Makaela Kroin
OHS has a festive afternoon planned for June 11th, 2017, 2-4 pm. Five featured Portland Metro Area folk artists will perform or demonstrate a variety of cultural traditions, from traditional Kenyan cooking techniques to Estonian folk dance. Rounding out the program will be interactive demonstrations of Oaxacan weaving, Coquille/Coos canoe paddle carving, and intricately woven nautical rope mats. The featured artists were identified by fieldworkers Nancy Nusz, Douglas Manger, and Makaela Kroin during the 2016 Portland Metro Folklife Survey.
This free, family-friendly open-house event is brought to you by the Oregon Folklife Network and is part of the Oregon Historical Society’s “Second Sunday” series.
Featured artists include:
Francisco Bautista is a fourth-generation weaver from Teotitlán del Valle, a village near Oaxaca City, Mexico, known for its weaving tradition. Bautista, who sells his stunning hand-loomed rugs at Portland’s Saturday Market, will show how he weaves colorful designs on his five-foot loom. He’ll also talk about his family’s traditional dyes and their natural sources.
Dennis Best, a retired US Coast Guard Chief Officer and Surfman, travels the world in his sailboat and makes traditional nautical rope mats of manila rope and seine net twine. Best will demonstrate his knotting techniques and invites guests to tie a few themselves.
Wambui Machua, Kenyan chef and business owner, teaches African cooking classes, caters, sells food at markets, and funds charitable projects through her Beaverton-based business, Spice of Africa. Machua will prepare typical Kenyan dishes including ugali, a corn meal based dish, and samosas.
Tulehoidjad, Portland’s Estonian folk dance troupe, has kept the Estonian language, dances, and other Baltic traditions alive for four generations in Oregon. Liina Teose leads the troupe that her mother, Estonian immigrant Lehti Merilo, founded in 1950. Both the adult and youth troupes will perform, and visitors are invited to learn some steps and join in!
Shirod Younker (Upper Coquille and Miluk Coos), is one of the keepers of his Tribe’s cultural knowledge. A recipient of the 2017 Native Arts and Culture Foundation’s Mentor Artist Fellowship, he manages the only pre-college artists-in-residence program for Native American teens in the United States. Younker will demonstrate his canoe paddle carving and discuss the interconnectedness between spiritual wisdom and Native art aesthetics.
This event is free and open to the public—all ages are welcome—no registration required. The Oregon Historical Society is located at 1200 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205.
For more information about the Oregon Historical Society, visit http://www.ohs.org/.
This event is the culmination of the Oregon Folklife Network’s Portland Metro folklife survey, the fourth in a series of regional surveys to identify and document folk and traditional artists in Oregon. The survey was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works, Folk & Traditional Arts Program.
OFN is administered by the University of Oregon and is supported in part by grants from the Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
To join the Twitter conversation about this event, please use #Oregonfolk. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, go to arts.gov. Follow OFN on Twitter @OregonFolklife and follow us on Facebook at Oregon Folklife Network.