Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Decemberists, Lemony Snickets artist coming to PCC Art Beat

Photos and story by James Hill

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Northwest Portland illustrator Carson Ellis is this year’s featured artist for the annual Art Beat Festival at Portland Community College.

Ellis is best known for her illustrations for The Decemberists’ album covers and for children’s books, including Lemony Snicket’s “The Composer is Dead.” She will put on various lectures throughout the week of Art Beat at many PCC locations.

“I’m flattered and happy to participate,” Ellis said from her Linnton studio. “I’m a supporter of community colleges and think it’s great that PCC takes a week to honor and raise awareness about the arts.”

A dedication of the featured art and lecture by Ellis will be from 10 to 11 a.m., Monday, May 10, in The Forum at the Rock Creek Campus, 17705 N.W. Springville Road. She also will put on lectures featuring her artistic style from 2 to 3 p.m., Tuesday, May 11, in Room 223, Moriarty Arts and Humanities Building, Cascade Campus, 705 N. Killingsworth St.; and 11 a.m. to noon, Wednesday, May 12, in the Little Theatre of the Sylvania Campus, 12000 S.W. 49th Ave.

The 2010 Art Beat Festival at Portland Community College is a week-long celebration of the arts May 10-14 at all of the college’s major comprehensive campuses. Art Beat covers visual art, dance, music, literature and theater, featuring more than 80 events at Cascade, Sylvania and Rock Creek campuses as well as the Southeast Center (2305 S.E. 82nd Avenue and Division). The 23rd annual Art Beat Festival is free and open to the public. Parking at all PCC campuses also is free during the festival.

For complete campus by campus schedules:

• Cascade Campus Events
• Sylvania Campus Events
• Rock Creek Campus Events
• Southeast Center Events

Art Beat 2010 will cover a wide array of talented artists. From Phillip Charette, an Alaska Native Yup’ik artist, specializes in native sculpture, Yup’ik spirit masks and musical instruments to Oregon Universal Zulu Nation, which combines all elements of hip hop in their performances, Art Beat will have it all. But it’s Carson Ellis who will give PCC’s Art Beat a bit of national significance. As a result of her developing high profile projects, Ellis’ appearances will not only benefit the community, but will be a boon to students.

“It is a real honor for PCC to be hosting a featured artist with a national reputation,” said Mark Andres, painting instructor at Rock Creek who helped bring her to PCC. “Carson Ellis’ work is some of the best illustration and design work being published today, on a par with artists such as Maira Kalman and Edward Gorey. But perhaps more importantly Carson Ellis’ distinctly unique combination of image and text in various formats such as album covers, book illustration and poster design make her work relevant to art students from a wide range of media from painting to calligraphy to printmaking to graphic design to even time-based art.”

Ellis was born in 1975 in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. She was raised in suburban New York and educated at the University of Montana in Missoula, where she earned a bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Painting in 1998.

“I moved to Portland from San Francisco 10 years ago,” she said. “I had spent a month visiting here, staying with college friends, and it just seemed so much more hospitable than San Francisco. Portland was cheaper, the art community was more welcoming and a lot of my friends from the University of Montana had migrated here. During my visit I met other artists and got involved in group shows and started making posters for bands.  It was irresistible; I never moved back.”

She was a bartender and an oil painter when, in 2001, her now husband and lead singer of The Decemberists put her to work making art for the band. What started as a small project undertaken in her spare time quickly developed into a big job. As the band’s illustrator-in-residence, she has created fliers and posters, Web site illustrations, T-shirt designs, backdrop and stage set designs, video props, and, all told, 18 record covers, leading her to a career in illustration. These days she mostly divides her time between children’s book illustration, artwork for the Decemberists and fine art for exhibiting.

“When the band started getting more attention, I started getting contacted by art directors to do my first editorial jobs,” Ellis said. “Their popularity grew and I got more work illustrating. I’d like to think that regardless of my work with The Decemberists and of what turns of fate my life has taken, I’d be a professional artist at this point but there’s no doubt that I owe a lot to the band’s popularity. Fortunately I really love working on things for The Decemberists and collaborating with their singer Colin, who’s also my husband.  It’s never stopped being inspiring and it’s helped to open up a lot of other illustration possibilities to me.”

For additional information on Art Beat, visit artbeat.pcc.edu