300-page book of images. When taking on the task of editor in 2010, Damian Skinner decided to treat Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective as an opportunity to examine jewelry as a mature, fully developed practice. Rather than propose yet another set of justifications for its existence, he led a project to provide instruments to navigate the spaces in which jewelry lives (Part 1), to understand the history of the field (Part 2), and to grasp some of the contentious issues that animate jewelry today (Part 3). This joint lecture by Benjamin Lignel and Namita Wiggers, both contributors to Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, Part 1, will look at the history of contemporary jewelry through the lens of some of its defining moments. Why was the critique of preciousness so important? What exactly is de-skilling, and does it herald the end of bench-based craft? Why is inheritance an issue for long-term preservation of contemporary jewelry? Lignel and Wiggers will also discuss the spaces of contemporary jewelry, revealing how they are both found and invented as products of contemporary practice. We will show how such spaces are determined by maker’s willingness to appropriate them and to challenge the limits of what is historically “given.” While we share some assumptions about contemporary jewelry, our positions as curator and editor/maker have colored, and to some extent polarized, how we think about the field. This lecture is meant to test our methodology and to better understand the functionality of the book as a user-friendly tool kit. The lecture will pick up selected tools in a non-linear presentation of a non-linear book with the goal of leaving the audience with the strange urge to burn, and then redraw the plinth on which contemporary jewelry sits. This program is co-sponsored by Art Jewelry Forum and the MFA in Applied Craft + Design. A book signing will follow the lecture. Download

Photo by Sara Kerens photography. MFA AC+D Lecture: Randy Hunt The MFA in Applied Craft welcomes Randy Hunt as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series. This event is co-sponsored by Scout Books for Design Week Portland. Randy Hunt is the Creative Director at Etsy, where he leads the team of designers building web products and creating off-line experiences. He believe designers must be able to build what they design. Currently, he’s writing Product Design for the Web, which will be published by New Riders in November 2013. This event is co-sponsored by Scout Books for Design Week Portland. Download