The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Some of Oregon’s most exciting artists and scholars will be exploring the intersection of art, food, and agriculture in the 2023 Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture (PMRCAA) arts residency program. Through a juried application process, 24 artists, culture bearers, scientists, scholars, and researchers from around the United States have been selected for either one-month or two-week stays at PMRCAA in Sisters, from March through November. The PMRCAA offers dedicated individuals a supportive environment in which to further their creative development. This year will be PMRCAA’s fifth residency program.

Through an open-call process applicants were invited to focus on the theme of “Food & Agriculture.” The topic connects the residency program with much of the work of parent organization The Roundhouse Foundation.

“Agricultural practices are adapting and/or adopting new techniques to deal with the current environmental and social challenges,” said PMRCAA Arts Projects Coordinator Ana Varas. “By inviting participants who focus on the different components of the food system, we aim to foster critical thinking, dialogue and exchange of ideas and knowledge, which can lead to potential solutions to some of the environmental and social problems we are facing today.”

Residents will work closely with others in the region that are already engaging in community-supported agri(cultural) initiatives. The PMRCAA also hosts a variety of community events around the scheduled residencies.

Located on Pine Meadow Ranch, PMRCAA is a 260-acre working ranch at the southwest corner of Sisters.

The 2023 residency participants include:

Visual Arts

Alexandria Nazar (Philadelphia, PA): paintings, drawings; received a master’s in painting and drawing from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia and a bachelor’s in fine arts and history from the University of California, Davis.

Ben Buswell (Portland, OR): sculptural work spans diverse media: glass, ceramics, metals, resins, and incised photographs.

Catie Michel (Denver, CO): visual storyteller who explores the relationship with the natural world using artistic and scientific principles.

Collin Bell (Syracuse, NY): Documentary and portrait photographer, crafting images that explore vulnerable and complex themes regarding changing landscapes, non-traditional families, and unexpected communities.

Derek Yost (Portland, OR): painter and tattoo artist; work draws from a range of sources, including folk art, pre-Columbian art, wildlife and botany.

Flora Carlile-Kovacs (Seattle, WA): textile artist using an ancient textile technique of combining wool and silk fibers and fabrics with water and soap to create felt.

Laura Nolan (Bend, OR): uses a range of formats including sculpture, performance, community engagement, and functional art.

Michael Pribich (New York City, NY): visual artist who believes that in recognizing labor as cultural production, there becomes an expanded social space.

Sally Widgery Finch (Beaverton, OR): visual artist working with weather and other information to see patterns over time; manipulates information to see it in new ways.

Tammy Jo Wilson (Oregon City, OR): Black artist and curator; Art in Oregon’s co-founder and president; Bush House Museum director of exhibits and programming: and Lewis & Clark College’s visual arts and technology program manager.

Performing Arts

Evan Kassof (Philadelphia, PA): composer based in Philadelphia whose work is at the intersection of opera, science and community building.

M. D. Schaffer (New York City, NY): a queer, non-binary, African-American writer, librettist, and lyricist from Houston who lives in New York City. Their works examine the relationship between Americana, historical romanticism, and contemporary American reality.

Literary Arts

Diane Wilson (Shafer, MN): author with a deep commitment to learning and writing about the relationship between humans and plants, water and land, and how that relationship has evolved.

Jackleen De la Harpe (Portland, OR): writer who has worked primarily in journalism and nonfiction — essays, news, and explanatory reporting.

Joe Wilkins (McMinnville, OR): author of a novel, “Fall Back Down When I Die;” a memoir, “The Mountain and the Fathers,” and four collections of poetry, including “When We Were Birds” and “Thieve.”

Nancy Matsumoto (New York City, NY): writer who covers food, agriculture, and the environment. She co-authored “Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake” and edited a forthcoming book of Japanese poetry from UCLA’s Asian American Studies Press.

Multidisciplinary

Julian Saporiti and Emilia Halvorsen (Portland, OR): perform as the musical duo No-No Boy. Saporiti transformed his doctoral research on Asian American history into concerts, albums, and films with No-No Boy. As an artist and musician, Halvorsen teaches workshops around the world.

Kaci Rae Christopher (Sisters, OR): Sisters-based writer and garden educator focusing on fostering transformative experiences for youth through a connection to land.

Kai Takada Misner (Detroit, MI): leader of Controlled Environment Agriculture Technology at Planted Detroit, a vertical hydroponic farm on the east side of the city.

Joe Wilkins PHOTO PROVIDED

Madelaine Corbin (Detroit, MI): multidisciplinary artist; research-based practice moves fluidly between drawing, writing, sculpture, textiles, and natural dyeing.

O. Milo Vella (Ithaca, NY): works on research to support and safeguard Indigenous and heritage-based agroecological systems.

Sarah Red-Laird (Ashland, OR): conservationist, researcher, beekeeper, educator, and artist; contemplating methods to creatively bring people to understand and appreciate the value of bees and healthy flower-filled landscape.

Slinko (Maplewood, NJ): multidisciplinary artist from Ukraine living in the U.S.; practice is informed by scholarship on labor, agency, and power, inspired by interactions with ordinary people.