Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and OPB members and viewers like you.

Funding for arts and culture coverage is provided by... [ jazz playing softly in distance ] ♪ But there's a shadow ♪ ♪ Shining in your face ♪ ♪ Tonight ♪ ♪ That takes... ♪ When I'm onstage, I love how powerful I feel, using my voice in a really special way.

♪ Oh, we pretend... ♪ It feels like the thing I was given.

Um, and I'm very grateful for it.

It's the place where I feel the most grounded and the most important.

♪ And we pretend... ♪ ♪ Sinnerman Where you gonna run to ♪ ♪ All on that day ♪ ♪ So I ran to the rocks ♪ ♪ Please hide me, rocks ♪ ♪ Can't you see me down here ♪ ♪ I need you, rock ♪ ♪ Oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ All on that day ♪ I love that music is healing for the singer, for the player, as well as the listener.

I love that music is a great way to communicate and emote.

Emote, yeah!

♪ No more injustice We cry ♪ ♪ Power, Lord ♪ ♪ No more hatred, we cry ♪ ♪ Power, Lord ♪ ♪ We cry power Power, Lord ♪ When I'm singing onstage, it feels like I know this is what I'm here to do.

[ audience applauding, cheering ] Whoo, yeah!

WOMAN: LaRhonda Steele!

LAUREN: I think it's octave, right?

♪ You treat me like a stranger ♪ Yeah.

♪ Like I ain't loved you good ♪ - ♪ You put my heart in danger ♪ - ♪ Danger ♪ - ♪ And you've misunderstood ♪ - ♪ Stood ♪ - Mama went... - [ both sing high note ] - [ laughs ] - See that, yeah-- LAUREN: Music is everywhere in this household, even when we don't plan for it.

I think we're always processing information through music, you know?

Oh, yeah, okay.

♪ I'll be spoken to With softness ♪ ♪ Put some syrup in your voice ♪ ♪ Speak as if you love me ♪ ♪ Every word You have a choice ♪ ♪ I know that I... ♪ LARHONDA: When we do shows together, we talk it out and we share ideas and we rehearse, yeah.

BOTH: ♪ Leave... ♪ LAUREN: Any question I have about this industry, I have, like, the encyclopedia in my house.

ANNOUNCER: So let's welcome back the first lady of Portland blues, LaRhonda Steele!

♪ When you kiss me, baby ♪ ♪ When you miss me, baby... ♪ LAUREN: She's a great help to me.

She helped me write songs.

We help each other pick out our outfits.

[ laughs ] You know what I mean?

LAUREN: ♪ And sometimes I shouldn't speak ♪ ♪ But the voice inside my head ♪ ♪ Says I should I ain't that special... ♪ LARHONDA: Lauren started showing an interest in music immediately.

♪ I won't see... ♪ When I was carrying her in my belly, I sang, so she was hearing it that way.

[ speaking indistinctly ] LAUREN: Oh, what a cute baby!

You were a very cutie girl.

Look at you in this!

- Before I had bills.

- Ooh!

LARHONDA: Just beautiful.

Oh!

LAUREN: I think I probably was singing before I could form words.

And I think I always knew it's what I wanted to do, and I always expressed myself through song.

LARHONDA: Lauren was a part of a marimba class.

Just knowing that I could play this instrument, and I love telling everybody that I can play that huge bass and my cool parts and stuff.

And it's just fun knowing I do something that not everybody else does.

On both sides of my family, we have multiple generations of musicians, and so it feels like something that was passed down to me.

♪ Bring it on home to me ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ I like-- I like that key.

What is that, B flat?

That's B natural.

- LAUREN: Okay.

- LARHONDA: ♪ Yeah ♪ LAUREN: The gospel side on my mom's side and the jazz side on my dad's side.

♪ Oh-oh, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ I know I got my voice from my mama.

♪ I'm going up ♪ ♪ Going down ♪ ♪ Going up, down, down, up Any way I wanna ♪ ♪ Just let it roll, honey... ♪ LARHONDA: The Waterfront Blues Festival is, for me, amazing.

I get to be on a big stage.

♪ And the wheel goes heaving Through the city, oh, yeah ♪ And my voice is-- it's just flowing out over thousands of people that I-- that is amazing!

LaRhonda has touched every stage at the Waterfront Blues Festival.

♪ Grab the rings of a tree Down by the river ♪ ♪ If you come With your spirits whole ♪ ♪ Clap your hands, y'all ♪ BOTH: ♪ Nah-nah-nah-nah ♪ ♪ Come on And clap your hands now... ♪ WARD: And people are like, "Where are you going to be?"

"Oh, she's going to be here?

Okay."

And they have, like, a LaRhonda map to see where they can see her every year.

There's always, you know, uncles and aunties and adoptive uncles and aunties everywhere.

Blues fests have sort of marked my childhood each summer.

Put your hands together for the babies, Sarah Steele... [ crowd cheering ] Yes!

Make some noise for Lo Steele.

[ crowd cheering ] Yeah!

Yes!

And I am LaRhonda Steele.

She just brings a truth that is very special and is healing.

♪ It's the hammer of justice ♪ ♪ And it's The bill of freedom ♪ ♪ It's the song The song ♪ ♪ The song of love ♪ ♪ Between my brothers And my sisters, yeah... ♪ I was born and raised in Spencer, Oklahoma, yeah.

Right outside of Oklahoma City.

♪ I pray for you You pray for me ♪ ♪ I love you... ♪ Grew up in church and, as a kid, listened to many choirs and many vocalists and wasn't much else to do in Oklahoma where I was.

♪ Sing it again I pray for you ♪ ♪ I pray for you You pray for me... ♪ Arriving to Portland was a culture shock, to say the least.

I moved up here with my aunt, and they were the only Black people I saw.

I was like, "Where are the Black people?"

[ laughs ] And that was one of the things.

And then people behaved in ways that were a lot freer than what... culturally, the way I grew up.

So I had to build my own life.

I had to be an adult, I guess, and decide who I wanted to be and how I wanted to act.

♪ Baby ♪ [ holding high note ] ♪ Baby, let me lean on you... ♪ WOMAN: Please welcome LaRhonda Steele to the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.

[ audience cheering, applauding ] LARHONDA: My induction into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame was... [ sighs ] It's... it's surreal to me.

It's wonderful to be acknowledged by your peers and fans... and to be written down as part of the musical fabric of Oregon is an honor.

LAUREN: It's been a really special couple years for me.

I just feel like, "Oh, I'm good at this."

LARHONDA: To not just be an incredible singer-songwriter and poet, but also her acting.

The acting is-- oh, my gosh.

And is not a mind reader.

She means the way people worry about things sometimes even when there's no reason to be concerned.

- Exactly.

- [ audience laughing ] LAUREN: I think the permission that I give myself when I'm stepping into another character is really exciting.

[ singing indistinctly ] And I love the structure of theater.

I love having a container that we explore within.

Whereas when I'm doing music, especially the kind of music that I do, it's... who knows.

We probably didn't even rehearse.

[ laughs ] We just come in together and figure it out as we go.

♪ I guess you wonder Where I've been ♪ ♪ I...

I search to find A love within ♪ [ crowd whooping, cheering ] I got asked to open for Tank and the Bangas at Revolution Hall.

I got onstage, and it was such a beautiful, generous audience.

Then I was like, "I'm going to call my mama up."

[ crowd cheering ] LARHONDA: When I got up there and I looked out at the audience, I just...

I just got overwhelmed.

♪ Some people go around The world... ♪ [ crowd cheers loudly ] LAUREN: And as soon as she opened her mouth, the crowd just-- it exploded.

It was the first time that I have ever seen her be overwhelmed onstage.

She's always so poised, she's always so in control.

But you could see her experience the celebration that she deserves.

What's the words to the song now?

Okay.

♪ This is where I've been... ♪ LARHONDA: And I could barely sing.

I couldn't remember the words to the song.

She had to whisper the words to me 'cause I was... [ laughing ] It's like I was the kid.

♪ I got a thing for you And I just can't let go ♪ She's always been my biggest advocate, my biggest teacher.

And to be able to say, "Look where I am now, Mom," and then be able to share that with her, because it's her victory too, felt amazing.

And it also felt amazing to see her celebrated in that way because she deserves nothing less.

♪ To let you know... ♪ [ crowd cheering ] ♪ And I can't let go I can't let go ♪ [ indistinct conversation ] LAUREN: My mom is my favorite person.

[ laughs ] I think if you ask anybody, when I talk about my mom, I light up.

She is the most courageous person I know, she's funny, she's beautiful, she's powerful, she's smart.

I love her.

I'll never stop calling my mom up.

I don't care what stage I'm on.

I don't plan on forgetting where I come from at all.

LARHONDA: Yeah, ooh, I can hear that!

That's rockin'.

[ camera shutter clicking ] [ traffic flowing ] [ shutter clicking ] MAN: People complain that it always rains here, and there's definitely some truth to that, but it's not the same day in and day out.

The sky actually changes here by the hour.

I end up taking reference photos all over the city, and mostly I just like being out and about, walking.

Sometimes it's because I'm interested in going to and capturing a certain place that I have in mind, but sometimes it's just I'm doing whatever and the way the light is striking something in front of me is captivating and I needed to remember how it made me feel, then go home and try to capture that on canvas.

[ music playing ] Growing up here in the Pacific Northwest and the Willamette Valley, I've been really comfortable with the wet, rainy climate to the point where it feels like home.

And I keep getting drawn to that in my artwork.

One of the things that I want to do is draw attention to the many different varieties of weather patterns and rain here and the different ways in which they're beautiful.

I love the way light plays off of reflections in wet pavement, the way that bright, saturated colors like the green moss or the funky Victorian houses pop against the gray backdrop.

And I think that there's a vibrant spectrum of grays to be seen here.

I'm most interested in capturing aesthetic wonder, those "blink and you'll miss it" moments.

My process usually involves working in acrylic first for the underpainting layers before going over that with oil.

There's a few different reasons I do underpaintings.

Sometimes it's just a solid color, which is also called toning the canvas.

Sometimes I use the underpainting to actually block out shapes in the piece.

Sometimes I use complementary colors to what's going to go on top.

I love that red iron oxide color for underpaintings because it creates warmth, especially because I like to use a lot of really cool gray tones.

That drama and contrast helps the painting come to life.

I already pretty much know what's going to go on top of this.

This is going to be a specific scene with a vantage looking from Mt.

Tabor.

[ music playing ] You're going to want to see this.

I love the way that watered-down acrylic drips.

I was at PCC for four years, followed by PSU for four years.

I'm a big proponent of community college as an option and that it's not the school you go to, it's really the people and the teachers that you meet and what you put into it.

That's going to be cool.

My final project in my BFA program was called "Words for Rain" because my focus was on water, weather, the interaction between light and the wet climate here in the Pacific Northwest.

I think Portlanders often feel connected to Josh's work because Portland is a city built of small neighborhoods, and when Josh is able to sort of capture the characteristics of a particular neighborhood and you live there, you very much recognize your community.

Portland is a beautiful city, but not everything about Portland is beautiful.

That's why, for instance, in my series "Ghosts of Albina," I wanted to draw attention to historic redlining practices and the demolition of buildings in the historically Black Albina neighborhood of North Portland.

A lot of those paintings used superimposed imagery to sort of tell a then-and-now narrative.

And folks were responding to those paintings in some cases by realizing they had no idea what used to be at a certain corner.

At North Williams and Russell, there's an empty grassy lot where a gorgeous historic building that was an entire commercial block was taken down in the 1970s through eminent domain.

In essence, these paintings function as monuments, in a way, right, and testaments to things both here and things gone and how those things that we can't see anymore are still affecting what it is in the here and now.

One of the biggest challenges I have definitely has to do with my hearing.

I lost my hearing early in childhood, but I didn't lose all of it, and I was raised to speak and hear.

The fact that I speak and I don't sound deaf to people makes it a bit of an invisible disability.

During COVID, especially with masks, it is often almost impossible or basically not possible for me to understand what people are saying to me.

I became more and more interested in capturing the expressive beauty of sign language, the ways hands move and create signs.

We maybe forget that sign language is a language, but the hands can basically speak.

The hands also, in my case, are the tool with which I make my artwork.

I'm really into process.

I'm really into just getting into the studio every day.

So I'm using a small projector to project the reference image for the painting onto the canvas, and I'm going to use that as a means of basically tracing the composition.

I'm all about using whatever tool helps get you to the point where you can pick up the oil paints and be more creative.

Now nobody is allowed to even breathe on this.

[ music playing ] This part of the process is really not concerned with precision, just really loosely blocking that in.

I really want to preserve this awesome streaking and dripping that we got.

Because the canvas is wet, I can get some really exciting brush marks that just blend fluidly.

So basically this is Bob Ross right now.

Feel free to paint along.

I try to avoid overworking a piece.

When there are infinite options for changes to make, it's hard to know when to stop.

This is my opening reception for my show "Traces."

So I've got over 30 paintings in this show.

[ music playing ] [ indistinct conversations ] One of the things I always like people taking away from my work is just seeing things in a different way.

Seeing a familiar moment, the way that the light might strike at a certain time of day or in a certain place, and noticing something like that that resonates with them in their own lives.

And that's something I feel is really special to me about the visual art that I create.

[ music playing ] ♪ Someone you can learn from Just as often as you teach ♪ ♪ Someone you can listen to As often as you preach ♪ ♪ But it ain't me ♪ ♪ It ain't me... ♪ To see more stories about Oregon artists, visit our website... And for a look at the stories we're working on right now, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

♪ But my ancestors Live in me ♪ ♪ And my mother's mother's Mother's saying leave ♪ ♪ I'll be spoken to With softness ♪ ♪ Put some syrup in your voice ♪ ♪ Speak as if you love me Every word you have a choice ♪ ♪ I know that I am young But my ancestors live in me ♪ ♪ And my mother's mother's Mother's saying leave ♪ ♪ Leave ♪ LARHONDA: ♪ Mama's saying leave ♪ LAUREN: ♪ Mama's saying leave ♪ That's called fashion.

- It's called sustainable fashion.

- Let me show the people.

- LAUREN: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

- I guess so.

- It's a low carbon print.

- LAUREN: Mm-hmm.

Here's something fun.

These are tiny pet portraits.

His name is Declan.

Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and OPB members and viewers like you.

Funding for arts and culture coverage is provided by...