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 writer, a museum curator, a visual artist, a musician, and a poet.  

 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.

Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Her bestselling collection of Dear Sugar columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, was adapted for a Hulu television show and as a play that continues to be staged in theaters nationwide. Strayed’s other books are the critically acclaimed novel Torch and the bestselling collection Brave Enough. Her books have sold more than 5 million copies around the world and have been translated into forty languages. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, and elsewhere. Strayed has also made two hit podcasts: Dear Sugars, co-hosted with Steve Almond, and Sugar Calling. 

Lloyd DeWitt

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Lloyd DeWitt is the Portland Art Museum’s Richard and Janet Geary Curator of European & American Art Pre-1930. He has worked in major art museums across North America for more than two decades. As Chief Curator at the Chrysler Museum of Art he was instrumental in developing the Works on Paper Study Center that is now under construction. DeWitt served as Curator of European Art from 2011 to 2016 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Ontario, Canada, where he organized exhibitions on Michelangelo, J.M.W. Turner, and Wilhelm Hammershøi. DeWitt also previously held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 2003 to 2011 and is now a visiting adjunct professor at Old Dominion University. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Maryland, College Park; an M.A. in Art History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Laura Domela

Laura Domela is a painter, photographer, and mixed-media artist. She earned her B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the Oregon College of Art & Craft in 1999. Her work explores the complexities of human emotion through layered compositions that merge organic forms and festive colors with dark shapes and stark geometries. Her work is in numerous public and private collections including the Portland Art Museum, Meyer Memorial Trust, Schnitzer Investment Corp., and The Neon Museum in Las Vegas. In addition to painting and drawing, Domela studied portrait photography with the renowned photographers Platon and Max Vadukul. Her photographic work has appeared on magazine covers, book covers, CD/album covers, billboards, and posters for numerous stage productions. She is represented by the Russo Lee Gallery.

Adam Eccleston

Adam Eccleston is the Executive Director of Orchestra Nova Northwest, a flutist, a conductor, a radio host, and an educator. He is a recipient of the prestigious Miller Foundation Spark Award. He also currently sits as Chair of the Recording Inclusivity Initiative, which brings to light music of underrepresented composers. He has conducted orchestras throughout the United States as well as ensembles in Panama, Dominican Republic, Belize, and Canada. He holds Master Degrees in performance and education and teaches flute at Reed College. He is devoted to youth development and has worked with the Metropolitan Youth Symphony and the Portland Youth Philharmonic. As a radio host and producer, he can be found at All Classical Radio and guest-hosting for WQXR based in New York City.

Brittney Corrigan

Brittney Corrigan is a poet and short-story writer. She is the author of the poetry collections Daughters; Breaking; Navigation; 40 Weeks; and, most recently, Solastalgia (a collection of poems about climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age). She is the recipient of a 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowship and the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship. Her recent debut short-story collection, The Ghost Town Collectives, won the 2023 Osprey Award for Fiction from Middle Creek Publishing. A former editor with Airlie Press, Corrigan is an event planner at her alma mater, Reed College.

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