Pile of Mistakes, glazed ceramic stoneware and cut-out photo on Canson BFK Rives, 4.5x16x6”, 2018/2025
Kelda Van Patten is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, photography, drawing, ceramics, and animation. Based in Portland, Oregon, she was a public art educator for more than 20 years. Her current practice embraces materiality, process, vulnerability, and the traces of making. Through play, improvisation, mess, excess, and mistakes, Van Patten explores uncertainty and not-knowing as generative conditions for discovery, change, and transformation.
She received an MFA in Craft and Material Studies from Oregon College of Art and Craft/Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2020, a BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MAT from Lewis & Clark College. Her work has received support from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, has been exhibited internationally, and is held in the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation collection.
The Shape of Longing (Disguise), 3 photos on Canson BFK Rives, 22x17” each, 2025
Sudden indescribable tenderness, watercolor and collage on paper, 52x42”, 2019/2026
Diary, mixed media on paper, iPad drawing, tape, false eyelashes, (20) 11x14” drawings and (1) 8x10” ipad drawing, 2026
(Left) Drop Dead Gorgeous, time-lapse iPad drawing, paper, tape, 18 sec loop with “Glam” by Christina Aguilera (3:44), 12x9x5”, 2025 and (Right) Falsehoods, watercolor and collage on paper, 51x42”, 2019/2026
Most Nearly Perfect Ham, watercolor and collage on paper, 26x22.5”, 2019/2026
Blink, animated collage and found images, 5 sec loop, video projection, 2024/2026