The Architecture of Experience showcases the work of North Pole Studio artists Adam Richards and Deanna Weisenhaus. Their pieces interweave elements of language and structure, offering visual frameworks through which we make sense of our environments and lived experiences. This exhibition invites viewers to consider the personal architectures we construct to navigate the world. 

Get your Holiday shopping started at North Pole Studio’s Holiday Pop-Up Gallery & Shop: a festive marketplace of original creations by NPS artists.

From November 6-14, we will be taking over the vacant storefront below the studio to share some holiday magic! Original artwork, prints, NPS merch and of course: Davis Wohlford’s Misfit Toy collection will all be for sale.

Join us for the kick off event on November 6, from 5-9pm during First Thursday Artwalk in the Pearl. We’ll have snacks, a DJ, and lots of great artwork to purchase. What are the Holidays without a little bit of North Pole magic?!

Kickoff Event: November 6, 5-9pm
528 NW 11th Ave (just below North Pole Studio)
Holiday Shopping hours Nov 7-14 coming soon.

Gallery Shopping Hours: November 8-14
Saturday Nov 8th, 11-3pm
Monday-Friday Nov 10-14, 11-2pm

Future Mythologies: North Pole Studio Printmaking Residency at Mullowney Printing Company.

Future Mythologies presents the culminating body of work of a printmaking residency between 5 artists from North Pole Studio and the master printers at Mullowney Printing Company. From January through June of 2025, North Pole Studio artists Eva Adneral, Aaron Cunningham, Annie Rose Macer, Dan Tran, and Scott Tullock spent six months exploring distinct printmaking methods: monoprinting, etching/drypoint, linocut, screenprint, and letterpress. This residency expanded access to both tools and ideas, and prioritized discovery through making with an emphasis on reflection and critique that fostered a collective exchange. 

Artists experimented with each print method without a fixed outcome in mind, allowing the process to guide their understanding and outcome. Reflection and group dialogue after each round of printing opened up new approaches and interpretations, creating a ripple effect of shared ideas. The works emerging from this process showcase personal narratives that speak both to individual identities and collective imaginations. 

These prints speak a new symbolic language - reimagining folklore, identity, and storytelling through ink and impression. What emerges is not just technical accomplishment, but the forging of myth: layered, expressive works that look both backward and forward. 

This exhibit will open on Thursday, November 6 from 5-8 pm during First Thursday. 

Gallery hours: Thursday - Saturday: 12-5pm, Sunday 12-4pm

Joni Smith (b. 1955) is a prolific, entirely self-taught Portland artist who has been drawing since childhood. She has an extraordinary creative practice, sometimes drawing for over eight hours each day, often regardless of place and circumstance. Art-making is inextricable from Joni’s life – she creates at a drafting table in her art studio, nestled in a recliner in her living room, and even from the bed of a hospital room. For Joni, art is a primary communication tool. 

Over the course of her 60+ year art practice, she has filled hundreds of sketchbooks, frequently drawing on the front and back of each page. In 2021, Joni joined North Pole Studio where she began using an upright drafting table and tabletop easel, allowing her to access large-scale paper from her wheelchair and marking a significant phase-change in her creative practice. Using these tools, Joni continues to build an extensive collection of large-scale works, working across various sizes, paper textures and multiple mediums. 

Joni’s process is kinetic and expressive; she harnesses raw energy into mark-making that oscillates between sweeping, delicate linework to forceful, striking motions that can tear through the page. Seemingly guided by intuition, she draws in continuous, rhythmic movement while making instantaneous decisions about color as she adds layers to build each form. Joni’s process is episodic; themes in color and shape can be found throughout her work in sets or multiphase series. Joni’s most recent works showcase her exploration of an elegant arcing shape – variations of which take an almost shell or cloud-like form. In other works, undulating orbs are put in tension with one another, almost as if dualling, and in earlier works, Joni works across the perimeter of her page, giving the impression of a central magnetic force as each shape is drawn inward and towards one another.

Joni’s creative practice and collection of work has only become known to the public within the last 5 years, and this is the first solo exhibition of her work. 

Joni Smith: Markmaker opens on Thursday, October 2nd during First Thursday. The opening reception will be from 4-7pm with a short program at 5pm.

Join us for the opening of Joni Smith: Markmaker Thursday, October 2nd during First Thursday. The opening reception will be from 4-7pm with a short program at 5pm.

As part of his daily practice, Dan Tran draws a single invented symbol in one compartment of a self-made grid on sheets of standard copy paper (either 8.5” x 11” and 8.5” x 14”). He refers to this ongoing practice as “Calendars,” and works on multiple sheets with differing symbols simultaneously. Each consistent gesture marks the passage of time while gradually building a larger composition and a new visual record.

Dan draws deep inspiration from both world history and current events. Many of the colored symbols on his calendars, he explains, represent shields and crosses tied to events from the history of the Crusades. Others reflect the colors of national flags involved in present-day conflicts, such as the Ukrainian-Russian war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some symbols are known only to Dan himself. Interwoven with these symbols are Dan’s handwritten reminders of holidays, personal milestones, and significant dates in American history. 

Tracking shifts in response to news and public sentiment, Dan remains non-dogmatic and free from a fixed agenda. The symbols he creates reflect his fascination with both historical and contemporary events. By drawing different symbols across concurrently running calendars, Dan presents world history, current events and time in a linear yet layered three-dimensional conceptual form.

What starts as a routine action transforms into a reflection on process and transience. The work is fluid and multifaceted: part art-making, part record-keeping, part data visualization. It results not only in striking individual and collective compositions, but also in the creation of a system that expresses a private visual language offering insight into Tran’s relationship with time, history, memory, politics, and impermanence.

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between artist Dan Tran and the North Pole Studio team: Mary Ellen Andersen, Celeste Gutentag, Jade Novarino, and Exhibitions Manager Krista Gregory. The process began with over 1,000 sheets of paper, which Tran initially sorted into groups based on color and symbol. Krista Gregory then refined these groupings, taking into account the gallery space and overall exhibition design, before returning them to Tran. He arranged the final selections in chronological order, a sequence reflected in the exhibition’s layout. Each group’s composition is based on the number of sheets Tran used to explore the life of a particular symbol. Groups containing seven or more sheets are displayed in rows of seven, sometimes stacked, referencing Tran’s ongoing interest in the structure of the Western calendar.

Each grouping is titled according to the symbols’ lifespan.

Dan Tran | Calendars opens on Thursday, October 2nd during First Thursday from 6-9pm at after/time collective.