Hood River art exhibit highlights local Black artists in immersive setting

A new art installation in Hood River invites visitors to relax on a couch, read poetry, listen to records, and spend time with each other in an environment completely dedicated to Black art and culture.

Just step inside the “Black Infinity House.”

Black people make up about 1% of Hood River’s population, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Evelyn Charity and Stephanie Harris co-founded Black in the Gorge five years ago to build more community and opportunity between the few Black, biracial and multiracial people in the area.

The group’s latest project is “Black Infinity House,” a free art exhibit at the Columbia Center for the Arts that features work by more than 30 Black artists from Oregon in an array of different media, including photography, fabric, paintings, poetry and more.

Launched as part of the group’s Black History Month program, the installation opened on Feb. 6 and will remain on display until March 29.

Hood River designer and producer August Oaks curated “Black Infinity House.” He describes it as an experiential, maximalist exhibition highlighting artists of color, as well as a place for people to hang out, read books, listen to music and just exist.

Step inside the Studio Space, the Living Room, and the Porch

Unlike many traditional art galleries, “Black Infinity House” is separated into three different spaces.

“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,” Oaks said. “I wanted to create something that really emulated that feeling of creating work, creating art, and would leave people feeling inspired.”

The first area is “The Studio Space” and is modeled after an artist’s studio, with surreal elements that focus on identity exploration and creative expression. Visitors can walk by a “poetry shower,” where poems are flowing down the walls. They can gaze at some unfinished paintings, or sit at the artist’s desk and snoop through their photography on a computer.

The second section is “The Living Room,” akin to a studio apartment with a bed, couch, coffee table, books, record player, albums and an electric piano. “It’s centered around gathering and consuming Black art and Black culture, but in a positive way,” Oaks explained.

Here, too, visitors are encouraged to interact with the exhibit as if it’s their own living room.

“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,” Oaks said. “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.”

The third space is “The Porch” and is centered around connecting with nature, art and rest. It also features some of Harris’s handmade jewelry, which she said is inspired by stones and natural colors.

“People are encouraged to kind of just take some breathing room in that space,” Oaks said. “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.”

Oaks estimated that about 20% of the artwork was contributed by artists from Hood River, with the rest coming from the Portland area.

On living in a “fishbowl”

Black in the Gorge co-founder Charity was the Hood River County School District’s first and only Black teacher until 2014, when her former student, Harris, who is Black biracial, joined the district as a middle school counselor.

Charity and Harris came up with the idea to form the organization after one of Harris’ students began feeling like they were “in a fishbowl” of sorts, isolated from others at school. It was a feeling that Harris was familiar with, having lived in Hood River since she was in kindergarten and was often the only Black kid in class. While she had used humor as a coping mechanism, she wanted Black students who also felt lonely to have more support.

“So, Stephanie’s student was having a hard time, and 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,” Charity said.

“And so that was the catalyst for Black in the Gorge. And 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.”

When Oaks first shared his vision for “Black Infinity House,” Charity said she found it hard to conceptualize until she visited the exhibition one day, when it wasn’t even finished.

“And the first thing I saw was these beautiful images of small Black children,” Charity said. “And I walked in and I immediately started crying, because we don’t have a lot of input from Black people in Hood River. 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 I found out, quite surprisingly, that a lot of them had never been to Hood River.”

Upon arriving in Hood River, Charity said many of the artists who aren’t from the city were surprised by how cosmopolitan it was.

“There were so many people that came, that were so surprised by the fact that we have something like that in Hood River,” Charity said. “They said we should have this all the time. And that made my heart feel very, very wonderful and warm to think that people support us.”

“We contain multitudes, each and every one of us”

Oaks was inspired to create “Black Infinity House” after reading “The Black Aesthetic II,” a book featuring conversations with filmmakers based out of Oakland.

An idea is broached at the beginning of that book: that Blackness in and of itself is an infinite concept, and there is no single definition of Black identity.

“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,” Oaks said. “I wanted to give all these artists an opportunity to showcase who they were and their talents in whatever form of art that they chose to, especially as we, 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.”

Like the artists featured in the exhibition, Black in the Gorge as an organization has worked to carve out new spaces for itself in the Gorge, time and time again.

For Charity, the group’s mission is to educate its community about the history and the culture of Black people. The group organized Hood River’s first Juneteenth celebration in 2023.

“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,” Charity said. “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.”

“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.’”

“Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller spoke to Charity, Harris and Oaks last week to share more details about “Black Infinity House” and Black in the Gorge. Listen to the full conversation: