Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Trace Extractions by Stephanie Serpick, Victoria Smits, and Stefani Byrd

Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery

• Exhibition dates: January 19, 2024 – February 24, 2024
• Opening event: Friday, January 19, 5-8pm; gallery talk 6-7pm
• 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.

Home is a destination, a refuge, a place of respite and inviolability. Hegemonic roles of women have historically placed them as responsible for daily acts related to domesticity — cooking, cleaning, laundry, kin-keeping, and more — this is Invisible Labor. This exhibition holds space for collective autobiographical narratives during the pandemic, how “home” changed. Exhibiting artists Stephanie Serpick, Victoria Smits, Stefani Byrd document these experiences through modern technology and traditional materials including intimate reflections in oil on panel, records of GPS tracking etched into acrylic, and scanning technology and digital photographic prints. The artists each employ a decidedly feminist lens in framing the experiences of the pandemic through how it disproportionately affected the lives of women

Serpick’s paintings of windows and bedding connote extraction from the outside world; they are devoid of human presence while intensifying awareness of grief, solitude and healing.

Smits’ etched acrylic GPS records of invisible labor document exertion and dysregulation of domestic acts historically falling on the shoulders of mothers, made more acute during the pandemic.

Byrd uses LIDAR tools to archive the commonplace while exploring stasis during a global crisis, abstracting and recording the formal qualities of space and volume, as well as absence and presence.

Please join us for the opening event and artist lecture, on Friday, January 19, 2023. Gallery will open at 5pm with a 45-minute gallery talk  at 6pm, during which the artists will discuss their works within the exhibition.

About the artists

Stephanie Serpick is a visual artist working primarily as a painter. She received her MFA from the University of Chicago, and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she currently lives and works in New York. stephanieserpick.com, Instagram @sserpick

Victoria L. Smits is an interdisciplinary artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She studied English, art, and secondary education at Calvin College and received an MA in English Education from University of Buffalo with a concentration in creative writing. After an extensive career in art and English education, she embraced a full-time art practice and has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the School of Art Institute of Chicago SITE 280 Gallery, Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts in Lubbock, Texas, and the Art Center Highland Park. Her art and writing have been published in Home-Works, Torpor House, and Literary Life Chapbook. Smits graduated in 2023 with her MFA in Studio through the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

victorialsmits.com/, Instagram @victorialsmits

Stefani Byrd’s art practice includes video, new media, and interactive technologies. Their current work focuses on creating psychologically charged immersive media environments addressing topics such as how technology impacts empathy in digitally mediated spaces. She has received grants and support from groups such as: Creative Capital of New York, Flux Projects InLight Festival, and Idea Capital. Her work has been reviewed and featured in such places as the Public Art Review, the Huffington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Art Papers. In 2015, they trained in The Abramovic Method of Performance with Marina Abramovic. Byrd’s work has been exhibited at places such as the CICA Museum (South Korea), SONIC MATTER New Music Festival (Zurich), Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (Spain), Athens Digital Arts Festival (Greece), among others. Byrd’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Columbus Museum of American Art. She received her BFA degree in Photography from Georgia State University, and a Masters Degree in Visual Art from the University of California San Diego. Byrd is currently an Assistant Professor of New Media in the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

stefanibyrd.com, Instagram @stefanibyrdstudio

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.