New fellows join 55 peers selected over the last 15 years of the Hallie Ford fellowship program.
Roseburg, Ore. –The Ford Family Foundation today named its 2025 Hallie Ford Fellows in the Visual Arts, recognizing three Oregon visual artists for excellence.
A jury of five arts professionals from within and outside of Oregon selected Derek Franklin, Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) and Vo Vo, from a competitive pool of 160 applicants. They will receive a $35,000 unrestricted award to support their practice.
“Derek, Vo and Sara have distinctive life stories that bring them to art making,” said Kara Inae Carlisle, president and CEO of The Ford Family Foundation. “They come together, however, in their sincere commitment to working with others and care for communities. We are so pleased to welcome them to the ‘forever cohort’ of Hallie Ford Fellows.”
The jurists individually considered and then further reviewed the applicants in an in-person panel. They determined that each awardee demonstrates a mastery of practice that leads them to rigorous and meaningful international opportunities. Serving on the panel were: Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art, Portland Art Museum; Jeanine Jablonski, Director, ILY2; Stephanie Seidel, Monica and Blake Grossman Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator, Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Lumi Tan, Independent Curator (New York).
The recipients were selected based on the following criteria:
- Quality of work: Artists demonstrate artistic excellence, exemplary talent, and depth of sophisticated exploration.
- Evolution of work: Artists stand at a pivotal point in their practice and would benefit from a Fellowship at this point in their careers.
- Impact of work: Artists’ goals are consistent with Fellowship goals, and they show potential for future accomplishment and capacity to contribute significantly to Oregon’s visual arts ecology.
Beyond the fellowship award, Fellows are supported by the foundation as long as they remain living in Oregon through grants to out-of-state venues that organize exhibitions of their work, professional development and consulting opportunities, and other offerings such as print and video documentation of their practice.
About the 2025 Hallie Ford Fellows
DEREK FRANKLIN
(b. 1981. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Derek Franklin. Photo by Sam Gehrke.
Derek Franklin grew up in rural Scappoose, Oregon. While his early work as an industrial fabricator is appreciable in a sculpture practice that today includes sometimes large, welded, arcane ideation, the upbringing also made for what he describes an unlikely path to becoming an artist, and one that was hard-forged. His work today is multifaceted: a skilled painter and sculptor, his practice engages both, as it does art historical and domestic subjects.
After receiving his Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Franklin became a Director of the esteemed Brooklyn artist-run space Soloway, before returning to the Pacific Northwest to found SE Cooper Contemporary, a gallery and residency space that, as Franklin describes, “capitalizes on the region’s relative isolation from other urban centers.” As well as running this endeavor and maintaining a serious studio presence, Franklin is the Artistic Director of Converge 45. Explains Marc Handleman, Associate Professor of Visual Art at Rutgers University, “Derek always wants to ‘open the door’ for others, to build and sustain dialogues, and to empower other artists. In this way, the forms of recognition or support that he’s received over the years, have always extended beyond him, multiplying their effects outward.”
“As a parent of 6 children in an interracial family, and growing up in generational poverty,” says Franklin, “I think about what we need to survive and the contradictions we must endure to do so in the contemporary landscape.”
Selected solo presentations of Franklin’s work include Document, Chicago; Thierry Goldberg, New York; and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland; as well as group exhibitions at Simone Subal and Performa Biennial in New York; Melanie Flood Projects, Portland; and The Center for Art Research, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR.
SARA SIESTREEM (HANIS COOS)
(b. 1976. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Sara Siestreem. Photo by Sam Gehrke.
“I believe art saves lives and the canon is authored by the oppressed,” says Sara Siestreem.
Siestreem is a multidisciplinary artist from the Umpqua River Valley on the South Coast of Oregon, working in painting, photography, printmaking, weaving, and large-scale installation. She combines the ceremonial traditions of her ancestors with contemporary modes and materials at the intersection of social and ecological justice, education, and Indigenous feminism. Siestreem was recently awarded the University of Oregon’s CFAR Fellowship, and a Forge Project Fellowship.
Her work is in collections including the Forge Project, Mahicannituck (Hudson River) Valley, NY; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Missoula Art Museum, Missoula MT; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA, and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR. Her artwork was recently included in the landmark 2023 book An Indigenous Present, conceived and edited by Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee). She has an upcoming exhibition at Elizabeth Leach Gallery in September 2025.
Siestreem comes from a family of professional artists and educators; her training began in the home. Her lifelong mentor is Lillian Pitt (Wasco, Warm Springs, Yakama) and her weaving teachers are Greg Archuleta (Grand Ronde) and Greg A. Robinson (Chinook Nation).
Siestreem graduated Phi Kappa Phi with a BS from Portland State University. She earned an MFA with distinction from Pratt Art Institute. She created a self-sustaining weaving program for the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians.
“She is exceptionally professional, and has successfully navigated the complex gallery and museum landscape for twenty years,” said Reuben Roqueñi, Executive Director of Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), “In her own right, she is an activist, carving out space for Native artists in a field that has historically not offered proper recognition.”
VO VO
(b. 1981. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Vo Vo. Photo by Sam Gehrke.
An immigrant from a (Vietnamese) refugee family, Vo Vo names and diagrams dynamics around imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and oppression. “I work from an international, populist perspective,” describes the artist, “with an intention to make these concepts approachable, accessible and dialectical.” Vo’s work spans textiles, installation and social practice that recognizes and provides direct care to contemporary traumas of a “third culture,” and other disenfranchised, displaced and threatened communities.
“By operating simultaneously on multiple dimensions – as highly advanced conceptual devices, as low-brow cultural ephemera, and as literal rugs and textile blankets,” says artist and 2024 Hallie Ford Fellow Sam Hamilton, “Vo’s work teases and (gently and lovingly) challenges us to dismantle and analyze our inherited assumptions and value metrics about art, culture, labor, and materiality.”
Vo’s work has recently been included in the 2024 Oregon Artists’ Biennial, Oregon Contemporary, Portland, Oregon; Converge 45, “Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship”; “Weaving Data,” Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, and, through May 31, 2025, at their solo exhibition with Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Of ev rywh re and n wh re.
They are also an editor, speaker, educator, curator, and musician who has exhibited and toured internationally. They received a Bachelor of Design in Architecture and a Graduate Certification in Design Science (Acoustics and Audio) from the University of Technology, Sydney; and a Master of Fine Arts (Visual Studies) from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Willamette University.
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Derek Franklin JPG
Sara Siestreem JPG
Vo Vo JPG
Photo Credits: Sam Gehrke
About The Ford Family Foundation Visual Arts Program
The Visual Arts Program honors the late Hallie Ford, co-founder of The Ford Family Foundation, who left a legacy based on an interest in, and a lifelong support of, the visual arts. The Hallie Ford Fellowships are the flagship element of the Visual Arts Program. In addition, the program offers grants to visual artists for unanticipated career opportunities; supports artists-in-residence programs; brings curators and critics from outside the region to Oregon for studio visits and community dialogue; supports exhibitions, catalogues and other forms of documentation; and awards grants for small capital projects.
About The Ford Family Foundation
The Ford Family Foundation believes in the power of rural communities. It is a private, nonprofit foundation proudly headquartered in Roseburg, Oregon, serving rural Oregon and Siskiyou County, California. Its investments through grants, scholarships and community building create the conditions so that children have the family, educational and community supports they need to succeed in life. www.tfff.org
General media inquiries
Sarah Pytalski, Learning Officer – Policy and Communications
(541) 492-2396, spytalski@tfff.org
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