Meet the Artists
Composer
I write contemporary classical music, much of which is based on my experiences with the environment. Over the past year, I have discovered that the online presentation format actually offers additional opportunities for creative expression, because I can create videos that offer more ways for people to gain insight to and connect with my music. So now, much of it also has a visual component.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Choreographer/Dancer
Caitlin Rose is a choreographer who creates contemporary works for the stage and film. Rose choreographs using momentum and flow to create an energetic stream of movement and a lack thereof to create disjointed, unconventional patterns. Each gesture or motion in her work has an intention behind it, and she invents her own movement vernacular for each piece based on her own larger vocabulary of movement that was learned and fostered over her years of training.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Ceramic Artist
Diana Ryan is a teaching artist based in Corvallis Oregon. She teaches pottery and mixed media classes privately at her home Studio Diana Rose Studio as well as out in the community.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Poet
Donna is a visual artist, poet, performer, editor, and craft of poetry teacher. Her practice of poetry is most interested in "listening to the mysteries" (inner and outer) through language, and in inviting listeners/readers into the process of discovery and surprise. Donna's poems themselves (intentionally "accessible") are artifacts of that practice. Her work has been widely published and anthologized, and of her 3 collections "The Eddy Fence" (2007) which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Poetry.
Find her participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Poet
Eric Braman is a poet living in Springfield, Oregon. They were raised in Michigan, where a tenacity for niceties and a love of nature were born. Since coming out, their Queer identity has pushed their art to explore themes of masculinity, mental health, and queer possibility. They are inspired by the dualities of the self, the communities they have called home, and the wonders of nature in its smallest and grandest forms.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Musician
Erika Lundahl is a musician, storyteller, and climate justice advocate living on stolen Duwamish Land, in Seattle. Her classically-trained voice and distinctive "tapping" guitar style create an enveloping sound all her own. Poetic, often autobiographical lyrics employ poignant imagery to deal with contemporary social issues. Her 2018 live in-studio album ‘Right Back at You’ recorded at London Bridge Studios features the moving storytelling and talented performance that Erika is known for. Her newest album Daughter, You're a Storyteller released in October 2020, mid-pandemic, with a multimedia release on her Patreon and is now available wherever music is sold. Record Crates United called the album "..a stellar collection of deeply personal ballads and tributes to the heart. With songs that are inspired by the unlocking of the stories within our genetics, and seeking to explore our pasts to better understand our present adult minds and bodies." Daughter, You're a Storyteller is on Bandcamp, Spotify, and can be experienced with expanded multimedia on Patreon.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Mixed Media Artist
My art is bright and surreal. I love using fantasy elements. I'm inspired by art history and my time spent as a tattoo artist. I love working with color palettes and figurative imagery.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Halie Loren
Jazz Vocalist
Halie Loren is an international, award-winning jazz singer/songwriter. Raised in Alaska, this Oregon-based artist brings a fresh and original perspective to time-honored musical paths, channeling her innate understanding of connectedness across musical boundaries to forge bonds with diverse audiences in North America, Asia, and Europe. A lover of global cultures and music, her repertoire is a multi-lingual one, including songs in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese and Korean as well as her native English. She’s released eight albums to-date, garnering several national and international awards as well as significant critical and chart success along the way, with her albums consistently charting at #1 in Billboard/Japan Jazz Charts, iTunes (Canada and Japan) and Amazon Music
Her debut jazz CD, 2008’s “They Oughta Write a Song,” won Best Vocal Jazz Album of the year in the JPF awards (then the world’s largest independent music awards). She was signed in 2010 by JVC/Kenwood Entertainment (Japan/Asia) and in 2011 by Justin Time Records. Halie has since released nine additional albums including two Japan-only releases, and gone on to win many awards as both a singer and a songwriter.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Multi-Media Artist
My work exists at the intersection of dance, installation, and multimedia technology. My creations translate the ephemeral into a sensory experience that heightens the audience’s understanding of their own bodies. My practice is driven by deep questioning and rigorous logic. I want to understand: How heavy is loneliness? Does a memory taste sweet? How soft is grief? What is the texture of a ghost? My most recent project, Field Guides, is a series of interactive audio experiences motivated by the desire to replicate the transformative feelings we get from live performance while getting the audience off their couch and screen. Field Guides is created in partnership with Leah Crosby.
Find our participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Illustrator
Painting and illustration, using watercolor, gouache, acrylic, colored pencils, and ink, on themes of nature, fantasy, animals, plants, and space. My art is colorful, whimsical, and playful.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Craft Kits!
Encaustic Painter
Jill Myer is a visual artist whose work explores natural landscapes through the use of mediums such as plant matter, wool, beeswax, and watercolor pigment. Myer works with watercolors for their simple but beautiful layers and subdued color palette but also dives into bright full textured, and tactile encaustic paintings. Myer grew up in Montana and received a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Montana in 2000 with an emphasis in painting and photography. After living in Alaska for many years Myer now lives in Newport, OR with her husband and their dog, Simon.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Joey Sims/Hezekiah
Spoken-Word Artist
The subjects I've chosen to present range from Avant-Garde spoken word to standard esoteric poetry and to lighten the mood a funny blues.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Joy Johnson
Digital Artist
Digital portraiture with subjects ranging from COVID to cosplay.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Sculptor
I make my art out of materials that were not originally intended to be artistic mediums. Sometimes found, sometimes ancient fossils, sometimes multiples of cheaply mass-produced consumer flotsam – the materials I use allow an accessibility and universality of experience that draws viewers closer, and allows me to push into deeper layers of meaning and concept. I take old, cold, beat up steel objects and merge them with many other objects to create something new, that can appear soft, warm and life-like – the whole belying the origins of the many recycled ingredients.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Painter/Virtual Exhibit Curator
Justin is an artist living in the Willamette Valley. His projects aim to inspire people to explore their inner world through visual art, using artistic practices to make connections that have not been made before.
His project for this year's Arts Alive, "Mapping Memory," is a call to make visual representations of events that happened in the past. This project challenges artists to combine multiple images to map complex and fluid memories.
Find my participation in Arts Alive through the Virtual Exhibit.
Fiber-Artist
The focus of my work is to connect with the natural world that surrounds me in a whimsical and imaginative manner. Each piece has been inspired by a small interaction within a larger context. Currently, when working with wool, I am suiting small creatures and critters with the hope that they connect people back to childlike impulses such as kindness, helpfulness, imagination, or curiosity.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Craft Kits!
Photographer
Layered. I make photographs like a traditional printmaker, thinking in tiers & how one layer or step in the process affects another, from the weather; to film; the camera; how I develop, print, mount, and display the final image. The layering reflects the reality of multiple truths, meanings, understandings, and perceptions of life. Ergo, my style also embraces ‘imperfection’—working with what the medium throws at me, rather than against it. The work, thus, ultimately is about acceptance and this is incorporated in every layer. Visual meditations.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Teaching Artist
My style of art is focused on teaching beginners of all ages, providing them with access to create with clay. I teach both hand-building and pottery throwing. I also put together clay activity kits for individuals to create together on their own or in small groups.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Craft Kits!
Poet
Much of my poetry is inspired by place, and like many poets and other creatives, when the flow of ideas slows to a trickle, typically all I require is a long drive – through the woods, to the coastline, to another city – and my creative well fills up again. As this last year has limited the scope of my movement – around the neighborhood, to the grocery store, and very few places besides – my poetic attention turned to meditations on home, family, heritage, loss, and longing.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Performances!
Artist
Sharon Rackham King is a Corvallis, Oregon, artist who offers a fresh approach to flora and fauna. Whether creating in watercolor, acrylic, or wool, her work is heartfelt and interwoven with personal experience. Sharon advocates for a better understanding of both mental health and the chronic symptoms of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She’s a self/community taught artist, a grateful parent and partner, and an involved arts and social justice volunteer.
Find my participation in Arts Alive under Craft Kits!
Digital Artist
I create unique digital art using iPhone and iPad. My expansive female-centered series is titled, "Portrait of a Woman" focusing on women and aging. The imagery uses self-portraiture and natural world captures, creating spiritual iconic personae. The series is a deeply, expanded look at reclaiming the power of aging women using accessible digital tools and techniques. The composited pieces provide opportunity to reimagine who we are as women and to offer an alternative understanding of aging.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
Musician
Venus Rings is Jessica Billey on solo violin. Her improvised musical meditations use loops and effect pedals to conjure cinematic soundscapes and meditative ambient folk. Jessica's playing welcomes the audience to pause and step into a near reverent landscape of sound. Throughout her musical career spanning decades, she has toured and recorded both nationally and internationally and has performed with a wide variety of musicians and groups including Dine' composer Raven Chacon, Bill Callahan, Will Oldham, Mick Turner, and Jim White of Dirty Three, Scott McCloud of Girls Against Boys, the Boxhead Ensemble, and the Mekons.
Find my participation in Arts Alive at the Artist Discovery Tour!
