Celebrate the opening of Mapping Familiar Territories, Charting New Paths with a conversation between curator Alexandra Terry and artists Epiphany Couch and Brenda Mallory on Thursday, January 29 at 4:00 PM. This program will be followed by an opening reception at the museum.
Epiphany Couch (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work explores generational knowledge, storytelling, and our relationships with the natural and spiritual worlds. Working across photography, beadwork, weaving, and collage, she reinterprets traditional forms to create images, installations, and sculptural works that engage ancestral knowledge and invite new ways of understanding. Her practice is rooted in unconventional collaboration—across time, between generations, and with the natural world—recognizing these relationships as vital to sustaining memory, culture, and identity.
Couch is spuyaləpabš (Puyallup), Yakama, and Scandinavian/Mixed European, and grew up in caləłali (Tacoma, Washington). Her work has been acquired for public and private collections and exhibited in museums, galleries, and art fairs across the United States. Couch lives and works in Portland, Oregon, where she is a member of the artist-run gallery Carnation Contemporary, the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild, and the Cyme Collective.
Brenda Mallory lives in Portland, Oregon. She grew up in Oklahoma and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She received a BA in Linguistics & English from UCLA and a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. Texture and repeated rhythmic forms are instrumental to Mallory’s abstract compositions. She often works with reclaimed materials, ‘sewn’ together with industrial hardware to explore ideas of dominion, disruption, repair, and interconnections.
Mallory has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Awards include the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, Hallie Ford Fellowship, Bonnie Bronson Fellowship, Eiteljorg Contemporary Native Art Fellowship, Native Arts and Culture Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Ucross Native Fellowship. Residencies include Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Bullseye Glass, and International Studio & Curatorial Projects. Her work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Crystal Bridges, Portland Art Museum, Heard Museum, and Hallie Ford Museum.
Image Credit: Brenda Mallory, Old Homeplace, 2024, Mixed media, 135 x 180 x 2 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Russo Lee Gallery, Portland OR/ Marinaro Gallery, NY