Willing & Able

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Torea Frey is a mixed-media collage artist based in Clackamas, Oregon. She has been working with found papers, glue, and paint since the early 2000s, exploring the transformative potential of mundane materials. Her work has been shown in the US and internationally (at Gallery 114, Denise Bibro Fine Art, Shift Gallery, and the Kolkata Academy of Fine Arts, for example), and it often grapples with issues of language, gender, identity, and memory. She is on the board of the Northwest Collage Society and is a member of the National Collage Society and Collage Artists of America.

teague grounds themself in the processes of printmaking, bookbinding, and processing wild pigments. currently they are residing in portland. having graduated with a mfa in print media and an ma in critical studies from pacific northwest college of art [pnca] in 2022. more than anything else, the exploration of wild pigments caught them during their time at pnca. they are at home with wild pigment dyed hands, while weaving paper, thread, and words. with a current focus in making work to nurture themself. gaining a closer relationship to the spaces around them via the pigments that they can forage and how they can process them within the boundaries of their disabled body, apt, and studio spaces.

Alexis Neumann (MFA Visual Studies, MA Critical Studies PNCA '22) is a Pacific Northwest installation artist using light, bio-medical imagery, copper, and iridescent, transparent, & reflective materials to draw attention to the complexities of the human experience while engaging Disability Studies, Intersectionality, Theology, and Cultural Studies. She lives with multiple invisible illnesses including Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and mental illness and is currently based in Portland, OR. Her work focuses on and celebrates interconnectedness, intricacy and balance within the body through her use of neural and biological systems and explores resiliency and the metaphysical through sound, light, vibration, and materials.

Marie Conner is a Portland based inter-disciplinary artist, writer, educator, and arts accessibility consultant with a focus on disability aesthetics and otherness theories. She received a BA in Liberal Arts, Sculpture and Non-fiction Writing in 2015 and an MA.Ed in Postsecondary Educational Leadership and Policy in 2017, both from Portland State University, followed by an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019. She has curated and exhibited work across the Pacific Northwest and in Antwerp, Belgium, and ran a one-year residential gallery project out of her basement, Tethered Cord Gallery. She is currently in the process of forming a non-profit arts organization, Disability Aesthetics Institute, focusing on Disability Arts education, opportunities, and community engagement. Her pedagogical philosophy is grounded in experiential learning, with a focus on personal narrative, and her work asserts that the non-normative body can be seen through the lens of the sublime and beautiful, and strives to establish a framework and language with which to open lines of communication concerning difference and acceptance.