H.A.C. offers uncommon art classes, workshops, private art class parties, and professional practice services for artists.
House of Art & Craft (H.A.C.) is an anti-institutional art school for adults founded by artist Rainen Knecht, and co-directed by artist/poet Morgan Ritter. H.A.C. offers uncommon art classes, workshops, private art parties, and professional practice services for artists. We are unaccredited, affordable, and approachable. Our programs are facilitated by practicing artists and educators from many backgrounds, including established contemporary artists to folk artists living on the fringe!
Home-spun and hands-on, we believe art making doesn’t require a “genius” artist or a performance of skills. In fact, we believe art is for everyone. H.A.C. asserts that we can learn best through play. H.A.C. is a space for collectivity. Here you can directly connect with the uniquely experimental and diverse working artists in the Pacific Northwest region.
H.A.C. is currently a bit rogue – headquartered partially within a functioning artist studio in SE Portland, Oregon, and in pop-ups at it’s just a feeling, hide & seek gallery, art galleries, cafes, libraries, workplaces, and beyond.
H.A.C. seasonally releases one-off art objects, furniture and garments. Follow along @house_of_art_and_craft_pdx
HAC Headquarters
Rainen Knecht is the Founder and Co-Director of H.A.C. In her visual work she employs a form of dream logic, examining beauty, humor, and horror. Rainen comes with 17 years experience working closely with the conservation and care as well as creation of artworks through museums as a preparator as well as professionally in artist studios. Most recently she managed the studio of an internationally recognized artist, where she researched and assisted with a wide variety of material experiments and was instrumental in the execution of large scale projects including a 40 ft long fused glass ceiling installation at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Knecht was recently awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship in 2021. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006. Her exhibition history includes solo and two-person exhibitions at Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, Oregon; SITUATIONS, New York, New York; and CAPITAL, San Francisco, California, as well as recent group exhibitions at Post Times in NYC, et al in San Francisco, Shulamit Nazarian and Various Small Fires in Los Angeles, California; Fisher Parrish, Brooklyn, New York; Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; Ditch Projects, Springfield, Oregon; and PMOMA, Portland, Oregon.
Morgan Ritter is the other Co-Director of H.A.C. and comes with 20 years of nonprofit arts experience supporting artists, producing exhibitions and managing programs and projects at spaces including Yale Union, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Portland Art Museum, and most recently the Arts Council of Lake Oswego, and others.
She is a practicing artist, poet and mother whose intermedia practice is driven by dreaming and play, yet responds to, and at times subverts current cultural realities. Her practice contains drawings, sculpture, poetic text, html webpages and textiles. As within hypnagogic states, object, action, sensation, and language interchange freely in her work. Her work has been exhibited at Noon Projects (LA), Artists Space (NY), Shanaynay (Paris), PICA, The Whitney Biennial 2017 (NY), a light bulb store, an orchard, MoMA (NY), and many other conventional and less conventional venues for experiencing art. She is the recipient of grants from Oregon Arts Commission and Foundation for Contemporary Art, among others. Ritter has attended several residencies including Anderson Ranch and Ken Kesey’s Farm. Her work has been featured in Art Forum, Art Practical, Art Viewer, e-flux, W Magazine & Vice.
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