GMS Members to Receive Precipice Fund Award
We celebrate the achievements of Dana and Aileen, both of whom received a Precipice Fund award from The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts administered by PICA.
Since 2013, the Precipice Fund has provided critical support to unincorporated visual art collectives, alternative spaces, and collaborative projects in and around Portland, Oregon. Operating outside traditional forms of support, funded projects seek to promote dialogue, cultivate communities, and encourage generative and expansive artistic process while driving culture forward locally and nationally. The Precipice Fund recognizes these informal, experimental, and often anti-institutional projects as integral to the innovative spirit and vibrant art ecology of Metro Portland and surrounding areas.
Aileen and Dana at Dana’s exhibition opening, February 2020
Dana nominated Aileen for the award due to her passionate artistry and longstanding contributions to GMS. She says:
Last week Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) called to tell me that I am a recipient of a Precipice Fund award funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and administered by PICA. Knowing so many artists doing incredible work right now in Portland, I am honored to be among those selected.
I was also asked to nominate an artist in town doing extraordinary work to also receive this award. I immediately knew that I would nominate a longtime Gather:Make:Shelter Academy member and collaborator, Aileen McPherson, and I am absolutely thrilled to report that this week she received an award as well.
Aileen and I met three years ago at the first GMS workshop at Street Roots and we have been working together ever since. Aileen is a visual artist, poet, writer, and gardener. She takes a lead role in the village where she lives and is an integral member of the GMS Academy. She has been a GMS Ambassador for three years, and we have collaborated on creative projects and supported each other through personal works and exhibitions. Two weeks ago, we installed GMS's first public art project at Hygiene4All, a hygiene hub located under the Morrison Bridge.
Currently we are exhibiting some of Aileen's process paintings at our new headquarters in Northwest Portland! We are celebrating our creative connections and sisterhood with these awards, something that is at the very core of Gather:Make:Shelter's mission.
With love and inspiration,
Dana