During their residency, DeepTime Collective facilitated a series of workshops with third grade students that explored familiar and alternative ways of timekeeping through drawing abstract shapes to illustrate the shape of time. They then turned those drawings into movements for a performance with students. 

In the workshops, the artists did exercises to get students thinking about how communities measure time and how we physically feel minutes, hours, days, and years. For example, they asked students to close their eyes and raise their hands when they believed one minute had passed, highlighting the influence of visual cues for timekeeping. They also asked students to draw the shape of their day, the shape of time for an ant, or the feeling of time during the last minute of the school day.

DeepTime Collective is a collaboration between artists Amanda Leigh Evans and Tia Kramer that explores how people understand time, and how individual perceptions of time influence how we relate to the communities and environments that surround us.

Tia is an interdisciplinary artist who creates collective experiences and performances rooted in public art, creative pedagogy, oral history, dance, and social action. She has a BA from Macalester College, a postbaccalaureate in Fiber + Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA in Art + Social Practice from PSU. 

Amanda is an artist who creates projects that reveal invisible threads that connect social and ecological communities. She led The Living School of Art, an alternative art school inside a large affordable housing complex in East Portland and was a core collaborator at KSMoCA. She holds an MFA in Art + Social Practice from PSU and a postbaccalaureate in Ceramics from Cal State Long Beach.

Since forming in 2021, they have developed many projects such as Fifty Clocks Made to Strike Together, a large-scale installation and performance as part of the 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial, When The River Becomes a Cloud, an ongoing collaborative public artwork at Prescott School, and A Day Without a Clock, a performance at the Everson Museum when they ran the museum without any clocks for one day. 

The exhibition opening takes place in the cafetorium hallway. Please stop by the main office to sign in and receive a “visitor” badge when you arrive.

During her 2026 residency at KSMoCA, painter and Dr. MLK Jr. School alumnus, Kathy Pennington, collaborated with the Harriet Tubman Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice at MLK School to curate an exhibition of her work at KSMoCA. This group of fourth and fifth grade students learned about the curatorial process by participating in workshops at Dr. MLK Jr. School and by going on field trips to the Portland Art Museum where they met with curators and museum professionals to learn about the various stages of exhibition planning.

Out of twenty-four paintings, they selected twelve depicting a range of subjects and places: churches and bus stops; car washes and restaurants; friends catching up over lunch; familiar cityscapes; brightly colored outfits on Easter Sunday; scenes from the local barbershop, and everything in between. According to Pennington, creating artwork of Black people, for Black people, is what drives her practice. “I always wanted black people to have art in their homes that represented them. Because you couldn't just go and buy Black art in Portland when I was growing up,” said Pennington.

Pennington was born in 1953 in Seattle, Washington. Her painting style was developed through a formal educational journey at both Oregon State University and Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a broader education that took place in the community through friends and partnerships with local artists. Four of her pieces were a part of the Black Artists of Oregon exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. Her artwork was also shown in the Kwanzaa on Killingsworth art show held in the historic Albina Arts Center. 

The exhibition opening takes place in the library. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “visitor” badge when you arrive.

During her fall 2025 residency at KSMoCA, Yoonhee led workshops on paper making with every student in the school from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade. There were six colors of paper using colors the artist selected from the traditional Korean color spectrum, also known as Obangsaek. Students made sculptural compositions using their finished paper tiles. 

“As an artist I strive to deepen my sensitivity to my surroundings and my art is the record of my own perception of our time. Simple items that are in my everyday orbit are the subject of my work. They have included bread bag tags, magic marker caps, Play-Doh container caps, popped balloons, vintage line tape, old cotton futons, and more. I am intuitively drawn to the unknown stories and hidden histories of these humble objects,” said Choi.

She studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, architecture at Yale University, and city planning at Hong-ik University in Seoul. Born and raised in South Korea, she currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

The exhibition opening takes place in the Cafetorium hallway and is open to the public. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “Visitor” badge.

During his Spring 2025 artist residency at KSMoCA, Dr. MLK Jr. School’s very own Mr. Xavier Pierce led over five workshops on color and painting with his first grade class. He collaborated with his first grade students on mixing and naming unique paint colors based on their emotions, dreams, and interests. Then they painted their colors onto a canvas divided into three sections: walls and a floor. This created a “room” that students  filled with drawings of subjects that are important to them. These collaborative rooms became a symbolic safe space for expression, reflection, and taking up space. Each student was paired with a PSU student and KSMoCA mentor who supported them individually—helping mix colors, spread paint across the canvas, and draw their chosen subjects. The resulting student artwork will be exhibited at KSMoCA alongside Mr. Pierce’s paintings. 

Mr. Pierce is an artist who grew up in Northeast Portland down the street from Dr. MLK Jr. School where he is a first grade teacher. He received his undergraduate degree in Liberal Studies and a master’s in Education, both from Portland State University.

The exhibition opening takes place in the Cafetorium hallway and is open to the public. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “Visitor” badge.

During his winter 2025 artist residency at KSMoCA, Napoleon Jones-Henderson led two workshops with Ms. Kahn’s second grade students. They built houses from cardboard in the style that Jones-Henderson has used in his own work. Then they glued and pasted images of things they find important on the surface of the structure so the house becomes a sacred space for cultivation of ideas and concepts. The resulting student artwork will be exhibited at KSMoCA alongside Jones-Henderson’s work. 

The exhibition opening takes place in the Cafetorium hallway. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “Visitor” badge.

Jones-Henderson was born in 1943 in Chicago, Illinois. His artwork is in the collections of the DuSable Museum of African American History, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Southside Community Art Center, Hampton University Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of National Center of Afro-American Artists and Studio Museum in Harlem. In addition, his artwork is in distinguished private collections and numerous public art commissions. He lives and works in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Intisar Abioto is an artist and explorer working across photography, dance, and writing. As a storyteller, her works capture the many narratives of peoples of African descent across various geographic regions. She is also the curator of the monumental exhibition, Black Artists of Oregon, recently shown at the Portland Museum of Art. 

For her KSMoCA exhibition, Abioto will showcase a photography series that focuses on Black and Indigenous stewards of the land across various landscapes—family farms, gardens, and other rural domains. As such, we thought it would be fitting that this exhibition also include our favorite steward at Dr. MLK Jr. school, the incomparable Ms. Ruby Sims!

For over fifteen years, Ms. Ruby has served tasty and nutritious meals to students, emphasizing the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables. As an avid gardener and herbalist, she is passionate about wellness and strongly believes in the healing power of plants. The exhibit features a portrait of Ms. Ruby by Abioto taken in the park next to the school.

For this exhibition’s accompanying workshops, Ms. Ruby led a “touch, smell, taste” session with Ms. De Lara-Vargas’ kindergarten class, where students had the opportunity to taste and learn more about her favorite herbs. In a second workshop, the students generated a creative response to the first workshop, adding drawings of their favorite herbs to t-shirts. After the workshop, they wore their shirts to the cafeteria, surprising Ms. Ruby with a “Kinder GARDEN Parade” through the lunch line. Documentation of both workshops will be exhibited with Abioto’s photography series.

The exhibit opening takes place in the Cafetorium hallway. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “Visitor” badge.

Sadé DuBoise is KSMoCA’s Winter 2024 artist-in-residence. At KSMoCA, DuBoise led two workshops with Ms. Tran’s second grade class, where she helped students create their own portraits in nature. During the first workshop students had their portraits taken in their favorite outdoor spaces, which they later transferred onto watercolor paper. They were then instructed to select prompts that encouraged them to think creatively about their experiences in nature. During the second workshop students were encouraged to reinterpret their photos however they saw fit as DuBoise led them through the process of painting their portraits. The workshops were designed to not just teach painting techniques but to also connect the students with nature and their own creative expressions. It was a joy to see their individual perspectives and connections to the outdoors come to life through their artwork,” said DuBoise.

The exhibit opening takes place in the Cafetorium hallway. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “Visitor” badge.

At KSMoCA Mr. Brown collaborated with PSU students to facilitate a workshop in Ms. Maalaea’s first grade class, inspired by the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. He believes that if children are given space to think deeply about this question, they can take steps to actualize their dreams.

Additionally, we invited professionals from the community that represented occupations students desired to learn more about. College students from PSU paired with the first graders to interview the visitors as Mr. Brown photographed their interactions. During a follow-up workshop, the first grade students augmented poster-sized portraits of themselves depicting their future selves working in their dream professions.

These works will be exhibited alongside images from Mr. Brown’s “There’s Magic in Dreams” series created in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

The exhibit opening takes place in the cafetorium hallway. Please stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a “Visitor” pass to the school.

Update, 1/17/24: This event was originally scheduled for Thursday, January 18, 2024.

Please join us for the opening reception of Byron Kim: Sunday Paintings, which will take place during the MLK Jr. School Comm Unity Festival and during Assembly, a coauthored conference organized by PSU Art + Social Practice.