Gallery Exhibit: Works by Arvie Smith
Portland Center Stage will be hosting a collection of narrative storytelling work and portrait work by Portland-based painter, educator, and mural artist Arvie Smith, in support of our production of Gem of the Ocean. The show, titled Works by Arvie Smith, will highlight different eras of his work, including portraits and some narrative paintings that express "deep sympathy for the dispossessed and marginalized members of society in an unrelenting search for beauty, meaning, and equality."
This gallery exhibit will be on display in the PGE Gallery at PCS and will include his famed "We Still Rise" painting, on loan from Prosper Portland. The exhibit opens on January 28, 2022, and will be on view daily through April 4, 2022.
This special collection of work by Arvie Smith at Portland Center Stage will be on view concurrently with a career retrospective of his work from the past 25 years, titled Arvie Smith: Scarecrow, opening at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University. The retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum will be available for viewing and gallery visits from January 22 – March 26, 2022. If you're able to travel to see the show at Willamette University, the opening will be held on Saturday, Feb 5, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Arvie Smith transforms the history of oppressed and stereotyped segments of the American experience into lyrical two-dimensional master works. His paintings are commonly of psychological images revealing deep sympathy for the dispossessed and marginalized members of society in an unrelenting search for beauty, meaning, and equality. Smith’s work reflects powerful injustices and the will to resist and survive. His memories of growing up in the South add to his awareness of the legacy that the slavery of African American’s has left with all Americans today. His intention is to solidify the memory of atrocities and oppression so they will never be forgotten nor duplicated. Smith creates this work because he must.
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