Pamela Chipman, Jan Cook
Jan Cook is a visual artist who works with photo-based imagery, combining traditional processes in unconventional ways. Her work is a combination of reality and fabrication, a type of magic realism where she explores believability in the photographic image and the enigma of altered photographs.
She has exhibited in the US and Mexico. Recent shows include Roll-Up Gallery in Portland, Oregon and Gallery 1/1 in Seattle. In the last few years she has been published in Fraction Magazine and Diffusion Magazine. In 2017 she received a Regional Arts and Culture Council Professional Development Grant and was a Critical Mass finalist. In 2020 her work was acquired by the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture for The Seattle Portable Works Collection.
Jan received her BFA in photography from the University of Washington. She studied and worked in Mexico for two years and that experience had a big influence on her imagery. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
Pamela Chipman explores themes of memory, domesticity and femininity. She creates work that speaks to the history, strengths and struggles of women in our culture.
Centered around the female experience, Chipman’s work is grounded by her own challenges growing up female and navigating the changing cultural landscape for women in the 20th century. While her work plays with the multiplicity of femininity, it also examines identity traits of duty, strength, and courage, as well as grace, vulnerability, endurance, and desire. Her visual storytelling utilizes photography, video, installation, and fiber arts. She received her BA in psychology from Marylhurst University, she also studied photojournalism at Boston University and fine arts at UCLA.
Chipman’s work has recently been featured in exhibits at The Pacific Northwest Drawers at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland OR; Imogen Gallery, Astoria, OR; The Walters Cultural Arts Center, Hillsboro OR; Vashon Center for the Arts, in Vashon WA; and the Art at the Cave Gallery, Vancouver WA; where her photo-based installations Inner Voices and Threads debuted in 2019.
Chipman’s photographs are in permanent collections at the Portland Museum of Art and The Portland Visual Chronicle. Her innovative video books, which utilize a creative approach to QR code technology, are held at the UCLA Library and the UC Santa Cruz Library. Her video work has been exhibited internationally in galleries, at film festivals, and on television. Jumptown, her multichannel video piece, is permanently installed on an exterior wall in Portland, Oregon. Additionally, she created and curates the PDX Red Wall Project, an exterior public exhibition space with monthly changing exhibits; she has received funding for this project through an Oregon RACC grant.