Malia Jensen Awarded Oregon Community Foundation's “Creative Heights” Grant

Project

Feb 20

The Elizabeth Leach Gallery is proud to announce that gallery artist Malia Jensen is the recipient of Oregon Community Foundation's “Creative Heights” grant, a prestigious award intended to enable artists and institutions to test new ideas, stretch artistic capacity and take creative risks.

Jensen will launch Nearer Nature, a project comprised of four temporary sculptural installations sited throughout Oregon in 2019-2020. Engaging with varied landscapes and both human and animal collaborators, Nearer Nature will unfurl in seasonally aligning chapters and conclude with a catalogue published in collaboration with Container Corps.

The first chapter begins in Spring 2019 with Worth Your Salt, as Jensen places a series of sculptures carved from dense blocks of livestock salt-licks in natural and farm settings to invite the unwitting collaborations of wild animals and livestock. Surveillance cameras will record these interactions as well as the eventual dissolution of the salt and the seasonal changes of the surrounding landscapes. Video footage gathered over six months will be compiled and exhibited in selected urban settings close to the original locations. Chapter two, Mourning Tides, takes place in Summer 2019 on the Oregon Coast with opportunities for the public to participate. Sign up here to receive the Nearer Nature newsletter and details on public installation sites in Fall 2019. Video and photographic works resulting from Nearer Nature will be exhibited at the project’s conclusion.

Malia Jensen (b. 1966, Honolulu, HI) lives and works in Portland, OR. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues and institutions including the Melbourne International Arts Festival (Melbourne, Australia), Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland, OR), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee, WI), Holter Museum of Art (Helena, MT), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Mesa Arts Center (Mesa, AZ), Marian Goodman Gallery (London, England), Richard Gray Gallery (Chicago, IL), and Cristin Tierney Gallery (New York, NY). She has been an Artist in Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (Captiva, FL), Ucross Foundation (Clearmont, WY), Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA) and the Portland Garment Factory (Portland, OR). Malia has been a visiting artist and speaker at Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA), Southern Oregon University (Ashland, OR), Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR), and Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA). She has completed numerous public commissions in the Northwestern United States and her work is included in many public and private collections.

Jensen's project is made possible in part by a partnership with the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College.