Residency at Building 5, at NW Marine Art Works | Portland, OR
photos by Aaron Wessling | Portland Art Documentation
I met Cloyd George as I was unloading my car to move into my residency here, at Building 5. He emerged out of nowhere, and appearing disoriented, he said—I worked here for 30 years. Here, being Northwest Marine Iron Works—the giant industrial manufacturing company that once occupied this space. A place where they manufactured components for dams, such as the Aswan Dam and Bonneville, railways and sawmills. Machines to build other machines, the machines we use to shape water and cut into the land.
Conversations with Cloyd became my starting place. I was struck by the emptiness I experienced through his eyes. The absence. The silence and the ghosts he spoke of. The emptiness of a space once so full—full of giant heavy machines, full of people, full of the deafening sounds of cutting metals, and full of hope in a technological future. The light pouring in through the sky-high windows onto the smooth concrete accentuates this cathedral-like space, not unlike a place of worship. Once a space for ritualized labor, it recalls a time of optimism and prosperity: both economically and socially (It was a family, Cloyd said).
And then it all unraveled. How easily the things we build can erode and fall apart. And underneath it all, this place had once been a lake, a vast ecosystem—filled and built over, creating the foundations of this present-day industrial wasteland.
The conclusion of this residency is a snapshot within a 6-week process of listening, experimentation, and play. Feeling the rhythms of the space and responding to the ghosts of its history. I could not ignore the calling to fill this space with a soft and feminine energy—one seemingly at odds with both the physical heaviness of the building’s industrial past and the emotional heaviness of our present moment. And yet, this energy—akin to water, is simultaneously powerful. I want to give it space, this softness and light, and hold it with care and tenderness.
An incomplete list of materials
Rust, the remnants of water and iron, staining white cotton
Paintings as artifacts of process—soaked through with water, ragged with mended wounds
Fish bones, dried up and brittle
The weeds that struggle in the cracks, on top of a lost ecosystem
Crocheted nets, created by the rhythms and form of the body, unraveled by a gentle tug