What do your dreams look like? Once pictured, could you describe them to someone else?
Portland painter and arts educator Tia Factor asked those questions to friends and strangers alike. Those answers became Fall Back Into Place, paintings on display at One Wall Gallery on the second floor of Epic Seconds in downtown Eugene through March 30.
Factor says each of the 15 pieces was based on a dreamer’s description of what they saw while they slept, which Factor then translated.
“I ran the dreams through my filters of associations and personal visual lexicon,” Factor explains of her process in an email with Eugene Weekly. That process typically involves staining canvas first with fluid acrylics, creating what she calls “visual noise,” and then imagery and content painted more carefully with oil paint over that.
The paintings, large and small, range from relatively representational to completely abstract, rendered in sunshine yellow and fiery burned oranges and reds, often with heavy impasto. All have the free-associative quality of a dreamscape.
Viewing Factor’s work at One Wall Gallery, one thinks of how wildfire has seared into the subconscious dreams and nightmares of the entire West Coast, particularly when set against buildings and structures as often appear in these slumbering landscapes that might represent rural Oregon.
“I relished the challenge of painting something not physically present in this world,” says Factor, who received her BFA from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. She describes her work as “fleeting and ephemeral, leaving little trace but a lingering aftertaste.”
“Centering subjectivity and human-to-human interaction,” Factor adds, “the paintings are a document of the attempt to connect, listen, understand, interpret and visually translate the ineffable and tenuous experience of dreaming into something concrete and lasting.”
For Benjamin Terrell, Epic Seconds’ owner who coordinates artist showings in the space like Factor’s show, One Wall Gallery is a dream in and of itself. Shortly before the pandemic, Terrell bought the building with partners where CD/Game Exchange, which Terrell managed, was formerly housed.
Terrell is a painter, too, who trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and these days lives in the McKenzie River area. Terrell’s work is inspired by the McKenzie River landscape, particularly after the Holiday Farm fire in 2020.
After Terrell bought the building and business, he changed the name and launched a vinyl-record-only annex on the second floor. One Wall Gallery is on the west wall of the upper level, likely Eugene’s smallest but certainly among its most consistently interesting places for visual art.
In the past, the space has hosted works by Eugene and regional artists, but also major artists from as far away as New York, Scotland and Belgium. Browsing records at the art openings is just a plus.
Terrell says he mounts a new show at One Wall Gallery about every two months, and he contacts artists most often online and simply asks them if they’re interested in displaying their work. Though small, and located in Eugene, not exactly a high-profile visual art destination, the response is most often positive.
“I started to make it a place where I could give to others what I wanted for myself,” Terrell says, “which was a respectable place to show your art that was more about passion,” than motivated by money, he adds.
“An artist-run space,” Terrell says of his gallery, “can be about the dialogue of an artist to an artist or artists to the community.”
When Terrell met Factor, she hadn’t started the dream interpretation project. Referring to Factor’s work, Terrell says, “I love big, dreamy, beautiful paintings, and she’s that kind of painter. She was going to interpret others’ dreams through paint. Which is intriguing, right? Is it going to look dreamy? Is it going to stick to the dream?” Terrell wondered. With Factor’s work now in the gallery, Terrell says, “It does all of those things.”Tia Factor’s Fall Back Into Place is on display at One Wall Gallery on the second floor of Epic Seconds through March 30th, 30 East 11th Avenue. For more information search One Wall Gallery on Instagram.