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Our artists
Epiphany Couch (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist exploring generational knowledge, storytelling, and our connection to the metaphysical. By re-contextualizing mediums such as bookmaking, beadwork, photography, and collage, she presents new ways to examine our pasts, the natural world, and our ancestors. Couch’s work is unapologetically personal, drawing from family stories, her childhood experience, archival research, and her own dreams. She utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to create images and sculptural works that hold space for reflection, transforming from mere things into precious objects — intimate and heirloom-like.
Couch is spuyalÉ™pabsÌŒ (Puyallup), Yakama, and Scandinavian/Mixed European and grew up in caləłali (Tacoma, Washington). She attended the Tacoma School of the Arts and earned her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Puget Sound. Her work has been shown at Oregon Contemporary (Portland, OR), Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO), and The Bellevue Art Museum Education Gallery (Bellevue, WA), among others. She is a 2024 Studios at MASS MoCA resident, recipient of a 2024 Ford Family Foundation’s Oregon Visual Artist Fellowship, and a commissioned artist for Oregon's Percent for Art in Public Places. Couch lives and works in Portland, Oregon and is a member of Carnation Contemporary Gallery.
Epiphany Couch
"In my series Comes From the Land, I explore the transformative effects of nature and waterways, reflecting on the many teachings that the natural world provides. Using a combination of landscape and double-exposure film photography taken in Washington and Oregon, I trace the flow of water as a way to honor my ancestral ties to the Pacific Northwest and pay tribute to our indivisible relationship with the earth. Taking inspiration from Salish weaving patterns, the quilt-like designs reach out in the four directions evoking a sense of balance, interconnectedness, and transformation."
Liz Dexter has been practicing architecture in Portland since 1991. Founder and principal of Reveal Architecture + Interiors, Inc., Liz began deep diving into mixed media artmaking in 2019 and now primarily spends her time focused on art. A fifth-generation Oregonian, Liz and her husband are in the process of building a home and studio on ten acres in Mosier, Oregon, and are excited for their shift to rural life in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge.
Understanding materials and methods has been central to Liz’s architectural practice, and delving into a broad array of media truly lights her up. Her paintings are built up using many layers of acrylic, plaster, collage and fiber. She imbues her paintings with texture and memory - she is especially drawn to materials and processes she can’t fully control, those that will lead her to a place of discovery. Liz’s artwork has been included in numerous regional exhibitions and her work resides in private collections across the USA.
Liz DexteR
Streaming Upward, 2023
"Inspired by one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, The Sun, Streaming Upward incorporates inscribed words within deep layers of iridescent plasters overlaid by woven translucent bits of photographs taken while exploring the back alleys of the Getsamani neighborhood of Cartegena, Colombia. Recalling sun-drenched days absorbing the sights, smells, tastes, and history of a magical place – feeling wild love for the light that reaches this earth, warming us, nourishing us."
Born on Galveston Island in 1957, Ellen George’s earliest memories are visions of tiny aquatic life, teeming in drops of Gulf water collected and seen under the microscope in her parent’s laboratory. So much life! The motility, clustering, translucency, and shift of scale of these watery microscopic animals and plants inform her work to this day.
Ellen’s work has been exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, OR), Portland Chinatown Museum, Morris Graves Museum of Art (Eureka, CA) and Whatcom Museum of Art (Bellingham, WA). As a member of the Nine Gallery (housed in Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR) Ellen has created numerous installation exhibitions for that space. Her work is included in the collections of 4Culture and King County Public Art Seattle, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Oregon Health and Science University, Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Science Center, Tacoma Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and the Microsoft Collection. Ellen is a 2024 SOLA/Artist Trust Award recipient. Since 2002, Ellen has been represented by PDX CONTEMPORARY ART, who has to date, presented ten solo shows of her work.
Ellen George
Aqueous Suite, 2024
"The name Washougal is thought to derive from a Native American word for “rushing water”.
Water gives life to everything. Water embodies renewal, adaptability, strength, power, reflection. Our world is constantly shaped by water’s ever-changing rhythm, affirming its irreplaceable role in our lives. Nearby is the Washougal River, and the Columbia River which I have walked alongside hundreds of times. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have beautiful waterfalls, ponds and lakes. And thankfully, enveloping rainfall and mist. Aqueous Suite offers a calm and dynamic meditation on water, signaling a tribute to the surrounding presence and influence of water."
Damien Gilley is an American artist whose work explores hidden architectures through site-specific perceptual installations that combine drawing, sculpture, and digital approaches. Taking influence from vintage computer graphics, techno-structures, and science fiction the work integrates contemporary visual tools with the physical world to question historical, current, and potential environments. Whether immersive experiences or a digital image, his works respond to landscape as perceptual events.
His work has been exhibited internationally with exhibitions at venues including the Sharjah Art Museum (Dubai, UAE), Tetem Kunstruimte (Enschede, Netherlands), Dam Stuhltrager (Berlin, DE), MARC (Kivik, Sweden), Suyama Space (Seattle, WA), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), among others. He has been supported by The Ford Family Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, Regional Arts and Culture Commission, Region Skåne, and numerous academic institutions.
DAMIEN GILLEY
Force Fields, 2024
“These five mountains are envisioned as monolithic beacons of energy. Many cultures revere mountains as sacred spaces, often depicted as living entities or an axis to the heavens. Using a contemporary lens these artworks portray mountains as energy systems, observed through the visual tools of the information age. Using 3D scans, GIS topologies, and satellite imagery the works combine multiple views of the mountain landscape. Impossible to truly witness these perspectives, I celebrate their ethereal beauty in one moment of stasis. “
Nicky Kriara is a visual artist and mural painter based in Portland, Oregon. With a background in stop-motion animation, she worked as a Scenic Painter and Test Animator on three major motion films with LAIKA Studios. She holds a BFA from the University of Oregon and pursued further studies in an environmentally focused graduate program at Portland State University. Nicky curated Epitome Gallery for two years and now runs Niko Far West, a small ceramic production and design studio.
Nicky Kriara
“On a sunny Spring Day, I took a walk through Steigerwald Lake National Refuge to inspire the imagery for the Walden Mural. I spotted numerous egrets and a majestic lone heron. I also took photos of an array of tiny wildflowers in bloom. After presenting two separate renderings, one of a Great Blue Heron with Mt Hood in the background, and the other of enlarged wildflower silhouettes, it was collectively decided that the two images could be combined into one final mural design that reflects Washougal’s surrounding natural beauty.”
Willie Little is a Black multimedia artist. He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His solo exhibitions include the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, NC, the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, MO, and the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, AL. Little is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2022 Oregon Community Foundation Creative Heights Grant, the 2021 Glean Portland Residency, the 2020 Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Black Lives Matter Artist Grant, and the 2019 Regional Arts & Cultural Council Project Grant.
Willie Little
“My new monotypes are part of a new journey to self-discovery and enlightenment, via using icons of my origin from the perspective of my origin, my source. This is part of an exploration, using icons, Adinkra symbols from Ghana that encapsulate evocative messages conveying traditional wisdom, aspects of life, or the environment, created at a printmaking residency at Mullowney Printmaking in 2022-2023.”
Captivated by the wilderness since early childhood, MacConnell’s relationship with nature continuously sparks her imaginative work. Her childhood road trips to wilderness areas were the inspiration for her extensive backpacking excursions as a young adult. While hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, she tuned into wilderness exploration as both an integral part in understanding the world and an endless source for creativity. In 2006, after hiking the AT, sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, and traveling the country, she left her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio to join Portland's community of artists. Soon after, at Portland State University, where she received her BFA, she found a love for printmaking. She now resides on the Olympic Peninsula in WA where she is dedicated to exploring the endless possibilities of printmaking and creating original, introspective art in hopes that it will foster a healthier relationship between humans and nature.
Kelli MacConnell
“Give Me Truth honors the forest community. These quiet yet dynamic trees are a reminder and reflection of the truth that Thoreau seeks.
By singling out each species and putting them on a pedestal, their unique characteristics are more pronounced, providing space for contemplation and reflection. With simplicity of imagery combined with the graphic power of printmaking, I hope that this visual interpretation creates a place to elevate what we often take for granted, and that the forests are revered not as a commodity, but as a community of valued beings, what is and where we can find truth."
Marie Watt (b. 1967) is an American artist. She is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians (Turtle Clan) and also has German-Scot ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Haudenosaunee protofeminism, and Indigenous teachings; in it, she explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. Through collaborative actions, she instigates multigenerational and cross-disciplinary conversations that might create a lens and conversation for understanding connectedness to place, one another, and the universe.
Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also has degrees from Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts; and in 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Willamette University.
Marie Watt
Horizon: Ancient and Young Observer, Version I, 2023, is inspired by the environment and companion species that guide how Watt moves through the Pacific Northwest. Site-specific, doubled relational words create an overlapping call and response, reverberating linguistically and visually throughout the broad color washes. The work brings an ephemeral, atmospheric layer to an ongoing conversation in Watt’s work about the expansiveness of horizon lines. The artist writes, “the sunrise and its light observe us, as we similarly observe and seek its glow and touch. There is an intimacy and connectedness in this exchange which includes more than human entities.”