The Artist in Residence Program at the Gretchen Schuette Art Gallery occurs during the summer at Chemeketa Community College. The Artist in Residence Program offers a single artist or a group of up to three artists the use of the gallery space as an art studio in July and August along with a future exhibition.

The artist or artists get quality uninterrupted time and space to complete a body of work or foster new directions. He or she may also gain access to kilns, still life props, and printing presses. In exchange for the studio space, the artist offers two public educational programs such as slide lectures, open visitor hours, or workshops.

For more detailed information, please review the  to learn about our Artist in Residence guidelines. Or you may contact the Art Program at Chemeketa Community College with further questions 503.399.6093.

Artist statement

From a residency at Chemeketa I hope to be able to continue my legacy of sharing skills and inspiring young artists. Most importantly, I wish to share my creative experiences and values with the rest of the world. In doing so I hope to identify with their imagination and become apart of a diverse community of artists.

Artist statement

My passion lies in using art to tell stories, and I am particularly interested in the stories that we tell ourselves about war, and about the men and women who fight our wars. I work primarily in painting and large-scale installations, and enjoy engaging in intertextuality with other works from the visual arts, literature and history. Put differently, I reference previous works of art in order to deconstruct them and then create new meanings that resonate more powerfully today. In addition to Expressionists such as Erich Heckel, my influences include contemporary artists Eleanor Antin, Anselm Kiefer and Ai Weiwei, as well as writers Wilfred Owen, Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami.

My art revolves around issues of collective memory and operates on different levels –

• Visually appealing
• Interactive- visitors can touch, activate, run through and sometimes even take home pieces of the installation
• Challenging- what counts as a memorial? What do we collectively choose to remember and what do we choose to forget? What is the difference between art and monuments or memorials?

Artist statement

Growing up in a Latin home, I quickly learned the importance, or more accurately, the obligation, of having long hair because of its association with femininity. Up until the age of thirteen, the most tragic events of my life all involved the cutting of my hair. Now, working in a middle school, I find similar attitudes amongst students and staff, alike. There are constant intrusive conversations about "manes", weaves and split ends, as girls comb and braid each other's hair during class. It is this imposing and overwhelming quality that I am interested in, as I question the role hair plays in each of our homes and the way in which it's reflected in our society at large.

This was a very special project for me because it was really the first body of work that I’ve finished since graduating. I very much appreciated having a deadline. I love deadlines. That’s been one of the biggest struggles for me since leaving school because it’s so easy to make excuses to not paint. It was also great to do it in the place where I worked and went to school years before. Chemeketa is as pivotal in my life now as it was then.

Artist statement

The Gretchen Schuette Art Gallery was my workspace for 8 weeks as an Artist in Residence at Chemeketa Community College the summer of 2013. It was all exploratory. The privilege of using this beautiful 1000+ sq. ft. space to investigate my process is invaluable to me as a professional artist. Unencumbered with the typical clutter of my small studio, I was allowed to work fresh in a spacious new environ. This circumstance permitted me to explore the physical relationships of materials, psyche and subject. The result was a body of fifty or more works.

Equally important is the opportunity to exhibit the outcome of the residency in the gallery. This event brings affirmation of the work, the community and the many textures of our humanity.