EIRIK JOHNSON – Indie Folk: New Art from the Pacific Northwest

Photographs from Eirik Johnson‘s series Sawdust Mountain are included in the online exhibit Indie Folk: New Art from the Pacific Northwest guest-curated by Melissa Feldman for Adams and Ollman. The exhibit runs May 8—June 13, 2020.

Indie Folk identifies a group of contemporary artists working in this unique and rugged part of North America whose works in mediums including collage, quilting, painting, and video explore history, folklore, craft traditions, and ideas of community. Whether artisanal or rough-hewn, works are patiently handmade and range from meticulous woodwork and woven baskets to homespun ceramics and textiles. A sense of place is apparent throughout the work of the seventeen featured artists, who labor under an ethos of “making-do,” as often found in working class and rural communities.

Cascadian themes of self-reliance and environmentalism—including a focus on land use, domesticity, recycling, and the everyday—are displayed in many of the artists’ practices, which often involve salvaged materials such as damaged paper and old clothes and now rare techniques such as stone-cut etched glass and fretwork. Indie Folk is the first exhibition to identify this thrifty, folksy, do-it-yourself aesthetic that has emerged as a defining feature of art from the Pacific Northwest.

Featured artists: Brian Beck, Marita Dingus, Warren Dykeman, Joe Feddersen, Gaylen Hansen, Sky Hopinka, Denzil Hurley, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Johanna Jackson, Chris Johanson, Eirik Johnson, D.E. May, Jeffry Mitchell, Blair Saxon-Hill, Whiting Tennis, Cappy Thompson and Joey Veltkamp.

A playlist of indie folk music from the area compiled by Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records accompanies the exhibition.