For Black Girls to Bloom

Collaborative ceramic tile installation with KinCultivate girls and community aunties

On View July 7 – August 1, 2026

Reception: Thursday, July 9, 5:30 – 6:30 PM in the Main Gallery

About the Exhibition

Rooted in Oregon’s Mid-Willamette Valley, KinCultivate is a Black-led organization supporting Black youth and their families. Developed through KinCultivate’s spring girls group, For Black Girls to Bloom features garden-inspired ceramic tiles and vibrant self-portraits by elementary-aged Black girls from Linn and Benton counties. Set among these works are ivory-colored tiles created by adult supporters and community aunties, quietly reflecting the protection and collective care that surround the young artists. 

Realized in partnership with Maxtivity Creative Space for Community Arts, the project reflects KinCultivate’s mission in practice, honoring the beauty of Black girls’ becoming and the community responsibility required to nurture and sustain their growth.

Veruca’s Daughters

Erika Rier

Corrine Woodman Gallery

June 30 – July 25, 2026

Workshop with the Artist July 25-26, 2026, 1- 5 PM

About the Exhibition

Erika Rier is a Portland based artist creating work that tells feminine stories, and examines changing expectations of the way feminine people are depicted as subjects within art. While masculine perspectives are often centered within the Art world, Rier explicitly celebrates the feminine in order to prove feminine stories are universal.

Veruca’s Daughters is a series of ceramics that dives into the thought  of whether art can be joyful and frivolous at this present moment in time. Must every work be a deeply meaningful commentary on the world or is it enough that it makes the viewer smile for a moment?

Artist Interview

TAC curator, Jennie Castle had the pleasure of catching up with Erika Rier prior to the installation of Veruca’s Daughters. Take a listen!

About the Artist

Erika Rier is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist creating mostly ceramics and art zines in a style she calls folk surrealism. Writing was her first love, and she still secretly writes stories. Having lived in Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, NYC, Arizona, and Washington, Erika now resides in Portland, OR. She also has one of each of the following: a husband, a daughter, and a cat she found in a hallway.

Love Rier’s work? She is teaching a 2-day workshop at The Arts Center July 25 – 26, 2026. Learn more or sign up here!

Looking for Pattern

Bruce Osen

Corrine Woodman Gallery

June 2 – 27, 2026

Meet the artist during CAW, June 18, 5:30 – 7 PM

Thank you to The Arbitrary who will be pouring wine during the June CAW.

About the Exhibition

Bruce Osen has ambivalent feelings regarding tourism, and yet he participates. He is curious about the world and its landscape, both familiar and exotic, the way people live and how they lived in the past, and the material residue of those lives. But, he also sees that our mere presence, and the engines that deliver us, can damage or destroy the very thing we want to experience.

Looking for Pattern is an effort to distill fragments of life, and try to make sense experiences, memories and images. In this exhibition, Osen submits a modest assemblage as a mini tour- sort of a painting version of “My Summer Vacation”. So, relax, stay hydrated, be sure to wear comfortable shoes, and please, be back on the bus at the appointed time.

Artist Interview

TAC curator, Jennie Castle had the pleasure of catching up with Bruce Osen prior to the installation of Looking for Pattern. Take a listen!

About the Artist

Bruce Osen graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Pennsylvania State University. He lived in Pennsylvania, Brazil, West Virginia, Japan, and Kansas, before moving with his wife and daughter to Corvallis, Oregon, in 1990. His creative focus during his career has been the design of quality, small-scale living environments, emphasizing land, resource, and energy conservation. Along the way he has learned a great deal and forgotten more as an owner-builder of two house renovations and one from-the-ground-up family home. A decade long stint volunteering with the City of Corvallis Planning Commission and Historic Preservation efforts helped him understand how the design of the larger community affects quality of life, and the importance of participation in the democratic process.

In the last six years Bruce has shifted the focus of his aesthetic efforts to painting and the two dimensional surface. He thinks of himself as an emerging late career artist.

The Frimpong Case

Vincent Frimpong

The Arts Center Main Gallery

May 21 – July 3, 2026

Opening Reception and Panel Discussion: May 21, 5:30 – 7 PM

Main Gallery Clothing Swap – Saturday, June 27, 12 – 5 PM. Drop off dates: June 23 – 26, 12 – 5 PM.

About the Exhibition

Vincent Frimpong uses mixed media installation to confront social and environmental issues caused by the massive amounts of textile waste produced by the western world. Specifically the work in The Frimpong Case, “A Common Hope for Tomorrow”, was created using shoes that would otherwise end up in West African landfills. The project employed friends and family living in Ghana, and showcases the human hand as a tool to explore what it means to be an African.

“The western world brings all unwanted trash to places like Africa, as both a way to make profit and get rid of the responsibility of alleviating permanent waste”, Frimpong explained. “As a boy I had learned how to reuse what was in my environment to survive, as did my family and neighbors, so I took it upon myself to use my practice as a way to help better the lives and environment of people in my town of Kumasi while giving the objects back to the western world after turning them into art”.

Panel Discussion

The Frimpong Case opens with an expert panel discussing the social and environmental strains caused by textile chains, both on a local and global scale. The talk starts at 6 PM. Arrive early to experience the exhibition by Vincent Frimpong. Food and drinks will be provided.

• Leslie Davis Burns, Ph.D. – Former President, Responsible Global Fashion LLC andProfessor Emerita, Oregon State University
• Dazie Carnes – Vina Moses Center Volunteer Manager
• Tiga Evans – The Cat’s Meow Thrift Store Manager
• Ann Morey Ross – The Arc Thrift Stores General Manager

About the Artist

Vincent Frimpong is a contemporary ceramic artist from Accra, Ghana. He holds an M.F.A. in Ceramics Art from the University of Arkansas and a B.A. in Industrial Arts (Ceramics Option) from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. His work has been exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including A labor of love at the Poole Gallery, University of Montevallo (Birmingham, AL), Beyond the Single at the Shircliff Gallery of Art (Vincennes, IN), and The Frimpong Case Continued at the Hall Gallery, Millsaps College (Jackson, MS).

Frimpong’s research and creative practice have been supported by several fellowships and awards, including the 2025 NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship, Amaco Fellowship at Archie Bray Foundation, and the 2025 Rudy Autio Endowed Fund for Creatives. He has also received the Windgate Accelerator Grant (University of Arkansas), the Artists 360 Practicing Artist Grant (Walton Arts Foundation), the CXF MARs Award (The Medium / CACHE), the Zenobia Award (Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts), the Windgate University Fellowship (Arrowmont), the Maxwell-Hanrahan Fellowship (Haystack), the John Glick Scholarship (Penland), and awards from CIRCA and the Midsouth Sculpture Alliance. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Art at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Landscapes Reimagined

Philip Stork

Corrine Woodman Gallery

April 28 – May 30, 2026

Meet the Artist Thursday, May 21, 5:30 – 7 PM, during the Corvallis Arts Walk

About the Exhibition

Through layered compositions, Philip Stork aims to suggest a sense of movement through space and time, which inspired the title of his exhibition Landscapes Reimagined. Although the images emerge from his imagination, they are greatly influenced by colors and landscapes he has encountered while traveling.

Stork works with pastels and pencil to explore abstract landscapes and expansive color fields. He often draws lines into the surface to create structure—an underlying framework that both supports and contrasts with the openness of the color. Pastels allow him to create subtle hues without constraints as he builds nuanced, shifting hues without being bound to specific figures or literal forms.

Featured image: Mountain Pass, Pastel, 24 x 30″,  2024

About the Artist

Potential Spam

Corrine Woodman Gallery II

Exhibition Dates: April 7 – May 2, 2026

Reception: Thursday, April 16, 5:30 – 7 PM

Exhibition Details

Potential Spam is an annual exhibition in the Corrine Woodman II Gallery at The Arts Center in Corvallis, OR. All artists who submit will be shown in the exhibition, as long as they follow submission guidelines. The Arts Center will not sell zines; however, artists may include a QR code linking to their own sales website.

About the Juror

Erika Rier is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist creating mostly ceramics and art zines in a style she calls folk surrealism. She has been self-publishing comics and visual narrative zines since she was a teenager which means for about 35 years. Currently her focus is on making books that have experimental formats which include hand-cut pages, fold-out pages, and even some pop-ups. While on the surface her work can seem whimsical and lighthearted, deeper exploration reveals political and social issues examined through a colorful, metaphorical lens. In addition to self-publishing comics, Erika’s work has be in a few local, PNW anthologies dealing with social issues like sexual assault, houselessness, and women’s reproductive experiences.

Animal Husbandry

Ketzia Schoneberg

March 31 – April 25, 2026

Corrine Woodman Gallery

Reception: Thursday, April 16, 5:30 – 7 PM

About the Exhibition

Ketzia Schoneberg’s mixed media paintings and drawings constitute a temporal self-portraiture, depicting animals and the female figure within a psychospiritual framework and an expanded notion of species sentience. These feminist works combine elements from her active dream life, longstanding meditation & visualization practices, cultural background and familial relationships to create a complex interplay of intimate scenes. She frequently investigates movement-based plays of power, the erotic and sensuality, while offering novel perspectives on the labor of motherhood. 

Animal imagery functions on several levels in her work. The figures are avatars – the manifestation of an embodied deity or the expression of a person, an emotion, or an idea. They are presented close to one another and to the human characters in an intimate fashion as the friend, the child, the familiar or the lover. She suggests an interrelationship with animals in her work free of customary hierarchies, pointing to our shared sentience, origin, and fate. This element of her work is a deeply personal response to the climate crisis, global deforestation and species extinction.

Using strong, layered mark making and active brush work, she underscores motion as a central concern of her practice, with most of her images combining abstraction and figuration. She uses acrylic paint, wax crayons, grease pencils, colored pencils, charcoal, chalk pastel, graphite and ink in her pieces, along with a variety of substrates including translucent and opaque Dura-lar, stretched and unstretched canvas, museum board and toned papers.

Artist Interview

TAC curator, Jennie Castle had the pleasure of catching up with Ketzia Schoneberg prior to the installation of Animal Husbandry. Take a listen!

About the Artist

Ketzia Schoneberg is a contemporary visual artist, classical violinist and college professor whose mixed media paintings and drawings are exhibited internationally. Her instinctual artworks function as temporal self-portraiture, depicting animals and the female figure within a psychospiritual framework and an expanded notion of species sentience.

In 2025 the artist was awarded a Career Opportunity Grant from the Ford Family Foundation. She has been a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow and a Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture Artist-in-Residence. Schoneberg’s works were included in both the 2025 Artworks Northwest Biennial and the Around Oregon Biennial. Her one-woman show, Animal Husbandry opens at the Corinne Woodman Gallery in Corvallis, Oregon in April of 2026.

Schoneberg received her MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2023 and completed her undergraduate education at the San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University. A fourth-generation artist, she was born in Los Angeles, grew up in San Francisco and is currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. Schoneberg is a lecturer and Studio Head of Drawing at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and formerly a visiting assistant professor at Willamette University and Southern Oregon University.

Paintings from the Suburbs

Ron Walker

Corrine Woodman Gallery

March 3 – 28, 2026

Reception: Thursday, March 19, 5:30 – 7 PM

About the Exhibition

With a surrealistic slant, Paintings from the Suburbs, by California artist Ron Walker, depicts emotional, psychological and intellectual reactions to the environment in which he lives. He seeks to make sense of seemingly incongruent thoughts, and ultimately ties them to the physical world. His style and sense of humor is evident in the repetitive imagery he chooses; a tongue and cheek commentary on the American way of life.

About the Artist

Ron Walker is a full time artist living in the Sacramento area of California. His work has been shown widely over the years and he has had more than 50 solo exhibits. His work can be found in several private collections as well as a number of college ones. In addition he has work in the Morris Graves Museum of Art, the Museum of Northern California Art, the Siskiyou Museum of Art, the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art and the Maturango Museum. Mr. Walker has also had his work published in more than 150 magazines and books including 17 covers. Mr. Walker holds both a MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Kansas and a MA in painting from the University of Central Missouri. Most of his work tends to be small and intimate in size and is mostly gouache on board.

Reformation

Kim Smith Claudel

Main Gallery

March 19 – May 9,  2026

Reception: Thursday, March 19, 5:30 – 7 PM

About the Exhibition

Portland-based artist Kim Smith Claudel returns to Corvallis—the site of her early formation as an artist at Oregon State University—with Reformation, a solo exhibition that engages painting as an active, evolving practice rather than a fixed object.

Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, Smith Claudel creates work that exists in deliberate flux. Her process-driven approach embraces the ephemeral, the decaying, and the mundane; building visual systems that resist completion. In Reformation, she brings this methodology into direct conversation with The Arts Center’s historic architecture, and her own formative years working in the space during college. Reformation is  a process of re-forming material, as well as an act of challenging the rules we rarely question. 

Artist Interview

TAC curator, Jennie Castle had the pleasure of catching up with Kim Smith Claudel prior to the installation of Reformation. Take a listen!

About the Artist

Kim Smith Claudel is an artist and  visual designer based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including a recent solo exhibition (End Cycle) at The Vestibule in Seattle. Other recent solo exhibitions include The Painting Center (NY), Mt. Hood Community College (OR), Carnation Contemporary (OR), KyotoBA (Japan).  Recent residencies include Building 5 in Portland and the Boston Center for the Arts. She holds  an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. She received an MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, where she was a Learning Innovation Fellow for her research into hands-on learning for computation in early childhood. She is a member of Carnation Contemporary Gallery and WAVE artist collective. Smith Claudel’s interdisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, performance, and installation, consistently exploring the intersection of process, materiality, and personal narrative.

Serendipity

Avery McDowell

Corrine Woodman Gallery

February 3 – 28, 2026

Reception and Artist Talk: Thursday, February 19, 5:30 – 7 PM

About the Exhibition

Avery McDowell’s exhibition, Serendipity, on view in the Corrine Woodman Gallery at The Arts Center of Greater Corvallis from February 3–28, 2026. In the exhibition, McDowell sets aside the grief and weariness that comes with living in an unreliable body and instead focuses on the positive ways her lived experience has shaped her. 

By honestly exploring themes of desire, pain and chance, McDowell publicly takes control over aspects of her private identity. She celebrates the mother figures who have cared for her in chaos and grief, and shows gratitude for her struggles, as they are the inspiration that drives her artistic practice.

Artist Interview

TAC curator, Jennie Castle had the pleasure of catching up with Avery McDowell prior to the installation of Serendipity. Take a listen!

About the Artist

Avery McDowell is a multidisciplinary artist from Portland, Oregon. Her work draws on personal experiences with gender, disability, and navigating the modern social landscape as a person it wasn’t designed for. After graduating from Oregon State University in 2025 with her BFA in Studio Art, McDowell was awarded The Arts Center Residency Award and produced this collection of pieces over the course of that program. She strives to take control of her own narrative through self-portraiture and explore the connection she has to her physical form in a way that acknowledges the complexities of living in an unreliable body while also finding joy and pride in her identity. Her work builds on long-standing themes in her practice around the expectations society places on disabled people and provides perspective outside of established conventions of what the world says people with disabilities are allowed to do, be, or desire. Following her residency with The Arts Center, McDowell is looking forward to pursuing her MFA and teaching art full-time.

Avery McDowell’s exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how personal experience, vulnerability, and resilience shape both the body and the creative process.