The entire Virtual Arts Alive 2021 event is now FREE for accessing whenever and wherever!
Performances
Please enjoy these performance videos for our local and regional artists!
AUDIO
Hannah Simmons
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.
LITERARY
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.
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.
MUSIC
TUTORIAL
VISUAL ART
Artist Discovery Tour
Please enjoy these videos from our local and regional artists from our Artist Discovery Tour!
DANCE/MOVEMENT
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.
LITERARY
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.
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.
MUSIC
Venus Rings
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.
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.
VISUAL ART
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.
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.
Joy Johnson
Digital Artist
Digital portraiture with subjects ranging from COVID to cosplay.
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.
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.
Craft Kits
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.
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.
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.
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.
Festival Sponsors
Literary Arts Fund of The Arts Center
Business Sponsors
Artist Supporters
