Exhibition: September 28th - November 26th, 2025

Reception: October 9th, 2025, 4:00 - 6:00pm
Curator Talk: November 13th, 2025, 5:00 - 6:30pm

Show Statement

The Littman Gallery at Portland State University is excited to host the 75th Anniversary Retrospective show for the Pacific Northwest Conceptual Art Center. Founded in 2023, the Center’s goal is to provide opportunities for artists and writers and host educational events about conceptual art and its history. The center chooses to operate out of a sense of abundance and believes that the making and enjoyment of art is for everyone. Curated by artist/director Adelaide Blair, the show consists of recreations of historical work by conceptual art luminaries associated with the center, as well as a group show of current artists working in the field:

Joe Bun Keo
Matthew Deane Parker
Erin Boberg Doughton
Stefan Leandro Gonzales
JoEllen Wang
Natasha Loewy
Leslie Samson-Tabakin
Von Coffin

Find artist statements and info here!

Supplemental Info: Show Statement

Thank you for coming to the Pacific Northwest Conceptual Art Center’s 75th Anniversary Retrospective. The Pacific Northwest Conceptual Art Center is a conceptual art project by Adelaide Blair and does not really exist except as a vehicle for her to publish books and throw 75th anniversary retrospectives. Formed in response to a perceived lack of resources for conceptual artists outside of academia, Adelaide’s goal is to provide opportunities for artists and writers, as well as educational events about conceptual art and its history. She chooses to operate out of a sense of abundance and believes that the making and enjoyment of art is for everyone. (Also, she likes making stuff up.)

About the Artists

Joe Bun Keo: Joe Bun Keo is a Khmer/Khmae (Cambodian) American artist working and residing in Connecticut. Keo has a BFA from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford and an MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. In 2023, he received the Real Art Award and a solo exhibition at Real Art Ways in Hartford. He is also a recipient of the Artist Fellowship Emerging Recognition from the Connecticut Office of Arts. Joe’s work focuses on unpacking intergenerational trauma through the scope of neomaterialism, the most recent iteration of the Duchampian school of thought on readymades and found objects. Keo’s work embodies the belief that it is not necessary to fabricate or create new commodities; one should utilize what already exists in a society that has an excess of materials.

Von Coffin: Von Coffin (b 1983) lives in Redmond, Washington with their wife and 2 young children. Coffin received their MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University (2016) and their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008). They run Coffin Farm, an experimental sculpture park on their family’s farm. They identify as nonbinary, transmasc, and use they/them pronouns.

JoEllen Wang: JoEllen (b. 1982, St. Louis, MO, USA) is a conceptual artist interested in the overlap between social, economic, and environmental structures. She is drawn to ubiquitous yet universally devalued subjects – plastics, weeds, and mothers. To her, each subject represents one system but intersects the other two. JoEllen believes that living is an act of rebalancing, and she is drawn to the tension inherent in the process: the tenuous balance between natural and man-made; the progression of certainties, constructed on passing cultural interpretations; the labor for self-understanding, existing as a woman habituated to the idea that others know better.

Matthew Deane Parker: Matthew Deane Parker is a disabled multimedia artist [B. 1991] that works in sculpture, photography, and installation. Parker’s practice explores the nature of making bodies of work without a working body. He uses foam boulders to create physical barriers in spaces to implore the audience to reconsider their relationship with what is hard, heavy, or mobile. His work humorously explores the contradictions between disabled bodies existing in abled spaces and the burdens of navigating art, labor, and relationships with a disability. Parker has recently shown work at Coffin Farm [Redmond], Specialist [Seattle], and 4Culture [Seattle]. Parker earned his BFA in Visual Art from Cornish College of the Arts in 2022. He currently resides in Seattle and is working towards his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Natasha Loewy: Natasha Loewy (1985 - she/her) lives and works in Oakland, California. She received a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2008, a Single Subject Teaching Credential in Art from Mills College in 2012, and an MFA in Art Practice from San Francisco State University in 2022. She is a recipient of the Cadogan Contemporary Art Award and has shown at galleries such as SOIL, SOMArts, the Marin County Civic Center, The Great Highway, Southern Exposure, Root Division, and Hit SF. She is one of three members of MUZ, a Bay Area-based art collective focused on a collaborative studio and curatorial practice.

Stefan Leandro Gonzales: Stefan Gonzales is an artist and art educator based in Seattle. They are Piro/Manso/Tiwa and a trans-nonbinary individual. Gonzales is an adjunct professor at the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts. They received a BFA from Cornish in 2016 and an MFA from the University of Washington in 2020, where they were honored with the de Cillia Teaching with Excellence Award. Recent exhibitions include dual solo shows at The Vestibule and Specalist Gallery in Seattle, WA. Their work has also been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Gallery 4Culture, Seattle, WA; Das Schaufenster Gallery, Seattle, WA; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Melanie Flood Projects, Portland, OR; and Well-Well Projects, Portland, OR. They have participated in residencies at Signal Fire Arts, Portland, OR; CoCA Seattle, WA; and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont ('24).

Erin Boberg Doughton: Erin Boberg Doughton (1972) is an artist, educator, and curator based in Portland, Oregon. She uses performance, video, music, task-based actions, and domestic objects to reveal moments of rupture and magic in everyday life, and the often invisible labor of making these moments. She is an Assistant Professor at Pacific NW College of Art and co-Artistic Director and Curator of Performance at PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.) Erin received an MFA in Visual Studies from the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies at Pacific NW College of Art, Willamette University in 2024, and a BA in Theatre from Lewis & Clark College in Portland in 1994.

Leslie Samson-Tabakin: Leslie Samson-Tabakin (b. 1985, Hilo, HI) is a visual artist based in Seattle, WA. She received her MFA in Art from San Francisco State University (2018) and her BA in Art from Smith College (2007). Working primarily in drawing, painting, and printmaking, she explores the layered complexities of the human condition. Through her practice, she seeks to foster connection by inviting curiosity, humor, and empathy into shared personal narratives. Outside the studio, she is passionate about the ocean, cats, dancing, and cake.

About Adelaide Blair

Adelaide Blair (1968) is a conceptual artist and writer whose research-centered practice allows her to interact with and learn about the world. She is involved in publishing, printmaking, web design, needlework, drawing, writing, performance, and filmmaking, and is also interested in distributed intelligence and how people make art together. Her current project is a simulation, the Pacific Northwest Conceptual Art Center. Originally from Southern Oregon, Adelaide currently resides in Seattle, Washington. She has a BFA from Southern Oregon University, an MBA from the University of Washington Foster School of Business, and an MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Check out her website here!