VISUAL ARTS
B Y A L E X V. C I P O L L E
TAD ERICSON AND
ERIKA FORTNER
AT KEVEN CRAFT
RITUALS (LEFT);
FORTNER’S
SKINCARE LINE
ART & CRAFT
Brooklyn transplants with Eugene ties
set up a modern-day apothecary and
gallery downtown
T
he day after Erika Fortner graduated from art
school in New York, she headed straight to Berlin
to work on a $5 million 80-foot long mural for
banking behemoth Goldman Sachs.
She wasn’t alone; Fortner was one of about
30 art assistants in the employ of abstract painter Julie
Mehretu, a 2005 MacArthur “genius” grant awardee who
Goldman Sachs commissioned in 2007 to create “Mural.”
The team holed up in Mehretu’s massive Berlin studio
for the project, which was featured in an episode of the
PBS program Art21— you can watch Fortner, clothes
splattered in paint, spraying finish on the painting.
Even though Fortner’s BFA from Brooklyn’s Pratt
Institute was in painting, Mehretu had hired Fortner for
her background in furniture finishing, which she had
picked up from her father, a cabinetmaker.
“I brought some high-end automotive finishing guns to
the process,” Fortner says, sitting in her current live-work
space in Eugene. Fortner also did polishing and sanding,
giving Mehretu’s paintings a “super smooth technical
surface.”
The process wreaked havoc on Fortner’s skin.
“The surface that she worked with had glass silica
in it, so it’s kind of like concrete work,” chimes in Tad
Ericson, Fortner’s fiancé. “It would dry out her hands
and the surfaces — because they were multi-million-
dollar museum pieces — she had to wash [her hands] on
a regular basis.”
“My hands would crack,” Fortner adds. “They would
burn and nothing would work and I was dying.”
“You tried everything,” Ericson says,.
During this period, Fortner’s sister was diagnosed
with cancer, and Fortner says she became vigilant about
chemicals she was exposed to.
After returning to New York, Fortner decided the only
thing left for her to do was develop a skincare line.
Fortner and Ericson tell me this while sitting in their
shop (they live upstairs), Keven Craft Rituals, on W. 7th
Avenue across the street from the Hunky Dory smokeshop
downtown. It’s a hot day smack in the middle of July, and
Fortner, with her mermaid-long sandy teal hair dreaded
past her belly, is very pregnant, like nine-months-and-
counting pregnant (she has since given birth to a daughter,
Freya).
In fact, the couple left New York because they did not
want to raise a child there.
“I said, ‘I will never have a baby in New York, never,’”
recalls Fortner — who grew up outside Los Angeles —
citing the expense, hauling strollers up apartment stairs
and one poignant memory of a neighbor girl restricted to
riding a Razor scooter on a tiny patch of concrete.
Eugene is a far cry from New York and Los Angeles,
but it wasn’t a random choice for either Fortner or
Ericson. Her parents met in Eugene in the late ’70s. Her
mother, Geri Dickenson, graduated from the University
of Oregon’s Department of Architecture and her father,
Jas “James” Fortner, hung out with Ken Kesey’s Merry
Pranksters and worked at The Cabinet Factory.
Ericson’s nieces and aunt, who is now a fiber artist in
Coos Bay, lived here for 15 years.
About a year ago, the couple opened the shop in Eugene
for Keven Craft Rituals (Keven is Old Norse for “communal,”
they say) — a sort of New Age artisanal apothecary with
a Brooklyn edge. There is something magical and bespoke
about the space in an old blue house; perhaps that’s because
Ericson used to design displays for Urban Outfitters in
New York. “All the wood in here is from St. Vinnies, so we
upcycled all the furniture pieces,” Ericson says.
On this summer afternoon, the shop is ripe with the
mingling aromas of primrose, ylang ylang and peat, scents
emanating from the skincare line Fortner developed from
scratch, which includes everything from face serums and
rescue balm to beard oil. There are also healing crystals
and tarot cards.
As the shop’s mission statement says: “Our products
are both conceptual and usable, and play with the ideas of
the metaphysical as well as inherent properties of natural
materials.”
Currently, Fortner is developing baby wipes.
“I’ve been making things for a really long time,”
Tim
Verkler
Full Service Real Estate
she says. “I want them to be eco-friendly; I want them
to be really good quality; I want them to have the best
ingredients; I want them to be handmade; I want them to
actually have a secondary or third purpose.”
Fortner makes everything by hand onsite; she and
Ericson even design packaging and cut their own labels.
Relocating to Eugene hasn’t all been a bed of primroses.
Ericson, a creative media specialist who has worked for
Vevo and done editing work on music videos for the likes
of Kanye West’s “Mercy” and Jimmy Eat World’s “My
Best Theory,” has struggled to find full-time work in town.
Then there’s the neighborhood, near WOW Hall and the
24-hour Chevron, a known hot spot for street kids, heroin
and crime (full disclosure: This is my neighborhood,
too). Directly next door to the shop is a Lane County
methadone clinic.
Often they’ve had to shoo people demonstrating all
sorts of unsavory and illegal behavior from their shop’s
porch or yard; frequently people who are not customers
use the parking spots designated for their business.
They’ve contacted the police, they say, but the response is
usually: Not much to be done about it.
They worry about the environment driving customers
away, but they have hope.
“This corner has the potential to be a really cool area,”
Fortner says. “For us, it’s definitely about quality of life,
revitalizing an area.”
The duo want to become more involved in the local
art scene, which is why Keven Craft Rituals doubles
as an art gallery where Fortner can hang her large-
format conceptual oil paintings alongside local artists
and artisans such as Joslyn Alana, Cayla Davis and Jen
“Tweedlebyrd” Moss.
“There are so many talented people here,” Fortner says.
“There’s such a pool of creative people.”
“That was one of the things we were really happy about
when we showed up here — how much creativity is here,”
Ericson adds.
Look for Keven Craft Rituals on upcoming art walks at 268 W. 7th Avenue. For
more information, visit kevencraftrituals.com.
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