Soul City by Stephanie Anderson
June 13th through July 7th 2025. Opening reception June 13th 6 pm to 8 pm.
(IN)visible by Amie Pascal
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Artist
Stephanie Anderson is a self-taught oil painter that began painting during the Pandemic. Stephanie recently moved to Hillsboro, Oregon in 2022 with her wife and three children and has just welcomed their first grandchild. Stephanie earned her Master’s degree in Behavioral Health Science. Her painting style is influenced by her background as a mental health clinician working with marginalized and underrepresented populations and living in cities rich with history, cultural conflict and street art such as Tulsa, NYC and Belfast. Stephanie is a life-long lover of roller skating and is a retired roller derby player. When she began painting, she wanted to take the opportunity to utilize her newly learned art form embracing the subculture she loves. With that, she has used photos from a Tulsa photography project as her initial inspiration, and they are the basis of the Soul Cities series. Stephanie also enjoys gardening, baking with sourdough and spoiling her three Ragdoll cats.
Show Statement
Stephanie Anderson, an emerging Portland artist, shares her journey of healing with her first completed series of oil on canvas paintings titled Soul City. Anderson drew her inspiration from the historic architecture and culturally significant landmarks of Tulsa, Oklahoma which carries the nickname Soul City. The iconic Reidell roller derby roller skates and thigh high rainbow socks are the featured muse used throughout the series as metaphors for movement, strength, identity, and the transformational ability of healing. Through use of vibrant color and realism, Anderson invites viewers to look through her unique perspective lens to show how growth and healing are dynamic, identity is fluid, and authenticity is an act of everyday courage.
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Artist
Amie Pascal is a mid-career surrealist artist working in acrylic, gouache, and oil mediums from the the Pacific Northwest. Amie is both self-taught and artist community-learned, including with mentor Jolyn Fry. Amie’s paintings have shown in solo shows and group exhibitions across the US and have been featured in multiple publications, including as the cover art for the 2023 book Queer for Fear.
Show Statement
Building on an oeuvre that has investigated the queer body and queer culture, my new series considers the precarious, liminal state of queer representation and existence. What does representation mean for queer people when our visibility is historically complex, politically paradoxical, and continually targeted?
Violence and persecution of queer people erases us from existence and punishes us for being visible. In fact, queer culture is founded on absences caused by violences. The LGBTQ2S+ community has fought for and gained civil rights and societal acceptance, but often by way of assimilating to cishet norms—and our integration is not permanent nor assured. At the same time, expanded representation and visibility increasingly mean heightened persecution, threats, danger, and erasure. Queer people are always already (in)visible.
Rendering queer (in)visibility through a surrealist lens, (In)Visible presents mixed-media paintings of ghostly figures, body horror, and lurid, pastiche compositions.
This series, (In)Visible, by Astoria-based artist Amie Pascal considers the precarious, liminal state of queer representation and existence. What does it mean for queer people when our visibility is historically complex, politically paradoxical, and continually targeted? A surrealist perspective renders queer (in)visibility in mixed-media paintings
