The Pacific Northwest is home to a unique artistic ecosystem involving craft traditions, pre-industrial cultures, and Indigenous and settler histories. Like folk art, the works featured here are handmade, unpretentious, and often blur the line between functionality and aesthetics. Artisanal woven baskets and tooled-wood objects mix with works that are makeshift, improvisational, and often employ salvaged materials. For the artists—patchwork quilters and abstract painters alike—a rural and working class ethos of passed down knowledge and making do with what you have are as foundational as academics and studio technique.

The exhibition features an intergenerational array of notable artists from throughout the region including Marita Dingus, Warren Dykeman, Joe Feddersen, Blair Saxon-Hill, Whiting Tennis, and Cappy Thompson. A playlist of Indie Folk music selected by Portland’s Mississippi Records will accompany the exhibition, filling the galleries with the sound of the Pacific Northwest.

Organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU and guest curated by Melissa E. Feldman. Indie Folk will travel to the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR and the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA. We acknowledge Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon, where Indie Folk began in 2020 as a virtual exhibition. Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Endowment, the Mildred S. Bissinger Endowment, Patrick and Elizabeth Siler, Nancy Spitzer, and members of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU.