Our 2027 Jury:

Nan Curtis

Nan Curtis (b. Louisville, KY, 1966) is an interdisciplinary and installation-based sculptor based in Portland, OR. Her work mines site, home and personal narrative to reframe what can be considered mundane, and funny, in life. Curtis received her MFA from the University of Cincinnati & BA from the College of Wooster, OH. Major exhibitions include DiverseWorks, Houston; Tacoma Art Museum; Mira Costa College, San Diego; ConsolidatedWorks, Seattle; Linfield College, OR; AnyTime Dept, Cincinnati, OH; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Reed College, WilliamsonKnight/Holding Contemporary, 1430Contemporary, NINE, The Art Gym, Sator Projects in Portland and Scalehouse Gallery in Bend, OR. She was the Artist In Residence at Clark College, Vancouver, WA in March/April 2026. Nan received the prestigious Bonnie Bronson Fellowship in 2011. She has attended residencies at Yucca Valley Material Lab, Joshua Tree, CA, Mira Costa College, OCAC & Caldera. Her work has been featured in ArtForum, ArtWeek, The Oregonian, Seattle Stranger, Willamette Week & Portland Monthly. Her work is in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Sarah Miller Meigs, Linda Hutchins and John Montague, MK Guth and Greg Landry, Reed College & Joan and John Shipley. She was the Director/Curator of the Feldman Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art, faculty & the Chair of Studio Arts for over 25 years. Currently, Nan has a robust studio practice and is a practicing Death Doula at Hopewell House End of Life Residence in Portland OR.

Mack McFarland

Mack McFarland is an artist, curator, and educator, who spends his days flexing his passion and skills for supporting artists, engaging with communities and partners, all the while advocating for the impacts art and culture have on our lives. For the last twenty-five years, it has been his privilege to collaborate with many cultural producers in the process of creating the shared cultural experiences that sustain and build communities, while helping us make sense of the world.


As an artist Mack has shared his postcards, videos, and performances at Portland Biennial- Oregon, Kaunas Biennial- Lithuania, Time Based Art Festival- Portland, OR, documenta 13- Kassel Germany, Northwest Biennial- Tacoma, WA, anCurrently her venues and festivals. As a curator he has been fortunate to work with many artists, including commissioned projects from tactical media practitioners Critical Art Ensemble, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Disorientalism; as well as solo exhibitions with Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Joe Feddersen, David Horvitz, Raul J. Mendez, Joe Sacco, Cauleen Smith, Lynn Yarne, and many others.

In May 2020 he co-founded Congress Yard Projects with Ariana Jacob, an outdoor exhibition space begun in the time of physical distancing. In 2023 he began PPSTMM, a gallery within a shared studio that is committed to art-as-verb. Currently, McFarland is serving as Arts Administrator within the Cultural Resources Department, for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. 

Morgan Ritter

I am an artist and poet. My work processes embodiment and more broadly the capacity for objects to hold multiple experiences, energies, and meanings. Playfully generated from hypnagogic or dream-like states, object, action, sensation, and language move freely in my work. My creative practice spans drawing, sculpture, text, HTML web pages, and textiles. My art work has been exhibited at Noon Projects (LA), Artists Space (NY), Shanaynay (Paris), PICA, The Whitney Biennial 2017 (NY), a light bulb store, an orchard, MoMA (NY), and many other conventional and less conventional venues for experiencing art. I am the recipient of grants from Oregon Arts Commission, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Regional Arts & Culture Council, among others. I have attended several residencies including Anderson Ranch and Ken Kesey’s Farm. I am a Co-Director of House of Art and Craft, and on the Art Collection Committee at the Oregon Jewish Museum. My artwork has been featured in Art Forum, Art Practical, Art Viewer, e-flux, W Magazine & Vice. I am a longtime WAGENT with Working Artists and the Greater Economy. My work will be on display at the Portland Airport beginning in Fall 2026, as part of the Converge 45 Triennial in partnership with the Port of Portland, curated by Lumi Tan.

Tyler Stoll

Tyler Stoll is an interdisciplinary artist whose research and theory-driven work critically examines contemporary masculinities. Working across sculpture, performance, video, writing, web-based media, and social practice, Tyler often appropriates or reinterprets familiar images and forms, using humor as a tool to invite audiences to imagine different ways of experiencing and embodying gender. In his recent work, Tyler reanimates Danny Zuko, the iconic leather-clad heartbreaker from the musical film Grease, to test the durability of normative, nostalgic masculinities, while offering “flaccidity” as an alternate emancipatory narrative. 

 

Tyler holds an MFA in Art from the University of Oregon and a BMus and BA in French Horn Performance and Environmental Studies from Oberlin College. He also completed the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. Formerly a ceramicist and jeweler, his work has been exhibited in venues ranging from The Society of Arts + Crafts in Boston, MA to Well Well Projects, an artist-run space in Portland where he currently serves as a co-director. Recently, he led a flaccid protest as part of the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial and was an artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Originally from Ohio, Tyler now lives in Portland, OR, where he works as an art preparator and occasional educator.

Many thanks to our 2025 Jury:

Bean Gilsdorf is an artist and writer. Her studio practice reanimates cultural figures from history books, turning flat images into collaged three-dimensional forms that are further détourned through draping, stuffing, and compressing.

Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. Her interdisciplinary art practice explores the ruptured space between the subjectivity and objectivity of the Black female body.

photo of Kanani Miyamoto in front of her botanical window mural. Photo by Mario Gallucci

Kanani Miyamoto is an artist, curator, and educator whose artwork has been shown nationally. Essential to her work as an artist is sharing and celebrating her mixed background in contemporary art to represent her community and the beauty of intersectional identities.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis and resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.”

MFA:NW organizing team

  • Georgina Ruff

    MFA:NW Founder and Art Historian with a mission to connect artists and all the arts communities.

  • Megita Denton

    Intermedia artist making work that speaks of the traditions of the past and responds to the challenges of the present.

  • Sarah Russell

    Maker, viewer and reader of art.

  • Lathe Pattern 28 Edward J. Woolsey 1869

    Collaborators

    Jurors, Handlers, Artists. MFA:NW needs collaborators and looks forward to crediting them here. If you’re interested in getting involved, please send us a note through the contact form.