Opening Cambium and We’ve Never Been Here Before
Yesterday the United States swore in Amy Coney Barrett into the Supreme Court in an attempt at stacking the Supreme Court with hyper conservative justices. Highly unqualified Barrett has no business being appointed let alone sworn in. As I came into the studio today and stood at my studio table I began pondering just really how far am I willing to go to continue to be who I am. Am I willing to be arrested? Am I ready to go back to the frontlines to fight for LGBTQI rights as I did all while growing up and through college? Because what Barrett was appointed to do was to demolish the ACA, Roe VS Wade and same sex marriage. She aligns herself ideologically with the justices in the Supreme Court who believe, on record, that homosexuality should be a felony punishable with time in jail.
But really what does that have to do with Cambium Gallery? It’s an art gallery why not leave politics out of it, you may ask. And really we’ve (Myself, Kirista Trask and my partner Audrey Long) had discussions about what point is it just politics or basic human rights. That is neither here nor there. Cambium Gallery was founded solely to support under represented artists. Artists who are under represented due systems put into place solely to lift up and support heterosexual white men at the expense of all others.
Therefor who is being voted into the Supreme Court has everything to do with why Cambium Gallery exists. We exist to lift up and promote those who have generally been overlooked by the rest of the market. We are here to redefine what an art gallery in Rural Oregon can look like and most importantly we are here to redefine how an art gallery in Rural Oregon can affect the lives of our artists and their communities. That mission is what birthed our gallery against all odds. That mission defined our payment structure in which we donate 10% of a shows sales to an organization that is doing work related to the shows topic and why instead of taking that 10% out of the artists payment we take it out of Cambiums and still pay our artists higher than market rate.
Our first show We’ve Never Been Here Before was a reaction to Covid-19 and living during an active Pandemic. The work discussed in the video below was created during lockdown, as was Cambium. You can watch our virtual art talk below for a more in depth conversation about that work.
Our current show In Between by photographer Delilah Anaya asks the question at what point do our laws no longer align with our values. In Between is just one story out of more than 8 million children in the US with the same story, Cesar and his four siblings are US citizens whereas his two parents are undocumented. You can still stop in to see this impactful work through November 11th and shop the show via our website.
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