Play like a child, create like a child, dream like a child.
Founder and Curator
Limei Lai
Painter, Muralist, Illustrator, Curator, Ceramicist
“Life is a tapestry, under the readable composition,
the organized colors, shapes, and texture, a tangled,
frayed, knotted forest of seemingly random threads
that tells you how to appreciate.”
Limei Lai
Portland-based artist, curator Limei Lai enjoys working with paint, fabric and clay. Her themes depict the fear of change, weakness and aging through generational stories. Her roots as Chinese, her ten years of work traveling and backpacking, and her current experience as an immigrant/single mom are combined in her art. Facing changes, fears and accepting vulnerabilities, differences can build stronger selves and a brighter world. She believes that art not only evokes issues and problems in society, it celebrates the beauty of this world in its entirety too.
Limei is the founder and curator of Playground Gallery and the vice-president of Oregon Chinese Artist Association. Her works were shown in Local 14 Art Show, Red E Cafe Gallery, Paragon Gallery, 511 Gallery, The Arts Center at Corvallis, Old Town Association Gallery, and Playground Gallery. Her murals are in north Portland and Chinatown.
Curator Assistant
Taylor Evans
Interdisciplinary artist
She brings in great energy with her vibrant colors and sculptural works. A creative spirit thrives with experimentation and exploration!
Treasurer / Installation Manager
Marty Trammell
Ceramicist
"...much like music, pottery enabled me to engage creatively with a rich folk tradition while also giving me the opportunity for constant learning and growth in my technical knowledge and skill. I was also attracted to its potential for fostering a closer relationship between people and the food they eat. "
Designer Dept Chair
Perry Chandler
Painter and Markmaker
His work for the past few years has revolved around his experience with brain trauma suffered in July 2019.
This experience has driven Perry to create work that explores the emotional complexities of Brain Fog, a symptom of that traumatic brain injury that he continued to recover from over the next few years.
These ideas have led Perry to create works where the color white is suggestive of a cloud that drifts through each scene as a major character throughout much of his work during this time most specifically on his paintings made on large raw canvases stretched directly to the wall creating an interaction between the canvas and the space the work exists in.
These clouds distort, enhance and disguise emotional and metaphorical elements within the surface.
The tropes used in his paintings tell a story of feeling unfocused and separate from reality. His use of color and the levels of noise are tied to emotional states of serotonin or a sinking feeling of sadness.
These marks are placed within a mental landscape seeking to explore images that contain elements that feel fleeting and temporary while the surface commands the attention of the room.
Documentation Dept Chair
Crimson Ravarra
Photographer
"By capturing honest connections, I hope to evoke the universal longing we have to feel human intimacy. I see these acts of fulfilment most notably in moments of grief. I see grief not only as the heaviness of a loss or death, but as the everyday struggles to sustain contentment."
On-Site Manager
Reny Simon
Painter
I like to observe wildlife and try to represent nature in a kind light throughout my work. My art practice consists of constantly thinking about new paintings and filling sketchbooks with ideas to come back to later.
My biggest painting inspirations are derived from surrealism. My mentor is a pop surrealist and I’ve grown accustomed to that genre. I find myself fascinated by artists such as Gerhard Richter, Martin Wittfooth, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Bill Carman and Alexis Rockman.
I was once troubled and wasn’t sure what to do in life. I developed a rare disease when I was 12 and it nearly killed me at the age of 20. I underwent a brain/ear procedure and have been given a second chance. Around that time, I didn’t care where life took me, but then I met my mentor and he showed me a different view of life. From that point, I turned my life around and I owe him for that. When I become an art professor, I want to do the same for students as my mentor did for me. I’ve always used painting as a way to escape from reality, it is my escape hatch from the world.
Justin works as an architectural designer and collage/sculpture artist, his passion can be found at the confluence of human psychology, design, art, clean-tech, and architecture.