Indie Folk: New Art and Sounds from the Pacific Northwest

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 exhibition features handmade works that are 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 17 notable artists from throughout the region including Marita Dingus, Warren Dykeman, Joe Feddersen, Blair Saxon-Hill, Sky Hopinka, and Cappy Thompson. A playlist of Indie Folk music selected by Portland’s Mississippi Records, a record label and shop, will accompany the exhibition, filling the galleries with the sound of the Pacific Northwest.

Above Image: Marita Dingus, Fabric Basket, 2003. Courtesy the artist and Traver Gallery, Seattle