FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Release date: September 28, 2015
Press contact: Kris Kebisek, Executive Assistant to the President
503/255-4140 kkebisek@ocac.edu
Program contact: MaryAnn Deffenbaugh, Director of Public Programs
971/255-4138 mdeffenbaugh@ocac.edu
Oregon College of Art and Craft Presents a Conversation and Book Signing:
The New Explorers by Kris Timken, November 19, 2015
Oregon College of Art and Craft
8245 SW Barnes Road Portland. OR 97225
7 PM (doors open at 6:45 PM)
Portland, OR – Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) will present a Conversation with author Kris Timken, artists Camille Seaman, Linda K. Johnson, curator 
Prudence Roberts as part of the OCAC Connection: Intersecting Tradition and Innovation speaker series. This event is open and free to the public and will engage the community in bringing makers and thinkers of international renown to explore the relationship of craft to other disciplines and fields.
If there is no geographic territory on earth left to discover, are explorers obsolete?
In the twenty-first century, the farthest reaches of the earth have been surveyed, mapped, and photographed. One could argue that our planet is now in a near-perpetual state of overexposure. With no “new” lands left to discover and conquer, is the archetype of the explorer still relevant?
“This book offers a compelling selection of some innovative creative interpreters of the American land…They evoke the charisma and courage of the original explorers of the new nations, but probe instead into the world that we made collectively – a constructed landscape whose complexities and mysteries are as rich and varied as its inhabitants.” – Matthew Coolidge, founder of The Center for Land Use and Interpretation
“Like the artist explorers examined in her book – Marie Lorenz ferrying passengers around New York in a plywood rowboat, Alison Davies traversing desolate landscapes in a hazmat suit, Jamie Kruse using her own body to measure the layers of earth vaporized in a Nevada nuclear blast – Timken seeks to train our eyes differently…This is a wonderfully provocative book.” – James T. Campbell, Edgar E. Robinson Professor in US History, Stanford University; author, Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa 1787-2005.
The author and artist, Kris Timken, was born in Ohio and earned a degree in history from Stanford University. While raising a family, she embarked on a BFA degree at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, going on to finish that degree at the California College of the Arts where, in 2011, she also completed a dual MFA and MA degree in Social Practice and Visual and Critical Studies. While in graduate school she began to research material that led to The New Explorers. Ms. Timken is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in visual studies at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Artist, Camille Seaman was born in 1969 to a Native America (Shinnecock tribe) father and African American mother and graduated in 1992 with a BFA in Photography from Purchase College, the State University of New York. Her documentary/fine art photographs have been published in National Geographic, TIME, The New York Times Sunday magazine, Newsweek, Camera Arts and American Photo among many others. Her photography has received many awards including: the 2006 National Geographic Award and the Critical Mass Top Monograph Award in 2007. From her base in Emeryville, California, she photographs across the globe using digital and film formats and, since 2003, has concentrated on the fragile environment of the Polar Regions. “The Last Iceberg” was the title of her one-person exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D. C. She is represented by the Richard Heller Gallery in New York and the Adamson Gallery in Washington, D. C.
For over 25 years, dancer and performance artist, Linda K. Johnson, has performed and worked on the West Coast as a choreographer, performer, educator, arts administrator, curator, and public artist. An Oregon native, her concerns are social and environmental and address our collective relationship to and with site, place and community. From her first site-based, large-scale interdisciplinary performance event in 1992 – Finding the Forest, Johnson has gone on to author over 15 major works, most often collaboratively, that utilize unconventional compositional forms, formats and venues to pose and frame questions about how we live where we live. She has been awarded residencies at Rauschenberg Artist Residency Center, Yaddo, Caldera, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work has received critical review in diverse venues, including Dance Magazine, Landscape Architecture, Metropolis Magazine, NPR/Living on Earth.
Former curator of American Art at the Portland Art Museum, Prudence Roberts, currently teaches art history and directs the Helzer Art Gallery at Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus. Roberts was the curator of Disjecta’s Portland 2012 biennial and has been a guest curator at the Art Gym, Marylhurst University; and at COCA in Seattle. A member of the Board of Disjecta Contemporary Art, she has served on panels for the Regional Arts & culture Council, the Ford Family Foundation, and the Oregon Community Foundation. She is co-chair of Portland Community College’s Women in Art Lecture series, which has brought such notable artists as Carolee Schneemann and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to Portland audiences. Roberts was born in Philadelphia and moved to Oregon in 1985. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; and her MALS degree from Reed College.
Fascinated by the importance of context in shaping a region, Professor Ethan Seltzer is a recognized authority in the subjects of regional planning, regional development, and the region of Cascadia. Dr. Seltzer teaches interdisciplinary courses on themes of regions, planning, and place. His current research focuses on citizen participation in planning, specifically the use of crowdsourcing as a participation tool, and on the development of a “region ethic” as a way to contextualize local and regional planning. In 2011, he co-edited Regional Planning in America: Practice and Prospect published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and Toward One Oregon: Rural-Urban Interdependence and the Evolution of a State published by the Oregon State University Press. Dr. Seltzer is also engaged in matters of art, culture, and the environment exemplified by his serving on and leading the boards of the Oregon Environmental Council, 40-Mile Loop Land Trust, and PICA.
The New Explorers: A Conversation and Book Signing with the Author and the Artists
Thursday, November 19, 2015
7 PM (doors open at 6:45 PM)
Oregon College of Art and Craft
Vollum Building
8245 SW Barnes Road
Beaverton, OR 97225
Copies of the book, The New Explorers, with an introduction by Lucy R. Lippard will be
available for sale, and author Kris Timken will be available to sign copies of her book.
RSVP BY NOVEMBER 16: lectures@ocac.edu or 971-255-4165
This event is free and open to the public.
the iconoclastic undercurrents within making-based creativity, featuring artists and educators Jovencio de la Paz, Rock Hushka, Mark Newport and Tali Weinberg. Together, with moderator Emily Nachison, head of Fibers at OCAC, they will establish an open dialog concerning the metaphorical, figurative, and formal process of mending in contemporary craft, fiber, and art. Attendance is free and open to the public.
Oregon College of Art and Craft Library 