PROOF – Group Printmaking Exhibition
Posted by zeinab.saab
From Left to Right:
Gordon Barnes, Untitled (Snake Charmer), Woodcut, 2023
Chris Chandler, Cube 2, Woodtype, 2023
Sam Orosz, Landscape II, Lithograph with mounted eastern paper and silver leafing, 2023
Cammy York, Just Girlie Things, Intaglio and Mixed Media,2023
Exhibition dates: January 23rd, 2025 – February 22nd, 2025
- Opening event: Thursday, January 23rd 5-8p
- Gallery hours:
- Wednesdays- Fridays, 12-7pm, Saturdays, 12-5pm
- 24/7 view at 815 N. Killingsworth, Portland, OR 97217
- All events are free and open to the public.
Paragon Arts Gallery at PCC Cascade presents PROOF Printmaking Group Exhibition. The exhibition opens Thursday, January 23rd, 2025, and runs through Saturday, February 22nd, 2025.
Please join us for the opening event on Thursday January 23rd, 2025 from 5-8p. Gallery will open at 12pm and close at 8pm.
All events are free and open to the public.
PROOF is a group exhibition showcasing a range of printmaking techniques, approaches, and critical investigations. The show invites viewers to immerse themselves in a display of printmaking in myriad forms, where narratives and images juxtapose and converge to explore how this medium enables introspection and connection within a creative community. The exhibition’s title references experimentation, when a proof is a preliminary version of a printed piece, offering a unique opportunity to witness artists in the process of trial and innovation. Beyond the artistic process, PROOF also emphasizes the tangible evidence of creativity, physical, tactile art that mediates communication between the artist and audience. Through the works of featured artists-Gordon Barnes, Lucas Cantoni Jose, Chris Chandler, Matthew Letzelter, Will Mairs, Sam Orosz, marvin parra orozco, Rory Sparks, and Cammy York- PROOF weaves together narratives, culminating in a multigenerational and multilayered exploration of individual and collective identity, placemaking and publics, and the palimpsest of creative production.
About the Artists:
marvin parra orozco is a Portland-based artist who uses words and fragments as a form of self discovery. They find themselves stuck between words like “yes,” “maybe,” and “no.” They like colors like reds and muted yellows, numbers 3,4,7,9,0, repetition and multiples to create different stories, they use prayer as a means of survival and collage images sometimes. Their work is rooted in action and reflection. They like to dream of a future where love and community are at the root.
Kanani Miyamoto is originally from Honolulu, Hawai`i, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she practices art, teaches, and curates. She is of mixed heritage and identifies most with her Hawaiian and Japanese roots, celebrated in her artwork. Miyamoto holds a Master of Fine Arts in Print Media from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Kanani is now the Arts Coordinator at p:ear , a creative drop-in center for homeless youth. Important to Miyamoto’s work as an artist is sharing and honoring her mixed cultural background to represent her community and the beauty of intersectional identities. She also explores topics such as institutional critique and hopes to create critical conversations around cultural authenticity in the arts. Miyamoto is a printmaker who uses traditional printmaking techniques to create large-scale print installations. In addition to being a practicing artist, she is an advocate for art education and a passionate community worker.
Gordon Barnes is a mischievous and curious artist and educator working in Portland, Oregon who enjoys thinking deeply about the wrong things. He earned a BFA in Printmaking from Sonoma State University in 2005 and a MFA in Studio Practice from Portland State University in 2007. His printmaking research is broadly focused on expanding/exploring the intersection of digital and traditional approaches while playfully and humanely challenging what he sees as false binary choices baked in to the way many of us frame our thinking around gender, sexuality, taste, class and craft. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally for the last 20 years and he has been an active member of Paintallica since 2008
Rory Sparks explores craft and collectivity in her work—how material transformation and connections open spaces for thinking and feeling. In her book and print practice, she approaches publishing as being a mode of making that is about networks as webs of relationships. She is interested in investigating what shifts when we think about the book as a hybrid space, and publishing as a process of community building rather than commerce. Rory has co-founded several communal projects including Produce, Working Library, and Em Space, which are each centered around co-creating social spaces that weave together pedagogy and making to inform and construct ways of thinking, being, and working. Sparks earned her MFA from
Chris Chandler works in modes of deconstruction and reconstruction with modular type and letterpress printmaking. Primarily utilizing the Alpha-Blox and Future Schmuck fonts –enlarged into large custom woodblocks for use on his Vandercook 232P proofing press –Chandler transposes letters, words, and shapes into abstracted assemblies of wheat-pasted prints. His practice of rearranging, layering and tearing his prints reflects his appeal to the
analog and endless combinations possible through printmaking processes. Chris’s printworks communicate
an admiration for the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements with nods to the origins of graphic design and typography. Often large in scale the works display qualities of immersion, movement and sound, harkening back to his 30 year career of tour management and sound engineering.Chris is a self-taught artist who fell into a passion of art and printmaking after acquiring his first Vandercook Press in 1996 and has exhibited his works across the Pacific Northwest and in New York City, Los Angeles and Oklahoma. In 2021 he was the recipient
for both the Mohawk Paper’s Maker’s Grant and Stumptown Coffee’s Artist Fellowship. He lives in Portland, OR with his wife and two children and manages his personal studio, long-time named Neu Haus Press which houses his personal practice, collaborations, and letterpress workshops.
Lucas Jose was germinated in São Paulo, Brazil where he was mostly fertilized with local and ancestral nutrients but also a good amount of mass produced colonial nutrient replacements. He got aerial roots from moving around and living and studying in the UK, Canada and now Portland. His work explores the different conditions that its body is submitted and the encounters with others being them beings with bodies or elemental forces.
Sam Orosz is a visual artist and printmaker who transplanted from St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2014,he received a BFA from the University of Minnesota Duluth and an MFA in Print Media fromPacific Northwest College of Art in 2024. Through the processes of print, mark-making, and the exploration of landscapes, Orosz
contemplates environments and the relationships we have with the natural world. Orosz has exhibited nationally in galleries and museums and has been collected nationally and internationally including the permanent collections of the Minnesota Museum of American Art and the North Dakota Museum of Art. He was awarded the 2015-2016 Jerome Emerging Printmakers Residency at Highpoint Center for Printmaking and in 2018 participated in a collaborative artist residency in Brisbane, Australia with Grey Hand Press.
Matthew Letzelter is an artist, professor, and professional printer in Oregon. He makes works on paper, prints,
and paintings, with a focus on abstracted landscapes. His current work is an exploration of passages
and marks that reference patterns, transitions, textures, and experiences that have developed from his
research of the man-made and natural environments. His work is defined by decades of exploring printmaking and publishing with multiple professional studios and programs in North America. Collaborating for years on numerous artist projects has informed his techniques and approaches to making both traditional and modern prints, paintings, and works on paper.
Matthew received his MFA in 2003 from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, and his BFA in 1998 from
University of Florida. He is currently a Professor at Willamette University/PNCA, where he is Chair of the MFA
in Print Media Program and Director of Watershed – Center for Print Research. Prior to moving to Portland,
Letzelter was the Master Printer at Stinger Editions and Visiting Professor at Concordia University in Montreal,
Quebec. Before residing Canada, Letzelter worked at Derrière L‘Étoile Studio and Petersburg Press in New
York City.
Cammy York is a Southern California native with a Bachelor of Fine Art in printmaking from Sonoma State University, and an MA and MFA in printmaking with a secondary emphasis in sculpture from the University of Iowa Cammy has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the International Print Center New York, the Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition in Illinois, and Guardino Gallery in Portland, Oregon. She has also participated in artist residencies nationally and internationally such as The Vermont Studio Center in Vermont, Cow House Studios in Ireland, and In Cahoots in California. Cammy currently lives in Oregon where she maintains a studio practice and continues to be surprised by the endless possibilities of intaglio printing.
Will Mairs is originally from New York and received a BS in computer science at Tufts University before learning the gospel and getting their MFA in Print Media at PNCA. Will is a non binary book artist and printmaker with a possibly misplaced affection for unreadable things. They find it fun to explore peculiar mark making with a letterpress and make unclear photo zines with a risograph duplicator. They feel both unease and a hopeful aversion to digital distribution platforms and art world autotheory, and suppose that cheap, printed things might be useful here.
About Paragon Arts Gallery
Paragon Arts Gallery is an educational showcase committed to exhibiting work of high artistic quality. Our versatile gallery is located at 815 North Killingsworth, at PCC’s Cascade Campus. Mindful of our role as a member of the Humboldt community, we are especially committed to engaging community members in our space.