2022 | Indie Folk: New Art and Sounds from the Pacific Northwest | Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU

Image of museum gallery hosting sculptures and paintings from the Indie Folk exhibition

2022 | Indie Folk: New Art and Sounds from the Pacific Northwest

The first exhibition to identify a regional artistic trend grounded in folk and craft traditions

EXHIBITION | January 18, 2022 – May 21, 2022
Indie Folk Reception and Gallery Talk With Guest Curator Melissa Feldman
Thursday, January 20, 2022, 4:00-6:00 p.m., Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Reception begins at 4:00 p.m., and Gallery Talk begins at 4:30 p.m.
Indie Folk: Sounds from the Northwest: Bigger Boat Concert
Friday, April 22, 2022, 4:00–5:00 p.m., Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Indie Folk: Sounds from the Northwest Concert
Friday, April 29, 2022, 4:00–7:00 p.m., Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

ABOUT | The Pacific Northwest is home to a unique artistic ecosystem involving craft traditions, pre-industrial cultures, and Indigenous and settler histories. Like folk art, the works featured here are handmade, unpretentious, and often blur the line between functionality and aesthetics. Artisanal woven baskets and tooled-wood objects mix with works that are makeshift, improvisational, and often employ salvaged materials. For the artists—patchwork quilters and abstract painters alike—a rural and working class ethos of passed down knowledge and making do with what you have is as foundational as academics and studio technique.

The exhibition features an intergenerational array of notable artists from throughout the region including Marita Dingus, Warren Dykeman, Joe Feddersen, Blair Saxon-Hill, Whiting Tennis, and Cappy Thompson. A playlist of Indie Folk music selected by Portland’s Mississippi Records will accompany the exhibition, filling the galleries with the sound of the Pacific Northwest.

Organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU and guest curated by Melissa E. Feldman. Indie Folk will travel to the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA; Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA; and Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, OR. We acknowledge Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon, where Indie Folk began in 2020 as a virtual exhibition. Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Endowment, the Mildred S. Bissinger Endowment, Patrick and Elizabeth Siler, Nancy Spitzer, and members of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU.

About the Curator | Along with her ongoing work as an independent curator and writer, Melissa Feldman held positions for the last several years as Distinguished Visiting Faculty at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, and Director of the Neddy Artist Awards. Recent curatorial projects include Uses of History (2019) at studio e, Seattle; Push Play, an Independent Curators International touring exhibition (2013-17): A Cool Breeze: L.A. and Vancouver Art in the 1960s and Beyond at Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver B.C. (2017); Another Minimalism: Art After California Light and Space (2015-16), at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and UK tour; Dance Rehearsal: Karen Kilimnik’s World of Ballet and Theatre (2012) at Mills College Art Museum, Oakland and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. Feldman has been a frequent contributor to Art in America and Frieze among other international publications and has taught at the California College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Goldsmith’s College, London.

LOCATION | The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus. For more information please visit museum.wsu.edu/about.