Elaina Marie Kassouf

Elaina Kassouf, the first-born daughter of an Iraqi mother and a Lebanese father, was born in Somerville, New Jersey, and came to Portland in the 1970s. She was an extraordinary multi-media artist, a singer, and a teacher for many years, bringing a high degree of artistry to everything she created, following the traditions of her artisan father, Sam, and her mother, Evelyn.

Her multidisciplinary artworks included fashion design, graphic design, illustration, ceramics, basket weaving, gardening, painting, jewelry making, and mosaics. An amazing cook like her mother, in the 1970s she started the Stepping Stone cafe in NW Portland.

Elaina taught art for many years at the Elsie Stuhr Center in Beaverton. She exhibited her art in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. She cooked Arabic food for the Iraqi child, Mustafa, brought to Portland for medical treatment by No More Victims in 2008. For ten years, Elaina was an active member of the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild and as chairperson of Gathering of Natural Materials, leading groups of weavers to gather local cedar and cherry bark, various grasses, cattails, tule, and other materials in local forests, estuaries, and wetlands.

Elaina was a member of the Josephine Faddoul Club, an informal group of Arab American women in Portland, who met for many years for sisterhood, great food, and laughter. In her quiet way, she touched many lives, and will be dearly missed. Her passing is a loss to our community.

She is survived by her husband Kelly Bjornsen, her mother Evelyn, her daughter Jessica, and her sisters Donna and Linda.

Locate on Walk:

• Stage Wall (Left Wall), 1-13