After receiving her BFA from the University of South Florida, Elisabeth Horan relocated to Portland, Oregon five years ago. A recipient of the Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, Horan traveled to Finland in November 2014 for a residency program. During her visit she created most of the Circle series, a collection of mesmerizing drawings with gel pen on colored paper. The process begins with one dot (or many) traced obsessively until the repetitive motion builds an image. The result is an uncalculated, automatic tracing ritual. The success of each circle drawing depends greatly on the artist remaining present in the mind and body, otherwise the line may falter. In this way, each finished piece alludes to the Mandala, a sacred image to aid in meditation and introspection.

In her sculpture and collage, Horan takes a more sardonic or whimsical narrative. Built using found objects and images, these works are about journeys into alternate realities. The subliminal programming of advertisements is challenged when the very context of each image is morphed into something new and not easily defined. Our world is one of Maya (Sanskrit:illusion), and consciousness is playing the game of divvying up what we see and putting it into neat little boxes. Horan calls her collages “analog Photoshop”, suspending real artifacts in time and space for inspection and storytelling.

William Lamson is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice involves working with elemental forces to create durational performative actions.   Set in landscapes as varied as New York’s East River and Chile’s Atacama Desert, his projects reveal the invisible systems and forces at play within these sites.  In all of his projects, Lamson’s work represents a performative gesture, a collaboration with forces outside of his control to explore systems of knowledge and belief.  

Lamson’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including the Brooklyn Musuem, The Moscow Biennial, P.S.1. MOMA, Kunsthalle Erfurt, the Musuem of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles.  In addition he has produced site specific installations for the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Center For Land Use Interpretation, and Storm King Art Center.   His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and a number of private collections.   He has been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation, the Experimental Television Center, and most recently he is 2014 Guggenheim Fellow.   His work has appeared in ArtForum, Frieze, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Harpers, and the Village Voice.  

William Lamson was born Arlington, Virginia and lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He earned his MFA from Bard College, and he teaches in the Parsons MFA photography program. 

Jared Steffensen was born in Fairfax, Virginia. He earned a BFA in Intermedia Sculpture from the University of Utah in 2002 and a MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. He was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant in 2006. His work has been exhibited throughout the US, in Mexico, Germany and The Netherlands. He is currently the Curator of Public Engagement at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Steffensen’s work is an examination of movement, with a focus on landscape and architecture, as the means by which we interact with and comprehend the places we exist. We travel through these areas on predetermined paths, each providing a glimpse, but not always an engagement, with what is around us as we move from location to location. His work originates from the fracturing of these pathways, opening up the possibilities of the paths beyond their intended use that allows for new ways of seeing, interacting and understanding place.