Hood River art exhibit anchors Black History Month events by group Black in the Gorge

The Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River is currently hosting “Black Infinity House,” a free, immersive art exhibit on display for Black History Month until March 29.

The exhibit is arranged into three spaces — an artist’s studio, a living room and a porch — that visitors walk through to experience art made by more than 30 Black Oregon artists whose work spans different genres and generations.

It includes fabric art illustrating the timeless landscape of the Columbia Gorge; painted portraits of Black, tattooed youth; a series of works made by burning designs and illustrations onto wooden canvases painted with imagery of snakes, skulls, hair and hands; handmade beaded jewelry.

August Oaks, a Hood River designer and producer is the curator of “Black Infinity House,” which he created to celebrate the expansiveness of Black identity. Oaks is also a member of Black in the Gorge, a grassroots organization that started five years ago in Hood River to ease the isolation Black, biracial and multiracial youth and adults can feel living in the Gorge.

From organizing the first Juneteenth celebration in Hood River in 2023 to its Black History Month events this year, the group has been expanding its programs and its profile within the communities it serves.

Oaks and Black in the Gorge co-founders Evelyn Charity and Stephanie Harris, whose jewelry is featured in the exhibit, join us for more details.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River is currently hosting a free immersive art exhibit called “Black Infinity House.” It features work by more than 30 Black artists from Oregon. It includes fabric, paintings, jewelry, mixed media, music, a lot more. The installation was organized by a Hood River group called Black in the Gorge, which started five years ago to ease the isolation that Black, biracial and multiracial people can experience in the Gorge. Evelyn Charity and Stephanie Harris co-founded the group. August Oaks is a Hood River-based producer and designer and the curator of “Black Infinity House.” All three join me now. It’s great to have all three of you on the show.

Evelyn Charity: Thank you for having us.

Stephanie Harris: Yeah, thank you.

August Oaks: Yes, definitely.

Miller: Evelyn, my understanding is you’re not a Hood River original, you didn’t grow up there. What brought you to Hood River?

Charity: I came because we left Aspen, Colorado and we looked for a place that was similar but not quite as expensive. We moved here with no jobs and I decided what would I love to do that I never got to do and I started working in the school district and from there I got a job as a teacher. I went back to Lewis and Clark and got my master’s in teaching. And I’d been teaching at Hood River Valley High School for the rest of my career. I retired in 2014, and until Stephanie came, I was the only Black teacher in the history of the Hood River County School District.

Miller: First and only.

Charity: First and only.

Miller: Until one more person of color came, one more Black person. You came from Aspen, so Aspen was also a very white city, but so were you prepared, emotionally, to be a Black person in a very white, outdoorsy town?

Charity: Well you’ll be surprised, but I was a ski instructor in Aspen, and I was the only Black ski instructor at the ski schools on Snowmass Mountain. So I was already accustomed to those kinds of experiences and I’ve just decided that is the person that I am, and that people are people, and I have not taken for granted that I am a Black person, but I think that people learn from me. I have a lot of questions about my heritage and my culture that I can impart with people and students.

Miller: Stephanie, am I right that you’re the only one of the three of you who grew up in Hood River?

Harris: I believe so, yeah.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what it was like for you to be a biracial kid growing up in a very white, small city?

Harris: Yeah, I moved to Hood River when I was in kindergarten, actually the day before kindergarten, and I was pretty much always either the only Black person of color in my class growing up. Evelyn was my only Black teacher growing up, and it did feel a little isolating. I know that my family did a really good job of trying to connect with the other Black families in Hood River when they moved there.

My mom is from LA, so I was very accustomed to being around lots more people of color, lots more Black folks. She really prioritized connecting us with as many as she could, but there still are so few Black people who live in Hood River, experience felt isolating. I oftentimes would kind of lean on humor as a coping mechanism or as a protective mechanism for not feeling quite so lonely.

Miller: You eventually became a middle school counselor there, right, for three years. What was that like?

Harris: That was amazing and also really hard. Being a counselor and working in mental health is challenging, as no one is questioning. And there were starting to be some conversations with some of the few Black and Black biracial students, conversations that I was having internally when I was a kid growing up in Hood River, so feelings of isolation, feelings of wanting to connect a lot more strongly with people who look like them, this idea of kind of feeling like you’re in a fishbowl. So that’s where this idea for Black in the Gorge and the affinity space that we have created.

Miller: Where did it come from?

Charity: Stephanie’s student was having a hard time and so we decided if she’s having a hard time, there are probably gonna be other people and other students that would be feeling isolated but not want to speak up. That was the catalyst for Black in the Gorge. Since then we’ve had more members, a lot of our families are parents who have Black students that are adopted, Black children that are adopted, and they’re kind of lost with how to bring their culture to them.

Miller: Because some of them are white parents who adopted Black children.

Charity: They are white parents who adopted Black children. I know that they’re isolated. I had a conversation with a woman today who has a friend who’s 35 years old, who’s from Cascade Locks, but has traveled the world, she’s biracial, and she said, do you know Jesse Jackson died today? And the woman said, who’s Jesse Jackson?

Miller: This is an adult?

Charity: Yes, but she’s been isolated culturally and I get it.

Miller: You’re being very generous to say I get it.

Charity: Well, I do because…

Miller: Because he is a Black man, he’s also just a very famous person in this country for decades and decades.

Charity: But if you are not associated with people who could enlighten you with his purpose or someone who’s been a part of a struggle, then it might not interest you to know about those people. Some people don’t watch the news, listen to the news, that’s how they would not know. But I’ll bet that any Black kid in the United States would never say, who is Jesse Jackson?

Miller: August, you grew up, am I right, right here in Portland?

Oaks: Right here in Portland.

Miller: How’d you end up in Hood River?

Oaks: I have some family who grew up in Hood River. My dad grew up in Hood River back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, so we have some family roots there and I ended up getting a cool historic home in Hood River in 2019 and decided to move up.

Miller: What was the move like for you? I mean, the transplant?

Oaks: I was ready to take a break from Portland and try something a little new and get some breathing room. And it’s been wonderful. It’s been wonderful up there.

Miller: How did you get connected with Black in the Gorge?

Oaks: I actually got connected through Black in the Gorge through one of our other primary and integral members in the board, Robin Allen. She invited me to the art show they did at the Columbia Center for the Arts last year, and that was my first experience meeting some of the members.

Miller: And now you curated this big new exhibition. How do you describe “Black Infinity House?”

Oaks: I would describe “Black Infinity House” as an experiential, maximalist installation that showcases and highlights over 45 artists of color, all of their work in various forms. It’s a place for people to come, hang out, read books, put on records, check out the art and spend all day, really.

Miller: What you’ve just described is very different than some, I don’t know, art museum, a sort of a stuffy museum, or a fancy gallery where the last thing you can do is hang out all day and touch stuff.

Oaks: Exactly. I mean, there’s a time and a place for art to be hung up in a single line on the white walls where you go through, you take a look at the piece, you read the artist statement in the bio, you almost forget what the piece looks like, and then you leave. I wanted to create something that really emulated that feeling of creating work, creating art, and would leave people feeling inspired.

Miller: Can you describe the three different spaces that make up the exhibition?

Oaks: For the show I kind of separated the gallery into three different spaces that you can walk through and spend time. One is called The Studio Space, and it looks like an artist studio, and that space is really about exploring identity and creative expression, so there’s a lot of surreal elements. There’s a poetry shower with poems just kind of showering down the walls and some unfinished paintings and there’s a computer and a desk set up where you can kind of go on and snoop through photographer’s work on the computer which is really cool.

Another section is called The Living Room and that looks more like a studio apartment. So there’s a bar, a couch, coffee tables, a bed, bookshelves, record players, and like an electric piano, and that place is really inviting. It’s centered around gathering and consuming Black art and Black culture, but in a positive way. And people are encouraged to kind of sit down, read books, put on records and just hang out.

Miller: And do people do that? Or are they so conditioned to behaving in a certain way when they go to see art? So they sit on the couch, they put on records.

Oaks: It’s been great.

Miller: They go on the computer and everything.

Oaks: I’ve had some 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds come in and put on records and listen through the headphones. I’ve had some people over 80 sit down and read some books. One person came in, a woman, she was reading one of Michelle Obama’s latest books on the sofa, which is really cool, and that’s exactly what I want. Even one of the producers for the show brought his family and his son was playing around on the bed that I have set up in there, and it really made that space feel like home.

Miller: OK, so you mentioned The Studio, The Living Room. What’s the third space?

Oaks: The third space is called The Porch, and that space is really about connecting cultivation with nature and rest and art. So people are encouraged to kind of just take some breathing room in that space. It’s filled with plants and ceramics and pyrography, which is work that’s made with a wood burning tool. So it’s really about connecting art with nature and taking some time for yourself.

Miller: Stephanie, what has your experience in these spaces been like personally?

Harris: Personally, I was invited to bring some of my art to this space as well, and I am newly calling myself an artist, but I’ve been a maker for a long time, so it felt really inspiring to see my jewelry and beaded work in The Porch area, which felt also very fitting because I love nature and I’m very inspired by stones and natural colors and spaces that I have spent time and that is and has always been the inspiration for the art that I like to create.

Miller: What enabled you to say, because you said you’ve been a maker your whole life, but now you can actually call yourself an artist. What made that possible for you internally?

Harris: I think just feeling others around me telling me that what I’m doing is art and getting that reverberated internally for a long time and starting to feel it has been new. But it’s been really empowering, really special, because truly, I have been making jewelry and beadings since I was a small child.

Miller: Evelyn, what’s it been like for you to watch people going through the exhibit, and I saw you sort of nodding earlier when August was talking about people sitting on the couch or reading.

Charity: When August brought the idea to the group, it was hard for me to conceptualize it, but I trusted him. And then one day I came through and it wasn’t even finished. And the first thing I saw was these beautiful Black images of small Black children. I walked in and I immediately started crying, because we don’t have a lot of input from Black people in Hood River and the opening was so phenomenal for me because 15 or 20 of the Black artists who exhibited there came to the opening, and to be able to speak to them and talk to them and found out, quite surprisingly, that a lot of them had never been to Hood River.

Miller: Oh, these were people from Portland or other places.

Oaks: Yeah, we have over 30 Black artists contributing to the show, 15 other people of color, and counting. People keep adding to the experience. But yeah, maybe 20% are from Hood River and then the others are friends that I have who live here in Portland.

Miller: So what did you hear from them, Evelyn, about these non-Hood River folks, about what it was like for them to be at this exhibition on opening night?

Charity: The first thing that they said was, this is beautiful here. This was a beautiful drive, and their experiences just coming to Hood River. I think they were quite surprised by the fact that it’s a little bit more cosmopolitan than they expected. I think a lot of people come to Hood River thinking it’s a little podunk town, and that we don’t have a lot of culture and a lot of art. For me, personally, to meet the artists and to learn from them and learn their experiences and then they’re explaining how they created their art, that was fascinating to me.

Then the other piece that I loved was the fact that the community turned out. There were so many people that came that were so surprised by the fact that we have something like that in Hood River. And they said, we should have this all the time. That made my heart feel very, very wonderful and warm to think that people support us.

Miller: August, what does the name mean, “Black Infinity House?”

Oaks: “Black Infinity House.” Good question. So I got the concept from this show from a book that I was reading called “The Black Aesthetic II.” It’s a short book with discussions from filmmakers who are based in Oakland or in California. At the beginning of the book, this idea is broached that Blackness in and of itself is an infinite concept. There’s not a single definition for Black identity. I think that’s really important. I’m sure we’ve all felt like this in our lives where people are trying to put us into a box and tell us, why don’t you act like this? Why don’t you speak like this?

But the truth is we contain multitudes, each and every one of us, and we have so much to give within our own senses of identity, and I wanted to give all these artists an opportunity to kind of just showcase who they were and their talents in whatever form of art that they chose to. Especially as Black people in society continuously create new spaces, new cultural phenomenons, and then they’re exploited or commandeered, and we create new ones again and we create new ones again. And so I just wanted to have this show at “Black Infinity House” to kind of highlight that and highlight the nature of what we do and how expansive it is.

Miller: Stephanie, what do you hope that visitors will take away from the exhibit, whether they’re from Hood River or not, whatever their background?

Harris: I think August spoke to this as well with this idea of infinity, of constant exploration of aliveness, of growth. I hope that when people come to this exhibit, they feel just how alive Black art is and art created by people of color, even hearing that August is still finding artists who are contributing to this work right now, it is growing right now.

Miller: It also seemed like that’s one of the benefits of the way you’ve created this exhibit that there’s some nook and cranny, some new way to put a painting somewhere because it’s sort of like a wonderful jumble as opposed to a perfect…

Oaks: It’s perfect, but I still have space in the ceiling.

Miller: Well, I mean, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there’s space for stuff there.

Harris: Yeah, it is the most full and alive that I think this gallery has ever been and spilling out into the halls.

Charity: I think that the thing that I liked also is that art is not just fine art, it’s also music. So when you go and you see albums on the wall by Black artists, and that’s still art, and it’s just all encompassing.

Miller: Evelyn, just for the bigger picture, how do you know for yourself that Black in the Gorge is making the kind of impact that you intended? What’s your, I don’t know, definition of victory or even small victories for your organization?

Charity: Well, I think the biggest victories that we’ve had were to enlighten the community, to bring the community out. We’ve had three Juneteenth celebrations and each year they get bigger and bigger and better and more people come out and more people are thankful that we even have this. We have African dance classes on the stage for the people in the park and people are loving it and the music and they’re learning about our African roots and listening to music and listening to people speak and learning.

As an educator, that’s my goal is to educate people about the history and the culture of Black people and to share it with our community. And people who even come from other parts of Oregon and Washington come to those events and that’s inspiring to all of us and I feel victory as far as those things. And as our group continues to grow and we outreach more people and more people, we’re continuing to meet people. In the grocery store, you see a Black person and you go, “Hey, do you live here?” And then we get numbers and then we say, “Hey, you should be a part of Black in the Gorge.”

Oaks: And even with this show, we’re bridging such a huge community gap with having all of these artists that I know coming in from Portland. We’re expanding our network and showing people we are here and we support each other across

county lines.

Miller: Evelyn, August, and Stephanie, thanks very much.

Charity: Thank you for having us.

Harris: Thank you.

Miller: That’s Evelyn Charity, August Oaks, and Stephanie Harris. Again, “Black Infinity House” is open now through March 29th at the Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River.

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