SOU’WESTER EVENTS!
See what’s happening during your next stay or plan a visit around our free live music, workshops, wellness offerings and more!
Peter Donovan : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Peter Donovan is an astute musical storyteller. His perceptive songs span genres and feature narratives based on both real-life and fictitious characters, written with a contemplative heart. After finding success and a dedicated fanbase with Seattle’s All The Real Girls and his side project The Rose Petals (alongside Elijah Ocean), Donovan returns in 2022 with his first proper solo album, This Better Be Good.
His previous releases spun expertly-crafted character sketches that earned plaudits from Paste Magazine, Consequence of Sound, American Songwriter, and more. With This Better Be Good, Donovan spreads his wings, combining the plaintive soul of indie rock, the heartfelt sincerity of Americana, and the stirring studio pageantry of ‘70s singer-songwriters, drawing them together to explore more intimate depths.
This Better Be Good is Donovan’s most personal effort yet; a loose concept record about the ups and downs of an ultimately doomed romance between two people. The songs are more reflective than bitter; more nostalgic than sad. It’s an album about learning and growing from lived experiences and reflecting on past failures in the interest of future successes. Donovan has managed to create an album that is sonically nostalgic and modern at once, both soul-stirring and dripping with heartache. It’s a roadmap of his past seen through fresh eyes, and a triumphant first step in this new chapter.
New Victorian : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
New Victorian is the ethereal, small-rock project from Portlander Scott Taylor.
In this workshop students will use transparent objects to create moving image cyanotypes without the use of traditional filmmaking equipment. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate how to clear coat 16mm film with cyanotype solution, compose creative film sequences with pre-coated stock, properly expose in the sun, and develop and tone images using household chemicals. At the end of the workshop, we will splice and project our sequences. Participants are encouraged to bring translucent fabrics, objects, 16mm negatives, transparencies and other materials to enhance their creative journey.
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 will use plaiting and twining to create a small basket. We will be weaving with hand harvested and natural materials, including cedar bark, cherry bark, sea grass and iris leaf. We will be creating unique shapes and designs using these 2 techniques.
Rose Covert is a constant maker and an artist who creates in many directions. Her paintings, sculptures and woven works have been displayed throughout the Pacific Northwest. Most recently Rose has been engaged in woven sculptural work made of plants growing within a 30 mile radius of where she lives. Rose makes these very intricate and wild shapes by weaving one stick at a time, thus creating pathways to follow and build upon. As a member of the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild and a childhood educator Rose moves seamlessly between student and teacher, learning from the materials, the process and the people she works with.
As a teacher Rose is drawn to engagement and embodiment, beginning by exploring the mediums and materials we’ll be working with then using our senses and intuition to get a feel for what we’ll be making. Her teaching style has an emphasis on the magic and play of making, using questions and conversation as a way to encourage connection and imagination.
Workshop cost $80
In this workshop we’ll explore elemental printmaking techniques, creating multiples or one-of-a-kind prints with a rolling pin or tiny press. Monotypes are a painterly print, using Akua Non-toxic soy and honey based inks with brushes, brayers, stencils and templates, ferns, feathers or leaves. We’ll do Trace monotypes, Foil printing and Collograph to create fantastic textured surfaces. We’ll also explore Gyotaku, the Japanese art of fish printing, using rubber fish to transfer ink onto paper or fabric. Other elements addressed will be chine Colle’, making a stamp, relief printing, printing on fabric, everyday items you can use for art, Scratch Foam printing, Stamping with Easycut, Tape design plates and more! Workshop is 10AM-2PM and cost is $90.
Jane Pagliarulo received a BFA in Printmaking from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She cut her teeth as a fine art printer at Hand Graphics in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From 1989 to 1996 she printed lithographs, woodcuts and etchings. As a monotype printer she has worked one-on-one in creative collaboration with artists having tremendously varied conceptual and technical approaches. As a result Jane strays beyond the traditional boundaries of printmaking. In 1996 Pagliarulo moved to Oregon, founding a printmaking workshop in Hood River. In 2007 she co-founded Atelier Meridian, a collaborative membership printmaking studio in Portland, where she teaches workshops and prints editions. In her own prints, Pagliarulo approaches the landscape with an abstract realist’s eye for the edges and shapes found in the expanses of the American West. Unique spacial tensions are created with the push and pull of brush strokes and erasures. Unpredictable marks and subtle veils of color are employed as the printmaking process delivers mysterious surfaces of ink in confluence with paper. She exhibits nationally and is represented in Portland by the Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery and Print Arts Northwest.
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.