50 Years After, Voices from a Diaspora: Thuy Tran
Thuy Tran talks about her experiences as an optometrist, member of the Oregon Air National Guard, and Oregon State Representative in this video by Kevin Truong.
Rhythm, Rhyme, and Revolution: Crafting Transformative Messages
Join cultural activist, emcee, poet, and writer Mic Crenshaw for an interactive workshop exploring the power of rhythm, rhyme, and storytelling as tools for self-expression and social change. Through rap, poetry, spoken word, and call-and-response, participants will discover how to craft meaningful, original, and transformative messages that reflect their perspectives and purpose.
Flowering in Tar
Daniela Naomi Molnar writes about learning to be sensorially aware amid climate chaos and socioecological crisis
People, Places, Things: Anne Greenwood
A Jacquard weaving of the lower Columbia River by Anne Greenwood
The Power of Community Spaces
Joni Kabana writes about how the Spray General Store is bridging divides.
Fields Artist Fellowship
The Fields Artist Fellowship is a partnership between Oregon Humanities (OH) and the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF), aimed at investing in individual artists, culture bearers, and their communities.
Meet the 2024–26 Fields Artist Fellows
Oregon Humanities, in partnership with Oregon Community Foundation, is pleased to announce the recipients of the third Fields Artist Fellowship.
Light Beam
A comic by Eleanor Klock about creative work, fulfillment, and despair
People, Places, Things: BLK&GLD
Portraits of family members by Oregon photographer John Adair
So Much Together: Spark to Finish
While creativity can be a slow and deliberate process, it can also be fast and spontaneous. In this highly interactive So Much Together workshop, we will explore the possibilities that reveal themselves when people get together to imagine and create something QUICKLY!
Meet the 2024–26 Fields Artist Fellows
Oregon Humanities, in partnership with Oregon Community Foundation, is pleased to announce the recipients of the third Fields Artist Fellowship.
The Pains and Joys of Aging
An illustrated essay by Leanne Grabel
Editor's Note: Joy and Pain
Ben Waterhouse on how this issue came to be
So Much Together: Staged Frights
What happens when a community bands together around a playful, creative cause? In this workshop, Haunt Camp program director JR Rymut will share how a rural community can be a perfect and unexpected incubator of avant-garde art.
The Middle of Nowhere
Evelyn Sharenov writes about memory, music, and maternal inheritance.
People, Places, Things
Mike Vos offers a glimpse beyond our world into an alternate timeline, where nature reclaims the industrial landscape.
Art and Activism in Modoc Point
Contemporary Klamath Modoc artist Ka'ila Farrell Smith on receiving a 2019–21 Fields Artist Fellowship
Creating Joy, Art, and Social Change
Lincoln-City-based artist and musician Crystal Menseses writes about her experience as a 2019-21 Fields Artist Fellow.
So Much Together - The People’s Park
Lauren Everett is a Portland-based artist, community activist, and researcher. In 2020, Lauren led the creation of the People’s Park, a temporary community space created on a vacant lot in the St. Johns neighborhood. In this two-part workshop, she will share the story of how the park came about, framed by a discussion about the ideology of property in the United States. Participants will collaborate to design their own community spaces and learn some of the basic practical aspects of doing this kind of project.
So Much Together: Shared Possessions
Patricia Vázquez Gómez is an artist whose practice investigates the social functions of art, the intersections between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and the expansion of community-based art practices. She strongly believes that we all possess unique talents, knowledge, and perspectives that make us unique and unordinary, and that those special possessions are often obscured by the situations in which we find ourselves. In this workshop, Patricia will share some of her projects and guide conversations and quick activities to connect to the themes and methods of her artwork. We will learn about the unique cultural possessions that each participant brings in the form of sayings inherited from families and cultures and make a set of posters featuring those sayings.
So Much Together: Shared Possessions
Patricia Vázquez Gómez is an artist whose practice investigates the social functions of art, the intersections between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and the expansion of community-based art practices. She strongly believes that we all possess unique talents, knowledge, and perspectives that make us unique and unordinary, and that those special possessions are often obscured by the situations in which we find ourselves. In this two-part workshop, Patricia will share some of her projects and guide conversations and quick activities to connect to the themes and methods of her artwork. We will learn about the unique cultural possessions that each participant brings in the form of sayings inherited from families and cultures and make a set of posters featuring those sayings.
Pandemic Flowers
Illustrator Mia Nolting reflects on a year of isolation through the dead flowers that have been in her house since the start of the pandemic.
Tutoring the Kingpin
May Maylisa Cat writes about how helping a friend apply for the citizenship exam revived memories of her own experiences of educational discrimination and marginalization.
Foremothers of Photography
Raechel Herron Root on how the creative lineage of Southern Oregon’s separatist lesbian lands can help us reimagine the future.
Black Opera: Singing over Ourselves
Singer Onry writes about making a place for himself as a Black man in the white world of opera.
People, Places, Things
Berenice Chavez photographs her mother.
Stories from the Diaspora: “Art is My Freedom”
Artist Akram Sarraj tells the story of his journey from Mosul to Portland as part of Stories from the Diaspora a project now being hosted on our website.
Cover Songs of Myself
Jason Arias on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the different versions of ourselves.
Black Mark, Black Legend
Intisar Abioto writes about uncovering the lineage of Black artists in Portland.
Intisar Abioto and Kimberly A. C. Wilson on the Stories of Black Artists in Oregon
A conversation with 2018 Emerging Journalists, Community Stories fellow Intisar Abioto and Kimberly A. C. Wilson, her mentor for the fellowship, on celebrating Black presence and creativity in Oregon.
Black Mark, Black Legend
Intisar Abioto explores the legacy of Black artists in Portland and the meaning of that history for current creators in the community, as part of Oregon Humanities' Emerging Journalists, Community Stories fellowship program.
Croppings: Enrique Chagoya, Reverse Anthropology
Through January 27, 2019, at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Day of Judgment
Simon Tam writes about the day he won a case before the supreme court and realized that winning can be complicated.
Croppings: The Casta Paintings
Multimedia works by Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland
On Tinnitus
Lucie Bonvalet writes about eight years of living with tinnitus, "a gray veil, a sort of curtain of rain, between me and everything outside of me."
Croppings: Strange Narratives
Jamila Clarke's photographs combine the extraordinary with the commonplace, using the imagery and language of folktales and literature to explore complex emotions of everyday life.
Field Work: Community Stories Onstage
Student-created show raises consciousness in Southern Oregon's Illinois Valley
Finding Home at the Mims
From the 1940s to '60s, the Mims House was a safe place to stay for African Americans traveling through Oregon. Now it’s a gathering place for the Black community in Eugene. Video by Nisha Burton.
More to the Story
A grade-school musical offers educators and students a chance to reexamine history. An article by Marty Hughley with photos by Fred Joe
Posts
Readers write about Move
Trademark Offense
Bandleader Simon Tam explains his fight to trademark his band’s name, “The Slants.” Tam recently argued his case before the US Supreme Court. He won.
Wild Blue Sea
How does a song become "our song"? An excerpt from Get It While You Can by Nick Jaina
Kansas in Technicolor
After a mastectomy, finding beauty in loss. An essay by Gretchen Icenogle
To Begin Is to Start
An excerpt from Spells, a novel-within-photographs
Clowns for Christ
Norina Beck writes about losing her faith and finding her nose.
In Defense of Navel-Gazing
To understand the world, we must first understand ourselves. An essay by Jay Ponteri
Trapped in the Spotlight
What happens when quitting your job means quitting yourself? An essay by Courtenay Hameister
Who Cares About the Future of Music?
Opportunities and ethics in the age of Internet music streaming. An essay by Dave Allen
An Anecdotal Glossary of Spectacle
M. Allen Cunningham sorts through our landscape of scandal, show, and distraction
Soldiers' Stories
Photographer Jim Lommasson collaborates with war veterans on a gallery exhibit and book project that look at life for soldiers after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Uprockin' the Rose City
The community that hip hop built in Portland. An article by Walidah Imarisha
That Public Thing
What jazz can teach us about being a community. An essay by Tim DuRoche
Laughing Into the Abyss
The existential howl of Jewish American humor. By Scott Nadelson
The Artist as Worker
Rilke would never have understood the current desire to merge commerce and creativity. An essay by M. Allen Cunningham
A Closer Look
Editor Kathleen Holt on the effort of looking.
Go Ahead and Look
In praise of forbidden looking. An essay by Scott Nadelson
Just Look and Read
Can photography make a poem more accessible? By Henry Hughes and Paul S. Gentry
Distance as an Illusion
John Yeon and the landscape arts of China and Japan. An essay by Kevin Nute