Making History

Mary e Clark

2/2/26 – 4/9/26

1st Floor Gallery, VSCI Building, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave, Vancouver, WA 98686

I am enamored with old materials, their previous life is interesting to me. There’s satisfaction in re-using an object, pushing back obsolescence, if only a little. Each object carries a secret history, partly known, partly imagined, as evidenced by the physical marks left from events. Historical ephemera become witness to these moments.

When is it okay to alter evidence? Does it wait until the bystanders and survivors are gone before it denies what happened?

The work in this show is mainly made with salvaged materials. Finding inspiration from the philosophy of Walter Gropius, one of the founders of the Bauhaus School, and from Brutalist aesthetics, I’ve imposed patterns, textures and surface treatments on old objects or material. While I feel reverence for how these forsaken materials have weathered, I also poison them with modern elements that may change or even erase their history.

Synthetic elements, jarring contrasts, or manipulated surfaces challenge the pasts of these source materials and at times overwrite them. The resulting tension of past and present is my response to our government’s manipulation of historical records. When governments distort or censor the past for convenience or control, the truth is critically eroded. My intention with this work is to meet these reckless acts with contempt that is both peaceful and playful.

Mary e Clark is a Portland-based creative working in mixed materials for 30 years. Her experience lies in both professional and private practices of making. Her personal work is informed by material knowledge gained during her professional life in themed entertainment, specifically stop-motion animation and amusement park attraction production. She attended California State University in Northridge, finishing a Bachelor of Art degree with a focus in Illustration. In 2005 she completed a Certificate of Craft in Metals from the Oregon College of Art & Craft. Her time at OCAC marks a significant shift from a 2D to 3 dimensional practice. Clark’s sculptural vocabulary is realized through the industrial arts. Her affinity for wood, metal, and concrete is accompanied by a curiosity in commercial processes. She uses 3D printing, CNC cutting and carving and laser cutting as tools for pattern and surface treatments. In 2006 Clark was one of four artists that developed Nowhere Gallery: a camping trailer outfitted as a mobile art installation space. Nowhere Gallery was parked in front of the 2006 Biennial at Portland Art Museum for First Thursday, transforming the space into a miniature museum. In 2016 Clark started Incidental Creative Services LLC to offer fabrication services to local makers and artists.

WSU Vancouver art galleries are open 8 AM – 9 PM, Monday – Thursday, and 8 AM – 5 PM, Friday. Admission is free. Parking is available at meters and in the Blue Daily Pay Lot.

See You on the Other Side

Anya Roberts-Toney

1/26/26 – 4/9/26

Dengerink Gallery (VDEN), 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave, Vancouver, WA 98686

See You on the Other Side is a new series of oil paintings on stretched linen that feature bursts of light, luminous skies, butterflies, and figures or apparitions, all grounded in the recognizable while drifting towards abstraction. I’m interested in capturing the feeling that something is about to happen—a sense that transformation and revelation are possible. I see the imagery in each painting as a portal—a threshold between what we know and what is yet to be discovered. 

Over the last decade my work has been driven by the question of how to define feminine power, which I’ve come to describe as a mix of empathy, care, and capacity for connection. Facing the unknown feels to me a feminine act, and my recent work has focused on the unknown and the unknowable. I want my paintings to feel like the viewer is facing something they don’t understand—for me it’s death, but also a deeper connection with spirituality and the earth itself. I want the paintings to be imbued with a sense of longing for transcendence or something like it. 

In Girls Night Out, three figures, seen only as pairs of hands, surround a table. An explosion of colored light appearing in the middle of the table suggests the power of the women’s combined presence. In All the Sorrow You’ve Ever Known… a solitary figure lies in a clearing under a night sky. Light bursts from her chest like a firework. I see her coming into her own capacity, newly ripe with power. Her pose references Matisse’s nudes, but unlike the odalisques from Western art’s history, her story is her own. New Moon and Believer both present single butterflies. I love the feminine nature of butterflies. Here they represent the evolution of our bodies over time. The butterfly has been a caterpillar and is now fully transformed—could we transform as well?

In the titular work in the series, a feathered orb of light appears beyond an arched window. The window’s lower ledge acts as a barrier, creating distance for the viewer. Distance enhances desire, and I want to express a longing that has not yet been fulfilled. The world has so much darkness in it right now, and I want my paintings to hold hope—to reflect what it feels like to love and persevere amidst real worry. See You on the Other Side suggests that we will make it through, that we will emerge together anew. 

Books that inspired Roberts-Toney’s painting on display in the WSU Vancouver library.

 Anya Roberts-Toney’s oil paintings and works on paper explore feminine power and the unknown. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum and Soho House, has been presented on Platform (a David Zwirner Project), and has been exhibited in Portland at locations including Disjecta Contemporary Art Center (now Oregon Contemporary), Dust to Dust Projects, Nationale, the Office at Russo Lee, The Portland ‘Pataphysical Society, and Chefas Projects, and in Los Angeles at La Loma Annex. She is a winner of the Hopper Prize, a recipient of both a Photography Documentation Grant and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission (with additional funding from the Ford Family Foundation), and a recipient of the Stumptown Artist Fellowship. Anya received her BA in Studio Art from Brown University and her MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art. Originally from Seattle, WA, she lives and works in Portland, OR, where she is represented by Nationale.

WSU Vancouver art galleries are open 8 AM – 9 PM, Monday – Thursday, and 8 AM – 5 PM, Friday. Admission is free. Parking is available at meters and in the Blue Daily Pay Lot.

Cassie Ferguson

8/18/25 – 12/12/25, 1st & 2nd Floor Galleries, Science & Engineering Building (VSCI)

Skateboarding has been a major part of my life for over twenty years. It’s where I first learned how to quiet the mind, not by slowing down, but through focusing solely on the motion or the act. The rhythm, repetition, and connection to the ground help me enter a state of mind that removes all of the excess, anchoring me fully in the physical and the ‘now’.

This series of copper-plate photogravure etchings highlights just that, being engrossed in the moment while also engraving and archiving the place into my memory. Each piece begins with film photography, documenting and paying homage to the places that have allowed such tranquility. Using traditional printmaking methods and materials, I reproduced those fleeting moments into something tangible and enduring.

These works, printed on Eastern Paper with hand-torn edges, are then mounted on black paper to create a layered, portal-like effect that invites the viewers inward. These works are both a personal archive and a meditation process. I hope they offer viewers a quiet entry into the places that have shaped me. Enter the Void is about finding clarity through motion and paying tribute to the spaces that make that clarity possible.

Cassie Ferguson is a Portland-based printmaker and film photographer. She specializes in a variety of print and photo processes including photogravure etching, silver-gelatin printing, stone lithography, and screenprinting. Cassie holds a B.S. in Honors Biology with a Minor in Art from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and an MFA in Print Media from Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University. She is the founder of ‘Lost Bearings Press’, where she operates as a collaborative printer and works with fellow artists to produce and publish editions from her home studio. In addition to her art practice, she is employed as a lead printer at Mullowney Printing Company, Portland, OR.

Briar Pine and Jack Snell-Ryan

8/18/25 – 12/12/25, Dengerink Gallery (VDEN)

New Earth Anatomy brings together the work of Briar M. Pine and Jack Snell-Ryan, exploring our ever-changing relationship with materiality, identity, technology, and the environment. The exhibition examines the concept of bodies, whether they be human, geological, or constructed, and how they are impacted and shaped by systems of power, perception, and extraction. While both artists execute these concepts in distinct ways, they both research the anatomy of our “new earth,” marred by ecological crisis, constructed identities, and the contested narrative of history.

Pine’s practice engages with rare earth mining, corporate greenwashing, and transmasculine identity, while allowing criticism towards concepts of environmental degradation and inherited systems and structures. Through a combination of photography, textiles, and sculpture, Pine seeks to expose how narratives of progress often obscure the consequences associated with overproduction and the formation of identity. Snell-Ryan’s work, grounded in experimentation and fabrication, shows the result of substantive research and studio practice.

Snell-Ryan treats the act of making as a thinking process and, in his recent works, has tended to shift towards the aesthetics of “low resolution”, favoring porous and open-ended forms that leave room for modification and re-interpretation. Together, Pine and Snell-Ryan ask viewers to consider what lies beneath the surface of our everyday lives: the raw materials, ideologies, and personal narratives that shape our collective reality.

The exhibition extends into the 1st Floor Hallway in VMMC and the Library entrance in VLIB. This curator statement was written by art student Jesse Velasco.

Jack Snell-Ryan studied at Hunter College, New York, and received an MFA with Distinction from the University of Georgia, Athens. He currently teaches at the University of Oregon and has been awarded notable fellowships from the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and the Hallie Ford Fellowship from The Ford Family Foundation. Briar Pine (they/he) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose recent solo exhibitions include Ditch Projects, Charles Adams Studio Projects, and PAPA Projects. He received his BA in Art and BA in Journalism from the University of Minnesota and their MFA in Studio Art from Washington State University. They recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Photography at the University of Oregon.

WSU Vancouver Art Students

4/8/25 – 8/8/25, Dengerink Gallery (VDEN)

Background art by Sarai Ceniceros

The 29th Annual Student Art Exhibition features work made in a wide range of art classes from the past year, including 2D and 3D Art & Design, Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking. In these classes, students from different majors across campus practice the building of form, the process of conceptual development, critical thinking, and the value of a commitment to craft. The Art Department at Vancouver believes that mark-making is an essential human activity, exploring the connection between contemporary art, culture, and the built environment.

From left to right: Ronald Clark, Olubukola Ntia, B.S. Silva

From left to right: Vince Pharo, Alina Mirgorodskaya

From left to right: Annaliese Sanders, Danny Macias, Shannon Guo

Luca Espinosa

3/1/25 – 8/8/25, 2nd Floor Gallery, Science & Engineering Building (VSCI)

“Art is a method of learning; it provokes introspection and insight. Faded Ruminations is an opportunity to lean into these concepts of self-perception. Each piece in the exhibit offers a glimpse into moments of unique sensation. They reflect the flux between anxiety and hope, between exhaustion and passion, between sorrow and serenity. Within each image are the intimate processes of feeling, understanding, and embracing. This becomes a form of therapy, as well as a method of letting the artworks breathe. Only through trust can this art exist.

Faded Ruminations is built around highly personal, incredibly specific moments. These cannot be truly reproduced, but isn’t that the beauty of it? Having come to this realization, I do not seek to preserve or recreate these moments, only to invoke them. My past sensations will always exist in some form, a fact my art stands as physical proof of. It is tempting to latch on to feelings, but my work seeks to show that an unclear haze is just as real, if not moreso, than a moment locked in time.

I have argued that the exact sensations embedded in my works are no longer attainable; however, this does nothing to devalue the feelings coming after and out from the work. Feelings and sensations are constantly changing, always evolving. If my work entices the viewer to connect with it and embrace their own sensations, then I know the ever-distant moments left inside will never go to waste.” — Luca Espinosa

Luca Espinosa graduated from Washington State University in 2024 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. They earned the Fine Arts Outstanding Student of the Year award for 2024-25. Having developed a love for education, they are pursuing graduate programs in art history and working towards a career in museums. Although they are most interested in the academic side of art, Luca is committed to maintaining their own artistic practice. Their artwork is not constrained by medium and tends towards the conceptual. Inspiration comes from studying art history, passion towards music, and feelings brought on by meditation.

どこにいても今も同じ空は見える

Yoshihiro Kitai

1/21/25 – 4/4/25, Dengerink Gallery (VDEN)

“The exhibit I am still looking at the same sky no matter where I am, explores the internal struggle between my Japanese roots and life in the United States. This phrase represents my acceptance of changing/shifting identity, emphasizing that values remain constant regardless of location. My abstract creations investigate human connections and the nuances of group dynamics in the American society that surrounds me. Influenced by traditional Japanese painting, I employ a mix of Japanese and Western materials in my prints. My work in ceramics includes an unexpected embrace of imperfection.

“Cloud shapes often appear in traditional Japanese painting as the main object or the background. In my printed works, clouds become metaphors for the perspectives used in traditional Japanese painting, such as the bird’s eye view. These metaphors show show the societal differences I perceive between group and individual values in Japan and the United States, and the resulting tension.” — Yoshihiro Kitai

Yoshihiro Kitai was born in Osaka, Japan and moved to the United States in his 20’s. He studied and focused on ceramics before coming to the U.S. He holds an MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Washington University, St. Louis, MO and a BFA in Printmaking from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR, where he is currently an associate professor in the printmaking department. In his work, Kitai mixes a Western style of abstraction and a Japanese style of composition and materials, conceptually focusing on his perspective as a foreigner in the United States. His works are in several public and private collections, including Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Multnomah County Courthouse, Oregon Health and Science University, Nomura Bank in London. Kitai’s art has been reviewed in several publications including: The Oregonian, Art Ltd. Magazine, Willamette Week, Portland Mercury and Oregon ArtsWatch.

Kaitlyn Lee

1/6/25 – 8/8/25, 1st Floor Gallery, Science & Engineering Building (VSCI)

“The series Contours In Charcoal explores the female form through the expressive medium of charcoal. The play of light and shadow emphasizes the shapes and lines that construct bodies, evoking depth and physicality. Eyes are omitted to create anonymity — an absence that opens up interpretation without the distraction of identity. The viewer is instead invited to focus on the strength and vulnerability inherent in the female form.

“Charcoal is my medium of choice because of its expressive versatility. I am drawn to the bold, rich texture it offers, allowing me to create dramatic, impactful pieces. At the same time, its flexibility enables me to capture subtlety and details when needed, making it the perfect tool to convey the depth and emotion I seek in my work. This series reflects my evolution as an artist. What began as a simple pastime, with a fascination with portraits, has blossomed into a deeper exploration. I have honed my skills, allowing me to expand my artistic vision and push the boundaries of my work. This work represents not only a personal milestone, but also a continuous journey of growth and discovery.” — Kaitlyn Lee

Kaitlyn Lee is an artist working in the Pacific Northwest. In 2024 she earned her B.A. from Washington State University, Vancouver and was awarded the Fine Arts Outstanding Student of the Year. Her passion for art began at an early age, but in college she was able to explore multiple mediums and techniques. She currently works primarily with graphite and charcoal, using their bold and versatile nature to capture both the dramatic and subtle aspects of form. Kaitlyn’s work focuses on the small details of life — the beauty of everyday people, places, and objects.

WSU Vancouver Art Students

12/4/24 – 1/5/25, Cascadia Brewing Evergreen Pub

“Tap In / Tap Out is a student-curated exhibition reflecting the transitory position experienced by upcoming graduates at WSU Vancouver. The show builds on the anticipation felt as undergraduate programs come to an end and new avenues as artists begin to open. Visitors are encouraged to tap into the creative atmosphere and engage with artwork, while simultaneously tapping out of the pressures and uncertainties that accompany moments of transition and transformation.

Alongside the theme of new beginnings, “Tap In / Tap Out” reflects students’ connectivity, growth, and engagement within their communities. The diverse selection of works becomes a web of different styles, offering a glimpse into each artistic journey and the experiences that have shaped the inner worlds of these artists. The show may be a celebration of farewells, but it is also a celebration of the creativity and talent of the next generation of emerging artists.

“Tap In / Tap Out” includes two sub-shows, “West Coasters” and “Bytes.” One uses the coaster as a canvas, transforming an everyday object into a platform for art. The other focuses on digital works created by students and community members, presenting visual appetizers that aim to leave viewers emotionally fulfilled.

Enormous thanks to Brothers Cascadia Brewing for being such a supportive, welcoming host!

Petra Sairanen

8/3/24 – 12/13/24, Dengerink Gallery (VDEN Building)

“For the past 20 years my work has been engaged in an exploration of color and repetition. I have always considered myself a painter, but recently new materials, often with a meaningful history of their own, have found their way into the work. The idea of visually integrating opposing forces through materials and color feels relevant to my own desire to make sense of the world today. The act of repetition becomes a meditation, a form of perseverance and a measure of my own state of mind within our shifting and elusive times.

“I have been incorporating gunpowder and crushed glass into many of the new paintings. I find the material of gunpowder visually beautiful, yet we are all aware of its potential to destroy — or to protect. It is a material that speaks to both fear and safety. Broken glass is a material most people try to avoid. Yet glass is used on roads and airport runways to signal directions, boundaries, and warn of danger. Other works in this exhibition incorporate materials that have a more personal history. For example, the work Inherited Gestures, is made with yarn my mother unraveled from artworks she had woven in the 1980’s. I hand dyed each strand and arranged them to evoke the energy of a torso with arms extended. I wanted to honor the history of the material and the energy she put into being a creative artist.

“Living through the past few years of political, environmental, and pandemic turmoil created a desire to address ideas of how to persevere in an unwelcoming and challenging world. Allowing new materials to enter my painting practice has opened a door toward a more personal form of connection.” — Petra Sairanen

Petra Sairanen is a Finnish-born artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. She earned a BFA from the University of New Hampshire, a Post-baccalaureate from Brandeis University and MFA from Boston University. Numerous public and private collections house her works, including the Portable Works Collection (City of Portland, Oregon), North Shore Children’s Hospital (Salem, Massachusetts), Children’s Hospital of Boston (Massachusetts), Astra Zeneca Pharmaceutical Company (Newton, Massachusetts), and the Boston University Fuller Collection. Sairanen teaches painting and design at Portland Community College- Rock Creek and is the Director of the Helzer Gallery.