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

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WOMAN: When I'm out on location, time just flies by.

It's kind of a euphoric feeling where things are happening organically.

WOMAN: It's kind of exciting.

There's this shiver of moment when I start something new or, like, something takes a direction that I didn't expect.

WOMAN: There's a time where I'm not playing, I'm just, like, absorbing what it feels like to be alive.

[ birds chirping ] Oh!

Oh, you're so beautiful.

Can you see?

[ chuckles ] It's like right... right here.

I'm ready.

INTERVIEWER: All right, can you say your name?

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Hi, my name is Lisa Jarrett, and I'm an artist based in Portland, Oregon.

I make a lot of different kinds of work.

I have a studio-based practice where I make objects, oftentimes out of and about Black hair and the Black femme experience in relationship to beauty.

My mother always did our hair growing up, and my aunt owned a salon for years and years, my Auntie Candy.

And that was a place I had just such strong associations with learning about Black femininity.

I think I just have always had a relationship with hair growing up.

Even when I talk to my mom now, she'll always say, ''How's your hair?''

You know, we talk -- it's like a question that I expect to answer.

And I think that it really became a marker of who I was in the world in certain ways.

I think haircare regimes and beauty, I mean, I think that these things are so important within Black culture.

And I think it contains your story.

And I think I'm interested in trying to find my stories.

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This is part of the migration study series.

This one's called ''Prototype.''

The ingredients are super simple.

It's just a medium, a net, and tracing paper.

And I really like what those material limitations can allow you to think about.

So that the complexity is not coming from how many things I'm putting together but in how I'm working with very little, which I think is also really relatable in terms of the experience of navigating difference in the United States, just culturally.

Often where we grew up, my sister and I were the only Black kids in our school.

Our ways of tending to our hair were very different than the people around us.

It was really one of these parts of being who I was that made assimilation, if you will, an impossibility.

We always shopped for our haircare products at, like a beauty supply store.

Like, you couldn't buy products for our hair at just the regular market, the grocery store.

And I wanted to feel like when I went to a store or a space that there were things for me there, and I didn't want to be told that that wasn't possible.

And then as I got older and started really kind of looking at what marketing of haircare products looks like to Black people and to Black women, and even if you go to a supermarket or a drug store today, it's always sort of a segregated experience.

Often it'll be called ''ethnic haircare.''

Right, like there's a way in which there are these cues and ways we're supposed to read where we can find things that are for us, as opposed to everything else that, although it is not marked as such, in that very moment of being unmarked, that's the normative, right?

That's the dominant identity, of which...

I am not a part, right?

So what I've always liked across my practice are things that can mean at least two things at once, sort of like the ethnic haircare section or for all hair types, really not meaning for your hair type.

So that double meaning or at least double meaning, the multiplicity of meanings and messages is something I've always been interested in.

With projects like ''How Many Licks?''

I could also employ degrees of access and degrees of sort of refusal of access.

So the project includes 156 suckers that are installed into panels, like on a gallery wall, and they're made out of beet sugar, and in the center is a little bead of my hair that's set on a paper lollipop stick.

And then the wrapper is a cellophane.

And so what I really like about these is that the orbital shape of the sugar distorts your ability to understand the size of that piece of hair in the center.

So they're really quite tiny, but they're magnified by this clear casing on the outside.

The sensation of hair in your mouth is sort of an immediate -- a sensation we all usually kind of go to get rid of quickly, and you don't have to actually experience it to know that that's the way your mouth is going to react to hair, so you can imagine it very easily.

That's what I like about these.

You don't have to -- but knowing that you could eat it, which is why it's edible, as opposed to it being actual glass or a resin cast.

And with ''How Many Licks?''

I think I was really interested in the attraction and repulsion sort of tension that's inherent in the work.

Plus, I think they're really pretty.

I think that the thing that really occurred to me with hair, it's like sort of the one relationship that I have that can allow me to have a relationship with my ancestors that are often inaccessible for a lot of reasons, but also to have a relationship not only with my ancestors from the past, but the project ''Future Ancestors,'' in which we're thinking about what it means to actively be an ancestor in the present with a mind toward who would be able to access you in the future.

Hi!

Good to see you.

Good to see you too.

How are you?

''Future Ancestors'' is the first exhibition of Art 25, art in the 25th century.

And it's a collective that I founded with my longtime collaborator Lehua M. Taitano.

One of the goals of our collective project is to collaborate with artists within the African and Pacific Islander diaspora worldwide to see what we can create in the context of a practice that privileges Black and indigenous aesthetics and ideologies and just general ideas around connecting outside of dominant cultural narratives.

So for ''Future Ancestors'' we worked with an artist based in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jocelyn Ng, and so the three of us together thought about what it would be like to exist as our future ancestors in the present tense, and we tried to embody those actual characters, if you will.

And the work that you see here at Ori Gallery is the culmination or documentation of that experience.

The thing I would compare this to most closely is what you would expect or anticipate as an artist's statement in a museum or a gallery setting, and we're placing it in conjunction with a sound piece and a text piece that invites participants and viewers to listen to the work and also to think about what these text pieces are connected to, how they are attached to the images that we wrote.

''To bury the swell, begin your line anywhere and bind me to you.

Like let me dress you in your story, like I tell you haku lei, like what binds us bonds us closer, like woven story.

Show me.''

[ voices on recording, overlap ] To keep the memories nimble, place your fingers inside the mouth of her hair, the history there is one motion, told and retold by millions of bodies over hundreds of years.

Sister, mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, lover, friend, partner.

Braid me.

Keep the tails of what we cannot forget here.

I don't have a lot of interest in doing something I already know the outcome of 100%.

And I think that uncertainty is also a particular part of my identity.

Doubt, I think, is how you know you're on the right track.

I say that to my students.

I'm like, ''That's how you know.

This is the place where you persist.''

Like, whatever that thing is that is sort of -- you're trying to squirm out of or makes you feel like you don't know how to do it yet or you don't know what's going to happen, it does not have to be paralyzing.

It's kind of exciting.

There's this shiver of moment when I start something new or, like, something takes a direction that I didn't expect.

Then there's the doubt of making art in this particular moment, like, in 2020, when, honestly, I'm questioning everything about the value of my -- of my work and what it means to me.

And the value of all of these identities we've constructed for ourselves and how we want to navigate them.

I'm really just in a moment of immense, deep questioning.

A lot is changing right now, and I think that raises a lot of other questions for me as an artist as well.

But what I can say, I guess, about myself or kind of like the here and now is that making this kind of work really does help anchor me.

And there's so much more to learn there.

And I think that's where I feel strongly about doubt being a good part of a process.

It's a good part of my own.

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We're at the Tillamook State Forest on the way to the coast.

I think we found this place like two years ago.

I was just driving with a friend to the coast.

I just love that it's by the river.

And different seasons, you get to experience different things, different colors.

I've been here in winter a lot, and that brings on its own beauty with the bare trees.

It's just like really exciting to come here every time, because I don't know what I'm going to find.

I'm Bhavani Krishnan, and I paint landscapes, figures, still life.

I love to come out and paint in nature.

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Oh, wow, this is so beautiful over here.

I just love that I could just look any direction, and it would make a good painting.

I used to be a software engineer, and about eight years ago, I just started painting as a hobby.

And then very quickly, I became more and more passionate about it.

And so about five years ago, I transitioned into painting full time.

For me, it was just, like, how many people get to find their true passion?

I just felt like I had to go for it.

I had to give it a shot.

I was born in Switzerland, but we moved to India like when I was 2 years old.

I always feel like my love for mountains comes from me being born there.

I don't know, like -- I don't know if it make sense, but I just feel that.

[ laughing ] Being out in nature, it's always been a way for me to clear my head.

All the time while growing up, I sought out groups that would go hiking.

I remember there being lots of waterfalls, and we would just jump into the water, and it was a lot of fun.

That's how I developed a deep connection with nature.

Look at that water.

It's so golden, with all the reflection off the trees.

It's just beautiful.

When I look at a scene, I kind of see in terms of shapes and colors.

So it's kind of like a puzzle piece, where different shapes fit together.

I try not to be very logical about it, but just use nature as a jumping-off point.

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Especially when there's a lot of green in the landscape, the complementary color will help pop it.

I like to be very loose and expressive with my painting.

When I pick up the brush, I don't even know exactly what I'm going to do with it, but I'm just going with that pure instinctual feeling.

And what happens is I get all these marks on my canvas that are quite -- quite unexpected, which you cannot produce if you're just thinking in a very calculated manner.

If I can use minimal strokes to describe something, that's always, like, way more exciting.

I came to Oregon for work.

The very first time I came here was to interview with Intel, and I saw Mount Hood from the plane.

I almost instantaneously fell in love with it.

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I love to paint along the Columbia River Gorge.

I think that's just a really beautiful area.

I just love places that are open and natural.

I love going up to Mount Hood, especially in winter to paint snow.

I like coming here to Tillamook State Forest.

The color of the river, the color of the trees or the textures I see, each of them are beautiful in their own way, so I just like coming back here in different times of the year to try and capture them.

When I'm out on location, time just flies by.

Nothing seems to bother me.

It's kind of a euphoric feeling where things are happening organically and you're not forcing anything.

When I first started, I learned a very realistic style of painting where the most important thing was to make something look three-dimensional, and that was what was driving me.

But now, recently, I've found that I need to say something that's a little bit beyond that.

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I don't want to just copy a portrait and get an exact likeness, but try to -- I don't know, like, just try and capture something about their personalities.

So basically everything is already blocked in and everything is sort of in there, but I'm just trying to refine some of the colors, add some complexity.

There was like sunlight on the river, so I tried to capture that.

Towards the end of the painting, I like to step back more often because sometimes you can keep going and ruin it.

So it's a good idea to just step away, get a fresh perspective, and see if you're actually done.

Up close, it's kind of a big mess, but when you step back, everything's sort of -- you can see trees, the river.

It sort of all comes together.

Yeah.

I think I'm done.

Yeah.

I think so.

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I would hope that people would have an emotional response to my painting... that they feel something, that they would be moved by my painting.

Because when I look at art, that's what I feel.

I'm moved by paintings that make me feel excited or invigorated, and that's what I hope to transcend into my paintings.

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WOMAN: I grew up rural, and I didn't have a lot of friends.

[ laughs ] You know, I was taking classical guitar lessons.

It's not like it led to jam situations, even if I had known anybody.

So in a way, playing solo music is like the most pure form for me.

[ strumming chords ] And I have such a lifelong connection to the place inside of me that is satisfied by doing that.

I stopped playing classical around when I was 19.

I started becoming more influenced by blues and folk and country music that I had heard all my life but I'd never played, and in particular, finger-style blues.

And I feel like my music is orchestral without the orchestra.

Like, when I'm arranging a piece on guitar, I'm thinking about where the drums are, and that's my thumb, and then I'm thinking about where the piano is, which is usually my index or middle finger.

When I was a kid, my brother played piano.

I don't know how this happened, but I internalized the message that I was not allowed to play the piano.

While I would eavesdrop on his lessons, nobody ever knew that I was teaching myself.

And if you listen to my records, the piano's there, but it's so subtle that you almost wouldn't know it's there.

The piano will never be what's featured or the melodic thing, because it's just like this secret part of myself.

[ pine needles crunching ] I always think that my music has the cadence of footsteps.

I notice that I'm always mid-tempo, and I realized that walking informs my composition process.

There's a time when I'm not playing, I'm just, like, absorbing the quality of the light in a place or ambient sound... what it feels like to be alive wherever it is.

Paying attention.

It's just paying attention.

[ water running ] I'm not that interested in ideas, honestly, for art.

My aesthetic choices tend to be more conceptual, image, or emotionally driven.

[ strumming electric guitar ] In the case of ''Lament,'' I wrote that song after seeing the photograph of Alan Kurdi, who was the Syrian toddler lying on the beach.

And that photo just made me feel, like, all of the things: sadness, helplessness, grief, anger, rage, all of it.

And to say that in a sentence, it's just a sentence, you know?

Making a piece out of it was a way for me to move from that sentence into an embodiment of the feeling.

[ playing ''Lament'' ] The reason that I played it on slide was because I wanted that melody to sound like a human voice.

I think the power of the voice is in the frailty, and I wanted that song to be sung in the way that a guitar can sing it.

I'm doing a drone underneath that, also dissonance.

I'm not afraid of dissonance.

And I wanted that song to have drone, because, like, grief is a low hum, you know?

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[ crowing ] WOMAN: The Oregon Lavender Paint Out takes place for about two weeks prior to the big festival and art show.

Artists can paint in fields all over the state.

Participating farms are members of the Oregon Lavender Association.

They can then show their work at the Willamette Valley Lavender Festival in Plein Air Art Show, which happens at the end of the paint out in Newberg at the Chehalem Cultural Center.

I had been reading in magazines about paint outs, different paint outs, and I thought, ''Wouldn't it be great?''

And the more I thought about it, the more excited I got.

The first year, we had six people.

We have more fields to paint in now, bigger fields to paint in, and more farmers who are welcoming us into their fields to paint.

[ bees buzzing ] There's usually tons of bees, because they love the lavender.

I thought, ''Oh, what fun to be able to get onto farms that you're not usually allowed onto.''

And so it gives you access to something you can't usually see, and I just thought, ''Okay, I'll take advantage of that.''

I went out and I fell in love with the festival immediately, not only because lavender's one of my favorite smells, but because it's run in a very efficient but relaxed fashion.

I love being around the other artists, the excitement of working on new pieces, and it just gets you inspired.

I work on lights and darks, cools and warm colors, and then you squint to see if you've got the right values, and hopefully you do.

[ chuckles ] These are dry pastels.

And I take these out in the field because I find that I don't have to spend the time mixing the color.

I can just, you know, place the color on and go.

WOMAN: When I first started it, it was in the evening.

I'm painting what I remembered, but I still have the essence of the warm and cools of the greens and the purples.

And I'm trying to lock those in right now.

[ crowing ] You tap into all your senses, and there's just this connection with the earth when you're outside painting.

It's great.

I love it.

And of course, you know, we walk away feeling like we've got, you know, some aromatherapy going on too.

[ laughs ] To see more stories about the arts in Oregon, visit our website... And for a look at what we're working on now, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

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