January 18, 2023

Faculty Exhibitions: “Scrum” and “Betwixt and …”

The Hoffman Gallery and the art department are excited to announce the two spring 2023 faculty shows: Dru Donovan’s Scrum and Cara Tomlinson’s Betwixt and . . . The exhibits run from January 26 to March 23, 2023.

Black and white photograph next to a colorful painting Faculty Exhibition: Dru Donovan's Scrum and Cara Tomlinson's Betwixt and …

These exhibitions highlight recent photography and video works from Assistant Professor With Term of Art Dru Donovan and paintings, textile sculptures, and works on paper from Associate Professor of Art and Studio Head of Painting Cara Tomlinson.  

Additional Events

Exhibition Opening
Thursday, January 26, 4–6:30 p.m.

Guest Performance
Property of Opaqueness by Takahiro Yamamoto along with Emily Squires and Roland Dahwen
Sunday, February 26, 2 p.m.

Artist Walkthrough and Discussion
Saturday, March 18, 2–4 p.m.


Dru Donovan: Scrum

In Scrum, black-and-white photographs and videos distill moments of physical negotiations in which force and care cannot be untwined. Bodies are arranged, posed, and tended to in ambiguous formations and steadied compositions. Balanced in precarious stasis, the viewer’s inability to understand the root or cause of the gesture is common in all of the work, bringing to light that conflict and collaboration can coincide.

Cara Tomlinson: Betwixt and …

Betwixt and … includes paintings and drawings that explore the capacity for human and non-human forms to intertwine, blend, and create a pictorial language. This language becomes an interchangeable alphabet, forming an ecology of bodies both linked and situated, open and closed, exploring boundaries of what is inside and outside.


Regular gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The gallery is free and open to the public; parking on campus is free on weekends. 


About the Artists

Dru Donovan

Dru Donovan is an assistant professor with term of art at Lewis & Clark College. She works with both photography and video to examine the connection between physical and emotional occurrences by constructing or revisiting human experiences. Donovan’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and was included in reGeneration2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in the 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Fraenkel Gallery, Yancey Richardson Gallery, Williamson Knight Gallery, and Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. Donovan’s photographs were published in Aperture Magazine, Blind Spot, Picture Magazine, and Matte Magazine. In 2011 TBW Books published her first book, Lifting Water. In 2011–2012 she participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace studio residency. Awards Donovan has received are the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship in 2015 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2016.

Cara Tomlinson

Cara Tomlinson is an Oregon-based artist who is an associate professor of art and studio head of painting at Lewis & Clark College. She addresses ideas of subjectivity, agency, and materiality through the language of painting. Tomlinson received her BA in painting and literature from Bennington College and her MFA in painting from the School of Art and Design at the University of Oregon. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been supported by numerous grants and residency awards including: the Ucross Foundation, Millay Colony for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Willapa Bay Artist Residency, Ford Family Foundation Grant, Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, and two professional development grants from the Portland Regional Arts Council and Oregon Arts Commission. Tomlinson researches and writes about art making, and she has presented papers at national and international humanities and arts conferences on the phenomenology of object making, the pedagogy of drawing, and the affect of color. Her teaching extends to traditional and experimental art practices, with an emphasis on drawing and painting informed by historical methods, painting as hybrid practice, and contemporary art theory. She has also taught at Dartmouth College, University of Iowa, and Syracuse University. Tomlinson’s work is represented by BDDW Gallery in New York.