New fellows join 58 peers selected over the last 16 years of the Hallie Ford fellowship program
Roseburg, Ore. –The Ford Family Foundation today named three 2026 Hallie Ford Fellows in the Visual Arts. A jury of five arts professionals from within and beyond Oregon selected Katherine Aungier, Diego Morales-Portillo and Ralph Pugay from a competitive pool of 168 applicants. Each artist will receive a $35,000 unrestricted award to support their practice.
“Katherine, Diego and Ralph are some of the most critically aware, savvy artists working in Oregon,” said Kara Inae Carlisle, president and CEO of The Ford Family Foundation. “Their practices are rigorous, socially attuned and openly playful in how they connect with viewers. We are honored to welcome them into the ‘forever cohort’ of Hallie Ford Fellows.”
The jurists individually considered and then further reviewed the applicants in an in-person panel—to gauge mastery of practice. Serving on the panel were: Rachel Adams, Chief Curator and Director of Programs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE); Derek Franklin, 2025 Hallie Ford Fellow and Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College (Portland, OR); Essence Harden, Independent Curator (Los Angeles, CA); Daniele Knapp, McCosh Curator, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR); and Bernardo Mosqueira, Artistic Director, Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio (New York, NY).
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 2026 Hallie Ford Fellows
DIEGO MORALES-PORTILLO
(b. 1992, Guatemala. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Diego Morales-Portillo. Photo by Sam Gehrke.
Diego Morales-Portillo is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines labor, migration, and the structures of global production. Working across sculpture, ceramics, installation, painting and video, he creates intentionally “non-functional systems” that expose the contradictions embedded in dominant narratives of universality.
As an immigrant from Guatemala, Morales-Portillo’s practice is shaped by his experience within systems that position the Global South as a site of production for Western consumption.
His work foregrounds labor not only as a material process but as a historical condition — one that he reclaims through acts that are at once absurd, critical, and deeply personal.
Recent projects have expanded his engagement with ceramics and installation, exploring how objects and actions can embody both systemic critique and lived experience. In works that often appear provisional or precarious, he constructs scenarios that intentionally resist resolution, revealing the instability of the structures they reference.
Morales-Portillo received his MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and has participated in residencies including MASS MoCA, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and the Vermont Studio Center. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in public collections in the United States, Guatemala, and throughout Europe.
“In this historical moment, sharing our human stories becomes an act of resistance,” he notes. His practice insists on visibility, empathy and the assertion of immigrant presence within the contemporary art landscape.
KATHERINE AUNGIER
(b. 1983. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Katherine Aungier. Photo by Sam Gehrke.
Katherine Aungier is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers accessibility as both an aesthetic and ethical framework. Working across painting, installation, performance and collaborative projects, she employs what she describes as “multi-sensory engagement: touch, sound, texture and rhythm” to challenge conventional hierarchies of perception and participation.
These research-driven projects often engage specific sites and histories, including extended fieldwork at the former Manzanar War Relocation Center, where she reexamines narratives surrounding the incarceration of Japanese Americans.
Across her work, she seeks to “de-enclose” space — dismantling physical and conceptual barriers while opening pathways for collective interaction. Through material openness and durational process, her work invites participation and evolves through investigation of history. Aungier’s practice is grounded in collaborative inquiry. In her ongoing project Blank < Plank, developed with artist Andy Slater, navigation happens through sound and touch, positioning embodied knowledge as central to both artistic production and audience experience.
Aungier holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her work has been presented in exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and most recently at Helen’s Costume, (Portland, OR). She has received numerous fellowships and residencies, including support from PICA’s Precipice Fund, and IRIS Projects/Yucca Valley Material Lab through a residency funded by The Ford Family Foundation. Aungier is a former member of the respected New York artist space Regina Rex, and is a current co-director, with Ido Radon, of Society, Portland.
“How can the work be playful and yet tied to the burdens of the past and concerns for the future?” Aungier asks. Her practice continuously negotiates this tension, offering forms that are at once experimental, accessible, and deeply engaged with social and historical realities.
RALPH PUGAY
(b. 1983, Philippines. Lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Ralph Pugay. Photo by Sam Gehrke.
Ralph Pugay builds nonlinear worlds shaped by humor, contradiction, and the layered noise of contemporary culture. His works often unfold as loose fables or open-ended situations in which everyday absurdities, digital residue, and emotional undercurrents gather without insisting on resolution. Humor moves through the work, existing as paintings, drawings, collages and installations, as both tenderness and friction, allowing moments of surprise, discomfort, and care to coexist.
“I’m interested in situations where meaning isn’t fixed, but emerges through how images sit together,” Pugay explains. His work embraces this instability, offering spaces where viewers can navigate layered emotional and visual experiences.
Pugay holds a BA and MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Portland State University. His work has been exhibited widely, including at Adams & Ollman (Portland, OR), Cristin Tierney (New York, NY), AA|LA (Los Angeles, CA), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Salem, OR). He has participated in residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Rauschenberg Residency, the Joan Mitchell Center, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His accolades include the Betty Bowen Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award, and an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship.
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Diego Morales-Portillo JPG
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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.
General media inquiries
Sarah Pytalski, Manager – Policy and Communications
(541) 492-2396, spytalski@tfff.org
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