This content was published: January 15, 2016. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Moth, Flame, Desire
Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery
By Kaia Sand
Meet the artist
Kaia will be in the gallery every Tuesday, 2-3pm, embroidering a poem through conversations with visitors.
- Exhibition dates: Friday, January 15, 2016 – Thursday, February 18, 2016
- Artist talk: Friday, January 15, 2016, 2-3pm, Terrell Hall 122, PCC Cascade Campus
- Poetry reading and eco salon: Wednesday, February 17, 6-8pm, Terrell Hall 102, PCC Cascade Campus
- Gallery hours: 9am-5pm, Monday – Friday
Cascade Gallery presents poetic essays written, embroidered, and burned into cloth by Kaia Sand. Sand explores language around fossil fuels, fire, and moths, flowing between English and Portuguese, and then builds embroideries into sculptural installations in the gallery. Drawing on literary traditions from medieval illuminated manuscripts to picha??o, poetic graffiti on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Sand works with traditional and non-traditional materials, embroidering with cotton thread, copper wire, and a flame. She began her embroideries in public spaces in Brazil, such as the subway or a park bench, and the works-in-progress coax conversations with strangers, even leading to artistic collaboration. Extending that practice, she will reside in the Cascade Gallery every Tuesday during the exhibit (2-3pm), embroidering an essay that emerges from conversations she has in the gallery.
The work in this exhibition is a culmination of Sand’s time in the Despina Artist Residency at Largo das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council. Her exhibition at the Cascade Gallery is supported by an Oregon Arts Commission Career Opportunity Grant.
Kaia Sand is the author of three poetry collections, and she has performed her poetry across the United States as well as in England, Switzerland, Canada, and Brazil. She has exhibited her artwork at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston and Largo das Artes in Rio de Janeiro. In Portland, Sand has exhibited at the North Portland Branch of the Multnomah County Library, Portland State University, 26 Sandy, Glyph Cafe, and the PDX Contemporary Gallery Window Project. Commissioned by the Regional Arts and Culture Council, she was recently an artist-in-resident with artist Garrick Imatani at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center responding to the contents of historical surveillance files on local political activists. Kaia Sand teaches in the Portland State University Honors College, where she is a resident poet. Visit her website.