Sou’wester Artist Residencies
The Sou’wester Lodge strives to cultivate a space where creativity and community coexist. Located on the southwest coast of Washington, we are both a historic lodge and vintage trailer resort, and the home of Sou’wester Arts, a nonprofit organization offering artist residencies, workshops, and community programs year-round.
The Sou’wester is just a ten-minute walk from the shoreline. Nestled between towering pines and the Pacific Ocean, it offers a rare balance of quiet solitude and creative community. Through our nonprofit branch, Sou’wester Arts (501c3), we host a range of artist residencies designed to support experimentation, reflection, and connection:
Sou’wester Arts also facilitates opportunities for visiting artists to collaborate with our local preschool, creating intergenerational exchanges that celebrate play, imagination, and the creative process.
Residents enjoy a stay in one of over 30 vintage trailers, minimalist trailers, 4 cozy cabins, or 5 historic lodge suites.
During your stay, you’ll have access to Tuesday afternoon tea and zine-making gatherings, unlimited coffee, forested nooks, communal spaces and optional private bookings in the Garden Spa & Finnish Sauna or Tea Trailer.
For those who can’t break away for a full week, we also offer a 3-night Mini Artist Residency. It’s a shorter weeknight stay that holds the same spirit of our standard residency: creative time, solitude, and space to reconnect. No application is needed. Just choose your dates and book directly. Browse dates here.
Creative Time Belongs to Everyone
When people hear “artist residency,” it often brings to mind a familiar image: a full-time artist tucked away in a remote studio, preparing for a gallery show or academic milestone. But at the Sou’wester, we believe residencies can be so much more. They are for dreamers and caregivers, for poets, hobbyists, and beginners. For those starting over or starting again. For those healing, exploring, or simply curious. They are also for established artists seeking fresh inspiration or a shift in perspective.
Artist residencies are for everyone.
In a world that often measures worth through productivity and output, we’re here to reclaim time, space, and creativity for all kinds of artists. Whether your work is quiet or loud, emerging or well-established, shared publicly or kept close to the chest, it deserves room to unfold.
What Is an Artist Residency, Really?
An artist residency is time and space set aside for creative exploration. At its best, it offers the conditions for curiosity, experimentation, and deep focus. That might look like long, immersive hours in your space, or it might mean resting, walking in the woods, journaling, or simply staring out the window while something quietly takes root.
At the Sou’wester, our artist residencies are designed with this in mind. They are self-guided and gently held, rooted in flexibility, reflection, and connection. There is no rigid structure, no expectations, and no pressure. Just time. Just space. Just you and whatever it is you need right now.
We’ve witnessed albums written between ocean walks, graphic novels dreamed up beside the fire, foraged dyes and meals, and powerful creative shifts from time spent by the sea. We’ve seen great sparks and deep breaths, moments of breakthrough and moments of quiet. It isn’t always about leaving with a finished piece, but often about leaving with a full heart and a returned sense of possibility.
This too is art.
Some days are generative. Others are contemplative. Both are valuable.
Many residents arrive hoping to expand or complete a project, and while that rhythm often unfolds, it’s just as common to leave having reclaimed something more personal: voice, vision, or simply space to breathe.
This is a place to follow your own rhythm, to listen inward, and to make or unmake on your own terms.
