SPEAKERS
Zoe Weldon-Yochim is a Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research explores the intersections of art and ecology, with a focus on how visual and material culture—particularly Indigenous artistic practices—engage with environmental injustices, nuclear histories, extractive economies, and the ecological legacies of militarism. She examines how artists challenge dominant narratives and foreground innovative modes of engaging with land, technology, and environmental futures through their work. Her research has been supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the College Art Association, among others.

Emily Eliza Scott is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and artist who holds a joint professorship in Art History & Environmental Studies, and is Co-Director of the Center foe Environmental Futures, at the University of Oregon. She has authored numerous essays on contemporary art and design practices that engage pressing (political) ecological issues; co-edited The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (2021), Viscosity: Mobilizing Materialities (2019), and Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics (2015); and is currently writing a book on art that tracks environmental violence. Her work has been supported by major grants/awards from Creative Capital, the College Art Association, American Council of Learned Societies, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Nevada Museum of Art, and Graham, Luce, Mellon, Annenberg, and Switzer Foundations, among other institutions. She is a founding member of two collaborative art projects, World of Matter (2011-17) and the Los Angeles Urban Rangers (2004-present), and worked for nearly a decade as a National Park Service ranger before entering academia.

Portland-based artist Michael Brophy graduated in 1985 from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where he has also taught. He has shown extensively in the Northwest in both solo and group exhibitions. Reach: The Hanford Series is the first solo exhibition at the JSMA by Brophy. It continues what the artist calls his “Northwest Ethos” – a long-held commitment to examining the region’s history of exploration and settlement, and the relationship of its native peoples, historical settlers, and contemporary residents to the natural and increasingly urban world. His work is in collections including the JSMA, Microsoft, the Multnomah County Library Collection, the Portland Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, OSU Library in Corvallis, and the City of Portland, OR. Public commissions include Portland’s City Hall, the Multnomah County Courthouse, Portland, OR, the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in Wasco, OR, and Mt. Rainier High School in Des Moines, WA.