MAY 1 – JUNE 26, 2026 | THE AMERICA WALDO BOGLE GALLERY AT THE BUSH HOUSE MUSEUM
Let the Sun Shine Through unfolds at the threshold between interior and exterior, history and presence. Installed within the historic rooms of the Bush House Museum, this work considers how the female figure, landscape, and memory move across and through one another.
The mural painted directly on the wall introduces a silhouetted, copper-colored, feminine form that gathers the oak just beyond the gallery window and draws it inward. The gesture collapses distance: outside becomes inside, past becomes present, and the natural world enters a space shaped by layered histories. The oaks, rooted and enduring, act as witnesses—holding time in ways the built environment cannot.
My work begins where history fractures—where Black stories have been silenced, fragmented, or erased. Through painting and curation as social practice, I assemble those fragments into spaces for reflection, resistance, and radical beauty. Across the mural and accompanying figure paintings, silhouetted forms emerge in ethereal negative space, carrying both memory and possibility.
These figures, informed by gesture and organic form, move between the human and the elemental. They ask how bodies hold ancestry, how land remembers, and how presence can be reclaimed within spaces not originally built to contain it. Afrofuturist undercurrents shape this work, opening speculative pathways for Black futurity, growth, and transformation.
Within this installation, light becomes an active force—filtering through windows, across surfaces, and into the figures themselves. To let the sun shine through is to allow for permeability: between histories, bodies, and worlds. It is an offering toward healing, and an insistence on becoming.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tammy Jo Wilson is a Black artist, curator, speaker, and facilitator dedicated to creating inclusive spaces where art serves as a catalyst for connection, dialogue, and change. Based in Portland, Oregon, she weaves together her passion for advocacy, creativity, and community-building to uplift underrepresented voices—particularly Black artists—through exhibitions, programming, and mentorship. She holds an MFA from San Jose State University and a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She co-founded Art in Oregon, a statewide nonprofit fostering artistic equity and cultural vitality. Wilson serves as the Visual Arts & Technology Program Manager at Lewis & Clark College. She is actively curating numerous exhibitions, including Black Matter, an ongoing exhibition featuring Oregon-based Black artists, and Terrain, a land art exhibit and residency celebrating the intersection of art and nature.
Welcome to the Bush House Museum 