Sou’wester Arts Week 2023 Artist Bios and Project Descriptions
Chris Lael Larson transforms discarded paintings into photographic still lifes that build upon the original creative idea of painting — taking an abandoned impulse, and giving it new life, meaning, and value. To do this, he constructs an assemblage with the painting and altered found objects, that he then photographs.
Sara Flynn is a prolific maker with many skills. A busy mother of three young children, she finds time to create by adhering to her values of acceptance and self-compassion. She is currently working on a series of passage quilts as she processes the death of her marriage.
At the Sou’wester, Samuel Wildman will use a blend of dark comedy, surrealist techniques, and horror-flick strategies to open up the relational knot that binds private spaces to public infrastructure. His work will take the form of dispersed, small-scale, sculptural interventions.
Hermitage is an ongoing interactive sculptural performance first presented at Can Serrat Artist residency outside of Barcelona, Spain in Fall 2022. Cathy Kossack will lead small groups to Hermitages hidden amongst the landscape, some hard to find, creating space for intimate conversation and solitary reflection.
The 8 Circuit Brain Oracle is an immersive, interactive, brainwave driven installation. Sound and images draw on an 81 card Oracle deck created by Kodi Crone reflecting ways to take in, process & express experiences in an exploration of consciousness.
Nathan Paul Rice is working on an ongoing series of wood sculptures and ink drawings inspired by his research of playscapes as pedagogical spaces. This series explores the two dimensional line and three dimensional object while playing with color, form, and texture.
In her latest body of work, Rachael Zur continues to explore the ways in which domestic spaces hold the remaining radiance and tenderness of the departed. These depictions of the residue of lives lived will be in the form of expanded paintings which blend sculptural physicality with traditional painting techniques.
Joni Whitworth will perform new poems from their forthcoming collection.
Newton’s comedic character, ‘Frank’: the world’s most entertaining entertainer, comes face to face with his own mortality on his final world-tour. Through a comedic lens, Newton examines how death shows up and changes our lives forever (even the rich and famous).
Ollie is a queer/ trans, white, mixed media artist living in Nisqually and Squaxin territory in so called Olympia, WA. They are currently working on an artist book project that combines fabric, painting, and collage to explore queer intimacy and story telling in the times of the covid pandemic.
Aaron will be creating a live music experience with an interactive projection element.
He is also writing and recording a multi-part audio series based on recently found recordings of his father, when he was deployed during the Vietnam War.
PENNY is a film about mourning the recent loss of my father, burnout from working in the ICU, and finding solace through the use of play – as exemplified by the character Penny’s awkward yet earnest commitment to meditation, nature worship, and conversations with a radically different kind of deity.
Bonnie Smerdon is exploring connections between visual art and dance. She invites the spontaneity of movement improvisation to inform her approach to drawing and painting. Bonnie draws inspiration from her daily surroundings and her artwork is in dialogue with time, memory and her relationship to landscape.
Hannah Glavor is a Portland based singer-songwriter with a cinematic range of indie rock revelry and raw folk spirit, clutched together by catching pop elements. With “Temperennial Terrestrials” she explores life, death, loss and rebirth in song and story. All self-fabricated installation pieces are part of her forthcoming music project.
Visual arts: installations, performance, photograpy, video, silkscreening
Perugia, Italy
“Suspended Rocks at Seaview” is an ecotone performance/installation involving plain glass containers on which we balance rocks. The rocks being from the geographical area reflect local color/identity. We arrange them according to their shapes and colors in search for harmony and aesthetic balance, creating audio and physical tension.
In Defense of Dancing I, II & III is a collection of interactive multimedia works exploring cognitive dissonance in the global ecological recession. The pieces are constructed with an assortment of obsolete broadcast gear, self-hacked video hardware & footage shot on the Washington & Oregon coast.
Drawing on wood panel composed of a two column grid creating a series of diptychs of an object and an abstracted or (d)evolved version of the same object. This composition is in reference to Jun Takahashi’s SS2004 collection for Undercover titled Languid.
Lila Ferber’s project is an abstract, wooden sculpture that spins. It’s called a “stabile”. It’s made from sticks and branches collected around the woods and the beach. It stays balanced when it’s spun by the wind and by visitors, based on the same physics that keep a tightrope walker balanced.
Too Big is a life-sized puppet show examining the cyclical nature of believing your own hype and getting too big for your own good. Papier-mache costumes are made from post-consumer waste–recycled newspapers, old bills–and are another reminder of CYCLES!
In an effort to make a flexible, elegant, lightweight and compact interface, Darcy has been developing an ongoing series of e-textile FX pedals, which use capacitive sensing to send MIDI signals to your favorite DAW (digital audio workstation).
Three friends have waited three years to gather and finish a batch of tunes lost during the pandemic. Themes of greenery, camaraderie, and harmony will be gladly explored in this allotment of time.
WALKING THROUGH WALLS: Ariel Burke + Fox Whitney + special guests
Music, Theater, Performance, Installation
Seattle, WA
Walk through the woods
Whispers of pine
Creaking wood
Too tall to hold the (wind)
Secrets
The cabin, the lodge, the record library within. The surrounding woods. The majesty of the ocean…the cape of personal disappointments.The infinite elevated horizon.
A haunted cabin + lodge + grounds tour + performance.
A musical performance of new lunar and tidal-inspired songs exploring the full spectrum of the human experience; Imprints of memory and the ease/dis-ease in our bodies, mirroring the land. Traversing sonic landscapes and micro-climates and the interplay of sound, silence and stories. Opportunities for collaborative song creation and performance.
Phoebe Moore is creating a video sculpture. Her goal is to explore the relationship between 3d texture and projected video art using Papier-mâché, animation and found objects.
Sundae Theory: V Hoy, Clare Lilliston, Evelyn McLean, Lucien Spect.
Collaborative writing
Queens, NY; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; San Diego, CA
Our project is a series of essays that explores failure and collectivity and theorizes the social and historical conditions that create obstacles to “getting four people in a room together.” The manuscript closes with a piece of speculative fiction imagining a day in the life of a new “social body.”
Rachel Blumberg//Arch Cape – She/Her
Magical Realism, Folk Art Paintings and Animations, Organic Ambient Music
Portland, OR
Rachel Blumberg presents new visual works that explore the relationship between humans and their environment during the time of climate change and the plant ecology of the Pacific Northwest, along with music composed using field recordings and rhythmic studies of nature drawn from the environment around the Sou’Wester.
Andie’s line drawings are approached as documentary, capturing the energy of moments in time as they pass. Each informed by the line before it, the organic transformations and meanderings that the lines embody are captured and projected in light as a time lapse film projection. A biography of change.
DEATHWEAVE is an interactive process of recontextualizing our relationship to death on a personal and cultural level.
We invite resident artists and the public to engage in a meditation on loss, transformation and celebration of the moment through the physical act of weaving our collective thoughts into a cocoon-like structure.
Asa Mease creates a site-informed sculptural intervention on the Sou’wester property, investigating the boundaries and inflection points where the built and natural environment intermingle.
Samantha Alexa will create a site-specific performance at Sou’wester that blends installation and performance. She will make a durational work, performing live for hours and welcoming visitors to come, watch, and leave as they please. Inspiration will come from her creative study of the surrounding lands during her time.
Rachel Slater in collaboration with Janet Goulston
Intermedia Storytelling
New Orleans, LA and Portland, OR
“Tell me a story, Mama” is a intermedia chronicle of stories from Janet Goulston’s adventurous life. In the twilight of a stage four cancer diagnosis, daughter Rachel Slater has begun collecting Janet’s tales, which will be shared via film, writings and photography.