The Craft Center is thrilled to welcome Laura McClain as our Spring 2026 Visiting Artist. Laura McClain is a wet felting artist and educator who works with wool to create functional and expressive décor, accessories, and wearables. At the heart of her practice is a method she calls Felt by Feel—a playful, embodied conversation between maker and material that allows her to stay connected to the wool’s changing textures, while tapping into her own responses as the work evolves. Laura has been creating with fiber arts since childhood and brings a balance of technical knowledge, curiosity, and fun to her teaching. To learn more about Laura McClain, please visit www.lauramcclain.art. Exhibition On View: March 30 - June 12 The Craft Center Gallery is located on the 2nd floor of the Erb Memorial Union by the Adell McMillan Gallery. Artist Talk & Reception: April 24, 12pm-1pm Join us at the Craft Center for an inspiring artist talk with Laura McClain. This event is free and open to the public. Please register at myemu.uoregon.edu. (Community Members without a Community Card must email craftctr@uoregon.edu to be added to our roster.)

Wet Felting Workshop: April 24, 1pm-4pm This hands-on workshop introduces wet felting, guiding you as you transform soft wool fibers into a strong, cohesive piece of felt. Using merino wool, water, soap, heat, and pressure, you’ll layer, embellish, and shape fibers by hand while learning how the material changes at each stage. This workshop is free. Registration is required at myemu.uoregon.edu. You must have a UO ID or Community Card to register. Space is limited.

CFAR Banner at 510 Oak

Utilizing the visual language of color calibration charts and contemporary stock photography, this image collage offers the viewer an amalgamation of references that could at first appear to be celebratory. Mashed together are depictions of beauty regiments, skin tone makeup charts, piles of foods and ethnic spices, sumptuous desserts, tropical vacation landscapes, pastoral farmlands, and community building moments of togetherness. On closer inspection, the frictions and ironies begin to surface, suggesting an anxious shift in contemporary politics masked by upbeat advertising language and colorful veneer.

Long interested in how visual displays can camouflage more complex realities, Syjuco purchased the majority of these images from commercial stock photography sites, juxtaposing them in a way that teases out conflicting meanings. Included is one large image she staged in her studio, as well as multiple color calibration charts that are meant to check for “correct color” — a fraught metaphor for our times.

Stephanie Syjuco works in photography, sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations. Recently, she has focused on how photography and image-based processes are implicated in the construction of exclusionary narratives of history and citizenship. Born in the Philippines in 1974, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award and a Tiffany Foundation Award. Her work is in numerous collections, including at The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, The Getty Museum, SFMOMA, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. She was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC in 2019–20 and is featured in the acclaimed PBS documentary series Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century. She is a Professor in Sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Oakland, California.

The Lundquist College of Business, University Career Center, and Student Alumni Association are thrilled to invite UO students and alumni to our first ever What a Quackin' Idea day at the UO Portland campus! This event provides an opportunity for Ducks at all stages of flight to meet one another and celebrate each other's achievements. A panel of young alumni will discuss their career journeys post-graduation, students will showcase their projects, and all are invited to mingle at a graduation reception! Get ready to celebrate each other's Quackin' Ideas at the UO Portland Campus.

Nominate an alum for distinction

• Student Alumni Association Leadership Team: Alumni Impact Certificate of Distinction
  • The Student Alumni Association Leadership Team (SAALT) is excited to present its very first Alumni Impact Certificate of Distinction. This certificate showcases the importance of alumni volunteerism and the idea of "Ducks helping Ducks" by highlighting the positive impact student-alumni connections can make. If you know of an alum who has volunteered their time in supporting students through mentorship, engaging with students at networking events at the UO, and/or creating opportunities for students to reach their career goals, nominate them today! 
  • What is SAALT? SAALT is a student internship program that runs the Student Alumni Association and its programs. SAALT aims to create connections between fellow ducks at all stages of flight through student activities and student-alumni networking events. Learn more about SAALT here: https://www.uoalumni.com/student-alumni-association/who-we-are 

Nominations close on April 19.

Present a student showcase project

Have a project you're proud of? Want to show off that project to fellow students and alumni in Portland? Or, are you looking for a place to practice for an upcoming presentation for your project? Now is your chance to do just that!

All UO students are welcome to apply to present their project showcase at the event. We accept projects from all majors and academic disciplines. We understand that your project may be a work in progress. For each of the questions on our submission form, please answer to the best of your ability. The committee will determine who will present based on the thoughtfulness and potential of each project submission. 

One showcase project will be selected for an award and the award recipient will be announced during the reception portion of the event.

Submit your project here!

Applications for project presentations close on April 30.