In this episode we get into conversation with Portland based multi-disciplinary artist, educator and community organizer Sharita Towne. 

Music featured on this podcast by Brown Calculus

More about the artist:

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.

Interview with Sharita Towne. Episode 72

Artist-run independent broadcasting platform amplifying narratives of intersection, solidarity, contradiction and inspiration in the Arts.

Launched in 2014, Broken Boxes was created to transmit ideas between working Artists. Broken Boxes shares the lived experiences and world building strategies of contemporary Artists in order to archive collective strength while considering how Art and imagining may unbind us from collective social trauma. This long-form interview podcast reflects the vulnerability and strength of the Artist while acknowledging the many variations of an Artists practiced values including those of the activist, advocate, disruptor or culture bearer. 

Broken Boxes maintains that complexity is resilience and expands on the points where we stand in accomplice-ship for one another as creatives. By actively practicing long term alliance through communication strategy, this work amplifies Artists at the forefront of global and regional impact who are creating new ways to see our existence through Art, organizing and advocacy. This project promotes deeper understanding, healing and solidarity as we move collectively towards witnessing each other and the world in new ways.

Interview with Sharita Towne. Episode 72

Broken Boxes Podcast