SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Experiments in Writing & Zine Making with A.M. O’Malley & Grant Gerald Miller

Come experiment! This workshop will consist of 4 hours of generative writing and then and 1-2 hours of zine making with a lunch break. We will explore erasure poems, flash memoir and flash fiction and will do our best to embody the spirit of play in our writing. The class include a zine-which is a self-made publication made by one person or a small group.

A.M. O’Malley lives in Portland, OR where she is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her writing has appeared in Nailed Magazine, Poor Claudia and The Burnside Review, among other publications. Expecting Something Else her first full-length book of poem-memoir is out on University of Hell Press. Find her at amomalley.com

Grant Gerald Miller was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama and an assistant editor at Black Warrior Review. His work has appeared or is set to appear in various journals including Hobart, Qu Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Necessary Fiction, and Nimrod.

COST:  $25 – $40 sliding scale

BRING: a writing utensil and paper, and please bring a sack lunch and/or snack (hot tea and coffee provided)

All workshops are open to the public.

All Skill Levels Welcome.

This workshop is for students age 15 and up.

RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542

Lili St Anne is an experimental trip-folk-hop band based in Portland Oregon. With lyric melodies and unexpected syncopation, the intimate songwriting and soulfully enticing vocals envelope you in an ethereal world permeated by strains of neo-soul, 1940s jazz, appalachian folk, and human howls. The songs live in a curious juxtaposition of whimsy and thoughtfulness, creating an intimate life soundtrack that ponders themes of love and loss from a distinctly female perspective. These songs, in collaboration with funk and hip-hop drummer Jason Miller, make Lili St Anne an uncommon genre-bending experience. They are in the midst of releasing their first single together, “Wolves”, and will be touring the West Coast in August 2017.

Photo by Hunter Faacks

Indira Valey (Portland, OR) is an avant garde multidisciplinary performer and a second generation Latinx Spanish speaker. Her ancient-sounding, resonant voice is a force of nature, and she utilizes looping technology, effects pedals, and a unique palette of instruments (including flugelhorn, timpani, kalimba, electric guitar) to create mesmerizing and memorable live performances that are ever-changing due to her spontaneous improvisational magic. Her debut album Recordar is a bilingual collection of oceanically soothing, powerfully healing songs about memory and finding your own inner power. In Spanish, “recordar” means both “to remember” and “to pass back through the heart”.

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Drawing as Seeing and the Acceptance of Chaos: A Sumi Ink Wash Drawing Workshop with Heather McLaughlin

Drawing is a way of seeing, a way of understanding and an exercise. This drawing workshop will focus on plenair (on-sight) observational drawing the beautiful and chaotic material: sumi ink.

The ink is an excellent tool to capture light and shapes, as compared to the way pencils and pens lead themselves to more contours and patterns. This special ink has rich, deep blacks that are easy to swoon over. During this 3 hour workshop students will complete multiple small drawings using the Sou’wester grounds as their muse and model. We will cover techniques for recording scale, light and shapes while practicing plenair drawing skills and increase our understanding and mastery of the sumi ink medium.

Heather McLaughlin was born next to the Chesapeake Bay in Baltimore Maryland and relocated to Red Lodge Montana, on the north border of Yellowstone Park, in 1991. After high school, she continued west to Portland Oregon and continued her studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Heather completed her Bachelors of Fine Art in Printmaking in 2005.  She served on the board of Flight 64 Studio (a Member-run Print Studio) from 2008 until 2014. She currently serves at the Printmaking Studio Manager and adjunct Continuing Education instructor at PNCA. In addition to her art, Heather is a musician in the band Rotties, a performer and production assistant. Visit Heather’s website at hardcoremermaid.com

COST:  $40 plus $10 material fee (Please pay material fee directly to instructor.) 

BRING: Please wear clothes that you will be comfortable in outdoors that you do not mind getting art materials on. Please bring a sack lunch and/or snack. Hot tea and coffee provided.

All workshops are open to the public.

All Skill Levels Welcome.

This workshop is geared for adults.

RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542

Kendra McKinley perceives a song like a painter views a blank canvas: an opportunity to expand an audience’s mind, to wash their thoughts in brilliant hues of blue and violet, scarlet reds and effusive orange. Inspired by the past but not chained to it, McKinley’s music spans the diverse spectrum of pop music. She echoes the intricate vocal arrangements crafted by Brian Wilson, fractures the narrow definitions of a genre like St. Vincent, and recognizes storytelling as the key aspect of a great tune the way the best singer-songwriters have for generations.

“Kendra McKinley is a rising star in San Francisco.” – Annie Bacon, SF Critic

“Her 1960s chamber-pop sound and strong, undulating vocals — which slightly resembles St. Vincent (Annie Clark) — will make you feel like ditching work to skip through a field of sunflowers with your new lover.” – Melissa Hellmann, The Bold Italic

“…McKinley is no throwback act – her sound may echo the past but she belongs firmly in the present.” – Nick Schneider, The Bay Bridged

This event is free and open to the public!

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Yoga in the Sweet Sweet Summertime with Ivy Ross Ricci

Explore asana (yoga poses), journaling, and habits of mind as avenues to self-knowledge, serenity, and celebration during the height of summertime on the Seaview coast!

Ivy is a nationally recognized yoga teacher, musician, and youth development activist who creatively incorporates philosophy, poetry, humor, storytelling, and a radical understanding of human potential into accessible yoga practices, songs, and social service. She believes in the power of everyday life lessons to draw us all into the heart of Yoga and Music.

She is currently in the process of building an army of artists who will fight via creative critical thought and profound self-love to alter standards of beauty in this country. In the words of Bill Coperthwaite, “Beauty is not what something looks like, it is what it is made of.” Ivy imagines a world in which young people can find refuge from harmful images in mainstream media within a culture of vibrant and caring adults who embody self-love and acceptance.

She is also co-founder of a national movement called the Keepers of Wonder in which youth of all ages work hard to keep the world magical.

COST:  $20

BRING: Yoga mat, journal and pen. Hot tea and coffee provided.

All workshops are open to the public.

All Skill Levels Welcome. Open to all ages. 

RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542

Iowa-born, Portland-based, Nate Lumbard is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has toured the nation and the world sharing both introspective and groovy de and re-constructions of life as we know it.  When he is not inventing instruments or bouncing his newborn baby girl, he is eating clam chowder for breakfast.

Born in Austin and splitting his down time between Oregon and Ecuador, twenty years exploring music from around the world finally led Michael Shay back to his artistic home deep in the North American vocal and songwriting traditions. With the nuance of a classically-trained musician, the twang of a born-and-bred Texan, and a career spent collaborating with musicians in a dozen countries, Shay’s vision exists comfortably outside any “Americana” box while still evoking his earliest influences:   Featuring original acoustic country-folk and roots-Americana with touches of bluegrass, world music and more, Shay’s songs are as likely to touch down in the bars and backroads of cow towns as in the graveyards and parlours of old Europe, dancing with the ghosts of William Blake, Hank Williams, or Sappho – sometimes while you dance too.  Shay’s lush baritone voice and guitar plus mandolin, upright bass and 3 part vocal harmonies in the Michael Shay Trio combine for a powerfully elegant sound in the tradition of Townes Van Zandt, Gillian Welch, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

This event is free and open to the public

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Custom Mosaics with Damon Ayers and Christy Wiesenhahn

10am – 4pm Sat July 15 (w/ hour lunch walk on the beach)

     11am – 12:30pm July 16 (short day to grout, finish & admire work)

Participants will complete a paneled mosaic using tiles and found objects. You can come prepared with an idea or sketch of a design that you would like to execute OR take an experimental approach to the materials. Either way you will come away with a wonderful, finished mosaic panel that is specifically emblematic of the particular time and place in which it was made. One of the great things about mosaic is its durability and timeless nature. There will be some discussion of the history of mosaics and possible materials and we will also host an extended “beach walk lunch hour” during which we will look at different kinds of local materials (shells, rocks, etc.) that we might incorporate into our works.

Damon and Christy are two artists who have been good friends for decades. Christy is primarily a tile/ mosaic artist whose expanded practice includes designing theater sets and working on skateboard parks. Damon mostly works in video but his practice often includes actors and extensive set building. They got the chance to work on a skateboard park together a few years ago and have been looking for a chance to work together again ever since.