Oregon Origins Project VI
Artists and Presenters
Matthew Packwood
director/composer
Matthew is founder and executive director of Oregon Origins Project. He studied composition at Northwestern University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. His string quartet Oregon Origins: Seven Wonders had its album release in early 2024 and continues to be performed across the state. Other commissions include confrontation (2019) for Fear No Music and Wonderland Lullaby (2018) for the Oregon Symphony concert Musical Reflections of Oregon’s Ecosystem. For many years Matthew co-produced the WGBH Radio program of American classical music Art of the States, which received awards from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and National Endowment for the Arts. A Portland resident since 2007, Matthew currently works at Reed College.
Ian Madin
geologist
Ian grew up spending summers backpacking and rafting in California, Oregon, and Idaho. His love of the outdoors led him to study geology, earning a BA from UC Berkeley and MS from Oregon State University. In 1987 Ian began a long career at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) that included work on earthquake and landslide hazards and geologic mapping. For many years Ian served as DOGAMI’s Chief Scientist, with stints as Interim Director and Assistant Director until his retirement in 2022. Ian enjoys sharing his love of geology with others, working as a river guide and ride-along geologist for Cycle Oregon. Ian recently discovered a passion for stone carving and now spends way too much time in his studio, messing about with rocks collected from the wilds of Oregon.
Ken Selden
conductor
Ken Selden is the music director of the Portland State University Orchestra, a position he has held since 2006. In recent years, he has appeared as guest conductor of the Eugene, Newport, Oregon, and Vancouver Symphonies, as well as the Portland Chamber Orchestra, Salem Chamber Orchestra, Third Angle, Fear No Music, and Portland Youth Philharmonic. With the Martingale Ensemble, he has recorded two Mahler albums for MSR Classics and most recently a Piazzolla album with violinist Tomas Cotik for Naxos. Selden previously conducted orchestras of Baltimore, Denver, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ottawa, and Washington D.C., as well as orchestras in Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Romania, and Switzerland. He has also led student orchestras at Brooklyn College, Columbia University, Juilliard Pre-College, and San Francisco Conservatory. Selden has worked with composers Pierre Boulez, John Cage, and Tan Dun, and has conducted world premieres of music by Peter Lieberson, Michael Nyman, and Stephen Paulus.
Michael Boonstra
artist
Michael Boonstra is a visual artist based in Eugene, Oregon. For the last 20 years his creative practice has focused on how we see and experience landscape. He is interested in our immediate experience of sites as well as the way in which we perceive places over time. This can be as fleeting as a cloud breaking apart in a desert sky, as drawn out as spring snowmelt in the mountains, and as long as the geologic shifting of our planet. This broad perceptual gradient allows the use of varying materials, marks, and environmental ephemera; asking questions about our relationship to specific sites, our world, and each other. Recent awards include an Individual Visual Artist Fellowship and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission with project funding from the Ford Family Foundation. He has been an artist in residence at Playa, Djerassi, Caldera, Pine Meadow Ranch, and the Kesey Farm.
Christine Bourdette
artist
Christine Bourdette is a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes sculpture, drawing, prints, and installation. Always utilizing a wide repertoire of materials, her studio work has long been driven by notions of imbalance, fragility, and instability. In the last decade it has been informed by geologic features and fracturing earth, by the idea of the ground underfoot as terra mobilis rather than terra firma. She has completed public art commissions in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida, and has collaborated on visual design for performance, dance, and film. Bourdette earned her BA in Art from Lewis & Clark College and has been honored with solo exhibitions across the United States and in France, along with residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Playa, Caldera, Jentel, and at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, NM.
Claire Burbridge
artist
For as long as I remember my intention was to be an artist. Graduating in 1995, I received a BA Honors degree in Fine Art and History of Art from Magdalen College, Oxford University followed by an MFA in printmaking from Camberwell College of Art and Design, London. I have been a full- time practicing artist since graduation. In 2010 I emigrated to the USA from the UK and settled in Oregon where I began a deep study of nature, creating large-scale, complex and detailed mixed-media drawings, watercolors and installations specifically inspired by mycology, ecology, evolution and sustainability. My work is in many private, public, and museum collections in the United States and Europe. My work is presently represented by Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco, and Solway Gallery, Cincinnati. Previously having shown in galleries, group shows and Art fairs in London, Berlin and around the USA. In 2017 I diversified my art practice to include hand designed fine art wall-coverings. These were inspired in part by an affinity with the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement who believed in the importance of nature as inspiration.
Juniper Harrower
artist
Juniper Harrower’s research focuses on multispecies entanglements under climate change. Drawing from ecology, visual art, and the environmental humanities, she considers the ways that humans influence ecosystems while seeking solutions that protect at-risk species and center environmental justice. With a PhD in plant ecology, an MFA in art practice, and a teaching credential that focuses on education for multicultural classrooms, her artistic research practice crosses many disciplinary boundaries. Her work has been exhibited globally in museums and galleries and her published research and artistic creations have received wide exposure in popular media such as National Geographic, Kunstforum International, KCET Artbound, Atlas Obscura, the associated press, podcasts, music festivals and conferences. Harrower founded and directed the art+science initiative at UC Santa Cruz, has taught art at UC Berkeley, and is an assistant professor of studio art at Reed College.
James Lavadour
artist
Born in Pendleton, OR in 1951, James Lavadour is one of the Northwest’s most revered living painters. Lavadour’s family are descendants of the Walla Walla tribe, part of the modern day Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. He has lived and worked on the reservation in Northeastern Oregon as an enrolled tribal member for much of his life. In 1993, Lavadour and a group of supporters founded Crow’s Shadow Institute for the Arts, a not for profit print studio/arts organization that provides a creative conduit for social, economic, and educational opportunities to Native Americans through artistic development. Among the awards and fellowships Lavadour has received over the course of his career are the 2019 Hallie Ford Fellowship Award from The Ford Family Foundation, an Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from Eastern Oregon University, Eiteljorg Museum Artist Fellowship, Award for Visual Arts from the Flintridge Foundation, Joan Mitchell Award, Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Memorial Recognition Award, and numerous large commissions throughout the Pacific Northwest. Lavadour’s works are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Boise Art Museum, Crocker Art Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, The Hood Museum, The Heard Museum, the corporate collections of Bank of America and Microsoft, as well as numerous other public and private collections.
Daniela Naomi Molnar
artist
Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her paintings are created with pigments she has made from plants, bones, stones, rainwater and glacial melt. These pigments become palettes of place with which she investigates the earth’s capacity to remember and recreate. Her writing is created alongside the pigments and paintings; the practices overlap to create new ecologies—paintings, poems, books, exhibits, classes, and installations. The subject of a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times, a PBS Oregon Art Beat profile, an entry in the Oregon Encyclopedia, and a feature in Poetry Daily, her artwork has been shown and is in public and private collections internationally, and has been recognized by numerous grants, fellowships, and residencies. Her debut book CHORUS won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press’ 1st/2nd Book Award. Her next book is PROTOCOLS (Ayin Press, 2025).
sidony o’neal
artist
sidony o’neal is a conceptual artist and writer with a focus on post-digital and synthetic methods for the development of works. Engaging philosophies of translation, mathematics, and computing, o’neal’s approach prioritizes research, intuition, and interface among many types of objects and environments.
Sara Siestreem
artist
Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) is a master artist from the Umpqua River Valley on the South Coast of Oregon. She comes from a family of professional artists and educators; her training began in the home. Her mentor is Lillian Pitt (Wasco, Warm Springs, Yakama) and her weaving teachers are Greg Archuleta (Grand Ronde) and Greg A. Robinson (Chinook Nation). Siestreem graduated Phi Kappa Phi with a BS from PSU in 2005. She earned an MFA with distinction from Pratt Art Institute in 2007. She is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Her studio work is multi-disciplinary. Her primary language is painting, but she also works in photography, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, video, traditional Indigenous weaving, and large-scale installation. Her art practice branches into education and institutional reform and these concepts directly influence and are reflected in her artwork and public presence. She lives and works exclusively in the arts in Portland, Oregon.
Amanda Triplett
artist
Amanda Triplett is an intermedia artist and arts educator who practices, shows, and teaches in the Pacific Northwest. Using primarily recycled textiles, Amanda creates craft-based, fiber sculpture, performance, and installation about human relationships to biological, ecological, and cultural narratives. Currently Amanda is making work around the narratives of ecological hope and resilience. A recipient of numerous residencies, grants, and awards, Amanda has had the honor of working as an artist in residence at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR and the Mary Olson Farm in Auburn, WA. Amanda is a member of Shift Gallery in Seattle and practices and lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.
Leah Wilson
artist
Leah is a visual artist, educator, and outdoor enthusiast. She began interweaving her passion for rivers and whitewater kayaking into her creative practice in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, where she created a pivotal project influenced by the environmental decisionmaking processes of scientists and stakeholders during the Federal Energy Relicensing Commission’s assessment of the Yuba-Bear watershed. This experience and decades of wilderness exploration form the backbone that continues to inform her creative process. A 2012 artist residency at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascades introduced her to ecologists working on long-term studies and field research. Attracted by the enduring focus of inquiry into a specific place, she is now an episodic lifetime artist in residence at the Andrews Forest. Leah makes her home is Eugene, Oregon and teaches at Oregon State University.
Oregon Origins Project V
Artists and Culture Bearers
Beth’Ann Gipson
basketmaker
Cow Creek
Beth’Ann is a traditional basketmaker of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians (CCBUTI) in southern Oregon. She also makes powwow regalia, ceremonial regalia, ribbon skirts, and traditional jewelry, and is a singer and gatherer. She is the chairwoman of the annual South Umpqua Traditional Intertribal Powwow held in July. Beth’Ann has worked with a variety of master basketweavers from the Karuk and Yurok Tribes, whose traditional lands in northern California and southern Oregon border those of the CCBUTI. Master basketweavers Wilverna Reece, Alice Lincoln Cook, and Lena Herd are her mentors; she also studied with Dr. Margaret Matheson, who has been active in revitalizing Native basketmaking in western Oregon. A member of the California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA), Beth’Ann is involved in revitalization efforts for her tribe; between 2022-2024 she received Traditional Arts Recovery Program awards from the Oregon Folklife Network for mentorships, apprenticeships, and to help her people learn about their traditions. Gipson is currently working on a degree in ethnobotany and anthropology. She is proud to be carrying on basketmaking traditions that are gradually making their way back into her community.
Patricia Whereat Phillips
storyteller
Miluk Coos
Patty is a Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw traditional storyteller and language keeper, is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians. A 2015 Master Artist with the Oregon Folklife Network Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Patty learned tribal history and traditions from her father and other tribal elders. She has also authored a book on ethnobotany, Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians (Oregon State University Press, 2016) and is expanding her work to other tribal languages from her home by building wordlists of the Miluk Coos and Siuslaw languages. Patty is deeply committed to recovering, telling, and passing on traditional stories, including their performance context.
OSU Press: Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians
Acosia Red Elk
jingle dancer
Umatilla/Cayuse/Nez Perce
Acosia Red Elk is an enrolled member of the Umatilla tribe of northeastern Oregon. She is a ten-time world champion jingle dancer and world-renowned performing artist, and in 2024 received the Doris Duke Artist Award in Dance. She is also a yoga instructor, snowboarder, glass artist, cultural teacher, and wellness advocate. Acosia is known for public speaking, storytelling, tribal dance performance, Indigenizing fitness, teaching yoga from a tribal lens, and teaching powwow dance to tribal youth across Turtle Island. She is passionate about sharing the practice of yoga and universal movement as a way to heal from historical and intergenerational trauma. Acosia is the creator of Powwow/Yoga, a fusion practice that braids together tribal dancing and yoga for a well rounded workout with an Indigenous approach to wellness. She leads classes with a Seventh Generation approach, teaching that everything should be done with a sustainable mindset to protect what is sacred. Acosia encourages all people to recognize the Indigenous knowledge within them so that they can continue to build bridges and protect Earth’s resources for future generations.
Jacy Sohappy
seamstress
Cayuse/Nez Perce/Yakama
Jacy Sohappy, Taamamno Ilp Ilp (Red Hummingbird) is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation born and raised in the Mission/Pendleton area. She descends from the Cayuse, Nez Perce, and Yakama tribes, and grew up in the tribal longhouse, traveling Indian country on the powwow trail and medicine dances. Jacy learned how to preserve her cultural identity and teachings from her grandmother, Loretta “Lonnie” Alexander (Pinkham), following in her footsteps as a gatherer, seamstress, and painter. She is dedicated to preserving her culture for future generations and creating with good intentions for those that will wear her creations. Her creative outlets include sewing, beading, traditional clothing for the longhouse and ceremonies, and contemporary styles for everyday wear. Jacy is the Traditional Arts Manager at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.
Oregon Origins Project IV
Artists and Presenters
Sara Jean Accuardi
playwright
Sara is an award-winning playwright whose work has been seen at Shaking the Tree Theatre, Vivid Stage, Theatre Vertigo, PlayMakers Repertory Company, the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Spooky Action Theater, The Blank Theatre, and Victory Gardens, among others. She has received the Oregon Book Award for Drama, Drammy Award for Outstanding Original Script, Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship for Drama, and she was the winner of the Inaugural International Thomas Wolfe Playwriting Competition. Sara Jean is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and LineStorm Playwrights. She holds an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University.
Josie Seid
director
Josie is an all-around storyteller who is active in several aspects of theater making, working as an actor/singer, director, playwright, and teacher. She has directed productions in Portland including two world premieres: Hazardous Beauty with PassinArt and A Dark Sky Full of Stars with Vertigo. She is a proud member of the LineStorm Playwrights collective as well as the ART Playwrights group Squabble and Throb. Most recently, Anonymous Theater produced her collaborative work Fezziwig's Fortune with fellow LineStorm playwright Sara Jean Accuardi in 2022. She has produced several works in partnership with Linestorm, including the short plays Jordan’s Wisdom and The Portland Colored School: A Lesson in Reading Between the Lines. Her plays have been featured in Profile Theater’s 24 hour short play festivals, the Fertile Ground Festival, Reading Parlor, and Play At Home Project. Her short film Being Me in the Current America is a multiple award winner in festivals around the world. Josie is a resident artist with Artists Repertory Theater and has performed in shows with them as well as Shaking the Tree, Broadway Rose Theater Company, Vanport Mosaic Festival, and Portland Actors Ensemble. She is an international arts envoy for the United States and has performed in Egypt, representing the United States in the International CIFCET Theater Festival.
Taya Dixon
actor
Taya (Alsea/Tututni/Chetco/Sixes) received her BFA in Performance from Southern Oregon University. She is very excited to be a part of this new work for Oregon Origins Project, and to get a chance to create and play with some new artists and friends. Audiences may have seen her most recently in Our Utopia (as Columbia) at Bag&Baggage. Other recent shows include: Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV pt. 1-2 and Henry V, and Two Gentlemen of Verona at Original Practice Shakespeare; The Muskrat, 12 Angry Indians, and Butterfly for the Yale Indigenous Playwright Festival; and Hedda Gabler, Love's Labour's Lost, Silkworms, and Into the Woods at the Oregon Center for the Arts. Taya is currently working in education as a substitute teacher for the Hillsboro School District, and absolutely loves it. She loves singing, photography, and improv/sketch comedy, as she loves making people laugh and telling meaningful stories. She would like to thank her family for always telling her to reach for her dreams.
Mandy Khoshnevisan
technical director
Mandy is a multifaceted theater artist based in Portland, dedicated to creating wonder and delight, and helping people tap into their artistic potential. Over the past 25 years, she has taught theater arts to innumerable children ages preschool through high school, as well as created theater both improvised and scripted for and with adults. In the Portland area, her professional stage career has included work as an actor, improviser, voiceover artist, burlesque host, puppeteer, director, and choreographer; and as a designer of lights, costumes, sets, sound, and projections. She is currently the Technical Director, and a member of the resident artist company, at Bag&Baggage Productions in Hillsboro. In 2017, she published her first book, Managed Mischief, about improvisation and creativity. At home, she maintains an excess of books, art supplies, and impractical musical instruments.
Riley Lozano
stage manager
Riley Lozano is a Chicana storyteller, actor, dancer and stage manager. Working mostly behind the scenes, she helps facilitate and organize new works within the fat, queer, and BIPOC communities in Portland. Some of her favorite credits include dancing in Weighted Bodies, producing Dearest Eva for the big screen, and co-writing and performing in Not Coming Back — a comedy music video — with her best friend. Her hands are still bloody from playing Agave in The Bacchae. During her apprenticeship at the Portland Playhouse she wrote and starred in her solo show, Riley’s Radical Radiant Irreverent Radio show. She is a producer and deviser with Kryptic Films. Recently she stage managed for Hand2Mouth’s Time & Time Again. Over the summer she performed in Witch Hunt Theatre’s The Last Dance.
Nikko Macklin
assistant stage manager
Nikko Macklin is a theater maker passionate about arts, community organizing, and story, and the intersections between them. Nikko uses creative practice as a means to open the imagination and cultivate connection and understanding for impact. Recently, Nikko served as a stage manager for the world premiere of Tunnel City by Gray Ashford, and served as a backstage production assistant for the world premiere of Awe/Struck by Christopher Oscar Peña. Nikko would like to thank all of the teachers and artists who have shared their wisdom with her.
Maia McCarthy
actor
Maia McCarthy is an actor, teaching artist, and facilitator who loves nothing better than working with other artists to tell stories in real time. They have recently worked with H2M, Fuse, The Reformers, and Crave Theatre. One of their favorite experiences last year was opening The Common Opus composed by Emily Lau and premiered at the Winningstad Theatre in July 2023. They are so happy to be a part of Oregon Origins Project IV: Convergence and have the opportunity to collaborate with this phenomenal group of people.
Daniele McKay
geologist
Daniele is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oregon. She lives in Bend, Oregon and teaches online geology courses throughout the academic year, and field courses in central Oregon during the summer. Her research background is in physical volcanology with a focus on recent mafic eruptions in the central Oregon Cascades. She is also interested in how societies prepare for and respond to natural disasters, especially volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. She has worked with Deschutes County, the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience, and the Red Cross on natural hazard preparedness and mitigation in central Oregon.
Jim O’Connor
geologist
Jim is a Research Geologist in the US Geological Survey’s Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center. He chiefly works on the geology and geomorphology of the Pacific Northwest. Jim majored in Geological Science at University of Washington and earned his MS and PhD degrees at the University of Arizona. Since 1991, he has worked at the US Geological Survey, intent on improving understanding of the processes and events that shape the remarkable and diverse landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.
Jayna Sweet
actor
Jayna is a Portland-based actor, writer, and producer, originally from Phoenix and Los Angeles. Recent notable stage credits include The Lightning Thief at Oregon Children’s Theatre, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Red Velvet at Bag&Baggage, Blithe Spirit at Lakewood Theatre Company, and Proof at Gallery Theatre, where her portrayal of Catherine earned her the BroadwayWorld Regional Award for Best Performer in a Play. With a decade-long film and TV career in Los Angeles, Jayna contributed to projects like Lemonade Mouth, Turnt (40 episodes on Facebook), and the award-winning pilot No Place to Fall. As the Artistic Director of Stomping Grounds Arthouse, Jayna uplifts emerging artists and writers, fulfilling her lifelong dream of nurturing talent. Additionally, she endeavors to enrich the lives of young artists through teaching at Oregon Children’s Theater.
Oregon Origins Project III
Artists and Culture Bearers
Hii-ne Jake DePoe
multidisciplinary artist
Yashuwe’ Tututni Dené
Hii-ne Jake A. DePoe (she/her) is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon and a direct descendant of the Rogue Tututni-Dee-ni’ village of T’cemetunne at the mouth of that river into the Pacific Ocean. She is an artist writer and community advocate for Indigenous, queer, and neurodivergent issues, as well a board member for NAIC (Northwest American Indian Coalition). Hii-ne’s mission in the Dee-ni’ Indigenous creative world and the greater native west Americas is to bring light and visibility to the beautiful, artistic, creative, regionally massive and wholly unique culture of her peoples, the Dee-ni’. Huu-cha~’.
Oregon Origins Project II
Artists and Presenters
Matthew Packwood
director/composer
Matthew is founder and executive director of Oregon Origins Project. He studied composition at Northwestern University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. His string quartet Oregon Origins: Seven Wonders had its album release in early 2024 and continues to be performed across the state. Other commissions include confrontation (2019) for Fear No Music and Wonderland Lullaby (2018) for the Oregon Symphony concert Musical Reflections of Oregon’s Ecosystem. For many years Matthew co-produced the WGBH Radio program of American classical music Art of the States, which received awards from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and National Endowment for the Arts. A Portland resident since 2007, Matthew currently works at Reed College.
Makino Hayashi
choreographer
Makino is a choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker based in Portland. She was born in Kumamoto, Japan where she began ballet at Kumamoto Ballet Studio at the age of nine. She danced professionally with Colorado Ballet from 2002-2008, has guested with several companies in the US and Japan, and has been dancing with Oregon Ballet Theatre since 2010. She has been choreographing professionally since 2013. Recent works include The Message 2022 for the Artists Climate Collective Art 2 Action; and Beauty in you (2022) for the BB Dance Film Fest in Boulder, CO; and KIZUNA (2021) for the Portland City Arts Program’s Ten Tiny Community Healing Dances.
Keiko Araki
violin
A native of Vancouver, BC, Keiko was inspired to begin violin lessons at age seven after seeing Itzhak Perlman on Sesame Street. She received her BM from the Vancouver Academy of Music and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where she was a member of the Peabody Camerata contemporary music ensemble. Her primary teachers were Lawrie Hill, Gwen Thompson, and Herbert Greenberg. Keiko is a member of the Oregon Symphony, Fear No Music, and Portland Taiko.
Maia Hoffman
viola
Maia has performed with the Oregon Symphony since 2021. Originally from Portland, she grew up playing in the Portland Youth Philharmonic and studied with Joël Belgique and Brian Quincey. Maia earned her BM and completed one year of a Professional Studies degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Robert Vernon and Stanley Konopka. Passionate about historical performance, Maia also studied baroque viola with Julie Andrijeski at Case Western Reserve University and has performed with Apollo’s Fire and the Oregon Bach Festival.
Christopher Kaiser
dancer
Christopher is from Los Angeles, where he trained at Los Angeles High School for the Arts. Afterward, he was accepted to The Juilliard School, where he graduated with a BFA and danced in the Edinburgh International Festival. He danced with Alberta Ballet for three seasons before joining Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2016, where he was promoted to soloist in 2021. He has enjoyed performing roles such as Nacho Duato’s Gnawa, William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman, Nicolo Fonte’s Left Unsaid and Giants Before Us, and Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella as a Step Sister.
Isaac Lee
dancer
Isaac was born in Billings, Montana and started dancing after moving to Eugene, Oregon at the age of 12. He began training at the Oregon Ballet Academy under John Grensback, and later danced with Eugene Ballet Academy in their pre-professional program. He attended Houston Ballet Academy’s summer intensive and pre-professional training program between 2017-19. Isaac performed with Syracuse City Ballet and Eugene Ballet Company before joining Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2021.
Jessica Lind
dancer
Jessica is from San Jose, California, where she began training at Dance Theatre International. Following one year at San Francisco Ballet School, she joined OBT in 2011 and has served as principal dancer since 2022. Her favorite OBT performances include William Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, George Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Nicolo Fonte’s Left Unsaid, and Trey McIntyre’s Robust American Love.
Michael Linsmeier
dancer
Michael was raised on a family dairy farm in Cato, Wisconsin. He trained at Jean Wolfmeyer School of Dance and at Virginia School of the Arts under Petrus Bosman. He joined Milwaukee Ballet before joining OBT’s corps de ballet (2011) and was later promoted to soloist (2013).
Ian Madin
geologist
Ian grew up spending summers backpacking and rafting in California, Oregon, and Idaho. His love of the outdoors led him to study geology, earning a BA from UC Berkeley and MS from Oregon State University. In 1987 Ian began a long career at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) that included work on earthquake and landslide hazards and geologic mapping. For many years Ian served as DOGAMI’s Chief Scientist, with stints as Interim Director and Assistant Director until his retirement in 2022. Ian enjoys sharing his love of geology with others, working as a river guide and ride-along geologist for Cycle Oregon. Ian recently discovered a passion for stone carving and now spends way too much time in his studio, messing about with rocks collected from the wilds of Oregon.
Valdine Ritchie Mishkin
cello
Valdine performs with Third Angle New Music, Fear No Music, 45th Parallel, Portland Cello Project, Duo Apaixionado, and on occasion with the Oregon Symphony. A champion of new music, she has premiered works by composers John Luther Adams, Kenji Bunch, Nancy Ives, and Karim Al-Zand. Beginning studies at age three and making her solo debut at age 10 with the Winnipeg Symphony, she has since performed concerti with the Sunnyside Symphony, Chehalem Symphony, and Mercury Ensemble. Valdine is on faculty at Reed College, has a private studio, and serves as an adjudicator, coach, clinician, and conference presenter. She holds degrees from Rice University under Lynn Harrell and Norman Fischer, and McGill University under Antonio Lysy.
Inés Voglar Belgique
violin
Inés studied music under “El Sistema” and came to the US States in 1996 to complete her BM and MM from Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon Universities. She is in her 14th season with Fear No Music, and served as its Artistic Director from 2005-2011. She joined the Oregon Symphony in 2004, and in 2012 became its Assistant Principal Second Violin. Inés is a faculty member at Lewis & Clark College and Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, conductor of the Portland Youth String Ensemble since 2015, and member of the Palatine Piano Trio. Her most influential teachers were Roberto Valdes and Andrés Cárdenes. Since 2018 Inés has been a part of Venezuela’s Voice in Oregon, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing aid to centers in need in Venezuela.
Oregon Origins Project I
Artists and Culture Bearers
Aiyanna Brown
musician, storyteller
Komemma Kalapuya/Hanis Coos
Aiyanna is a descendant of the Komemma Kalapuya and Hanis Coos tribes and a member of the Confedered Tribes of Siletz Indians. She has been actively involved in preserving the Kalapuya language through a new dictionary and language lessons.
Jake DePoe
multidisciplinary artist
Yashuwe’ Tututni Dené
Jake A. DePoe is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon and a direct descendant of the Rogue Tututni-Dee-ni’ village of T’cemetunne at the mouth of that river into the Pacific Ocean. She is an artist writer and community advocate for Indigenous, queer, and neurodivergent issues, as well a board member for NAIC (Northwest American Indian Coalition). Jake’s mission in the Dee-ni’ Indigenous creative world and the greater native west Americas is to bring light and visibility to the beautiful, artistic, creative, regionally massive and wholly unique culture of her peoples, the Dee-ni’. Huu-cha~’.
Fred A. Hill, Sr. (Táwtalikš)
singer
Umatilla/Cayuse/Yakama/Nez Perce
Fred was born in Pendleton and raised by grandparents and an uncle after his parents died in his infancy. Raised in Pilot Rock, his grandmother, Annie Jo, spoke to him in the Umatilla Yakama dialects and the Nez Perce language. Fred said when he started public school he knew little English and focused intently on mastering the language. Due to racial tension he left Pilot Rock to attend the Chemewa boarding school in Salem. There he had the opportunity to get back into traditional drumming and singing, run cross country and play basketball. Before returning to the Umatilla Reservation, Fred attended colleges in Salem, Lawrence, Kansas, and Santa Fe and lived on the Yakama Reservation where he married.
A teacher at Nixyaawii Community School in Pendleton and editor of a Umatilla dictionary, Fred shares his knowledge of language, singing, drumming, and traditional culture with his students. An avid big drum powwow singer and longhouse religious singer, Fred is often asked to conduct naming, first deer or elk killed, or fish salmon caught ceremonies. A self-described, “happy husband, happy grandfather,” Fred is an avid reader of history and is delving into his family’s early history. He is a known presence at the Homeland Project’s Tamkaliks and attends other celebrations as a drummer and singer.
Justin Quaempts
mixed media artist
Cayuse/Walla Walla
Justin Quaempts is an Indigenous/Native American self-taught mixed media artist who specializes in freehand spray paint/graffiti-style abstract art. Justin was born and raised on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon, and after a great life journey off-reservation for a few years, it’s where he and his family still reside today. A former Major League Baseball draft pick of the Texas Rangers, NCAA Division I baseball player, and graduate from Oklahoma State University, Justin currently coaches softball for Pendleton High School, and gives private lessons as a hitting coach as well.
Shannin Stutzman
musician, storyteller
Komemma Kalapuya/Hanis Coos
Shannin was raised in the traditions of her ancestors, the Komemma Kalapuya and Hanis Coos. Stutzman has a lifetime of experience in education and traditional youth summer camp administration. She serves as the cultural director for a Native American youth camp and has given presentations on Kalapuya history, singing, drumming, and storytelling in schools, universities, and libraries for over 20 years. She is deeply involved in the Kalapuya Language project, serving as curriculum writer and researcher.
Wilson Wewa
storyteller
Northern Paiute/Palouse
Wilson Wewa has been involved with tribal language, culture, and lifeways throughout his life. He was raised on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon. As a child he spent countless hours hearing the stories of his family, tribe, and past lifeways as they pertained to his life. Later, Wilson traveled extensively with his family and especially his grandmother to other parts of the Great Basin where he met many other Northern Paiute elders that added to his knowledge of his people. He continues to be called upon by his people as an orator, storyteller, and funerary officiate. Wilson works for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs as the Senior Wellness Coordinator, a position he has held since 1980, and is consulted by other tribes and organizations in the United States on elders’ issues. More recently, he was invited as a guest lecturer to the prestigious College of William & Mary in Virginia to speak on Native American issues that related to health, spirituality, environment, and treaty rights as they pertain to water and land. He also works with the University of Oregon and Oregon State University as a consultant on Northern Paiute history and ethnobotany. Recently, he wrote a book entitled Legends of the Northern Paiute, which was printed by Oregon State University Press and is being sold through Amazon. Wilson continues to be called to lecture at museums and venues around the Northwest.
Justin Quaempts, If the mountains could talk (2021-22) [detail]