Belonging Otherwise brings together the work of Epiphany Couch and Charlie-Anne Hopkins, two artists whose distinct practices converge around identity, ecology, and the layered histories of the American West. Together, their work invites viewers to reconsider how personal, cultural, and ecological narratives shape our sense of belonging within this contested landscape.

Originally presented at the Gorge Museum, Columbia River in VI Sections is a series of handwoven tapestries that map the entire length of the Columbia River - from its headwaters in British Columbia to its terminus in the Pacific - across six woven segments. The fourteen dams that interrupt the natural flow of the river's main stem are called out prominently in red, tracing a visual narrative of the geological, cultural, and political history of the Columbia and the tributaries that feed it as it passes through the Gorge.

For ten thousand years before Manifest Destiny, the land along these rivers was home to a thriving Indigenous population whose spiritual beliefs and cultural practices centered on respect for the land, the rivers, and the salmon within them. In fewer than two hundred years, Western expansion has profoundly altered that landscape. The rivers and their fish have had to find new ways to survive, and the Native people who lived here for millennia have had to find new ways to be. Strasen's tapestries hold that history in the weave - the flooded villages and sacred fishing sites, the submerged burial grounds, the "disappearance" of Celilo Falls and Kettle Falls, and the salmon migrations obstructed by dams built without fish ladders.

The work arrives at a moment of reckoning. In June 2024, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a "Tribal Circumstances Analysis" documenting the historic, ongoing, and cumulative impact of Columbia River dams on Basin Tribes - a first step toward acknowledging the damage done and exploring how to mitigate the harm. Columbia River in VI Sections gives that history a form you can stand before: a river rendered thread by thread, its power, its beauty, and its cost woven into a single continuous story.

About the Artist

Kristie Strasen built a highly successful career in New York City as a textile designer and colorist for leading companies in the interior furnishings industry before returning to her roots as a hand weaver and launching Little Weavings Co in 2017. Committed to making "things worth keeping," she creates artisanal, one-of-a-kind pieces from natural fibers - often hand spun or produced by small-batch spinners, and both commercially and naturally dyed. Known for an intuitive command of color drawn from years of building color systems for clients across North America and Europe, Strasen weaves work of unusual richness and significance.