Bio:
As an artist, Sharita Towne’s interests lie in unpacking the inherited struggles of past burdens and in affording collective catharsis. Through collaboration, stereo-photography, printmaking, video, and community art projects, she’s worked at memorials in Germany; in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria; Brazil; in gentrifying cities like Portland, Oregon and New Orleans; in schools, museums, and neighborhoods, and within her own family.
She received a BFA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Portland State University. She currently teaches at Pacific Northwest College of Art, works in the DIY printmaking and audiovisual collective URe:AD Press (United Re:Public of the African Diaspora), the post-colonial conceptual karaoke band Weird Allan Kaprow, and is a 2016 Art Matters grant recipient.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Selected Professional Experience (will be updated)
2016 - Instructor, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Media Arts, Mentor, & BFA Thesis Critique
2015 Fulbright, English Teaching Assistant, Brazil
2014 Screenprinting Shop Steward, Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, OR
2014 Instructor, Portland African American Leadership Forum & SEI, “De-Gentrifying Portland”
2014 Instructor, ART 257 Video I: Experimental Video, Portland State University
2013 Graduate Assistant, Event and Space Coordinator, Portland State University, OR
2013 Teaching Assistant, Printmaking, Portland State University, OR
2013 Film and Video Instructor, Ravensbrück Memorial, Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany
2013 Art Teacher & Interpreter, Book Arts/Newsletter, Metropolitan Family Serv., Portland, OR
2012 Youth Organizer, Interpreter, Video Instr., Germany/Saharawi Refugee Camps in Algeria
Selected Exhibitions and Screenings (will be updated)
2016 (*upcoming) URe:AD TV, BRIC, NY
2016 (*upcoming) Portland Prints, Micro screenprinting artist residencies, Portland Art Museum
2016 Our City in Stereo, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR
2016 Our City in Stereo, residency, c3:initiative, Portland
2016 Out of Sight, King St. Station, Seattle, WA, survey of contemporary art in the Pacific Northwest
2016 mamuk x̣alaqɬ iliʔi, Littman Gallery, Portland, OR
2016 Portland Lyric, Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, OR
2016 AgitProp!, “Karaoking the Museum”, Brooklyn Museum, NY, NY
2015 Karaoking Portland, by Weird Allan Kaprow, Independent Publishing Resource Center
2015 Continents, Auto Body: Buenos Aires, Faena Arts Center
2015 black [genus, genesis, genius], group exhibition, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
2014 Continents, Auto Body, Giant Motors: Auto Body & Paint Shop, Miami, FA
2014 Beasts of Notation, transmedia collaboration & event, Independent Publishing Resource Center
2014 Public Apology Karaoke, by Weird Allan Kaprow, Independent Publishing Resource Center
2014 De-Gentrifying Portland, film workshop and community screenings, Portland, OR
2014 Now We Know, In Other Words Feminist Community Center, Portland, OR
2014 Sahara in Stereo, Experimental Film Festival Portland, OR
2014 Karaoking the Museum, Shine A Light, Portland Art Museum, OR
2013 The People’s Laundromat Theatre, with Shani Peters, New York, NY
2013 Memorybildia, Shine a Light, Portland Art Museum, OR
2013 The Living Lab of Family Memory, Field Work, Portland OR
2012 Sahara in Stereo, Here! Hear! Experimental Ethnographic Film, Albuquerque, NM
Selected Awards
2017 The Precipice FUnd (URe:AD Press)
2017 Regional Arts and Culture Council (URe:AD Press)
2016 Art Matters
2016 Regional Arts and Culture Council, Project Grant, Our Family in Stereo
2016 Regional Arts and Culture Council, Professional Development Grant, Agitprop!
2015 Rema Hort Mann Foundation, ACE Community Engagement Grant:
"Tradução: Intercultural Media Exchange: US & Brazil", collaborator to Shani Peters
2015 Expanding Cultural Access, Regional Arts and Culture Council, “BCC:BrownHall”
2015 Community Grant: Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, “Hair & Community in Black Portland”
2015 Regional Arts and Culture Council, “Karaoking Portland” with Weird Allan Kaprow
2015 Regional Arts and Culture Council, “Conscientização” with Betty Marín and Zachary Gough
2015 Regional Arts and Culture Council, with Roger Peet, Sara Siestreem, and Gabe Flores
2014 Precipice Award, Black Creative Collective BrownHall, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
2014 Expanding Cultural Access, Regional Arts and Culture Council, “De-Gentrifying Portland”
2014 Community Grant: Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, “De-Gentrifying Portland”
Bibliography and Publications
2016 “An Artist Sees Portland In Stereoscopic Show”, State of Wonder, Oregon Public Broadcasting
2014 De-Gentrifying Portland, KOIN, Portland Mercury, The Skanner, KBOO Radio, and The Oregonian
2014 Talk to the Gun, Social Practice Reference Points Book series, with Pedro Reyes
2014 State of Wonder, June 7th 2014, Oregon Public Broadcasting, OPB, with Pedro Reyes
2012 Now I know my…, Printed Matter LLC, NY, NY
Education
MFA, Contemporary Art Practices, Portland State University
BA, Art & Interdisciplinary Studies (dbl. major) Honors, University of California Berkeley
Languages
English (Native language)
Spanish (Fluent)
Portuguese (Fluent)
Arabic (Working knowledge)
German (Working knowledge)
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).