Panel Discussion: WaterShed Graphic Novel Series
Channel: PNCA Live Video
Date: 2022-10-19

Please join the PNCA Community in celebrating the WaterShed Graphic Novel series with an evening panel discussion about the making of the work.

Panelists include Melanie Stevens (Artist/Author), samm saxby (Editor), and Sharita Towne (Portland-based transdisciplinary artist).
This discussion will be moderated by Vo (Portland-based writer, speaker, curator, artist and musician).
 
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Dane Nelson and Ed Cauduro Collection Studies Lab
On view until Monday, October 17th
Gallery Hours: 10am-4pm, Monday - Saturday

“THIS TIME...” A WaterShed Graphic Novel Series Exhibition by Melanie Stevens, features WaterShed Vol. I: PostModern, and WaterShed Vol. II: In the Black, the 1st two volumes in a ten volume series. Stevens’ prophetic voice eerily foretells of moments that reverberate through realities in a gripping time traveling thriller. This exhibition presents WaterShed in a variety of methods to be experienced; a reading area for the viewer to spend time and enjoy the work, video installations, as well as large format prints of pages from the graphic novel displayed through the gallery. Stevens also uses quotes from WaterShed to activate the space, bringing the viewer into the graphic novel. WaterShed is an engaging and beautifully illustrated narrative only two volumes in. “THIS TIME..."
PANELIST BIOS

Melanie Stevens, Artist/Author
Melanie Stevens is an artist, illustrator and writer. She is the creator of the graphic novel series, WaterShed, and the co-founder and editor of Miss Anthology, an organization that supports and publishes racially and economically diverse young comic artists who identify as female or genderqueer.  She is also the co-curator of Nat Turner Project, a migratory gallery space that grants artists of color the freedom to create or express their own language within and without the parameters of racial commodification or designation. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree for Political Science from Yale University and her Master’s of Fine Arts degree for Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art, where she currently teaches.

samm saxby, Copy Editor
samm saxby transferred to Portland State University where she earned her BFA in Creative Writing Fiction and graduated with honors. Samm is the Events and Marketing Assistant for Catapult / Counterpoint / Soft Skull Press, Associate Editor for Forest Avenue Press, Assistant Editor for The Gravity of the Thing, and she has published work in Nailed magazine. Samm is working to dismantle racism in book publishing. She participates in local writing workshops, reading series, speaks on literary panels, volunteers for literary events, is working on her first zine with Microcosm, and writing her debut novel.

Sharita Towne, Printer/Publisher of WaterShed Vol II 
Sharita Towne is transdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR, born and raised on the west coast of the U.S. along I-5 —from Salem, OR, to Tacoma, WA and down to Sacramento, CA. She is a research based video artist and printmaker most interested in creating interdisciplinary community art projects that engage local and global Black geographies, histories, and possibilities. She is the co-founder of URe:AD Press (United Re:Public of the African Diaspora),The Black Life Experiential Research Group, and is also known as “Mariah Carrie Mae Weems”, one-fourth of the post-colonial conceptual karaoke band Weird Allan Kaprow. URe:AD Press is an ongoing collaborative print and media project for Afro-diasporic audiences, that produces video installations, screenprinted ephemera, and self published books of Afro-diasporic inquiry. The Black Life Experiential Research Group is an interdisciplinary collaborative for inquiry and activism at the intersection of art, urban planning, and radical geography. Weird Allan Kaprow creates participatory projects built around appropriating pop melodies and creating new lyrics and music videos that critique institutional and art historical complicity in promoting recolonial worldviews.

Vo, Panel Moderator
Vo (they/them) is a writer, speaker, curator, artist and musician who has exhibited and toured in Australia, Germany, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Singapore, Croatia, Mexico, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Vietnam, Sweden, Malaysia, and the States. They primarily work in comics, textiles, embroidery, weaving, and furniture building; to explore support strategies and models of community care within a post-traumatic social landscape, focusing on the resilience of BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+ and disabled communities. Their latest publication is a graphic novel titled Trauma X: Holding Space Radically, published in late 2020.