Kathan Zerzan is a multimedia artist with a studio in Northwest Portland. Before working as an artist, she spent years as a registered nurse, including time at Cook County Hospital in Chicago in the 1970s. She earned a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and has shown her work throughout Portland, moving between drawing, painting, and sculpture.
Zerzan's practice draws on decades of activism, protest, and performance work, and that history informs the subject matter of her pieces, which often sit between the personal and the political. A recent project paired her own charcoal drawings with a set of vintage posters her late father brought home from Jordan in the 1960s, placing two distinct time periods side by side.
Zerzan has spent more than two decades showing work in Portland and remains active in the city's art and activist communities.
This October marks Kathan Zerzan's first exhibition with Luckygirl.