PORTLAND, ORE – Drawing on her previous work exploring materials with unusual and interesting physical properties, Stephanie Simek will install her deftly crafted, hand-built “table of holograms” in the Portland Building Installation Space beginning February 21st.
Simek’s project, titled Table of Elements (and Minerals), was designed with the architecture of the Installation Space in mind. Her installation not only serves as a way to engage visitors with a set of optical illusions (illusions that depend on the clever use of optical principles rather than complicated electronics) but it also functions as a conceptual container or vitrine for the artist’s personal table of elements—silicon, quartz, calcite, iron, copper, and bismuth. “It’s a table within a table, a reliquary for various elemental materials with remarkable inherent potential.” Simek says, “Each possesses unusual magnetic, electrical, or optical capabilities, and all have the ability to do work, such as carrying a signal or storing information.”
These familiar, but perhaps under-recognized, minerals have been used by the artist in her past installations to great effect. Those projects include the design and construction of a room-sized crystal radio, an invisibility cloak, a levitating sculpture, and an 8 byte data storage device.
About the Artist: Portland artist Stephanie Simek produces a wide array of work in multiple mediums. She received her BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and has shown and performed her work in the Pacific Northwest, New York, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Simek has received two Oregon Arts Commission Career Development Awards and was awarded a Regional Arts & Culture Council Project Grant in 2014. Her work will be included in a two-person show at Oregon State University in 2018.
Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland and is open 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday. Table of Elements (and Minerals) opens Tuesday, February 21 and runs through Friday, March 17.
The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) manages the 13’ x 8’ installation space in the lobby of the Portland Building and presents installation based art there year round. For more information, including images, proposals, and statements for projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.
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The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) provides grants for artists, nonprofit organizations and schools in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties; manages an internationally acclaimed public art program; raises money and awareness for the arts through Work for Art; convenes forums, networking events and other community gatherings; provides workshops and other forms of technical assistance for artists; and oversees a program to integrate arts and culture into the standard curriculum in public schools through The Right Brain Initiative. RACC values a diversity of artistic and cultural experiences and is working to build a community in which everyone can participate in culture, creativity and the arts. For more information visit racc.org.