As with the portraits in the previous installments of this series I have focused on the talented, dedicated, and creative people who have made significant contributions to the art, character, and culture of this city and state — in this case an actor, a glass artist, a poet, a science writer, and a composer.  

My aspirations have remained the same: to document the contemporary cultural landscape and to produce a decent photograph — a photograph that acknowledges the medium’s allegiance to reality and that preserves for myself and others a unique and honest sense of the subject.

The environmental details have been kept to a minimum. The subjects have the frame to themselves and do not compete with context for attention. This provides for a simpler, blunter, more intense encounter with character. It is character that animates the image.

Brooke Totman

Brooke Totman is an actor, director, acting teacher and coach, and founder of The Spotlight Studio. After receiving a degree in Theatre Performance from the University of Oregon, Totman moved to Los Angeles, where she trained with the sketch and improv company The Groundlings and eventually became a member of their eponymous “Sunday Company.” She joined the television series MadTV in its fifth season as a featured cast member. Other selected television and stage credits include The King of Queens (CBS), Less Than Perfect (ABC), Documentary Now! (IFC), Judging Amy (CBS), Life After First Failure (The CW), Portlandia (IFC), Detroit (Portland Playhouse), Sisters of Mercy (Portland Center Stage), Bath Night (Shaking the Tree Theater), Laughing Wild (21ten Theatre), Matt & Ben (21ten Theatre), and The Benefits of Gusbandry on Amazon.

Andy Paiko

Andy Paiko is a glass sculptor. A graduate of the studio art program at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, he co-founded and operated the Central Coast Glass Artists’ Studio (C.C.G.A.S.). He was named Searchlight Artist 2008 by the American Craft Council and was selected for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery’s 2012 exhibition 40 under 40: Craft Futures. He is known for ambitious technical works that explore the metaphorical and symbolic tension of form versus function — sculpted-glass celebrations of obsolete technologies reinterpreted such as a functional seismograph based on a design by Leonardo da Vinci and a fully-operable, actual-size spinning wheel. His work has been featured in such national and international publications as Home & Garden, American Craft, Make, Glass Art Quarterly, and the Corning Museum’s New Glass Review and is included in public museums and private collections worldwide.

Sponsor

Jennifer Perrine

Jennifer (JP) Perrine is the author of four books of poetry: Again; The Body Is No Machine; In the Human Zoo; and No Confession, No Mass. A fifth collection, Beautiful Outlaw, is forthcoming in 2025. Perrine’s most recent poems and essays appear in Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Nimrod, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Orion Magazine, Southern Indiana Review, Plant-Human Quarterly, Harpur Palate, and Oregon Humanities. Holding a B.A. in religion, culture, and the creative arts from Susquehanna University, an M.A. in English from Bucknell University, and a Ph.D. in English from Florida State University, Perrine co-hosts the Incite: Queer Writers Read series; teaches creative writing; and regularly serves as a wilderness guide.

Ferris Jabr

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of The New York Times Bestseller Becoming Earth, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Oregon Book Award. Reviewers have described Becoming Earth as an “electrifying” and “infectiously poetic” work that “earns its place alongside the best of today’s essential popular science books.” Jabr has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, National Geographic, and Scientific American among other publications. He has received fellowships from Yale, MIT, and UC Berkeley as well as grants from the Pulitzer Center and the Whiting Foundation. His work has been anthologized in four editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

Naomi LaViolette

Naomi LaViolette is a composer, performer, singer-songwriter, and pianist. Although she has a Master’s Degree in classical piano performance, she has immersed herself in the study of jazz standards, folk songs, soul, pop, choral, and gospel. She has recorded multiple singles and albums — most recently Live at The Old Church with Members of the Oregon Symphony. She has performed at numerous venues and festivals including the Carnegie Hall Weill Recital Hall, Portland Jazz Festival, Jimmy Mak’s, the Doug Fir Lounge, the Aladdin Theater, and All Classical Portland. She has been the principal pianist for the Oregon Repertory Singers since 2004. Her work with Steven Goodwin and the Saving His Music project received prominent coverage in national and local news, including CBS Sunday Morning. Their record titled The Nature of Love spent three weeks on the Billboard New Age chart.

***

Sponsor

Go here to see the previous chapters in K.B. Dixon’s portrait series The Cultural Landscape, featuring more than 100 Oregon artists in a variety of disciplines.