Meet the Artists
This year’s featured artists represent the remarkable breadth and vitality of creative vision shaping the Northwest today. Each brings a distinct voice—spanning sculpture, painting, mixed media, and interdisciplinary work—while contributing to a shared regional dialogue grounded in innovation, place, and cultural storytelling. Together, their practices illuminate the complexity, resilience, and imagination that define the Northwest arts community.
Iván Carmona creates striking sculptural works that transform memory, nature, and personal history into abstract, tactile forms. Inspired by Modernism and artists such as Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Calder, Carmona channels the mountains, rainforests, and vibrant landscapes of his youth in Luquillo, Puerto Rico through clay and concrete, enriched with flat, vivid color and evocative texture. Each piece is a bridge between intimate recollection and universal experience, merging emotional memory with a bold modernist language.
A 2020 Hallie Ford Fellow, Carmona’s work is held in prestigious collections including the Portland Art Museum, Boise Art Museum, and Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation Collection, captivating audiences with forms that are at once alien, familiar, and unforgettable. Carmona’s work was previously on view in the museum’s exhibition MoNA Ceramic Invitational 2025: Build Me Up, Tear Me Down, Why Don’t You Love Me Babe Like There’s No One Around?
David Hytone works intuitively and in conversation with his materials, letting the process lead to new ideas, compositions, and discoveries. He often experiments with “off-canvas” techniques, such as transferring paint from glass plates or applying painted paper to the artwork’s surface. This process of discovery guides the development of the final work. The content of Hytone’s work often enters the realm of the mythic and archetypal in ways that address autobiographical instances.
A 2024 MacDowell Fellow and 2018 Neddy finalist in painting, currently living in Tacoma, WA David’s current exhibition As Much by Hearsay as by Fact is currently on view at Studio 23 in Ghent, Belgium and will be followed by a solo exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum in November of 2026. Hytone’s work is currently on view in the museum’s exhibition Vitamin P:NW Recent Painting in the Pacific Northwest.
Weston Lambert is redefining the possibilities of mixed-media art. Originally from Bellingham, Washington, Lambert began sculpting as a teenager and has since developed a distinctive practice that merges glass, stone, and metal into works of striking precision and balance. A graduate of the University of Hawaii Mānoa (B.F.A.) and Tulane University (M.F.A.), Lambert’s career has taken him across the country and around the world. His work has been featured in international exhibitions including the International Biennale of Glass, the Seattle Art Fair, and numerous venues across Europe, Asia, and North America.
From intimate, hand-held forms to monumental public installations, Lambert continues to push the boundaries of material and form—inviting viewers to experience the interplay between transparency, weight, and light in unexpected ways. Through the Light: The Sublime in Contemporary Northwest Art.
Whiting Tennis is a celebrated painter whose work explores the intersection of form, color, and abstraction. Drawn to the power of mark-making, Tennis uses painting to explore the subconscious as a source of imagery. Through “automatic drawing”—a spontaneous, intuitive process—he creates sketches that evolve into paintings and sculptures.
Tennis earned his BFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Washington in 1984 and has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Northwest Art (La Conner, WA), Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Salem, OR), and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY). His work was included in the 2014 California-Pacific Triennial at Orange County Museum of Art, and he has received significant honors including the 2007 Neddy Artist Fellowship and the 2008 Arlene Schnitzer Prize. Tennis’s major works are held in public and private collections such as the Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, and Tang Teaching Museum, establishing him as a leading voice in contemporary Northwest painting. Tennis’ work is currently on view in the museum’s exhibition Vitamin P:NW Recent Painting in the Pacific Northwest.
Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) is a multidisciplinary artist from the Umpqua River Valley on Oregon’s South Coast, now based in Portland. Working across painting, photography, printmaking, weaving, and large-scale installation, she merges the ceremonial traditions of her ancestors with contemporary materials and methods. Her practice operates at the intersection of social and ecological justice, education, and Indigenous feminism.
A 2022–23 CFAR and Forge Project Fellow, Siestreem’s work is held in major collections including the Portland Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Forge Project. Featured in Jeffrey Gibson’s An Indigenous Present (2023), she also established a self-sustaining weaving program for the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, continuing her community’s legacy through art and education.
Sistreem’s work is currently on view in the museum’s exhibition Vitamin P:NW Recent Painting in the Pacific Northwest.
