Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... and OPB members and viewers like you.

Funding for arts and culture coverage is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ bird caws ] ORLANDO: Growing up in Cuba, I spent a lot of time in the river.

I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, I spent a lot of time with my cousins.

So the river was and is a big part of my life.

A lot of the paintings come from memories.

I try to, like, close my eyes and remember all these, you know, like, memories with my grandfather-- the smell of the water, the smell of the grass, of, like, the horses crossing the river.

It's like... it's like being there.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I do a lot of sketching.

Like, writing down stories and then put, like, an image on the text.

And then I transfer those sketches to a painting.

I remember pretty clear all the color.

I remember the yellows, like the sun in the countryside in Cuba was, like, really bright, so bright it cannot burn the leaf.

The red, the pink, that's my palette.

My palette, like, growing up.

Like, I lived that, I remember that.

I'm from Amancio Rodriguez, Las Tunas, which is a really small town in the eastern part of Cuba.

It's, like, really far away.

There was no TV, there was no radio, there was no cell phone at that time.

Feels like back in time.

So when I moved to Havana, I kind of, like, uh... put aside that part of me.

And then in college, we were like, oh, like the Bauhaus, which is really beautiful.

Or da Vinci or Michelangelo-- many, many, many artists in the art history.

And you, as a young student, you want to be like them, you want to copy them.

But they already told their story.

When you realize it's not about copying them, it's about being yourself...

I have an amazing story to tell.

Why are we looking outside?

We should look deep inside of us.

These beautiful people who already live here and are really beautiful and cool things, let's tell that story.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Going to art supply here is always one of the most amazing experiences I have.

I go there almost every day.

It's hard, maybe, for people to understand, but where I come from, there's, like, none of those stuff.

So coming here, you have like five or twenty different of one oil brand or twenty different brushes.

It's like a whole new world for me, the opportunities and results.

I'm going to blend it in now.

I believe in the past, I was more symbolized.

And I think right now I'm moving toward... to surrealism.

[ ♪♪♪ ] So that's why, like, the paintings sometimes have like a dog jumping at the fish in there.

It's a balance between the mind and the idea of a kid with the skill of, like, a trained professional painter.

I was like 10, 12 years old, running around, so everything is more low.

So the point of view is as a kid.

The name of the show is "Love Letter from a Shapeshifter."

It's mostly a love letter to a smaller version of myself, to that kid growing up in the countryside with my grandfather.

I mean by "shapeshifter," someone who'd have to, like, shift himself, like me.

I have to change myself when I moved from the countryside to Havana.

I have to shapeshift coming from Havana to be here in Portland.

But I also mean I change myself for the purpose of, like, helping our people.

Installing the show in the gallery is, like, really fun, because you see kind of, like, pieces in the studio look different, their relationship.

Lower down on the left side.

Like, this story goes with this one, this palette of color goes with this one.

It's kind of like the final finished product come true.

And you unveil it.

I think it's going to be great.

[ chuckles ] It's already great.

[ people chattering indistinctly ] The opening night of the show is really exciting.

You feel like a rock star.

Orlando.

Thank you for coming.

Also, you see people enjoying the pieces, and that's part of, like, the reward and the joyful part of being a painter.

So you see people, like, discovering new details, like asking you questions, talking, chatting.

It's kind of joyful seeing everybody come together into this spot.

[ ♪♪♪ ] It's a love letter to my roots, it's a love letter to what I grew up-- This is actually who I am.

I think my grandfather would be really happy.

I think he would give me that mischievous laugh that he had, like... "I told you."

Or, "I knew."

And he would say, "I'm very proud of you."

And I would say back, "I'm very proud of you, Grandpa."

Thank you for coming.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] NANCY: What I love about painting this place is that there's an infinite variety of options.

There's vineyards, there's orchards, there's river, there's mountains.

It's never-ending.

My name is Nancy Houfek Brown, and I am a painter, an oil painter.

I make large, abstracted landscapes using geometric forms and flat planes of color of sights and scenes in the Columbia River Gorge.

I like to go out into the countryside and take photographs.

And there's a right-angle turn in the road, and they had just put these street signs up saying-- you know, directional street signs.

I had to stop and take a photo of that because it was this moment of, "That is one of the coolest things to see."

"Which Way" is the name of the painting.

Sometimes we go for a ride in the country.

[ gasps ] Wow!

MAN: Yeah.

Yeah.

NANCY: Look at that!

Fortunately, Al does the driving, so I'm looking at things, going, "Oh, my gosh."

[ imitates camera shutter clicking ] "Oh, my gosh!

Oh, my gosh," taking photographs along the way.

[ laughs, inhales deeply ] Wow.

Rowena Crest has a viewpoint with an amazing panorama of the gorge and the geological formations.

You could see the basalt cliffs.

You could see how the gorge was made.

It was like, "I've got to make a painting of that."

And then you go a little bit further... Beautiful time of day.

...and the wind comes up over that cliff constantly.

And there are raptors dancing in the wind and playing.

[ shutter clicks ] Oh, wow.

I took some photos-- hard to capture a raptor, you know, in motion, but I thought, "I want to do that."

And then you walk another ten feet and you're looking at the balsam root just wildly blooming.

[ shutter clicking ] Yes, hundreds of photographs, and then I want to paint my emotional response to it.

And my emotional response to it isn't realistic.

I don't want to copy nature.

[ ♪♪♪ ] When I come back in the studio, all these photos are on my iPhoto program.

So I'm scrolling through them and looking at them and looking and deleting, deleting, deleting, delete, delete, delete-- Ah, that's the one.

That's the one.

Then, with a pencil, I go as quickly as I can.

How would I draw this if I were 4 years old?

How would I do this?

How would I make these trees?

Well, they're not going to have lots of branches, they're just going to look like little things.

Oh, that shadow is just a little block of stuff.

At that point, I take the drawing and I photograph that.

Then I can put it directly into Procreate.

It saves me making five, six oil sketches.

I can try things out.

"It's too dark."

So if I were painting it, you know, it would be a problem, but now I can just find a lighter color.

And when I feel like I've got a good sense of the color in the composition, I will print it out.

I put the grid on it, and I can make the drawing square by square so I have more accuracy to what I've already created.

And then I draw the drawing on it, so it's still looking somewhat like my child's drawing.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I begin to draw the grid on the canvas in a very, very pale, pale, pale, pale yellow so it's going to be easy to paint over.

And I just use the grid, get the drawing on, and then I start painting.

There's a moment where the painting starts to speak to me.

It's morphing as I'm painting.

And then there's a moment where...

I'm done with this painting.

If I do any more, I'll wreck it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Both of my parents were artists.

My mother had been an art major in college.

She was a talented portrait-drawer and painter.

In my early mid-20s, I decided I wanted to go to acting school, and then I continued on my career and I performed throughout the Western states as a stage actor.

And that's actually how I met Al, my husband.

It was at a reading of one of my plays and Nancy walked in, and I said, "Who is that?"

And it really was-- love at first sight is real.

I began to learn all the things that I really needed to learn about living once I met her.

And then I shifted out of being an actor to being an educator and got a job at the University of Minnesota in the theater department.

I would take art classes and I would still make art and still draw sketches.

So Al and I, when we were in Minnesota, we started windsurfing, and we learned and we got gear.

And then one summer, this was 1996, everybody was saying, "Oh, you've got to go to Hood River.

It's the best."

I was doing a gig in New York, and Al drove out to Hood River.

And I get these calls saying, "This is the most beautiful place in the world.

You've got to come."

AL: When we finally got her out here, she was just almost speechless.

NANCY: It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

I had all this experience onstage, also teaching at University of Minnesota, and gotten quite the reputation as an educator.

I was head of voice and speech at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University.

I was always drawing, always painting, always trying things.

It was always a current in my life.

So then, in 2002, we were both kind of depressed at the same time.

You know how that happens with a couple when you're both depressed at the same time?

It's not so good.

And I thought, "You know what, let's buy a house in Hood River.

Let's try it.

Let's see how it works."

AL: It gave me a feeling of maybe it was like home.

You know, finally, a real home.

Not Boston, not a city.

A small town where we could really be ourselves.

[ ♪♪♪ ] NANCY: I just started every day painting, and it just kept getting better and better.

AL: I went downtown Hood River, to Columbia Center for the Arts, and I started saying, "You folks really need to see my wife's art."

Then the gallery manager came up and then she got into a show there and, you know, it was small things at first and then... kaboom!

All of a sudden, the painting emerged as this new voice that had distinct shadows, had distinct shapes, had a vocabulary-- it has a red barn in it.

A lot of my paintings had little red barns in them.

It has the mountain in the simplest shape possible for the mountain.

And it was an "aha" moment.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Tell me, Al, is this good?

Yeah, good.

Is this good?

The Gorge Artists Open Studio Tour is an annual three-day event where artists throughout the gorge open up their studios to the public.

And people come from 10:00 to 5:00, three days, they look at art and they buy art.

Congrats.

Thanks so much.

I find that a lot of people collect my art who the simplicity and clarity and maybe even the math part of it appeals to them.

It's beautiful.

I've never seen anything like it.

WOMAN: People love her work.

They come from all over the place to get it, whether it's here at the gallery or at her studio.

So not surprisingly, she was Gorge Artist of the Year a few years ago.

People come to Hood River now for the art scene.

I think there is something special about this area.

The light is amazing.

It's an artwork of itself.

Good seeing you again.

Great to see you.

Wonderful work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

AL: I'm an old guy.

I'll probably go before she does.

And I was looking at her the other day-- she'll be just fine because she has all these friends.

And I just thought, "I got to experience all this time with her."

And doing all this crazy stuff we've done, to know that she'll be okay, it's a really wonderful feeling.

NANCY: I don't know what's next, but that curiosity and willingness to be open to learning and changing and growing constantly is my fountain of youth.

I hope that whoever gets one of my paintings enjoys looking at it for years and years and years and perhaps even generations.

[ answering machine beeps in game ] WOMAN [ on recording ]: Hi, Mom.

So I got my ticket home from Europe.

I get back on June 6th, but it's a really late flight.

MAN: "Gone Home" is a story exploration video game that takes place in 1995 in a house in Oregon, and you arrive there one night and find that your younger sister has gone missing, effectively.

WOMAN [ in game ]: Don't be worried, okay?

We'll see each other again... someday.

STEVEN TONTHAT: "Gone Home" was one of the most successful video games of 2013, and it started with a company called Fullbright.

I'm Karla Zimonja.

I'm one of the co-founders of Fullbright.

And I'm Steve Gaynor.

I'm one of the other co-founders of Fullbright.

I grew up playing tons of video games, and as I was getting through college and getting into what am I gonna do for a job, I realized that games as a medium really spoke more to me than other things that I was engaging with.

After college, Steve went to work for the big-name video game publisher 2K in California.

So I was building, you know, the spaces that the players would explore while they were playing.

He eventually became the lead designer for the game "Minerva's Den," where me met Karla.

KARLA: I went to school for animation and I worked in television for a couple of years.

A friend of mine was like, "We need help animating all these monsters," and I was like, "I can do that, I'm pretty sure."

[ ♪♪♪ ] The two colleagues decided to try their luck at creating smaller, personal games.

They formed a small team and moved to Portland.

STEVE: We rented a house in the Hollywood district and the three of us... All together to save costs.

Yeah, the three of us who worked at the company and my wife, Rachel.

Rachel was from Portland, and we all just lived in the house and our office was in the basement.

That's when they created "Gone Home."

The entire experience of the game is exploring this house, exploring this old Victorian manor, finding clues and hints and what the family has left behind to figure out what really happened in your absence and kind of rebuild the story as you explore.

[ thunder rumbles in game ] Building a game where you walk around and explore an empty house...

Sounds simple, right?

Well, not exactly.

The team was working with a smaller budget, which meant that they couldn't rely on fancy graphics and fast and furious action.

So they focused on making a good story and a one-of-a-kind immersive experience.

We wanted to make something that felt authentic and that felt like it really took place in our own world and to say it takes place in 1995 in a small town in Oregon, not just "a house somewhere."

And that allowed us to really pull on things that we were familiar with and say, "Okay, in the story, the characters that are in high school, they go on a field trip to Multnomah Falls."

WOMAN [ in game ]: Lonnie and I snuck off on the side paths at Multnomah Falls and got a little lost.

Okay, a lot lost.

KARLA: We really depend on the player meeting us halfway for the whole game, because so much of the work in the game is interpretive.

In other words, the clues are there, but it's up to you to find them all and piece the story together.

WOMAN [ in game ]: Lonnie came over today, but everything was different.

STEVE: So we wanted to tell, like, a smaller, more personal story that used the audio diary mechanic.

You hear this little bit of voice-over from your sister that gives you more context and more of a human connection to what you're finding.

WOMAN [ in game ]: I felt like I was gonna cry, but I wasn't sad.

A smaller budget also meant they had to wear many different hats and find clever workarounds for different problems.

[ bell rings ] Like making their own sound effects.

[ rattles ] Fullbright even hired their voice-over artists to be a part of the production team.

So I just want you to bring it up a little bit more at the end than you did on the last take.

When you live in one place your whole life, your next-door neighbor is kind of like your default friend.

STEVE: It's funny hearing Sarah's voice in this game because now Sarah works at the studio as a producer and office manager.

So we hear her every day, but not as the voice of Sam Greenbriar.

"Gone Home" resonated with critics and fans alike, and the gaming industry took notice... And the Choice Award for best debut belongs to...

The Fullbright Company.

[ audience cheering ] and hailed it as the future of interactive storytelling.

STEVE: Very unexpected that the game would hit that much of a nerve with people when it came out that we would have our work recognized in that way.

Thank you to all of our family and friends that have given us so much support over this process.

And thank you.

We made something very small that, like, we wanted to have be able to be kind of impactful to people when they played it, but... - It's a small, personal story.

- Right.

WOMAN [ in game ]: Get in your car and come find me, and let's just drive until we find somewhere for us.

STEVE: It was not something that we expected, but it's something that we were very grateful to have been involved with.

[ light clicks ] [ thunder rumbles in game ] 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.

Try to see if you can-- if we look like each other.

[ chuckles ] Maybe not.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... and OPB members and viewers like you.

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