Did you know that there’s an art museum at Portland State University

Recently named by Oregon Liveas a museum stop not to miss this Spring, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State Universityhosts multiple free exhibitions each year, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists right here on campus! Since 2019, the museum has worked to increase art accessibility and provide a space for students and the PSU community to experience the work of emerging and established creatives, often collaborating with local galleries and artists.

Mapping Familiar Territories, Charting New Paths, the current exhibition on view, brings together the work of 11 contemporary artists who use the aesthetics and techniques of mapmaking to raise questions of identity, place, power, and climate change. Interested in both issues abroad and at home, here's a closer look at the 5 Oregon-based artists and the work that they have on view.

Epiphany Couch

Epiphany Couch is an artist and writer based in Portland, OR. Born and raised in Tacoma, WA, she draws on generational knowledge, storytelling, and the histories of the Pullyalup, Yakama, and Scandinavian peoples in the Pacific Northwest.

The Stars I Followed to Get Hereis a suite of nine watercolor paintings that use beads and thread to create imagined constellations. Each was created using a combination of archival materials, genealogical research, and family histories to trace the movement of Couch's ancestors throughout their lives. In an accompanying poem, she reflects on her relationship with her ancestors across time and space.

In Search of Watersimilarly reflects on Indigenous histories and Couch's ties to the land. Inspired by a trip to Puget Island, where she realized that much of the shoreline was inaccessible due to private property, this series meditates on the importance of water and waterways to historical and contemporary inhabitants. Using photographs of the local plants and surrounding waters, Couch cuts and collages images into patterns drawn from her ancestry. Each piece, named for a specific island significant to Indigenous cultures in the Pacific Northwest, features an embossed outline of the landmass-a subtle detail best viewed in person.

Michael Boonstra

Nearly two-thirds of Oregon's population lives in the Willamette River valley, including artist Michael Boonstra. With a practice defined by how humanity experiences landscape aesthetically, culturally, and scientifically, it is no surprise that he has made work that examines the long history of the Willamette, one of the most transformed and manipulated rivers in the Western United States.

In river channel / flood plain, Boonstra renders a 30-mile stretch of the Willamette River that he frequently drives past on his commute from Eugene to Corvallis, OR. The river is shown in negative, surrounded by sheets of mirrored aluminum, a deliberately chosen material that mimics how water responds to light, movement, and change.

One may also notice the small holes and arching lines that surround the Willamette. These empty spaces are holdovers from the artwork's first iteration as a drawing, which was made using pigment created from the rocks and soil along the banks of the river. These details, translated into the medium of sculpture, reflect the materiality of the original drawing. They also evoke the layered history of the river and the ancient Missoula Flood, which shaped much of the contemporary landscape of the Willamette River valley and Portland.

Colin Ives

Born to geographers, Colin Ives has long considered how humanity understands its place in the natural world. His artistic practice grounds him at the intersection of "art, technology, and ecology," and he often employs emerging technology in the creation of his work.

Ives's works in the exhibition tackle the topic of wildfires. Incident Table was created in the aftermath of the Holiday Farm Fire, which raged in 2020, only hours away from Eugene, OR, where the artist works and lives. Burning over 173,000 acres of land in the McKenzie River Valley, it is still one of the most destructive wildfires in Oregon history.

Using ethically salvaged wood from the burn site, Ives fabricated an incident map of the fire using a CNC machine, which carved the topography of the affected landscape. Ives presents this map in the form of a table-an ordinary object in the home-inviting you to reflect on how we increasingly live with wildfires and other climate events.

Brenda Mallory

When you walk into the museum, your eye may be drawn to the monumental mixed-media piece on the south wall: Old Homeplace. Artist Brenda Mallory, based in Portland, OR, typically works in the abstract; Old Homeplace, by contrast, is uncharacteristically representational. This monumental diptych, measuring fifteen feet tall, depicts the Cooweescoowee District, one of nine districts of the 19th-century Cherokee Nation, as it appeared on the allotment maps of the 1887 Dawes Act.

Roughly 40 years after the people of the Cherokee Nation were forcibly removed during the Trail of Tears, the Dawes Act was an effort by the U.S government to dictate land use and assimilate Native nations. Communal land was forcibly divided into individual plots of private property, as shown in the second half of the diptych. Mallory's grandmother's allotment, which was later repossessed, displacing the family, can be seen in this section.

The red half of the diptych depicts the landscape and waterways of the Cooweescoowee District as they appear naturally, unbounded and enduring. Reflecting on both personal and collective loss, Mallory highlights the long histories of Indigenous displacement and land dispossession, while also showcasing resilience and the hopeful belief that the land will endure.

Rick Silva

Oregon-based artist Rick Silva primarily works in video, using the medium to examine the environment and potential climate futures. He often employs advanced computer software, scanners, cameras, and editing programs to construct elaborate, lush digital landscapes that blur the boundaries between environment and simulation.

Dirt Nap, one of the artist's most recent projects, documents Silva's efforts to nap in 46 locations across the Western United States, encompassing Oregon, Washington, California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. Silva, always dressed in black, used drone cameras and tripods to capture himself asleep in various climates, landscapes, and seasons-each of which can be seen in a 1-minute long clip. Often hidden within or dwarfed by the expansive landscape, Silva raises questions about grief, our relationship with the land, and how we occupy it in the face of climate change.

All of these works and more can be seen in Mapping Familiar Territories, Charting New Paths, on view through April 25. As the academic art museum for Portland State, we are proud to offer free admission to all students, faculty, and staff, as well as the wider Portland community, and to provide a dedicated space for art to serve the city.

If you haven't been to the museum before, don't be shy and drop by! If you've already visited, take a look at our programming-something might catch your eye. Everyone is welcome, and there's always more to see.

PLAN A VISIT:

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University
Mapping Familiar Territories, Charting New Paths
On view through April 25, 2026

Tues - Saturday, 11-5, Thurs 11-7

FREE ADMISSION

1855 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201