https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/art/art-shows/2025-competition-and-touring-exhibition

OSU Art About Agriculture, Oregon State University, 248 Strand Agriculture Hall, Corvallis, OR (2026)

06/18/2026

Savanah Downs, “Farmhouse Collection”, 2023, glass, 8” x 16” x 2”.

Rooted in a background deeply connected to the agriculture industry, my art explores the history, progress, and modern challenges of farming through the lens of a woman in the field. While glass is my primary medium, I integrate found materials to bridge the gap between industrial labor and domestic memory.

My childhood was defined by a wonderland of collections curated by my mother and grandmother. Our shelves were filled with vintage glass, farm tools, and floral frogs – a family of trinkets that we constantly expanded by scouring thrift stores together. These ingrained memories of searching and collecting turned me into an avid enthusiast of antiques and the narratives they hold.

In Farmhouse Collection, I translate this nostalgia into a tangible archive. This sandcast glass piece was created using the physical impressions of various depression-era glass pieces – and a few “stolen” floral frogs—taken directly from my mother’s china cabinet. The work serves as an ode to her life as a florist, educator, and farmer; it captures the delicate beauty we found in designing flowers in between the relentless, non-stop schedules of farm work and school. Through these cast forms, I preserve the ephemeral balance of a life defined by growth, labor, and multifaceted womanhood.

-Savanah Downs, 2026
Grants Pass, OR

Student at Oregon State University
College of Agricultural Sciences
Majoring in Agriculture Science

OSU College of Agricultural Sciences 2026 Scholarship Award

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

06/11/2026

Dara Daniel, “Feel the Flowers 2”, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 24” x 36” x 1.5”.

2026 Carey L. and Glen S. Strome Agricultural Art Memorial Purchase Award, sponsored by the late Gayle Strome, and OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

I received a Master of Fine Arts in Art in 1989 from California State University, Humboldt, in Arcata, California, with an emphasis on sculpture. While pursuing my degree, I gained experience with various painting and sculptural media, with a primary focus on creating abstract female forms in concrete and steel. After graduating, I continued to sculpt expressionistic figurative sculptures in cement and other materials, such as clay and wood, until 2009. In 2010, I transitioned, leaving sculpture behind to explore two-dimensional Art in multiple painting media and subject matter, a transition that reflects my ongoing exploration of creativity and self-expression.

Since painting, I have found my inspiration in nature, aiming to evoke feelings of connection and authenticity by capturing the spirit of horses, birds, and animals of the West. I also enjoy painting landscapes that resonate with viewers seeking meaningful Art.

My process is intuitive, employing all available design elements to express rhythms, energy, moods, and emotions. For each painting, I combine realism and abstraction, emphasizing textures and contrasting color combinations. Each painting experience is unique, yet my goal in all my paintings is to capture the joy and beauty nature gives us.

“Feel the Flowers 2” is a tranquil landscape of a picturesque countryside scene on a cattle farm along the Pacific Northwest coastline. It features a charming white house nestled among a vibrant field of blooming flowers. The gentle interplay of soft purples, pinks, and greens fosters a sense of serenity, while the expansive sky above enhances the idyllic setting. The placement of the farmhouse draws the eye naturally through the scene, while the expanse of flowers in the foreground adds a sense of abundance and peace. This piece captures the beauty of nature, making it an ideal addition to any home’s ambiance.

-Dara Daniel, 2026
Grants Pass, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

06/04/2026

Shari Dallas, “Rebound No. 3”, 2025, oil, 36” x 24” x 1”.

What comes out of each of us (and what Rebound No. 3 represents for me), when we step up to the easel or to the keyboard or to the writing desk, is what we know best—what we have embodied over time. For me—and this is what drives my painting—that is the crumbling basalt, the climate-impacted rivers, and the cultivated, rain-dependent patches of the Eastern Oregon plateau, for which I and many others, as dryland wheat growers, have long been stewards. My often windswept home sits high in the fields, essentially between geologic wonder Wallula Gap, across the hills to the north, and the Umatilla drainage viewscape and Blue Mountains to the south. I am daily full of both gratitude and a keen sense of the responsibility that comes with living in that setting. It translates to my work as an artist, as I try to capture the very visceral response I have to the landscape around me. When my work sparks recognition—when others seem to find something familiar and meaningful for them in my paintings—I am thrilled; and I have been thankful for that understanding and affirmation, while sharing my work in a variety of state venues over the years, including at the Betty Feves Memorial Gallery on the campus of Blue Mountain Community College; in two previous OSU Art About Agriculture exhibits; at Blackfish Gallery in Northwest Portland; at the ArtsEast Gallery in La Grande; at Art Center East in La Grande; at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center in Baker City; at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture in Joseph; and at the Pendleton Center for the Arts.

-Shari Dallas, 2026
Pendleton, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

06/02/2026

Laura Crosby, “BRASSICA”, 2025, oil, 14” x 14”.

2026 Margaret Hogg Memorial Art About Agriculture Purchase Award, sponsored by the late Margaret Hogg, and OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

I am fascinated by light, color, mark-making and how it influences how we feel and see the world around us. Each image tells a story, but the viewer interprets it. I try to translate what my mind sees into an image that makes sense and reveals what I want to say in a simple, yet eloquent way.

I spent five years learning the classical techniques of oil painting. During that time, I studied a style of painting known as ‘chiaroscuro’ (“light-dark” in Italian). It uses shadow and contrast to focus strongly on the subject. To me, it can reveal the ‘soul’ of an object and its’ unsung beauty.

I am a juried member of the Oil Painters of America, and the Corvallis Art Guild. I also paint with the local Vistas and Vineyards plein-air (outdoor) painting group in the summer. I was a featured artist in the Willamette Magazine in 2024.

My paintings can be seen at the annual Corvallis Clothesline Sale on the first Saturday of August in Central Park, Corvallis, as well as various local venues during the year. I will be selling my work at the Spring Art Sale at the Parks and Recreation building in Newport, Oregon on March 28, 2026. I also show my work by appointment.

During the summer months, I can be found outside with my easel, chasing the light in this beautiful place that I call home.

-Laura Crosby, 2026
Corvallis, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

05/28/2026

Andrew Cook, “Corn”, 2025, oil, 27” x 21”.

2026 Paul Lamb and Reese Lamb Memorial Art About Agriculture Purchase Award, sponsored by the Lamb Foundation, and OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

I grew up around working painters. These were painters, and educators, who worked from life using watercolor and oil painting, which is what I do.

I work from observation, for lack of a better way of putting it. I go out in the field and look at things, and my ideas and compositions come from that. If I get stuck, I look more closely, and that usually has an answer. I develop things starting with the color, which I’ve always found difficult. This is also why it’s interesting.

I don’t think western cultures have much of an attention span for visual arts anymore. Nonetheless, painting is a very interesting thing to engage with over the span of a life.

-Andrew Cook, 2026
Portland, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

05/26/2026

Lisa Conway, “Ice Blue Tidal Spiral”, 2025, stoneware and glaze, 6” x 16” x 14”.

Through my work, I draw on elements of the natural world to reflect on and reference the human body. My sculptures evoke emotional and physical sensations, appearing as plant-like or abstract forms that blush, sag, reach, tense, or soften. These gestures mirror bodily states and allow me to explore the emotional language of the body and the ways identity is shaped through intimacy, vulnerability, and connection. Like plants growing toward the sun, I understand sexuality as a vital, essential force that informs how we move through the world. As a result, my work carries a strong sensual undercurrent.

My conceptual development is grounded in a deep engagement with ceramic materials and processes. Clay becomes a metaphor for my own body; as I stretch, shape, and build each piece, I test both the limits of the material and my own internal, physical sensations. The act of making is slow and responsive, requiring close attention to pressure, balance, and restraint. Surfaces are developed through layered processes and multiple firings—glazes are applied and fired, then sometimes sandblasted, polished, and occasionally finished with wax or oil paint. The resulting surfaces are richly varied, sometimes stone-like and sometimes glossy, yet always subtle, tactile, and evocative.

My most recent work centers on a series of ceramic spirals, twists, and knots. These forms allow me to explore twisting plant structures and the interplay between interior and exterior spaces inherent in ceramic vessels. They also serve as a way to investigate containment, entanglement, tension, and connection. The knots and twists I create are organic and charged with tension, suggesting intimacy and restraint, vulnerability and strength. At times, they read as two bodies—coupled strands of material bound together in connections that are tender, visceral, and essential.

Having lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest for over thirty years, I draw deep inspiration from its natural world. Quiet moments of observation and awe inform my practice, encouraging compassion, reflection, and joy. I hope my work offers viewers a similar sense of connection, gentleness, and embodied awareness.

Lisa Conway received her BFA from the University of Michigan and her MFA from Louisiana State University. She has completed numerous artist residencies, including at the Archie Bray Foundation, Anderson Ranch Art Center, and the Ucross Foundation. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and is a Professor of Art at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington.

-Lisa Conway, 2026
Portland, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

05/19/2026

Bets Cole, “A Trip of Goats”, 2025, gouache and charcoal, 16” x 19”.

2026 Brenda & Gordon Hood Art About Agriculture Purchase Award, sponsored by the late Brenda and Gordon Hood, and the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

As I paint, nature is not so much subject-matter as constant companionship. It gifts me with extraordinary light, value, and color and challenges me as each of those elements change. I meet this challenge by working gesturally, drawing with a distinctive rhythm, and weaving my colors and values in with my line. It is in the activity of mark making and color mixing that my personal narrative evolves. I paint and draw to communicate with the world through a visual language made up of interlocking shapes, hierarchy and harmony.

To keep my imagery alive and interesting, I seek new opportunities to develop and acquire skills. Throughout my artistic career I have traveled and painted throughout the US and Europe in the plein air tradition. However, the place I have chosen as my home – and place of work - is Oregon. I paint the ever-changing interactions between weather, people, land and architecture.

Goats are here to stay in Oregon. In addition to providing milk for cheese and meat for consumption, herds (or trips) can be used to graze noxious weeds.

-Bets Cole, 2026
Elmira, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

05/19/2026

Bets Cole, “Soup’s On!”, 2025, acrylic, 30” x 34”.

As I paint, nature is not so much subject-matter as constant companionship. It gifts me with extraordinary light, value, and color and challenges me as each of those elements change. I meet this challenge by working gesturally, drawing with a distinctive rhythm, and weaving my colors and values in with my line. It is in the activity of mark making and color mixing that my personal narrative evolves. I paint and draw to communicate with the world through a visual language made up of interlocking shapes, hierarchy and harmony.

To keep my imagery alive and interesting, I seek new opportunities to develop and acquire skills. Throughout my artistic career I have traveled and painted throughout the US and Europe in the plein air tradition. However, the place I have chosen as my home – and place of work - is Oregon. I paint the ever-changing interactions between weather, people, land and architecture.

Each year farmers in Oregon plant several types of small grains known as cereal grains. These include different varieties of soft wheat, hard red wheat, hard white wheat, and barley. Bakers typically use soft wheat flour with a lower protein content to bake croissants. Flour milled from hard wheat, with its higher protein content, is better for strong doughs like bread. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration has found that barley has the same health benefits as oats in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease. This makes barley soup, with a slice of freshly baked bread and finished off with a flaky croissant, one healthy meal!

-Bets Cole, 2026
Elmira, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

05/19/2026

Bets Cole, “Big Blue”, 2025, acrylic, 18” x 22”.

As I paint, nature is not so much subject-matter as constant companionship. It gifts me with extraordinary light, value, and color and challenges me as each of those elements change. I meet this challenge by working gesturally, drawing with a distinctive rhythm, and weaving my colors and values in with my line. It is in the activity of mark making and color mixing that my personal narrative evolves. I paint and draw to communicate with the world through a visual language made up of interlocking shapes, hierarchy and harmony.

To keep my imagery alive and interesting, I seek new opportunities to develop and acquire skills. Throughout my artistic career I have traveled and painted throughout the US and Europe in the plein air tradition. However, the place I have chosen as my home – and place of work - is Oregon. I paint the ever-changing interactions between weather, people, land and architecture.

It was an honor to complete this portrait of a Willamette Valley farm’s new tractor “Big Blue”. Big Blue replaced trusty old Big Red!

-Bets Cole, 2026
Elmira, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

05/14/2026

David Cohen, “Milbert’s Tortoiseshell”, 2023, watercolor and pen, 34” x 24”.

As I work to discover my authentic voice, an expression of who I am at this place and time, each artwork that I create is a dollop of a thick stew containing a wide range of ingredients. In the pot are all of my interests and loves: nature, science, anthropology, books, collections, museums, history, curiosity, wonder and awe. Mixed in there are the spices: a love of light and shadow, a touch of mystery, and an ode to beauty. Each time I dip the ladle in, a different combination of ingredients and spices is gathered, so the results are never singular or linear but always somehow connected. Through varying combinations and emphases, I can venture down many pathways investigating different worlds within this broader visual universe.

In making explorations of the natural world the major focus of my art, I am also trying to elevate its symbolic importance - something that artists have been doing since the first days that they began to leave images behind. The recent “mosaic” paintings are my attempt at celebrating nature’s beauty and mystery, conjuring up symbols for reverence as the ancient Romans did when they created their incredible nature-focused objects and mosaic floor designs. This also aligns with my strong interest in unearthing how we came to see the world as we do today and the many ideas and events that shaped us along the way.

Butterflies have always been part of my life - I was an avid tracker/releaser from an early age, with many of the un-bulldozed suburban lots as my hunting grounds. There I sat hour after hour in the bush, with my butterfly net and glass holding jar with punctured-metal top in hand, keeping an eagle eye out for exotic creatures who flitted in my general vicinity. The excitement of the hunt as well as the chance to examine these amazing creatures up close was the ultimate stimulation for my curious mind.

-David Cohen, 2026
Beaverton, OR

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Art About Agriculture Competition and Touring Exhibition 2026: Field Report

Giustina Gallery at The LaSells Stewart Center (3/9 – 4/17), Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (4/24 – 5/30), Grants Pass Museum of Art (8/7 – 9/25) and Feves Gallery at Blue Mountain Community College (10/5 – 11/25). (link in bio)

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