Ladies Up Project announces expansion of community street art program

Whether you like it or not, street art is a defining component of a city.

However, street art has historically been a male-dominated field, which inspired the Portland Street Art Alliance’s Ladies Up Project.

With allocated space and canvases, Ladies Up is rooted in empowering the creative expression of female street artists.

We’ll hear from Executive Director Tiffany Conklin and artist Kyra Watkins about the program’s impact and recent expansion.

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

Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez, in this week for Dave Miller. If you have been to the Portland area in recent years and noticed colorful, super-sized murals splashed across public spaces, you may have Portland Street Art Alliance to thank for that. The nonprofit supports street art culture and street artists locally and throughout the Northwest. Lately, they’ve been working to empower women and other femme-identifying folks who create street art through their Ladies Up Project. And now those efforts are expanding.

With us now to tell us more about it is Tiffany Conklin, the executive director of Portland Street Art Alliance. Also joining us today is Kyra Watkins, an artist and alumna of the Ladies Up Project. Kyra and Tiffany, welcome to Think Out Loud. Thank you for being with us.

Kyra Watkins: Thank you for having us.

Tiffany Conklin: Thank you.

Chávez: So Tiffany, I want to start with you. You founded Portland Street Art Alliance in 2012, if I’m not mistaken. Eight years later, in 2020, the Alliance launched the Ladies Up Project. What did you see in those eight years that inspired you to launch a project that centered women, specifically, and street art?

Conklin: So we came to this idea, one, because the vast majority of our staff members are actually female. And as a female myself, I noticed that there was this gap happening, that women, female-identifying artists and people in the street art community were very underrepresented compared to all the male artists we were working with. So we would really have to search them out and try to find women that were in this field. And that’s for a lot of reasons. A lot of it goes back to originally street art coming out of the graffiti culture and reasons why that is a more male-dominated subculture.

But of course, things are changing, and we really wanted to elevate and bring a platform to women and work with them. And what we realized is bringing them all together in a space really created a very different vibe for the painting and for that project. So when we got access to the first community art program site for Ladies Up in Southeast Portland we decided that we really wanted to have a space for all female-identifying muralists to paint. And we went through our roster and we selected a couple of our favorites, which is a really special thing that we get to do in these very unique programs. They came out and painted, and Kyra is one of them.

Chávez: Yes, and I’m so excited to hear about your mural.

Tiffany, I wanna ask, you mentioned the first Ladies Up mural project location that was in inner Southeast Portland with murals along Southeast Alder and 15th Avenue. And as soon as I read that, I knew exactly where that was because I used to pass by it on long walks around the city during the COVID pandemic. And I just got to tell you both all the art there brought me such comfort. So, Tiffany, can you first describe what that project site looks like and feels like?

Conklin: Yeah, it’s the backside of the building. So it’s two long walls facing residential streets, which are rows of very cute, quaint Southeast Portland houses there. And each wall is a separate artist. The walls are divided by columns naturally in the architecture, so that just made perfect little canvases for us to work with. We first started working with seven artists along the Morrison Street side – that was when Kyra painted with us. And then we added four more on the other side when you turn the corner.

And each one is totally different because they are designed by obviously different artists. And what’s really unique about the Community Art program, which that’s part of, is that not only do we get to choose those artists, but then the artists are given almost complete open creative freedom in their work. So they can just pick something that they really want to practice doing or show in their portfolio and share with the rest of the community, which is obviously very unique and different, versus how a lot of other murals come to be when it’s a market commission. You’re being told what to paint, essentially, and providing a service to someone else.

Chávez: Kyra Watkins, I want to turn to you now. As we’ve mentioned. You have a mural up at this site that we’ve been talking about in Southeast Portland. Can you describe it to us?

Watkins: The mural that I have is a profile of a young gentleman with a parrot on his shoulder, and the parrot is made of roses. Actually, this mural was the first mural I’ve done while being a Portland resident. I’m a Cincinnati, Ohio native, so I’ve been here for about eight years, and it was my first public arts project here in Portland. And it was exciting because it was the very first time I actually got to design a mural. I’ve been doing murals for a long time as an apprentice, but I got the leeway and the reins to actually design. Because a lot of times, much like Tiffany referenced, when you’re designing for a client, you’re creating what they envision. So we had full creative control, and that was beautiful.

Chávez: And I know you work in multiple mediums and sizes, and I understand you first got your start as a young person as a mural apprentice. What hooked you on creating murals? What do you love about public art in particular?

Watkins: I’m an artist through and through with some big emotions. And when I see my work, it makes me really happy. I guess a part of me exploring my ego is me putting myself out there. The beauty about public art is there’s just no gatekeeping of that, it’s for the public to see. It’s not hidden behind any walls. I just wanted to put my work out there where people can see, and it makes me feel good to share it with the public. I think my stuff is dope and I wanna share it.

Chávez: Heck yeah, I’ve seen this mural and I think I would agree with your characterization.

Watkins: Thank you so much.

Chávez: You spoke to this a little bit, but what was your experience like working with Portland Street Art Alliance as part of this Ladies Up Project?

Watkins: It was a smooth and easy one, one of the easiest projects I had with Portland Street Art Alliance. Not to the fault of Portland Street Art Alliance, it’s just them being a liaison with other organizations that I’m working for. But it’s just the freedom. I have freedom of the wall and getting access. A lot of times I have my mentees come to me and like, “how do I get started?” The first thing you have to do is get a wall. So I think Portland Street Art Alliance removed that barrier. They came with the wall. They came with a supply budget. And when you’re getting your start, that’s golden. I struck gold.

Chávez: So Tiffany, I want to turn back to you for a moment. As I mentioned, this program is now expanding. What will this new expansion of the program look like in this area?

Conklin: Yeah, so I tallied it up just before we started speaking, and we actually have 17 artists that we’ve worked with now through the Ladies Up initiative, and that is now across three sites. The first site that we’ve been talking about on Morrison was kickstarted by Killian Pacific. They provided a donation to help us get going, and luckily the new property owners continued to support that. So we still have that site going, that’s still rotating. Part of the special program, we’ll rotate some of the murals out to give other people opportunities.

And then we also, thanks to a grant from First Tech Credit Union, we got a site in Hillsboro, Oregon going. That was two years ago now, in 2024. And then most recently, we have a brand new site in the Central Eastside that we had Ren Kyles recently paint a double mural, two separate murals kind of combined into one. And that mural site was also supported and kickstarted by First Tech Credit Union, so very thankful for their grant support.

I mentioned the community art program’s really unique. All of that is funded through public donations and grant support. That’s why we have such flexibility with that program and being able to curate and give the artists all of that wonderful creative freedom.

Chávez: Amazing. Tiffany, how have you seen the landscape change – or not change – for women and femme-identifying people creating street art in the Portland area in the years since you started this project?

Conklin: That’s a great question. I think, right now, we’re kind of hovering at about 50-50 working with male and female, which feels good, that women are getting that good representation on the walls. They’re landing big commission projects. Any time we can with these community art projects, we do try to make sure that we have female representation on the walls. At our flagship site, we call it Taylor Electric at the Electric Blocks, we have hosted times where all the women come together and we only have women painting on a certain weekend. So we try to build it in anywhere we can.

But I think just in general, there’s a lot of really amazing female muralists out there. And they can do everything the boys can do. So don’t hesitate on hiring them, certainly, and inviting them to paint your walls.

Chávez: Kyra Watkins, I want to turn back to you. You spoke a little bit about this from your own personal experience. But why do you feel like it’s so important for women’s voices and women’s art to be visible in such a prominent public way on massive walls across the Portland and Portland area cityscape?

Watkins: Well, if we’re trying to share Portland’s story, I think women are a big part of that, so I think they should be just as present in that storytelling. And public art, it lends to public storytelling. So I think that’s a great reason why we need to be represented and our stories told, and I think we should be the architects of those stories and not leave them left to be told by someone else. So it’s important for artists like myself to remember that, that I have a duty.

A lot of times, when I do look to my left, look to my right, and I see my peers in the public art space, the ratio can be a little skewed. So a lot of times when I show up, I’m left to have to be a voice for a lot of women, which I don’t mind. But I don’t think that’s a burden I as an individual should have to bear. I think we all need to continue to open those doors to make sure that more women are able to share their voices.

And then also, to any woman under the sound of my voice, just know that you can do it. Because a lot of times I think when we talk about the public arts space and why it’s male-dominated, I call it “blue collar with color.” It’s a physical job, and a lot of times we have this perception that women can’t do physical work. They can. But also, once the atmosphere is already male-dominated, it’s hard for women to sometimes feel safe. Well, we have pockets, we have incubators to keep us safe and to continue to make community in the public art space. It takes us joining and having the courage to join.

Chávez: I know you also have a focus on youth mentorship. Why is that important to you, and how do you think you can use your role in that way?

Watkins: It’s important to me because that’s my catalyst. I started as an apprentice, I started as a mentee. And now that I’ve grown into a mentor, it’s important that I continue to reach back and make a path, much like my path has been made for me. I’m not interested to being the first person in the room, I’m not interested to being the only one in the room. I think if I was to get in a room where I’m the only one in the room, that’s something wrong. And my duty is to hold that door open so there’s more people that look like me with my story, and with stories unlike me that don’t look like me, that are in the room so we can have a more fleshed-out story.

Chávez: Tiffany, how would you like to see Portland’s street art scene grow even more from here? What is your dream for what public art and the community here for street artists could look like in the future?

Conklin: I think building off what Kyra just said and that question actually, that’s where my mind goes is that we are really creating this now to pass on to the next generation, this nonprofit and all of these programs. We’ve always been really focused on finding new and emerging artists, that’s always been a goal of ours over the past 14 years that we’ve been doing this.

What’s really beautiful to see now is that people that we work with on the community art projects and get some of their first walls – I can mention Saphya Lones specifically, who is one of the women that painted with us. She started as a youth camper with our youth summer camp in her late teens, and now she’s grown up. She keeps working with us, and we just got to hire her as the GraffLab camp coordinator, to bring in a whole cohort of 13- to 17-year-old kids interested in street art. So we were able to nurture her from just working with us painting, to now in a leadership role.

So I really see that as just one of those examples, that’s what we want to keep doing and we want to use that as a model, like Kyra said, to hold that door open and help bring people in to not just expand their portfolios and their career. She was perfect at that job because she’s there, she went through it herself, and she knows how to identify with those teens and really help nurture them and their creative interests too. I feel very much like that nurturing and bringing in the next generation is what I would really love for everyone to focus on, sharing the knowledge.

Chávez: Well, Tiffanny and Kyra, thanks so much for being here and spending some time talking about awesome public art with us.

Watkins: Thank you so much.

Conklin: Thank you.

Chávez: Tiffany Conklin is the executive director of Public Street Art Alliance. Kyra Watkins is an artist and an alumna of the Ladies Up Project.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.