Carla Axtman helps craft Oregon’s narrative, one page at a time
written by Joni Kabana | photography by Karl Maasdam
Some people are born knowing exactly what they are meant to do. Others discover it slowly, through experiences, loss and the quiet accumulation of stories. For Carla Axtman, storytelling has always been the throughline, a personal instinct that has come naturally to her. “Being a storyteller means hearing others and learning their stories,” she said. “It takes a desire to understand and a willingness to simply listen.”
Axtman was raised in John Day, where her childhood stretched from kindergarten to graduation alongside the same small constellation of friends. It was a place that taught her both belonging and endurance, wonder and limitation. Living in this small town shaped not just her personality, but also how she sees the world around her. Five generations of her family have lived in this region, and she carries that inheritance forward now from her current home in east Marion County.
As managing editor of the Oregon Blue Book, she curates the state’s collective memory: history and data, and also image, voice and feeling. Released every two years, the book is both reference and reverence, a record of governance and a quiet love letter to Oregon itself. The latest edition’s color section featuring Hells Canyon lends proof that even official documents can project a sense of awe.
Axtman verifies facts with agencies and tribes, coordinates statewide distribution, collaborates with independent bookstores and works closely with the secretary of state. Yet beneath all of those logistics is a deeper calling: to connect people to place and to one another, through truth and imagery.
Art plays an important part in Axtman’s life. She shapes clay using Mishima techniques, inlaying patterns into form. She also is learning watercolor painting, letting pigment slide across paper the way stories sometimes do when given time and space. Travel feeds her curiosity, and films feed her sense of character. If there is one word that binds her life’s work, Axtman says it is justice. A belief that stories matter. That land matters. That people matter. And that doing what she feels is right, especially when faced with difficulty, is its own expression of art.
