SOU’WESTER EVENTS!
Discover what’s happening during your next stay or plan a visit around our free live music, workshops, wellness offerings and more!
In this workshop students will learn basic embroidery techniques (5 basic stitches) through stitching your favorite plant, vegetable, or herb using recycled materials and/or through altering a piece of clothing: hats, jackets, patches, or bags (Please bring your own piece of clothing to alter). Participants will be guided through a process of choosing a plant you identify with, learning about its properties, then experimenting with multimedia techniques to create a piece of hangable or wearable art.
Chloe Jacobson grew up in the dry, oaky lands of Southern Oregon and headed north to the lush forests of the Pacific Northwest to pursue a major in Visual Arts and Psychology from The Evergreen State College. She chose to pursue the healing power of the art process professionally through getting graduate degree in Transpersonal Art Therapy at Naropa University, and now practice as full time art therapist with the LGBTQIA population in Portland, Oregon. She is a multimedia artist specializing in embroidery, painting, and collage to express sensations, feeling spaces, and to tell stories of empowerment and liberation. She walks the edge of fine art and craft to explore the natural world through my lens as a queer art therapist. She blends media to reframe and re-contextualize, while offering simple messages. She especially seeks narratives of natural perseverance, adaptation, justice, and resilience in the face of adversity or human constructs. Her background in art therapy informs my process as being a platform for healing self-reflection, through making the latent, blatant.
In this workshop students will be guided in making bath bombs from everyday household items and found materials from the surrounding natural landscape of the Sou’Wester. Using optional scents and/or herbs, students will create a personalized set of bath bombs filled with unique intentions and return home with a set of hand made bath bombs.
Hannon is a white, nb queer creative and care worker who’s been living for nine years in Portland, Or. on the occupied indigenous lands of the Cowlitz, Multnomah, and confederate Tribes of the Grand Ronde. Hannon is a facilitator of introspective space, and creator of Tender Tank, drawing baths meant to be in conversation with each bather’s internal tides. You can learn more on their website: hannonhannonhannon.com or instagram.com/tendertank
Workshop cost $77
In this workshop students will learn to shoot in the classic, home movie, analog format and become part of a community of Super 8 and 16mm enthusiasts. Explore the “bucket method” of hand processing your film, and how to care for your negatives.
Stephanie Hough is an experimental filmmaker, production coordinator and director of photography whose work explores repetition, gender, relationships and emotional landscapes. Her films HOW TO FEEL (DV, 2010), HEART (16mm, 2013), SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE (Super 8, 2016) have screened in the NW Filmmaker’s Festival, Portland International Film Festival, Experimental Film Festival PDX, BendFilm, The Boathouse Microcinema, TriBeca Film Center and more. As an educator with the Northwest Film Center, Pacific University and the PNCA, Hough has a passion for sharing analog film techniques and making learning accessible for all.
Workshop cost $70
Register for all three Analog Film Workshops for $150
In this workshop we’ll explore the idea of personal identity through mixed media. Learn how to do packing tape image transfers, create your own collage papers, and then make a grungy mixed media piece of artwork.
Angie Ebba is a queer disabled writer, artist, educator, activist, and performer. She is a published poet and essayist, who teaches and performs across the US. She believes strongly in the power of words and art to help better understand ourselves, build connections and community, and make personal and social change.
We often think of the poem, essay, or story as a device that delivers great knowledge, wisdom, or emotional insight, and the writer as an expert craftsman, who, with great skill and complete intention, willfully inscribes those messages onto the page. In contrast, the late (great) author Donald Barthelme defines the writer as “one who, embarking on a task, does not know what to do”. This workshop takes Barthelme’s definition as its starting point, and is designed to give students hands-on experience in writing without any predetermined outcome in mind–in writing with an eye towards uncertainty, chance, experiment, play, and discovery. This will be a playful, exercise based workshop and seasoned writers as well as students with little to no experience are equally welcome to participate.
Quinn Gancedo is a writer and educator based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of The Nouns (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2022) and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, Diagram, Tammy, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. He has taught creative writing, literature, and DIY bookmaking at the California Institute of the Arts and in various community and youth education settings. He is a co-founder of Elbow Room, a non-profit arts organization focused on providing material support, mentorship, representation, and space to work, collaborate, and experiment for artists experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities in Portland.
Katie Savastano is an artist, educator, and designer out of Portland, Oregon. From 2011 to 2015 she booked and promoted countless DIY shows in Portland and Eugene under the moniker Small Howl. Since then she has done design work making merch, album art, and promotional materials for Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, Mississippi Studios, Revolution Hall, Antiquated Future, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and others. In 2020, she co-founded Elbow Room, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to providing material resources, mentorship, representation, and space to work, collaborate, and experiment for artists experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities in Portland.
Learn about how to use a mixture of concrete to make lightweight and durable jewelry. Students will learn how to make a one part mold and pour the concrete as a casting technique. Afterwards students will sand their concrete and seal them. Students will leave with one finished piece of jewelry!
Arielle Brackett is a metalsmith and educator based in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA in metals at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2017. She has shown nationally and internationally, including Canada, Romania and Russia. Brackett was awarded best in metals at the Colorado Gallery of the Arts and the Art Center of Estes Park and Juror’s Choice Award in Jewelry from CraftForms 2021. She received two scholarships to paint in Le Barroux, France and Grand Junction, Colorado. In May 2016, Brackett was granted a full ride scholarship to attend a two-week glass workshop at the Penland School of Craft. Brackett is published in Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), Jams 2018 and How Art Heals, by Andra Stanton. In 2019, she had a piece in a runway show, Shift in Portland, Oregon. Brackett showed work in SNAG’s Exhibition in Motion in 2019 and 2021.
Participants will learn the basics of block printing on fabric including designing, carving, and printing. You will troubleshoot common problems in relief printmaking, learn about brands and tools, and leave with finished prints on fabric. Please bring your own fabric item which can include yardage, tshirts, scarves, or anything else that is relatively smooth. Avoid fabrics such as burlap.
Ashley Quick is a visual artist based in the mountain west. Her graphic and often illustrative work represents personal experience and place-based reflections on nature in mediums such as printmaking, illustration, and more recently mural. She shows regularly in Wyoming and Colorado, and has been featured in shows across the country.
This class is currently full.
Learn the basics of handbuilding with clay and experiment using “nerikomi” techniques – the process of pressing or folding multiple colors of clay to achieve unique surface designs. This class is beginner friendly and includes all the tools you need, clay, glaze, and firing of one or two finished pieces.
Ally Bruser is a former elementary school art teacher, artist, and mother living in southwest Washington, on the unceded territory of the Chinook Nation. Most of her ceramics are handbuilt using nerikomi techniques — the process of pressing and folding multiple colors of clay together then rolling them into slabs. When not making pottery, Ally is working towards making the arts and arts learning experiences more accessible as the Program Manager for Sou’wester Arts. Visit albepottery.squarespace.com or follow @albepottery on instagram to learn more about Ally and her pottery process.
$70