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!
Blair Borax: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Blair Borax is a singer-songwriter who writes tender folk-pop songs to make you feel less alone.
With vocal stylings reminiscent of 1920s jazz, songwriting that is unafraid to tackle the taboo, and pop melodies that stay with you for days, Blair Borax has something special to offer. She conjures a vocal charm somewhere in between Regina Spektor and First Aid Kit, wordsmithing inspired by folk songwriting greats like John Prine, and moody vulnerability like Haley Heynderickx and Big Thief’s Adrienne Lenker.
After releasing her first EP ‘everything is light work’ in May of 2021, Blair released her debut album “Keep Walking” in June 2022. “Keep Walking” will take you on an emotional rollercoaster, through the stages of anger, grief, and joy beyond trauma and heartache. It is the perfect companion to help you keep walking too. She is working on her sophomore record, “Tender Lately” this year.
Community Clay Play
Work with pottery clay and tools to create a finished piece of your own!
REGISTER TO ATTEND
$20/person, includes firing & glazing one item. Additional $10+ per piece 6 inches+. Must prepay to attend Clay Play.
All ages are welcome. Come bond with family or friends!
Location:
109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
(across from City Hall & next to Roots)
Intro to Handbuilding with Clay IV with Mariam Matheson (FULL)
Learn handbuilding techniques and create an object. This half day workshop includes all materials and tools needed to create a piece of handbuilt pottery. Pieces will be glazed fired and can be shipped to attendees. Can be taken as a series or independently of other Intro to Handbuilding classes.
Mariam Matheson has been a potter since 2018 and an artist her entire life. Mariam is the ceramics studio manager at Ilwaco Art Works. She lives in Seaview, WA with her husband and dog.
Hemlock
Live at The Sou’wester Lodge
Community Clay Play
Work with pottery clay and tools to create a finished piece of your own!
REGISTER TO ATTEND
$20/person, includes firing & glazing one item. Additional $10+ per piece 6 inches+. Must prepay to attend Clay Play.
All ages are welcome. Come bond with family or friends!
Location:
109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
(across from City Hall & next to Roots)
Rebecca Sanborn began writing songs at age six, starting an early pattern of straying creatively from sheet music. Her piano instructor taught her to write the music down, which seemed like a magical power. She also fell in love with theatre and writing, pursuing all of these arts with equal passion. Rebecca got her first agent at age ten and landed starring roles in commercials. One director hired her on the spot because she had a voice “like Lauren Bacall”. In High School she would wake at 5 am to jump rope in the driveway and then pound out short works of fiction on the typewriter in the garage so as not to wake anyone. The love affair with stories and music continued and at eighteen, she left her native Portland, Oregon to study at The College of Santa Fe, in New Mexico—majoring in Theatre and immersing herself in the free, unpredictable world of the Contemporary Music Program. Every Thursday night a Forum was held where new music was emphatically encouraged. Rebecca had found her home. She studied under the experimental composers Joseph Weber and Peter Gordon and was moulded by Martha Graham’s personal demonstrator, Juanita Barry, in rigorous modern dance classes for four years.
Upon returning to the Northwest after college, Rebecca met her husband and musical partner, drummer Ji Tanzer. They are both members of the adventurous jazz quintet, Blue Cranes, the art pop trio, Swansea, and Portland’s veteran indie group, Loch Lomond. Rebecca and Ji also starred in the film “Light of Mine”, which garnered a coveted spot at the A.F.I. Fest in 2011. “Light of Mine” was the only independent film from The States to be included in the festival. Rebecca plays in the all-female, cape-wearing, fog-machine-loving synth trio, Eccoh Eccoh Eccoh with Kyleen King (Brandi Carlile) and Jenny Conlee-Drizos (The Decemberists).
In 2021, Rebecca was invited to write an original set of music for the Montavilla Jazz Fest—composing and arranging eight songs in two months. She performed these tunes with her long-time mentor and hero, pianist Randy Porter, bassist Jon Shaw, and of course, Ji Tanzer. The work now stands as a collective entitled “Shadow Work”. Several pieces have since been arranged by Douglas Detrick, and were performed at the 2022 Montavilla Jazz Fest with the 12-piece Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble as a part of “The Heroine’s Journey” – an evening with Marilyn Keller, Darrell Grant, and Rebecca Sanborn. In 2023, Rebecca was awarded a RACC grant to record “Shadow Work”.
Throughout all of the years of hard touring and performing, Rebecca never lost touch with the written word. She earned a spot in the highly competitive Tin House Winter Workshop in 2016, mentoring under Mitchell S. Jackson. She has completed five novels and continues to work on her literary, musical, or theatrical craft on a daily basis. When Rebecca isn’t engaged in art or teaching, she can be found chasing after her costume-obsessed five-year-old daughter or trying to get some sleep.
Rosa Chang will be reading her book “My Indigo World”
at 5pm in the The Sou’wester Lodge on Sunday the 13th.
All ages. Free. Copies for sale.
My Indigo World:
A PASSIONATE PERSONAL STORY OF BECOMING AN ARTIST AND MAKER, this STEAM title is perfect for inspiring children to follow their creative interests and craft their own personal narratives. AN EYE-CATCHING CROSS-CULTURAL LOOK AT A PLANT OF HIGH VALUE AROUND THE WORLD, with a useful curriculum fit for botany, gardening, agriculture, sustainability, or basic chemistry units. FROM TIE-DYE TO EASTER EGGS, CHILDREN LOVE CRAFTS INVOLVING DYEING, and Chang offers step by step instructions for growing your own indigo plants and making homemade blue dye. BLUE IS CONSISTENTLY NAMED THE MOST POPULAR COLOR AMONG CHILDREN AND ADULTS, and this tribute to all things blue offers a feast for the eyes as well as fascinating information about where the blue around us comes from.
A True Story of the Color Blue
by Rosa Chang
This gorgeous celebration of the color blue and the indigo plant, by a Korean American debut artist and storyteller, powerfully connects art and the natural world.
With lavish mixed-media art including watercolor painting and hand-dyed textiles, debut author-illustrator Rosa Chang pays tribute to the science and art of growing the indigo plant and making indigo dye. Woven throughout is a poetic tribute to the color blue, Chang’s favorite since her girlhood in Korea, and an appreciation of the indigo plant as a valued source of blue dye in cultures around the world.
PRAISE for MY INDIGO WORLD
★ “Other hues will turn green with envy at the visually stunning and factually thorough attention given indigo blue in this vibrant and informative picture-book debut…. Intimate and meditative…and should find quick use in both scientific and artistic circles.”—Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Thought- provoking…..an enjoyable dive into the cultural impact of a hypnotizingly beautiful color.” — Kirkus Reviews
Rosa Sung Ji Chang 장성지 is a Korean-born visual artist, natural indigo dyer, and storyteller based in New York and Baltimore. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of Visual Arts, New York, Rosa has had work exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Paula Cooper Gallery, among many others. This is her debut picture book.
She can be found at rosafulgarden.com and on Instagram at @rosaful_garden.
Community Clay Play
Work with pottery clay and tools to create a finished piece of your own!
REGISTER TO ATTEND
$20/person, includes firing & glazing one item. Additional $10+ per piece 6 inches+. Must prepay to attend Clay Play.
All ages are welcome. Come bond with family or friends!
Location:
109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
(across from City Hall & next to Roots)
QUADRAPHONIC + ACUPUNCTURE + SOUND BATH
AUGUST 31 • 7PM
Featuring Sonic Ceremonies with Dr. Kade Rose (they/them) of Celestial Window Restorative Arts.
Harmonize your body with the healing waves of a sound bath combined with the flow of intuitive acupuncture.
- $88 WITH ACUPUNCTURE
- $44 SOUND BATH ONLY
Join us along with certified acupuncturist, Kade Rose, here at the Sou’wester Thursday August 31st for a unique wellness experience. This event will be held in our spacious Pavilion on the grounds of the beautiful Sou’wester and will be open to 15 participants. 8 reservations will be for a sound bath and acupuncture combination where Kade will be performing intuitive acupuncture while the sounds of her polyphonic analogue synthesizer offer deep relaxation and realignment. The remaining 7 reservations are for sound bath only where you can lay in a state of deep relaxation while the sound waves wash over you.The event will be an hour and a half long and we request you bring your yoga mats, blankets, pillows or anything that will make you more comfortable laying on the floor for an extended period of time. We are very excited to welcome you all to join us in wellness.