This August Make.Shift will be hosting a free outdoor event titled Radio Forever. First, we kick things off in the gallery! The Radio Forever art show is a group exhibition celebrating all things community radio and the analog technology that brought us to the present! This show features paintings and sculptures , an interactive theremin installation, a working telephone booth and a historical collection on loan from the Spark Museum and Whatcom Museum. Join us for the opening of the show August 1st 5pm-9pm in the Make.Shift Art Gallery!

Jim Ward Morris

The art & graphic design work by Jim Ward Morris has received significant recognition and has been collected, commissioned, reviewed, and exhibited by prominent individuals and organizations. Notable figures such as Eli Broad, Michael Crichton, Kristen Charlet, Jay Farrar, Son Volt, Cracker, R.E.M., Gillian Welch, Dwight Yoakam, The Bike Riders, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Peadar MacMahon, Lucinda Williams, Joshua Redman, and Ziggy Marley have acknowledged his contributions. Additionally, his work has attracted attention from respected critics and institutions, including Colin Gardner, Hunter Drohojowska, Christopher Knight, and Suzanne Muchnic, as well as major record labels such as Virgin Records, Warner Bros. Records, Elektra Records, Lost Highway Records, A&M Records, and Fender Music. His art has also been featured in reputable publications, including Getty Images, Chronicle Books, Harper's, Paste, Tape-Op, and No Depression. Morris's artistic expressions have been exhibited in a variety of esteemed galleries, including Camper Van Carpool, Juliet McIver Fine Art, ACE/Doug Chrismas Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Jan Kesner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Pence Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Irit Krygier Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Saxon-Lee Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), LACE Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), LAICA Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Metro Pictures Gallery (New York, NY), Artists Space Gallery (New York, NY), Amy Lipton Gallery (New York, NY), Night Light Lounge Gallery (Bellingham, WA), Make.Shift Art Space (Bellingham, WA), and The Seasons Performance Hall (Yakima, WA). Furthermore, his work has been prominently featured in platforms such as Artforum, Art in America, This American Life, NPR, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

Morris's latest series, titled *Analog Collage*, draws inspiration from vintage imagery found in popular culture magazines. His artistic vision has been shaped by other distinguished creators, including John Baldessari, Saul Bass, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Katrien De Blauwer, and Jim Jarmusch. This new series pays homage to the many postmodern artists who believe that everything has been done and that nothing is new. By juxtaposing found imagery, Morris seeks to embrace what he perceives as a pure form of artistic expression.

SPARK Museum

SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention is a 501(c)(3) non-profit science and history museum located in beautiful Bellingham, WA. Lightning strikes several times a day at the Museum, where thousands of visitors experience the marvelous history, science, and power of electricity.

Matt Gilmore

Matt is a self-proclaimed "tech punk" living in Bellingham, WA. Their interests in technology stem from a desire to understand our place in the modern world and how to retain our humanity in the face of endless technological proliferation. Towards this end, they study and preserve dying technologies and encourages curiosity over fear when dealing with our impending robot overlords. When not studying old technologies, Matt can usually be found riding around town on a plank of wood on wheels or basking in the glory of the local music scene.

Nico Lund

Nico Lund is a multidisciplinary artist living in Bellingham, Wa. Her studio is located in the FAB Artist Studios in Downtown Bellingham. You can see more of her work and find out when she is facilitating workshops on her website (www.nicolund.com).

Inspired by my personal love of songwriting and performing using an electric guitar, I became obsessed with learning how to incorporate fx pedals into my own playing. I started paying more attention to how other musicians organized their pedals and what pedals they would use; I started to snap photos of their fx pedal set -ups at shows. In my painting studio, in between working on more contemplative conceptual work, I began using the snapshots of fx pedal boards as a way to loosen up and play with paint, form and texture. This ongoing series has been a great way to allow my musician persona to share space with my visual-art persona- something I've been trying to figure out how to do for years.

Barrett Lizza

Barrett Lizza is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Pacific Northwest, known for evocative assemblage and abstract works that breathe new life into forgotten materials. Drawing from antiques, industrial fragments, and natural elements, Lizza creates immersive pieces that straddle the line between memory and myth. With a background in fabrication and a fascination with hidden narratives, his work often reveals subtle surprises—miniature worlds, symbolic relics, and surreal juxtapositions—inviting viewers to look deeper. Whether through wall-hung compositions or large-scale installations, Lizza’s art pays homage to the past while reshaping it into something distinctly imaginative and alive.

Through abstract forms and assembled relics, my work explores the tension between chaos and harmony, age and reinvention. Using found objects and forgotten materials, I build compositions that feel both ancient and unfamiliar. Each piece suggests a fragment of a larger story — a memory unearthed, a symbol reimagined. I’m interested in the raw language of texture, the weight of discarded things, and the quiet power of form stripped to its essence.

Gwen Thomas

Gwen Thomas is an international, multi-disciplinary artist with five music albums spanning multiple genres, performances around the US and Europe, and soundtracks in major art museums (Paris' Louvre and Amsterdam's Stedelijk). She has received grants and awards for her music, diorama work, and time-based artwork in The Netherlands and Germany. After 15 years living abroad, she is currently based in the PNW (her region of origin). Whether through music, words, or visuals, her work often uses analogy and unexpected twists that tickle the brain. By day, Thomas works as a certified hypnotherapist, with her own practice called Highlight Hypnosis.

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Coming from a background in music, comedy, dioramas, and animation, my enthusiasm for stereoscopic art took me by surprise in 2023, when I decided to go to what I thought was a public exhibit of 3-D photography in Los Angeles, and discovered I was accidentally crashing a private meeting of the LA 3-D Club, instead. They welcomed me in as if I was a member, and I have felt at home exploring stereoscopy ever since. It has become an excellent playground for combining many of my interests, and allows me to add "illusionist" to my bag of tricks, which is kind of a dream come true.

I started with stereoscopic photography, and soon added stereoscopic illustrations and animations to the mix. "Beyond Presets" is my first stereoscopic sculpture.

This piece uses radio as a model for the mind. Human beings have got all these "presets" we tune into regularly (emotions, habits, thought-patterns and foci, etc)... as well as an antenna that picks up everything our senses perceive. A lot of the time we default to the presets, but it is possible to create new neural pathways if we scan the dial and tune in to new channels. (I am deeply interested in this conversation — so drop me a note if you want to connect about this concept at all!)

About stereoscopy:

When we look at the world around us, we see everything twice. Once from the left eye in two dimensions, and once from the right eye in two dimensions. The brain compiles them to allow us a three dimensional experience of a single object. I like to play with that by presenting two objects — one for each eye. Then I let your brain do that same process to the two objects that it usually does for just one. Voila: 3-D.