-
Stirek Gallery, PRAX Center, Oregon State University
470 SW 15th Street
Corvallis, OR 97331
541-737-7729Viewing Hours:
Open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Open on performance evenings in Detrick Hall and Ray Theater
Closed Sundays
Don't have a campus parking pass but want to visit visual arts exhibitions at PRAx? Ask the Box Office for a pay code upon arrival, provided by PRAx.
Notes on the Cold: Images of the Arctic and Antarctic is an exhibition of contemporary artists, writers, and performers engaging the unique conditions of our global polar regions. Polar STEAM and other artist-in-residence initiatives annually facilitate creative exploration of polar landscapes, climate, and culture. This exhibition will feature stories from those landscapes, framed by the research and resilience happening therein.
April Waters is a featured artist.
-
On June 8th, 2025 April Waters was elected to the Explorers Club in recognition of valuable contributions to exploration and scientific achievement under the United States Antarctic Program.
Over the past 121 years, the Explorers Club has dedicated itself to the advancement of field research, scientific exploration, resource conservation, and the idea that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore.
She recently returned from a visit to New York and the club. During the Heroic Age of Exploration, her great-great uncle, Alfred Harrison, explored the Arctic and lived with the Inuit (1905 to 1907). He published a book called In Search of a Polar Continent.
Top photo:
April Waters in the Explorers Club with the historical portrait of Peter Freuchen, Greenlandic explorer.
Lower Photo:
Waters with Olivia Dodd, archivist at the Explorers Club NYC. Holding the book from their library “In Search of a Polar Continent” by Waters’ great-great uncle, Alfred Harrison.
-
Oil on canvas, 28 by 98 inches
2025
This commissioned painting is the latest of a series on the Willamette River.
The Willamette flows north through northwestern Oregon into the Columbia River on the Oregon/Washington border. Its valley was sculpted by the Missoula Floods at the end of the last ice age and over time, it has been altered by countless floods and farmers. The painting was commissioned by a family whose members have been farming the area for over 200 years.
“Willamette” is believed to derive from the colonized pronunciation of the Kalapuyan word, Wallamt, which means “still water”.
-
Salem on the Edge Art Gallery
March 3rd - March 31st 2025
Downtown Salem @ 156 Liberty St NE
-
Cannon Gallery
Western Oregon University
January 13th - March 21st, 2025
-
August 9 - 14, 2024
Dr. Kim Bernard (left), April Waters (right)
-
March 15 - April 28, 2023
Giustina Gallery Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. – An Oregon State University gallery is holding a water-themed art show from March 15 to April 28 that includes paintings from a Salem-based painter who traveled to Antarctica to document the changing landscape and has strong ties to an Oregon State scientist who studies the continent.
“It’s the Water: An Exhibition of Painting and Photography by Seven Artists” includes work by April Waters, who in 2018 spent several weeks in Antarctica drawing inspiration for the paintings on display. Six other Oregon artists are also featured.
The work is being exhibited at the Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center, 875 SW 26th St., Corvallis. It’s free to visit the gallery, which is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and evenings and weekends when events are scheduled. An exhibition reception will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. April 8. It is also free to attend and open to the public.
Waters traveled to the Southern Ocean and West Antarctic Peninsula as part of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. (That program is now known as Polar STEAM and led by Oregon State and funded by the NSF.)
Prior to her trip, Waters communicated with Kim Bernard, an associate professor in Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences who studies how climate change is impacting Antarctic krill, which support populations of whales, seals, seabirds and penguins.
Bernard, whose research in Antarctica is noted in the exhibit, and Waters spoke about Bernard’s personal experiences with climate change at Palmer Station, the Antarctic research station where Waters spent her residency. Bernard also assisted Waters in identifying the geographic features (islands and mountains) depicted in Waters’ paintings. Since 2000, Bernard has made 16 expeditions to Antarctica and spent 36 months at Palmer Station.
Waters is exhibiting five paintings drawn from what she saw in Antarctica and one from an artist residency she did in Greenland. They depict the ocean, icebergs and glaciers, with one being as large as 7 feet by 9 feet and another that is more than 17 feet long.
The exhibition also includes black and white photographs from Rich Bergeman; acrylic paintings by Rebecca Kiser; aerial photographs from Duncan Berry; color photographs from Jeremy Burke; watercolor paintings by Gary Buhler; and oil paintings from Katia Kyte.
-
May 7 – August 13, 2022
Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR
In 2018, Salem, Oregon, artist April Waters — known for her works that focus on water and contemporary women leaders — turned her attention to Antarctica. As a grantee of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program to observe, study, photograph, and sketch the ocean, icebergs, and Marr Glacier.
After witnessing firsthand the beauty and harsh realities of a landscape facing monumental change, coupled with profound implications for the entire globe, Waters returned to her studio to transform her sketches, photographs and experiences into paintings of the earth’s southernmost continent.“As Antarctica is undergoing dramatic changes in response to climate change,” marine biologist Dr. Kim Bernard of Oregon State University says, “I hope that those who experience the paintings that April Waters has created from her Antarctic expedition feel awed and inspired to protect this place.”The exhibition features a range of Antarctica paintings created over the past three years as well as text panels and ephemera that describe her journey and the science being done at Palmer Station, and includes a full-color brochure with an essay by art writer Bob Hicks.Later this summer Waters will embark on the next part of her journey to further explore the story of melting ice and climate change by traveling to the opposite end of the globe to Ilulissat Art Museum in west Greenland. There she will travel by boat in Disko Bay and fly over the Jakobshavn and Equi Glaciers, to witness Greenland’s stunning and quickly melting ice.Waters has a Bachelor of Fine Art from University of Colorado, in Boulder, and worked for many years as a registered nurse. Her paintings can be found in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Oregon State University, Mount Angel Library, as well as many places of healing. Her painting "Wizard Island, Crater Lake," was exhibited at the American Embassy in Kyrgyzstan through the United States Arts in Embassies Program. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions over the past thirty years, including a one person show in the office of Oregon’s Governor.
-
Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR.September 18 to Dec 18, 2021.
The Hallie Ford Museum of Art opened a new exhibition titled “Time in Place: Northwest Art from the Permanent Collection.” Organized by Jonathan Bucci, the John Olbrantz Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the exhibition considers how place can be seen in different ways, by different people, and at different times. The exhibition continues through December 18, 2021, in the Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery.
The exhibition explores the concept of place in the Northwest through the lens of time. It poses questions about the relationship between place and time and asks visitors to consider such questions as how does place change over time? How do artists respond to a specific place shift? How do personal experiences affect one’s relationship to a region or place? And finally, how does knowledge of history impact depictions of place?
The exhibition features a number of works from the Hallie Ford Museum of Art’s permanent collection that have never been exhibited before, including the remnants of a sandal from Fort Rock in Eastern Oregon that is more than 9,000 years old, as well as a mural of the Willamette Valley that was painted by the late Carl Hall for the Rowell home in the Fairmont neighborhood in Salem before it was removed a number of years ago and donated to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.
In addition to Carl Hall, the exhibition features work by some of the foremost artists of our region, including Michael Brophy, James Castle, Joe Feddersen (Colville), Charles Heaney, DE May, Robert McCauley, Tom Prochaska, April Waters, and Marie Watt (Seneca), among many others.