Moon Rabbit, February 17–May 10

Read more from the exhibition Curator, Morgan Ritter, in the Moon Rabbit Exhibition Statement (PDF).

Ash Wyatt’s stoic imagery, made from soft materials such as horsehair, wool, cotton, and vintage linens, appears spacious and gestural yet methodical within the painstaking processes of tufting and embroidery. At the root of her artwork is a deep connection to ancestry and nature. In her handwork, she sees her mother and grandmother's hands. The piece La Montaña en La Otro translates to English as The Mountain in the Other and speaks to the deep psychological work she is enmeshed in as a student earning her Master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Portland State University. In a recent conversation with Wyatt, she suggested that getting lost while doing her work was a sign she was going in the right direction. 

While Wyatt’s work transforms the soft into the heavy, Jean Isamu Nagai’s ethereal pointillistic color field paintings are gritty by the integration of pumice. Each dot within Nagai’s paintings represents a moment in time, amassing into a vibrating field of interconnected points. The dots float above fluid background gradients. Subtle connections to the natural environment imbue this seemingly non-representational work with inferences of ant colonies and mycorrhizal mushroom networks. Nagai sometimes combines mushroom spores into his paint mediums, and in the past, he has even listed smog as media in his work. Nagai shares that his inclusion of pumice “relates to the thin layer of earth of the Pacific Rim and the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped string of volcanoes, mountains, and oceanic trenches that connects Japan and the west coast of the United States.” Nagai’s inquiries are mystic and scientific. 

More about the Artists

Ash Wyatt (b.1985 Spokane, WA) is a primarily self taught bi-racial Mexican American Indigenous artist. From Spokane, currently living in Portland, Oregon, she is an early career artist who has done some exciting collaborations with woman owned ceramic studio and workshop, The Granite, and handcrafted tile manufacturer, Tempest Tile Works. She has multiple pieces within the Regional Art & Culture Council’s Public Art Collection in Portland. Ash has recently completed a large-scale commission at a new luxury high-rise building in Portland, and is pursuing her Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Portland State University.

See more from the artist: @ghost_tooth & ashwyatt.com

Jean Isamu Nagai (b. 1979 in Seattle, WA) is a self-taught artist who spent much of his upbringing in Olympia, Washington, and more recently spent the last few years in New Mexico before relocating to Los Angeles. He received a Bachelor’s Degree from Evergreen State College. His work has been shown frequently on the West Coast.

See more from the artist: @jean_nagai & jeannagai.com

Special Thanks

The Arts Council of Lake Oswego would like to thank the artists Jean Isamu Nagai and Ash Wyatt for their brilliant work in this show. Additionally, this exhibition could not have been possible without the generous support and guidance from Framing Resource and Josh Ott.

If you’re interested in more information on the artwork in Moon Rabbit, please reach out to us at artscouncillo@gmail.com.