artist-in-residence:
Ka'ila farrell-smith
Ka'ila Farrell-Smith, courtesy of Mario Galluci
Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts is pleased to welcome Ka’ila Farrell-Smith as the third artist-in-residence of 2024. Farrell-Smith will join us for the two-week residency this month from July 8 - July 19, developing limited-edition prints and working alongside master printer, Judith Baumann. This is Farrell-Smith’s second residency with Crow’s Shadow, made possible through the Ford Family Foundation’s Golden Spot Award grant program. During her first residency in October of 2018, Farrell-Smith developed one monoprint series and two lithographs.
Please join us for a public, in-person reception to hear about the work she created during her residency on Thursday, July 18, 2024, from 5pm-7pm.
Ka’ila Farrell-Smith (b. 1982) is a contemporary Klamath Modoc visual artist, writer and activist based in Modoc Point, Oregon. The conceptual framework of her studio practice focuses on channeling research through a creative flow of experimentation and artistic playfulness. Utilizing painting, drawing with wild harvested pigments, and stenciling found metal detritus, her work explores the space in-between the indigenous and western paradigms.
Farrell-Smith has work in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Portland Building OR, the Seattle Convention Center Summit Building, WA, and Missoula Art Museum, MT. Her work has been on view at Tacoma Art Museum, Out of Sight Seattle, WA, Boise Art Museum, ID, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
Farrell-Smith has worked as a community organizer for 20 years and participated in successful creative resistance to the Jordan Cove LNG projects. She continues to work on the front lines fighting resource extraction projects threatening the vast regions of Southern Oregon. Farrell-Smith is currently the lead plaintiff suing the State of Oregon Department of Justice’s Titan Fusion center for illegally surveilling her, violating her first amendment rights to Free Speech.
Ka’ila is a 2021 Hallie Ford Fellow and an inaugural 2019-2020 Fields Artist Fellow with Oregon Humanities. She received a BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practices Studio from Portland State University. She is represented by Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, Oregon.
Ka'ila Farrell-Smith, 005, Ghosts in the Machine, 2022-2023, 36 x 24 in, Northern Paiute lithium top soil, acrylics, aerosols, and graphite on panel
Here, Farrell-Smith incisively articulates the layers, (thematic, ideological, and material) in her Ghosts in the Machine series: "[This] series of 21 paintings is a study in gray scales, featuring wild harvested Northern Paiute lithium top soil collected during my travels through Northern Nevada and Southern Oregon in the past three years. This work is my response to the burgeoning global AI technocratic state that is threatening human freedom through the violent extraction of rare earth minerals like Lithium (Li) from sacred Tribal spiritual grounds for the sole benefit of Western electric elitism.
The title of the exhibition is a direct visual response to the US army recruitment video of the same name, alluding to the reality that we are being tracked, traced and databased by the US military industrial complex via transnational corporations, which they state in the video is an ongoing PSYWAR (Psychological Warfare).
During my active resistance (2016-2020) to the Jordan Cove Energy Projects I directly experienced censorship, spying, and technological interference on my personal devices and social media apps. Jordan Cove, a subsidiary of Pembina, a Canadian corporation, would have transported Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) across 500 waterways in Southern Oregon to an export terminal in Coos Bay to sell to foreign markets. I’m currently a plaintiff suing the State of Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ) Titan Fusion Center for illegally spying on me and violating my first amendment rights to resist a major environmental and cultural threat to my ancestral homelands and clean water ways.
Since successfully stopping Jordan Cove Energy Projects, I have been supporting Tribal communities and elders of the Northern Paiute, Western Shoshone and Bannock peoples who are actively resisting multiple proposed foreign Lithium mines surrounding the Ft McDermitt reservation on the Oregon and Nevada border. The corporations create narratives that “Green” mining is good for the environment, without revealing the truth about Sacrifice Zones and Man Camps.
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE is a visual matrix of grayscales, layering wild harvested Lithium top soil, metal detritus stencils found at Modoc Point studio ranch, acrylic and aerosol paints. The found metal detritus stencils visually represent machinery, grids, bots, and perhaps unidentified flying objects."
Ka'ila Farrell-Smith, Off the Ground, 2021, 60 x 48 in, Klamath wild pigments, aerosol stencils, acrylics, graphite, and oil bars on birch wood panel
Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts is located on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in the foothills of Oregon’s Blue Mountains. Crow’s Shadow is a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization formed in 1992 by local artists James Lavadour (Walla Walla) and Phillip Cash Cash (Cayuse and Nez Perce). Our mission is to provide a creative conduit for educational, social, and economic opportunities for Native Americans through artistic development. Over the last 32 years Crow’s Shadow has evolved into a world class studio focused on contemporary fine art printmaking.
