Join us Friday, April 26 at 5:30pm for an artist talk with Blue Sky Exhibition "Alumna" Daesha Devón Harris, about her work and her time at the Blue Sky/Sitka Center Residency.

Daesha Devón Harris is our third annual Blue Sky/Sitka Center Residency Award recipient. The juried residency recognizes an alumnx of Blue Sky’s exhibitions or Drawers program with a month-long residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Sitka’s residency program provides artists, writers and ecologists the gift of time and space needed to focus on creative pursuits and research. Prior to the artist talk, Daesha will be in residence for four weeks at Sitka Center, surrounded by the natural environment of Cascade Head on the central Oregon coast.

Daesha Devón Harris is a Saratoga Springs, New York native, artist and photographer who has spent time in Buffalo, NY and San Francisco, CA. She credits her parents for always fostering her creativity and fueling her interest in stories and history, but most importantly for teaching her the importance of community. Both her multi-cultural family and the unexpected death of her young father have greatly shaped her life. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the College Of Saint Rose and a MFA in Visual Art from The University at Buffalo. She is a member of various organizations and plays an active role in her community as a youth advocate, social activist and cultural history preservationist. The gentrification of her hometown and it’s effect on the local Black community has played a major role in both her advocacy and her artwork. Most recently Harris has been a MDOCS Storyteller’s Institute Fellow, Artist in Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer's Fellowship awardee. She is also an avid fisherwoman and hobbyist gardener.She was selected as an En Foco Fellowship Prize winner in 2017, and was one of the inaugural En Foco Fellowship Prize winners at Blue Sky Gallery in June 2018.

The Blue Sky NW Drawers Artists-in-Residency partnership with Sitka Center for Art and Ecology is now in its third year. The residency provides an opportunity to engage and respond to the natural environment of Cascade Head and the central Oregon coast. We are grateful to the Sitka Center for offering Blue Sky artists this opportunity.