Derek Franklin

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.