If you are interested in attending events at CRCI, please email crci.art@gmail.com:
Announcing The Inside Show – Outside Launch –
Oct 15, 2019, 630pm, PICA
Join us at 6:30pm for launch party and screening of the first episode of The Inside Show
at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) 15 NE Hancock, Portland, OR, 97212
Columbia River Creative Initiatives presents our latest collaborative project – The Inside Show! This series will launch on Oct 15, 630pm at @picapdx. Don’t miss it!
The Inside Show is a variety show produced at Columbia River Correctional Institution, a minimum security prison in Portland, Oregon. Inmates take on roles of host, performer, writer, cameraperson, and more. This robust collaboration of eccentric possibilities challenges perceptions of incarcerated individuals and what happens ‘on the inside’.
Season One of The Inside Show will be aired on the facility’s in-house channel, broadcast on public access channels in Portland in partnership with Open Signal, and available on the YouTube channel Columbia River Creative Initiatives, with new episodes added every two weeks. Hosted by Mark Arnold with Fred Armisen as episode one’s guest host. The series is directed by Salty Xi Jie Ng and produced by Jacob Diepenbrock, Salty Xi Jie Ng, and Spencer Byrne-Seres.
Visiting Artist Lecture Series – Amanda Leigh Evans
Monday August 26th, 2019 at 1:00pm.
Artist Amanda Leigh Evans will host a clay workshop with artists at CRCI. The workshop kicks off a new series of projects looking at sculpture and 3D forms, culminating in an exhibition by CRCI artists at Outerspace Gallery.
Visiting Artist Lecture Series – Vanessa Renwick
Monday July 16th, 2018 at 1:00pm.
Artist and filmmaker Vanessa Renwick will join us to screen a selection of films.
Vanessa Renwick is an artist by nature, not by stress of research. She puts scholars to rout by embracing nature’s teaching problems that have fretted trained minds. Working in experimental and poetic documentary forms, her iconoclastic work embodies her interest in landscape and transformation, and relationships between bodies and landscapes, and all sorts of borders.
She has been a singular voice in the experimental cinema for over 20 years. Eschewing an allegiance to any one medium or form, Renwick builds authentic moving image works revealing an insatiable curiosity and unflinching engagement with the world around her. Often focusing her lens on themes of westward expansion and the locales of her adopted home, the Pacific Northwest, Renwick uses avant-garde formal elements to explore radical politics and environmental issues. An artist who often self-distributes, her screening history reads as a map of independent cinema worldwide. She has screened work in hundreds of venues internationally, institutional and not, including The Museum of Modern Art, Light Industry, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Art Basel, Oberhausen, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Centre Pompidou, Bread and Puppet Theater and True/False Film Festival, among many others.
CRCI Comedy Show
Tuesday May 22nd, 2018 at 6:30pm.
Join us for an evening of stand up comedy presented by the CRCI Comedy class. Co-hosted by Katie Nguyen and Ben Stiller.
Visiting Artist Lecture Series – Tracy Schlapp and Danny Wilson
Monday May 14th, 2018 at 1pm
Tracy Schlapp and Danny Wilson will join the group to talk about their ongoing project FOLSOM50 and to host a letterpress workshop to make prints and booklets.
This year marks the 50th Anniversary of Johnny Cash’s live album, At Folsom Prison. FOLSOM50brings music to prisons in the far reaches of Oregon. The project was designed by musician Danny Wilson, and visual artist Tracy Schlapp, along with musician/producer Jim Brunberg to pay tribute to the work of Johnny Cash through his music. The spirit of Cash’s concerts recognized the contract between performer and audience is dignified through mutual respect.
Visiting Artist Lecture Series – Kristan Kennedy
Monday, April 30th, 2018 at 1pm.
Kennedy is an artist, curator, and educator. For the last decade, Kennedy has focused on commissioning new work by international emerging artists in the form of large-scale, site-specific installations and solo projects that exist at the borders of genres. Kennedy takes an expansive view of visual art; in addition to presenting the plastic arts, she organizes music, performance art, publications, and new media projects as part of PICA’s year-round programming and for the organization’s annual Time-Based Art Festival. Beyond her curatorial projects, Kennedy oversees the Precipice Fund, a grant for artist-run organizations and collaborative projects in Portland, Oregon, as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program. With the move to our new facility in 2012, Kennedy initiated PICA’s Resource Room Residency program through the organization’s library and archive.
Outside of PICA, Kennedy currently teaches Contemporary Art History at Portland State University, where she also organizes their MFA Visiting Artist Program and Lecture Series. She sits on the advisory board for the Headlands Center for the Arts and is the former Board President of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Kennedy represents PICA as a member of several emerging consortiums including the Visual Art Network, a pilot project of the National Performance Network. She has served as a juror, panelist, and advisor to several foundations and granting organizations, including Creative Capital, The Regional Arts and Culture Council, and Southern Exposure’s Alternate Exposure Grants among others. She is represented by Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, Oregon.
