North Pole Studio unlocks potential
The Pearl District space supports neurodivergent artists as working professionals
Mark Bishop’s face is a contrast to those he paints. He appears calm and serene while the faces in his paintings almost howl with struggle and turmoil. But there is strength and fortitude in those expressions, too. And Bishop, like the men and women in his paintings, is resilient. In Bishop’s case, that resilience is hard-won.
The 66-year-old self-taught painter is an “outsider” artist, untrained and outside the conventional art world. Bishop is also mentally ill. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and has heard voices in the past. By his 20s and 30s, he says, it was one therapist after another. He dropped out of college. His life was blowing up: “It was kind of like an ice cream headache in my head. And it got real bad and I told my mom and my dad I don’t understand what this is.” It took years before he could understand and then cope with what was wrong with him. Therapy helped. Psychiatric drugs help, too. The drugs, he says, usually keep the voices at bay, but sometimes he still hears a high-frequency sound “and I immediately pray about it and I say, 'Lord please take this away from me.’”
We met Bishop at North Pole Studio in the Pearl District, where twice a week he goes to work on his paintings. The 5,000 square-foot studio space is specially designed for neurodivergent artists — artists with autism and intellectual/developmental disabilities, some of whom have unique sensory needs. North Pole Studio is one of roughly 100 “progressive” studios across the United States.
These progressive studios are a niche in the “Outsider” art movement that champions artists without formal training, providing not just studio time but representation. Progressive studios create a community of artists who, according to North Pole Studio Exhibitions Manager Krista Gregory, “function as communities of makers, artists who often need advocacy and support navigating an art world where logistical barriers can be substantial.” North Pole Studio supports these neurodivergent artists as working professionals.
North Pole Studio opened in 2020. Mary Ellen Andersen is one of the founders. She was an art teacher working with children with autism at the Victory Academy in Sherwood. That’s a private school dedicated to serving children, teens and young adults with autism and other related learning differences. Another co-founder, Sula Willson, worked with the same students as they transitioned to life after school. One of their students, Davis Wohlford, hoped to become an artist. He was the impetus to open North Pole Studio. Wohlford named the studio after one of his favorite places— his own artwork portrays the North Pole as magical. He is the founding artist at North Pole Studio and is represented by the studio.
The North Pole Studio is a nonprofit, but it is also a business. One painting sold recently for $3,000. Most sell far below that price. Sixty percent of a sale goes to the artist and 40% goes to the studio to pay for staff and space. The studio also earns money by offering art classes, but sponsorships and donations make up the bulk of the budget.
Bishop is one of 38 artists represented by North Pole Studio. And just as with other studios and galleries, North Pole is selective. Bishop has had showings locally, but this March he will get his first national showing at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City.
Bishop offers a shy smile when asked about this: “That is what you want to do as an artist. You want to share your art with the world.”
North Pole studio takes part in the local art scene since it is located in the Pearl District near many of the city’s well-known galleries. Krista Gregory is the Exhibitions Manager at the studio who will be taking Bishop’s work and the work of 11 other North Pole Studio artists to New York in March for the Outsider Art Fair. Admiration for and the significance of Outsider Art is booming. The New York Times covers the exhibition, and outsider art has been sold for auction at Christie’s and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is part of a bigger, inclusive movement that reveres artists who don’t fit the conventional mold.
Last year, North Pole Studio’s represented work at the Outsider Art Fair nearly sold out. This year will be the first time Bishop’s work will be shown there. Seven of his paintings will be for sale, mostly from his series on Black cowboys. Bishop’s concentration on faces means when we stare at his cowboys, we see their muscularity, their intensity. Bishop says they are thinking about their life on the range and that they are very proud of their work. That’s not something we see a lot in city museums.
Bishop is a Seventh-day Adventist. He says that Jesus Christ motivates him to paint. “I work to do what he wants me to do.... He opens your eyes to what he is trying to say and you sit there and go, oh ok.” And then Bishop says he paints. When we met Bishop, he was working on a painting of Jesus. Like Bishop’s other work, Christ’s vivid face is a result of repeated layering of multiple colors, dark to light. Acrylic on canvas. There is a tactile presence in all his paintings. Wrinkles and facial lines wear well on Bishop’s people. In the age of Instagram, that alone is profound.
Bishop has been drawing since he was a boy growing up in Milwaukie. He used to watch his mother draw, so perhaps his talent is inherited?
But he also thinks his creativity is related to his mental struggles. “I think my art talent is like the same strand of DNA that carries my art talent — also carries my mental illness. If you try to get rid of my mental illness, I’d end up getting rid of my art talent so they’re kind of bound together so you can’t get rid of it.” Psychologists have found links between creativity and mental illness.
When Mark Bishop speaks, it is slow and deliberate. There is a great deal of silence in his speech. His paintings are sometimes quiet too, but they say so much.
For more information on North Pole Studio and to see the work of Bishop and other artists, visit their website at northpolestudio.org.
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This is truly a beautiful story! I can't wait to stop by and meet Bishop and his team!