Bean Gilsdorf is an artist and writer. Her studio practice reanimates cultural figures from history books, turning flat images into collaged three-dimensional forms that are further détourned through draping, stuffing, and compressing. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Wattis Institute, and exhibition spaces in England, Italy, China, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and South Africa. In her writing, Gilsdorf frequently addresses issues connected to feminism, gender, and the socioeconomic conditions of artistic labor. Her essays have been published in Artforum, Art in America, and Frieze, among others. Recent awards include an Oregon Arts Commission Artist Fellowship (2024), a Ford Family Foundation Fellowship Residency at Ucross (2023), a Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2020), Fulbright Fellowships to Poland (2015–2016 and 2016–2017), and a Graduate Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts (2011–2012).

Our 2025 Jury

Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA from Vassar College, an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MA from the University of Bergen in Norway. Her interdisciplinary art practice explores the ruptured space between the subjectivity and objectivity of the Black female body. She has been the recipient of the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Centrum’s Emerging Artist Residency, Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship, Performance Works NW Alembic Artist Residency and an Artist Trust Fellowship Award.  Jaleesa also works as Curatorial Coordinator in the Curatorial Department at the Portland Art Museum, where she initiated and curates an ongoing exhibition series titled Conductions: Black Imaginings. Her curatorial interests and research include the residual imprint of ephemeral works in institutional spaces, with a focus on Black performance work.

photo of Kanani Miyamoto in front of her botanical window mural. Photo by Mario Gallucci

Kanani Miyamoto holds an MFA in Print Media from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and a bachelor's degree in Art Practices from Portland State University. She is an artist, curator, and educator whose artwork has been shown nationally. She is originally from Honolulu, Hawai`i, and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Miyamoto is an individual of mixed heritage who identifies most with her Hawaiian and Japanese roots. Essential to her work as an artist is sharing and celebrating her mixed background in contemporary art to represent her community and the beauty of intersectional identities. Miyamoto is a printmaker who uses traditional printmaking techniques to create large-scale print installations.

More than just an artist, Miyamoto is a dedicated advocate for art education and a fervent community worker. Her role as the Art Coordinator for p:ear, a drop-in youth center that creatively mentors homeless youth, is a testament to her commitment to using art for social change and empowerment. 

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose, Schwegler resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Art Forum, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.


MFA:NW organizing team

  • Georgina Ruff

    Art Historian with a mission to connect new artists and arts communities. I started MFA:NW because I believe art is best when experienced and even better with conversation.

  • Areca H'lael Smit

    Professional creative with an interest in all things radical.

  • Sarah Russell

    Maker, viewer and reader of art.

  • Lathe Pattern 28 Edward J. Woolsey 1869

    Collaborators

    Jurors, Handlers, Artists. MFA:NW needs collaborators and looks forward to crediting them here. If you’re interested in getting involved, please send us a note through the contact form.