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 a composer, two writers, a visual artist, and an actor.  

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.

Freddy Vilches

Freddy Vilches is a composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and Professor of Hispanic Studies at Lewis & Clark College. He is also an instructor of Latin American instruments in the Music Department. Originally from Santiago, Chile, Vilches has performed and recorded extensively throughout the United States and Latin America. His symphonic works have been featured by the Orquesta Filarmónica de Montevideo, the Willamette Valley Orchestra, the Lewis & Clark Orchestra, the Reed College Orchestra, and other orchestras in Bolivia and the United States. His choral works have been performed by Resonance Vocal Ensemble, ACDA NW, and the NAU Choir. His most recent compositions include “Latin American Suite” and “Abya Yala Choral Suite.” He holds a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Oregon.

Lee Montgomery

Lee Montgomery is the award-winning author of The Things Between Us, Whose World Is This?, and Searching for Emily: Illustrated. In addition to editing anthologies and literary journals, she has worked as a senior editor at several publishers and spent a decade as the executive editor of Tin House magazine, founding director of the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and Editorial Director and Associate Publisher of Tin House Books. She worked with and published some of the most influential literary authors of our time at the Iowa Review, the Santa Monica Review, and Tin House: William Gass, David Foster Wallace, John Barth, Robert Coover, Diane Williams, Curtis White, Ronald Sukenik, Denis Johnson, Deborah Eisenberg, Marilynne Robinson, Aimee Bender, Harlan Ellison, and T.C. Boyle, among others. She has also taught both fiction and nonfiction and has been a visiting writer at a number of colleges and universities. As a senior book editor for Dove Books in Beverly Hills she edited (and ghostwrote) numerous celebrity memoirs, including producer Robert Evans’s The Kid Stays in the Picture.

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Kevin Maloney

Kevin Maloney is a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, memoirist, and web developer. His books include The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Horse Girl Fever, and Cult of Loretta (which became something of a cult classic). At times he has also been a TJ Maxx associate, grocery clerk, outdoor-school instructor, organic farmer, electrician, high-school English teacher, and teddy-bear salesman. His work has appeared in Fence, Barrelhouse, HAD, Forever Mag, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is co-founder with Ryan-Ashley Anderson of Pool Party—A Reading Series & Literary Journal.

Brenda Mallory

Brenda Mallory is a mixed-media sculptor and installation artist. She describes her work as bricolage — something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things. She lives in Portland but grew up in Oklahoma and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She holds a BA in Linguistics & English from U.C.L.A. and a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is a recipient of the Hallie Ford Fellowship, this year’s Bonnie Bronson Fellowship with Heather Watkins, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Native Art Fellowship, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship in Visual Art, and the Ucross Native Fellowship. She has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Artist residencies include Ucross, Anderson Ranch, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Glean, Bullseye Glass, and the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at Sitka Center for the Arts. She is represented by the Russo Lee Gallery.

Phillip Ray Guevara

Phillip Ray Guevara is an actor and educator. He holds a B.F.A. in Acting from Texas State University, an M.F.A. in Acting from The University of Washington, and has studied abroad with The Royal Shakespeare Company. A few of his stage credits include: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (University of Washington); The Hombres (Artists Repertory Theatre); Julius Caesar (Titan Theatre Company); Native Gardens (Intiman Theatre), and Much Ado About Nothing (Illinois Shakespeare Festival). Screen credits include a principal role in Somebody I Used To Know with Alison Brie as well as commercial work for companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks. He conducts private coaching sessions and is an adjunct faculty member at The Actors Conservatory and the University of Portland.

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See the previous 21 editions in K.B. Dixon’s The Cultural Landscape series here.