Now on view, a solo exhibition featuring artist Kate Newby who was commissioned for the large-scale ceramic tile installation titled The Sound of Trees. Extending 75 feet along the terminal, The Sound of Trees is composed of more than 1,500 hand-formed ceramic tiles. Each has been shaped, impressed, glazed, and fired by the artist, holding traces of pressure, heat, and time. The gallery exhibition of the same title, gives viewers a look behind the immense process behind the making of The Sound of Trees.
Throughout the project, Newby kept disposable cameras to document the various stages from start to finish. The cameras traveled with her on walks where she collected materials, on visits to the airport, and around the artist’s studio while she was making the work. The selected grid of photographs in the gallery serve as a kind of diary as the artist explains, “a record of the people I met, the places I visited, and the time spent behind the scenes to bring this work into being.”
The display cases in the gallery provide further context into the materials Newby utilized for The Sound of Trees. To make the mural, the artist used a combination of minerals, underglaze, base glaze, and a final top glaze. Various tile samples the artist made to test glazes and color intensity are in both display cases as well as large samples hung on the back wall.
The leaves were collected from sidewalks all around Portland. When Newby went walking she would bring a paper bag with her to collect interesting leaves. Next, she would carefully press them between sheets of paper to bring back to her studio in San Antonio where they would be pressed on the surface of the clay. “They are small records of walks through the city – little pieces of place, carried into the work.”
Newby also collected broken glass from around Portland. She hosted a glass foraging event in Portland where anyone could come and collect broken glass which she would later take back and melt into the glaze of the mural. Some tiles also contain melted glass from the windows of the airport’s original site, carrying fragments of the building’s own history into the present. “I think the melted glass in the final mural is one of the most magical moments. Something that was once discarded has been transformed into a tiny piece of light.”
Kate Newby was born in 1979 in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the recipient of the New Zealand Arts Laureate Award (2025), The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019), and the Walters Prize (2012). Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington.
For more information on Kate’s artwork contact studio@katenewby.com or visit katenewby.com
@kate__newby