ARTIST BIOS & PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS
Sculpture, Installation & Video Art
San Francisco, CA
Installation / Studio Tour & Film Screening – Embers
Embers explores the vertical plane, existing in the spaces among the trees. Inspired by the dance of fire, it transforms into light and glows as the sun sleeps. The sculptures serve as prominent characters in video, while the artist moves in response to them on screen.
SAZ’s Alexa (she/they) creates artistic work that explores land, performance, ritual, and digitalism. Their multidisciplinary process is inspired by the duality between the organic earth and our technological world. By engaging with these ever-evolving, expanding, and contrasting realms, they seek to explore the possibility of harmonious coexistence between them.
2. Julia Barbee
Sculpture & Multimedia
Portland, OR
Installation & Performance – Ember Nibbles
Julia Barbee explores the spirit of James Beard at the coast, inspired by an outdoor cookbook and his childhood spent in nearby Gearhart, Oregon. Foods will be submerged in embers, cooked atop the flames, and sculptural marshmallow and chocolate casts will be provided for s’mores.
Julia Barbee (she/her) creates autobiographical works that span performance, fashion, film, food, social media, photography, retail space, and publication. Born in 1978 in Portland, Oregon, where she resides, she has exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, and internationally. Frocky Jack Morgan, her deconstructed clothing line, ran for 10 years in the early oughts and has since evolved into a conceptual, ephemeral line under her name. Spaceness — the predecessor of The Sou’wester’s Arts Week — was a five-year-long art event she co-founded and curated with her friend and husband in 2015. For over 20 years, she has run an antique and vintage picking business that intersects with her visual arts practice, educational pursuits, and child-rearing.
3. Lane Bestold
Textile Arts
Seattle, WA
Installation – Landfill Quilt
Studio Tour – Fabric quilts
Lane Bestold explores consumption, consumerism, and the beauty of ‘trash.’ Using entirely repurposed materials, he creates sculptures and installations that spark conversations about sustainability.
Lane Bestold (he/him) is an emerging textile artist based out of Seattle, WA. His art is inspired by his surroundings, textures, vibrant colors, and his commitment to creating a full life. Lane is a queer trans man who pushes against the traditional stereotypes of masculinity through thread.
Installation Artists
White Salmon, WA & Portland, OR
Installation – We’ve Been Here
The small worlds that Gracen Bookmyer and Rowan Walton create are inspired by the stories and strengths of queer ancestors. This installation celebrates aging, late bloomers, and custodian changemakers. The journey of becoming spans a lifetime.
Gracen Bookmyer (she/her) has an M.A. in Gerontology and builds masks from gathered materials—natural and found—that take after her ancestors and the older communities she collaborates with. Rowan Walton (she/they) is starting graduate school in clinical mental health counseling and works as an interdisciplinary artist propelled by a fascination with materials, storytelling, and how humans choose to adapt to change.
Sculptor & Installation Artist
Seattle, WA
Installation & Performance – Huddled Strength (working title)
Colleen RJC Bratton seeks out experiential parallels between the human body and the larger natural world. Huddled Strength communes with the woods surrounding Sou’wester, illuminating their resilience amid a tumultuous, ever-changing landscape. Using natural materials on-site, Bratton will create an ephemeral drawing and performance.
Colleen Bratton (she/they) is an artist led by the desire to make their community a more empathetic place. Since 2017, they have been a curator and member at SOIL Artist-Run Collective, a gallery and co-op that supports experimental art. Colleen seeks out experiential parallels between the human body and the larger natural world. They move seamlessly through mediums like sculpture, installation, and drawing, letting the materials and research guide their making. Colleen is interested in alternative ways of thinking and resource sharing.
Cellist Sound Artist
Portland, OR
Performance – Smoldering Resonance
Elizabeth Byrd captures fleeting moments, weaving acoustic and electronic textures into a lasting artistic expression by way of an immersive sonic portrait — blending live cello with processed field recordings.
Film Screening – Aspen Meditation
Walking Meditation at 9,953 feet elevation in South Park, Colorado is a film set to Elizabeth’s first cello and modular synth improvisations.
Elizabeth Byrd (she/her) is a cellist, composer, and sound artist exploring the transformative power of sound across acoustic and electronic mediums. Integrating modular synthesis, electroacoustic composition, and sound healing, she creates immersive soundscapes that bridge emotional, physical, and spiritual experiences. Elizabeth’s work blends artistic innovation with therapeutic practices, offering listeners a journey through mindful sonic meditation and healing frequencies.
7. Rant Salt Casey & Esther Loopstra
Photography, Collage, Textile Art & Live Painting
Seattle, WA
Installation – She came from the sea
Rant Salt Casey presents a video composed of photography, video, and collage/mixed media elements, exploring themes of interconnectedness, growth, and rebirth. This silent film invites musicians and attendees to make sounds, hum, or sing during the screening if they wish.
Performance – She came from the sea
Esther Loopstra presents a live drawing that embodies the energetic expression of the birth and death cycle of creativity, as well as the connection to the earth and each other. Darkness serves as the initiatory phase of the creative cycle—here, Esther explores its beauty and its power to activate change.
Installation – Collective unconsciousness
Rant Salt Casey and Esther Loopstra display images created during their stay, taping them up to cover as much of the space as possible. There is no set progression; this work invites individual interpretation, discussion, and growth through darkness by fostering connections with the community and seeing oneself in the art.
Rant Salt Casey (they/them) is a self-taught, Seattle-based artist working in costuming, modeling, digital painting, tattooing, and portrait photography. Esther Loopstra (she/her) is a Seattle-based painter, writer, and curator with a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. They are both deeply inspired by nature and their experiences with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
Interdisciplinary Artist & Writer
Portland, OR
Installation – Tide Goes Out. Tide Goes in.
Epiphany Couch’s series of photographic weavings explores our connection to the land, each other, and the changing seasons. Using photographs and text, the works highlight the importance of winter as a time for rest and reflection, reminding us that we are part of nature’s cycles.
Performance – Tide Goes Out. Tide Goes in.
An evening of words and reflection, Epiphany Couch shares poems written alongside her photographic weaving series. Through meditations on seasonal cycles, rest, and renewal, these poems deepen the connection to the work’s themes, inviting moments of pause and a renewed awareness of nature’s rhythms.
Epiphany Couch (she/her) is a spuyaləpabš (Puyallup), Yakama, and Scandinavian/Mixed European interdisciplinary artist interested in generational knowledge, storytelling, and our connection to the metaphysical. Her work reimagines mediums like bookmaking, beadwork, and collage to explore the interplay between personal histories, ancestral ties, and the natural world. Raised in caləłali (Tacoma, WA), her work has been shown in galleries, museums, and art fairs across the U.S.
9. Jakelen Diaz / EVERYTHING IS SO MUCH
Zines & Art Books
Portland, OR
Installation – Everybody’s Printer + Zine Corner
Jakelen Diaz finds inspiration in the printed form and welcomes visitors to browse their collection of zines, art books, and print ephemera. Zines and art books are an invitation into worlds. Through self-publishing, anyone can create and disperse messages near to them.
Jakelen Diaz (she/they) is an artist, educator, and community organizer working in print media and publishing. Their work moves across print methods and forms, often exploring themes of grief and the self. They have self-published several zines and art books, such as the micro-zine series Everything Is So Much (2020–21), and A Precursory Musing on Ethics and Composting (2024).
10. Tripper Dungan
Painter & Woodworker
Portland, OR
Installation – Toy Box
Tripper Dungan works with salvaged wood and found materials to create a playroom with toy sculptures and instruments. His bright colors and inviting characters are sure to spark curiosity and joy.
Tripper Dungan (he/him) is a Pacific Northwest artist who makes paintings and toys out of salvaged material. His work is informed by vintage cartoons, symbolism, playful geometry, and the natural world; although his curiosity leads him to many other interests — the current ones being how to parent a sourdough culture and basic quantum physics.
11. Jamie Edwards
Sculpture & Multi Media Installation Artist
Portland, OR
Installation – For Our Matchless Friends
Installation – For Our Matchless Friends 2: Have a Light
Jamie Edwards uses humor and vulnerability in equal measure to investigate memory, intimacy, and the potentially paranormal view that community is itself a medium. Inspired by common phrases from vintage matchbook dispensers, her series For Our Matchless Friends explores layers of language through various forms — some handheld, some ghostly — inviting us in more ways than one to “have a light.”
In addition to her own work, Jamie Edwards (she/her) has worked as an arts administrator in nearly every capacity for 20+ years with various contemporary arts organizations in Portland, including PICA, Caldera, Converge 45, Parallax Art Center, ILY2, Cooley Gallery, and more. She found her love of animation working in the art department at Bent Image Lab and her distaste for corporate advertising while in Wieden+Kennedy’s “12” program. Currently, she primarily explores small-scale sculpture and occasionally does standup comedy.
12. Sarah Gilbert
Glass Engraver
Tacoma, WA
Studio Tour – Love Letter to the Sea
Traditionally used to document the staid and treasured for a lifetime, Sarah Gilbert uses engraving techniques to alter the narrative of the modern souvenir. Working with the concept of a message in a bottle, she carves imagery, words, and portraits on both found and handmade glass bottles.
Sarah Gilbert (she/her) is a queer artist who has primarily worked with glass for the last 24 years. She feels it is important to be connected to the subject she is speaking about. Most often, she references photographs she has taken or photos collected from the people she is engraving. In her narrative works, these spontaneous and momentary photographic moments are indelibly etched in glass, shifting our perception of a modern moment from fleeting to permanent.
Ceramics
Portland, OR
Installation – How the light gets in
In the midst of climate disaster and the rise of white nationalist authoritarianism, we are told to “hold out hope.” Hope is often interpreted as a passive, individual wish for things to be better, yet active hope is essential to sustainable resistance. Can we cultivate hope in a way that deepens our collective agency? Jess Grady-Benson explores these themes through a participatory installation of dozens of clay hand-built and wheel-thrown luminaries, shaped by the landscape of Seaview and the Sou’wester. Viewers are invited to participate in the project, contributing to the sense of collective hope as a shared practice in community.
Jess Grady-Benson (she/they) is a ceramic artist, organizer, and facilitator of social movements based in the Pacific Northwest. Jess has been studying and creating sculptural ceramics, installation, and functional pottery for more than ten years. Her work has been featured at galleries across the Northwest, including A-Gallery, Pottery Northwest, Verde & Co., and Saltstone Ceramics. Her work explores clay as a relational tool for cultivating belonging, connection, and collective imagination.
14. Justin Hamacher / Tidelands Traveling Theater
Visual Storytelling & Musical Theater
Portland, OR, Cascadia
Performance – The Sister Foxes
The bicycle crankie-based Tidelands Traveling Theater performs excerpts from the musical story The Sister Foxes. Original musical compositions for strings and voice accompany the visual tale of two young foxes adventuring their way home after a flood sweeps them across a strange land.
Justin Hamacher (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Portland, Oregon, working in song, story, theater, and visuals. He creates all the work for Tidelands Traveling Theater and just happily received a 2024 RACC grant. Justin also trains as a Jungian analyst in Zurich and is writing/illustrating some associated books.
15. Cecelia Hanford
Film, Dance, Photography & Painting
Bellingham, WA
Film Screening – Burning Embers
Studio Tour
Burning Embers is a dance film inspired by the exploitation films of ’60s and ’70s Europe and their scores. It was originally created during the height of fire season in 2020, but Cecelia is re-editing this work to create a version that will have full music rights and a submittable length for festivals and other opportunities. Embers are not just glowing coals but the unpredictable and transformational drifting sparks on the wind.
Cecelia Hanford (she/her) is a movement and visual artist who is curious about how the unrelated relates. Creating art helps her organize complex relationships — ecological, energetic, and geographic. Cecelia’s movement and visual art tend to incorporate elements taken from horror, which help contextualize our fears; and science/science fiction for delight and character.
16. Haley Lauw
Sculpture
Portland, OR
Studio Tour & Installation
Studio Tour
Installation – Some Fires Burn Gentle
A sense of suspended movement
a pause before impact
an embrace that never fully lands
a reaching, holding, release
Haley invites visitors to contemplate what is salvaged, what is discarded, and what is forged anew through both small, touchable works and a site-responsive installation.
Leaning into serendipity and the imbued histories of found and reclaimed metal—scraps, tools, things once useful— Haley welds them into structures that gesture toward the tension and tenderness of our connections. Haley’s studio tour offers an open door into their metalworking tools and fabrication processes, exploring love, loss, sex, and the absurd struggle of holding it all together.
Installation – The Bend is Between the Eyes and the Throat
Hooks have a body. A repetitive gutted gesture, alluring and unsafe, “the bend is between the eyes and throat” is a 20’ chain of chest-sized replica fish
hooks made from hand forged and welded steel rod. The prototype for this sculpture was made during Haley’s November 2023 Sou’Wester residency with the biggest hooks Englund Marine and Industrial Supply had
Haley Lauw’s (they/them) tidy sculptures boldly navigate connection and the rollercoaster of bipolar disorder—with wit, heart, and a lil cheek. Blending relationship psychology, minimalism, and material poetry, her sculptures bridge strength and fragility through precise fabrication and tender sentiment. A Gulf Coast critter transplanted in PDX with their two rescue hounds, Haley makes props and magic with the Matchless Builds crew (and also award winning adult soapbox derby cars.)
17. Savannah LeCornu
Painting & Beadwork
Ketchikan, AK
Studio Tour – Ah Yes, That Old Indian Saying
Paintings and Beadwork
Savannah LeCornu creates paintings and beadwork that tell Indigenous stories. Using traditional art forms with modern elements, LeCornu focuses on family, old legends, Indigenous humor, and joy. She invites the audience to rethink preconceived notions about Indigenous peoples and art.
Savannah LeCornu (she/her) is a self-taught artist from Ketchikan, Alaska. She is Tsimshian, Haida, and Nimiipuu (Nez Perce). Savannah primarily draws and paints in digital and traditional formats, but she also beads. She works in formline and plateau art styles and strives to create modern, accessible art that celebrates Indigenous peoples.
18. Sundae Theory
Collaborative Writing & Pedagogy
Olympia & Seattle, WA
Live Reading – Biding Time
Sundae Theory facilitates the generation of a collective poem intended to shift our strained relationship with time and attention into something more capacious. They also share a booklet of time spells collaged from found language, reference texts, drawings, diagrams, quotations, and daily writings.
Sundae Theory (Clare they/them, V they/them & Lucien he/him) is a thinking and writing collective that first coalesced at The Evergreen State College in 2015. Much of our time together is spent taking care of each other, which we feel is no small feat. We playfully engage with what it might mean to “make nothing happen,” a phrase from Auden that offers a space to reimagine value. In recent years, we’ve focused our efforts on creating new forms and venues for collective writing. We coordinate an annual retreat, called Sundae School.
19. Ness Linn
Social Practice & Assemblage
Portland, OR
Installation – Conglomerative Formation
Inspired by intertidal geology and the formation of conglomerate sedimentary rock, Ness Linn conducts conglomerative rituals for holding together. They collect nature objects, found objects, and offered objects, glomming them into a (loosely) singular form intended for participatory ritual.
Performance – Conglomerative Ritual: Collective Act of Holding Together
Ness Linn offers a participatory ritual as a collective act of holding together, making meaning, and collecting our attention. Participants hold and move objects in relation to the conglomerate, considering themselves part of a human conglomerate form akin to sedimentary rock formations in the intertidal zone.
Ness Linn (they/them) is a visual artist working in the realm of abstraction via painting, sculpture, and installation. Presented as ceremonial performances and collective rituals, their visual installations and object collections facilitate processes of aging, grounding, and grieving. They run Zine Club, a tiny press and IRL collective in Portland, Oregon.
24. Ashley Loyning & Emily Pacheco
Multi Media Performance Art
Portland, OR
Installation – Advanced Beach Robotics
Performance – Untitled
Ashley Loyning & Emily Pacheco undertake metal detection throughout the residency week as a meditation and avenue of discovery. Scraps and treasures they uncover are used to create a stage set and puppet elements, while the installation and performance reflect themes and findings that arise during the week.
Emily Pacheco (she/they) and Ashley Loyning (she/they) are mixed-media artists working in Portland, OR. Their work focuses on improvisation and play as a lens through which the mundanity of everyday life can be viewed and experienced.
20. Tracy Madison / Madisonware Ceramics
Ceramics
Seattle, WA
Performance – Into the Embers (live pit firing)
Studio Tour – Untitled
Installation – Voice From the Embers
Tracy Madison explores texture, form, and transformation through hand-built ceramics. Inspired by nature, her work integrates clay, fire, and found materials to create site-specific sculptures. At Arts Week, Madison experiments with outdoor pit firing, harnessing the unpredictable energy of flames to shape her pieces. Her installation features ceramic chimes and sculptures paired with driftwood, interacting with wind, light, and sound to evoke themes of renewal. Through this process, Madison deepens her exploration of fire as both a creative and symbolic force.
Tracy Madison (she/her) began working with clay in 2016, crafting props for photo shoots, and quickly developed a deep appreciation for the medium. Inspired by vintage textiles, natural textures, mistakes, and experimentation, she primarily creates functional pieces such as bowls, platters, and salt pots. Each piece embraces imperfections, celebrating the beauty of handmade art that adds joy and personality to everyday life.
22. Constance Mears / Rituals for Renewal
Installations & Assemblage Artist
Puyallup, WA
Installation – Phoenix: Rising
Constance Mears / Rituals for Renewal presents an interactive existential installation that celebrates the resiliency at the core of each person. The geodesic dome transforms into a portal for rebirth — where a charred Phoenix nest awaits your courage. What aspect of yourself feels “burnt out” and needs to rise from the ashes? Come place an ember in the nest and experience renewal.
Constance Mears (she/her) is an artist, writer, and mystic. She is interested in metaphors of transformation found in nature – particularly nests. She started painting mixed media nests in the mid-1990s, and ten years ago began creating large, embellished nest installations at festivals in nature: Luminata (Seattle), Bioneers (Santa Rosa, CA), Arts in Nature Festival (West Seattle), One Love Festival (SoCal), and Happiness Festival (Anacortes).
23. Maia Paroginog
Painter
Olympia, WA
Studio Tour – Botanical Ink Paintings
Maia Paroginog presents drawings and paintings made from hand-crafted botanical inks – inspired by ferns, mosses, and lichens growing on the surfaces of abandoned coastal defense artillery bunkers at Fort Canby (Cape Disappointment State Park).
Maia Paroginog’s (they/she) drawings and paintings are characterized by intuitive, delicate, and intricate marks that fluctuate in scale and urgency. The work is rooted in place, patterns, accumulation, and erosion; drawing influence from geologic timescales and native plants of the Cascadia bioregion. They nurture an intimate connection to plants through the practice of meticulous research and handcrafting botanical inks. Immigrant, queer, and filipinx histories inherently inform their work and movement in the world.
25. Liminal Bodies
Poetry, Theatre & Dance
Portland, OR
Performance – Edge Effect // An Asian Diaspora Story
Liminal Bodies artists No “Noli” Reyes and Ezri Galban Reyes explore renewal and transformation through contemplative and ritualistic movement, creating openings to make meaning and define new ways of belonging and relating as emergent beings and descendants of Asian diaspora peoples. Edge Effect, a durational performance art piece with sound and poetry about queer Asian diaspora, works against and with our shadow selves. A manifestation and a meditation on belonging to oneself and finding our joy and rage.
Liminal Bodies (all pronouns) is a Pacific Northwest-based queer and trans, Asian and Pacific Islander writing project focusing on movement as a process for deepening our writing practices. Liminal Bodies offers space for QTAPI and fellow QT/BIPOC to build community, read, write, and play together through various events, workshops, and retreats throughout the year.
26. Anna Rogers, Leah Lavelle, Logan Britt
Installation Artists, Social Practice & Mixed Media
Portland, OR
Studio Tour / Installation / Social Practice – Fruit of the Room
Fruit of the Room, conceived by Anna Rogers, Leah Lavelle, and Logan Britt, transforms an overlooked nook of The Sou’Wester Lodge into a glowing cocoon of fruity optimism. It’s a sensory ode to emergence with strawberry sights, strawberry smells, strawberry sounds, and strawberry thoughts. Experience strawberry-ness up close and pretend that winter isn’t slowly crushing your soul. Spring is coming.
Anna Rogers (she/her) is an artist and arts professional who enjoys creating spaces where people can connect, reflect, and laugh a little. Rogers’ background spans conservation science, libraries, and nonprofit work, but her practice focuses on equity-driven programming and rethinking how we experience art. While she often explores big-picture ideas like structural barriers and community-building, sometimes she just wants to make something strange and delightful to make herself and others feel better in a rough world.
27. Sarah Rushford
Video, Audio, Conceptual Reading & Writing
Portland, OR
Studio Tour – Writing Aloud
Sarah conducts interview-like sessions with participants throughout the week, asking them to describe the natural environment in their own words as if speaking to someone unfamiliar with this world. They simplify the language, focusing on shapes, color, texture, and space while avoiding the names of things. These recordings are then played back for visitors and participants.
Sarah Rushford (she/her) makes video, audio, and conceptual reading and writing. She has made and shown this interdisciplinary work over the past twenty-seven years, and in 2023 earned an MFA from PNCA. Her work was included in the 2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial, and she’s had a recent solo exhibition at Rubus Discolor Project. Sarah founded the Portland time-based artists’ alliance called Outer Voice in 2023.
29. Heartless Twyla & Joe Axler / Dead Shit
Mixed Media Painting, Photography & Writing
Seattle, WA
Studio Tour – Color Film Developing Demo
Heartless Twyla stops time and captures feelings through analog photography. Swing by the Zelmar Cruiser for a walk-through of the process of hand-developing color film. Formats and film stocks are subject to whim.
Installation – The Space Between the Frames
Heartless Twyla literally suspends her reality, capturing moments and memories in color film emulsions and strips of celluloid. She prefers old, gifted, and novelty film cameras, making the most of faulty shutters and ambient light—reprocessing unresolved trauma through the romance of plastic lenses, leaking light seals, and inconsistent film advance mechanisms. Installation located at Ilwaco Artworks.
Studio Tour & Installation – Dead Shit
Joe Axler brings his form of beauty to “dark arts” by giving a second life to death with mixed media painting, using acrylics, textures, and chemical reactions on real animal skulls. Dead Shit brings a sense of comfort to the often uncomfortable topic of death.
Twyla Sampaco (Heartless Twyla, she/her) is a Filipina-American photographer and self-published author based in Seattle, WA. Preferring old, gifted, and novelty film cameras, she makes the most of faulty shutters and ambient light, reprocessing unresolved trauma and bipolar disorder through the romance of plastic lenses, leaking light seals, and inconsistent film advance mechanisms. She is a resident artist at Blue Cone Studios/On The Block in Capitol Hill, Seattle. Joe Axler (Dead Shit, he/him) is an artist originally from NYC who relocated to Seattle, Washington, with an obsession with “dark arts.” Through various mediums, he strives to bring a rebirth to death. Painting on real animal skulls with textured granular gels, acrylics, and other mediums, he intends to bring beauty to what is normally considered uncomfortable.
28. Benji Santos
Film & Video
Olympia, WA
Film Screening – Hh
Experimental Animation / Expanded Cinema
Driven by an incomplete, never-ending read of Hopscotch that involves the reading of every other text as a companion to Cortázar’s text, Benji attempts to finally work on a film adaptation of a passage from the novel while inviting interruptions to steer the route.
The other day, while on the toilet, Benji Santos (they/them) realized they’d been editing videos and sound recording for about 16 years, which is exactly half their lifetime so far on this spinning planet!!!!!!!!? Some things that interest them as an artist: the voice recorded, the sounds of a room, projected light, what is motion, language, secrets, translation, memory, interruption, transit, dreams, desire, text, emptiness.
21. Mia Stephenson & Lauren Max
Photography, Fiber & Mixed Media
Seattle, WA
Studio Tour / Installation – Fire Walk With Me on the Beach
Lauren Max and Mia Stephenson evoke the warmth of spring approaching on the midwinter coast with still and moving images and a wearable garment in sunrise-colored fibers and found objects.
Mia (she/her) is a former metal artist and lifelong tinkerer with maximalist tendencies. She loves exploring shape and texture in her work and is currently focused on baking and fiber-based projects. Lauren Max (she/her) is known for her colorfully eccentric portrait & nature photography. Her work exudes freedom, humor, and untamed beauty found both in people and the world around us. She currently shoots on both film and digital formats to create images for a diverse array of clients in the Seattle area and beyond.
30. Carolyn Supinka
Comics & Poetry
Portland, OR
Studio Tour – Creation process
Performance – Megathrust
Carolyn Supinka explores the chaos of transformation through Megathrust, a poetry comic that merges natural science with poetry. The geology of the Pacific Northwest is layered with drawings of domestic scenes to create a surreal landscape through verse and comic panels. A megathrust occurs when two tectonic plates shift and one slips beneath the other: this comic explores deep time, geology, and the natural world, and the ways that transformation is necessary for survival.
Carolyn Supinka (she/her) is a visual artist and poet living in Portland, Oregon, where she creates poetry comics and zines. Supinka is interested in hybrid, cross-disciplinary projects that merge art with natural science and exist in between image, text, and performance. Her work is inspired by the natural world, especially geology and deep time. She makes zines with Conjunction Press and published her first full-length book of poetry and poetry comics, Metamorphic Door, with Buckman Publishing in 2024.
31. Daren Todd
Painter, Installation Artist & Musician
Portland, OR
Installation – The World We Want
Daren Todd creates Portal of Transformation, a large-scale interactive mural installation inspired by the journey from darkness to fire. The work features abstract patterns of embers and flames, with layers of semi-transparent fabric and cut-outs inviting viewers to explore a hidden path. This dynamic piece, situated in the carport of cabin #8, includes a community element where participants add personal reflections, weaving their sparks of renewal into the artwork.
Daren Todd (he/him) is a Portland-based artist and muralist, and the founder of Art Larger Than Me, a thriving creative firm focused on community engagement, teaching, and the creation of captivating public artworks, installations, and private commissions. His art style blends abstract expressionism and graphic representation, resulting in vibrant pieces, often on a larger scale. His public art draws from an inner monologue of experience to advocate for sustainable living and social consciousness.
Interdisciplinary Artist
Portland, OR
Installation – mattheuu – alight
Matthew Vlach, an interdisciplinary artist, creates an environment for reflection and presence. Using tape loops, a short film, and found objects, they capture the essence of a specific time, place, and feeling in an all-day installation.
Performance – mattheuu – alight
In a 35-minute immersive performance, Matthew weaves together field recordings, voice, analog electronics, and a projected short film to evoke a specific time, place, and feeling. Alight is to focus, to shine brightly.
Matthew Vlach (he/they) utilizes found materials with different qualities and reworks them into various mediums, including collages, drawings, music, and more. Under the music artist name mattheuu, he records ambient-adjacent music using analog technology, such as Ciat-Lonbarde modular synthesizers. mattheuu incorporates field recordings to capture the essence of different places in their present moment — places he frequents, stumbles upon, or visits once.
33. Jil Wierenga / Mother Tongue
Installation/Performance
Oregon City, OR
Installation- Untitled
Mother Tongue conducts a loose portal opening ceremony where participants (re)commit to the earth in general, and this land in particular, as co-conspirators bound in reciprocal stewardship. Through ritual and the cleansing properties of fire, this installation/performance sheds light on the dramatic ecological history and ongoing struggle of the local area.
Jil Wierenga (she/they) is an artist and educator living in Oregon City, OR. Under the name Mother Tongue, she produces performances and sculptural works that utilize found objects and original textiles to create temporal points of activation where the viewer becomes an active participant in the process of meaning-making.
34. Vivien Wise & Iris Vondell
Fiber Arts
Portland, OR
Studio Tour – Kite-making process
Iris and Vivien are two fiber artists. Using quilting, sewing, and embellishment, they embrace the DIY culture of sewing and build their lives around these processes. Together, they are creating some art kites. The studio tour will provide an opportunity to see how the kites are hand-dyed and sewn.
Performance – Collective Kite Flying
Join Vivien and Iris in a collective kite-flying experience as they (plus you!) launch their hand-dyed and hand-sewn kites into the coastal Oregon breeze.
Vivien Wise (she/her) is a fiber artist drawn and connected to the materiality of the rag rug, the quilt as art object, the intimacy found at a contra dance, and the community formed by a knitting circle. She also integrates a personal domestic history, especially connected to her mother and grandmothers. Vivien tends to work in 3D and is most often found at her sewing machine. She uses these inherited traditional craft processes to work towards finding a connection between land and body and relation to care.
Iris Vondell (they/them) is a lifelong adventurer, a former preschool teacher, a plant and cat mom, a queer creative, and a reflective enthusiast. They enjoy using many different mediums to create something unique. Reflective Society has been the fruition of years of creative exploration and a lifetime of passion.
35. Kaya Wurtzel & David Zetley
Print, Paper, Food & Installation Artists
Berkeley, CA
Installation – Archive of Arts Week in Papercut
Kaya Wurtzel and David Zetley explore the possibilities that live in the little moments and corners that catch our attention. Their Archive in Papercut illuminates some of the moments they were moved by during Arts Week, inviting curiosity and reverence for the quiet potentialities that already surround us.
David Zetley (he/him) and Kaya Wurtzel (they/she) are collaborators interested in material exploration, improvisational practice, and creating spaces for our community and the public to wrestle in questions and contradictions together. Kaya comes to their work as a fiber artist and printmaker, and David as a ceramicist and maker—they explore themes of Jewish lineage, inheritance, loss, and emergence in the place where their mediums and curiosities meet.