Dates: September 5- September 28

Opening Reception September 7, 5-7pm

Statement:

Nate Orton and Cynthia are colleagues and friends who have collaborated on many projects in the past and regularly explore the world together through museum visits, plein air drawing and thrift store shopping. Their artworks share the beauty and depth of mark making and a love of the evocative quality of materials. Both artists’ artworks are influenced by human artifacts from ancient times to the present, as well as by personal experiences and emotions. They believe even the smallest artifact can evoke the most powerful feelings, and draw inspiration from objects and images, both historical and contemporary, that have the potential to reflect beyond themselves.

The show at the Portland State University Littman Gallery will be a place where the Orton and Lahti artistic worlds collide and bleed together to create one experience. The differences and commonalities contain in each collaboration will excite and enforce the artwork but retain their artistic voices common dirge. The exhibition, combining the sacred with the profane, the wise with the stupid and the beautiful with the grotesque, will force a deeper explanation of reality and to facilitate a connection with a larger human experience.