Isabeau Waia’u Walker

LIVE at The Sou’wester

Presented by Sou’wester Arts

The vision for her music is clear and thought provoking, often expressed through her master storytelling. The authenticity of her presentation as a performer and storyteller taps into human emotions and bonds her with the listeners and audiences in front of her. Grabbing hold of the space with never having to command the attention of the room. Soothing and soft while powerful, accessible while complex, melancholic in celebration, serious while playful, sweet but aching. Songs of love, care, community, fight, self. Vulnerable while her humility guards her impressive force. The tensions of the stretches and contractions nested in her core, reverberate through the layers of her product: storytelling, collaboration, presentation, music. Her craft is seemingly effortless, but a closer attention reveals meticulous engineering and caring intentionality in process and product.

Screenprinting With Natural Dyes Workshop

w/ Katey Rissi $60

Learn how to make screenprinting ink from scratch using natural dyes and use those inks to create prints. In this class, students will create a screen printed edition on paper, working with a palette of color made possible by materials foraged and grown. The resulting work is entirely biodegradable, place-based, and beautiful!

Chibia

Live at The Sou’wester

Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Nature-Based Creative Writing Circle

guided by poet Charity E. Yoro

Saturday, Nov 18 | 10:30am | Sou’wester Geodesic Dome

Join Charity E. Yoro for a creative writing circle in a casual, low-pressure environment, as we allow our pen to be stirred by the elements of the coastal forest! Held in the cozy, light-filled Geodesic Dome, we’ll draw inspiration from nature-based prompts, gentle stretching/movement, and our collective energy. Bring a pen/pencil, your favorite notebook, and a mug for coffee/tea. This gathering is free & open to all levels/genres of writers.

Japanese Decorative Paper & Bookbinding 

a workshop w/ Yuka Petz $60

In this hands-on workshop we will be introduced to sekkazome (also known as orizomegami), which is a traditional Japanese form of folding and dying paper to create a variety of colorful patterns. We will then use our newly designed papers to bind into a traditional stab-bound book.

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Jess Clemons

Live at The Sou’wester

Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Jess Clemons’ experience as a traveler, former island dweller, and small town girl have influenced her folksy homegrown musical style. Raised in Vermont, she attended music school in Nova Scotia where she was a side and front woman for various bands, touring around Canada in the summers. A big leap took her to Nantucket, working as a gardener & musician, rowing to and from a houseboat she called home for several years. After finding Baja in 2010 and subsequently the wind-loving community of Hood River, Jess now calls the Gorge home. Playing guitar & piano on stages around the Northwest and in Baja in the winters, she has become known for her powerhouse vocals, intimate originals and tasteful covers of folks like Patty Griffin, Brandi Carlile and Lori Mckenna, all of whom she has been compared to. Coming out of the woodwork after a couple of years of limited shows, Jess is excited to be back on the road this year.

Exhibtion opening in our Art Trailer Gallery

No Lo Tenia Escrito / It Wasn’t in My Plans by Jade Mara Novarino

No Lo Tenia Escrito showcases a short film, Mi Abuela La Hormiga / My Grandma the Ant (40 minutes, 2023), and several prints and works on paper. The footage and the work are from a trip to Argentina in February of 2023. This work was made in order to remember—my grandma, us, a place, and a time. In a sense, it is a small archive, a document that marks a special moment in our relationship. Initially, for the film, I had set out to ask my grandmother many questions, and in some cases succeeded in receiving answers—but in the still and quiet moments of the footage, when the camera was just another piece of furniture and not someone to act in front of, was where I learned the most. The film is conscious of its own form, and the camera itself is acknowledged multiple times. Even so, the main subject—my grandma—doesn’t seem shy or to change before its presence. The prints and works on paper are reflections, journal entries, and photographs made within the year leading up to the show. 

Jade Mara Novarino is a first generation American artist, educator, farmer, and community member born and raised in San Diego, California. Her work draws on inspiration from her family and the seasons, personal narrative, site-specificity, songs, and attempts to highlight the everyday as sacred. Her multidisciplinary work spans from socially engaged projects to imaginary restaurants to calligraphy to video to collage, photography, painting, and found sculpture. She runs an artist space and farm from her home in Milwaukie, Oregon. Her birthday is in February, her favorite month is September, and she looks forward to planting garlic every October. She is always looking for new pen-pals. 

Curated by Nikki Cormaci

Steph Green LIVE at The Sou’wester Lodge

Presented by Sou’wester Arts

11/22/23

Free & Open to the public!

Steph Green’s music is for those who fancy the art of songwriting, depicting a lonely world illuminated by strangeness and beauty. Her sophomore album, “Lore”, is a series of vignettes that immerse the listener in dreams and nightmares of the West. It’s a world of towering storm clouds, flooding rivers, the smell of ponderosa pines, the pull of desert moons, and revenge, regret, and redemption under diamond skies. The natural and supernatural collide, wailing spirits wander lost highways, and shapeshifting starling murmurations soar overhead of restless loners.

​Green produced and recorded “Lore” at home on a borrowed 16-track reel-to-reel, creating a distinctive and otherworldly sound with weeping steel guitar, washy organ, and ghostly vocal layering reverberating from a distant dimension. Embarking on an almost entirely solo recording process that allowed room for experimentation, Green also enlisted long-time collaborator Duff Thompson as the rhythm section on bass and drums. Out October 20th on Mashed Potato Records, “Lore” is a rugged, eerie, and wild homage to both a real and imagined place.​

Green brought the same DIY ethos and spirit of experimentation that characterizes “Lore” to her previous releases, all of which were also recorded analog and variously featured her in the roles of producer and multi-instrumentalist. Her debut album “Thanks for That” and second EP, “Spooky Love” were recorded mostly live in makeshift home studios while living in New Orleans, with both releases taking influence from a combination of garage, indie rock/pop and country music. Her first release and venture into writing and recording was the cassette 4-track EP, “Salt Spring Island Tapes”, created alone in a seaside barn in British Columbia, following years of traveling and performing as a street musician. In addition to her own project, Green has also performed as a backing musician and vocalist for numerous songwriters over the years, appearing most recently on recordings for Duff Thompson and Dean Johnson. Following an extensive era of collaboration in New Orleans, “Lore” finds Green returning to her roots in Canada, multi-tracking her way through the isolated, northern winter.

Reb & the Good News Live at the Sou’wester

11/25/2023 8p FREE

Reb Conner is the singer, guitarist, songwriter and band leader of Portland based Reb & the Good News. Her full band plays funk, world, and soul and brings optimism and cathartic release to the dance floor. Catchy horn lines and sultry vocals soar over grooves that you can’t help but move to. Led by vocalist and guitarist Reb Conner, Reb’s love of rhythms from around the world bring the dance floor on a journey that’s full of surprises. Formed in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic, these songs reach for hope in a world under pressure. Reb believes that through feeling deeply and dancing together, we can face all that we’re up against in this life. Her striped down solo set is where Reb gets to express the heart of her music and lean into her more intimate sultry side. 

Reb & the Good News released their debut album “Wings” on May 11th 2021. This album is a culmination of a lifetime searching for Reb’s own voice in music. At 19, her love affair with music began by playing songs around a beach fire in her coastal hometown of Lincoln City. During a subsequent trip to Europe with a guitar, jazz was the music that most spoke to her, and she returned to the States to pursue an education. Reb went to music school at the age of 21 not yet knowing a major scale. With a lot of catching up to do, her education lasted all of 7 years, starting at LCC and finishing at the University of Oregon where she focused on Jazz guitar. Reb left her last collaborative project, High Step society in 2018, and moved from Eugene to Portland ready to tell her own story and bring her own aesthetic to life.