Jed Crisologo : Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Jed Crisologo is a soulful Seattle singer- songwriter, who mixes Americana, Punk Rock and Soul influences into heartfelt, catchy, honest tunes.  His introspective and thoughtful songwriting sets an honest, alive and intensely human core to their songs.  This combination of earnestness and swagger creates a sound that travels from wonderfully noisy and ambient to stripped down and raw, from raucous and bombastic to swinging and groovy all while emphasizing the truth and humanity in the songs.

Nick Delffs : Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Nick Delffs grew up in Mendocino County, a lawless stretch of coastline that’s hard to get to and, for many, hard to escape. Nick did — emerging in the early aughts as the frontman for Portland band The Shaky Hands, whose sharp, jittery rock was anchored by Nick’s quavering vocals and questing lyrics. The Shaky Hands were mainstays of Portland on the verge of a major shift, and they rode that shift a while, signing to Kill Rock Stars and touring internationally with some of the bigger names in indie rock. But a hiatus in 2011 became indefinite and Nick Delffs was once again cast into the world: working as a sideman, releasing solo records, doing manual labor, going deeper into his spiritual practices, and, crucially, becoming a father.

Becoming a parent can affect different artists in different ways. Nick rode that change with surpassing grace and maturity. 2017’s Redesign, his first full-length under his own name, reflected the transition. In “Song for Aja”, Nick touched on other concerns familiar to those who follow his work: love of the natural world; longing for spiritual and physical connection; the desire to suffer with meaning and exult with abandon, to embrace somehow the world in its maddening contradictions and find the unity at the core.

Childhood Pastimes, his second release on Mama Bird Recording Co., is both more focused and, despite being technically an EP, more ambitious. It’s a four-song cycle — one song with many movements or four songs that bleed into one another, depending on how you hear it — that can be viewed either as a personal journey or an archetypal passage of a human being through four discrete stages: roughly, the movement from childhood innocence into adolescent adventure (The Escape); the sudden immersion into a life of discovery and excitement (The Dream); the first experience of romantic love, followed by the onset of heartbreak, dissolution, breakdown of self (The Affair); the emergence into a new way of thinking, a fresh perspective that encompasses all the suffering and joy into a balanced whole (The Outside).

Nick plays nearly all of the instruments here and the result is a unified aesthetic, born ultimately of his deep-seated love of rhythm: the thrum and throb of the acoustic guitars, the percussive melodic bang of the elegantly-crafted piano lines, and always, always the insistent, driving drums, propelling the record, and the listener, on this journey as the four tracks bleed into one another, one body, one blood, one beating heart. The concept of four songs that are really one suite of music requires a sure hand, and Nick’s never shakes: the way the songs blend together while retaining their distinctiveness — from the poppy exaltation of “The Escape” to the cold intensity, almost like an acoustic Kraftwerk, of “The Affair” — shows a songwriter and musician who has fully grown into his powers.

Those who have followed Nick’s career may see this as a culmination of years and years of honing and fine-tuning his bountiful gifts, and wonder with delight what might come next. For those who haven’t listened to Nick before, Childhood Pastimes is the perfect entry point, a distillation of what’s come before and the promise of a new beginning.

4th Annual ARTS WEEK!

During Arts Week The Sou’wester hosts 30-35 artists and art collectives for a week of residency work culminating in a weekend (Friday and Saturday) of music, studio tours, performances and installations.

Over the past 9 years we have held an event around this time of year to highlight the creative process and the experiential nature of the Sou’wester Residency Program. Each year this event brings amazing artists to this neck of the woods and shines creative light into the darkest heart of winter.

The focus of Arts Week 2023 is SHIFTING CYCLES:

“Our reliance on a known occurrence has been disrupted. This shift is replacing existing patterns and problems. Collective action and individual insight paving our path forward.”

On the weekend, Friday and Saturday March 17th and 18th, 2023 the public will be invited, free and open to all, to tour the grounds and surrounding areas for a weekend full of installations, music, performances and open studios.

(The Sou’wester has regular residencies offered year-round in addition to residency events such as the annual ARTS WEEK. Applications for the Sou’wester Standard Residency are separate from ARTS WEEK and accepted on a rolling basis.)

Thank you to our Arts Week 2023 Sponsors!

“Portraits, Men in Ballgowns, Sound, We Will Be Heard” by Scott Braucht

Sou’Wester Arts is thrilled to welcome filmmaker Scott Braucht whose program Portraits / Men in Ballgowns // Sound / We Will Be Heard will be featured in a special exhibition celebrating Pacific County Pride in our Red Bus Microcinema.

On view at The Sou’Wester’s Red Bus Theatre

May 29 – July 14, 2023.

Opening reception Monday, May 29 6-8p with a special acoustic performance from musician Khaelo Dé.

June 27th-29th

Stop Motion En Plein Air! with Aarica North

This summer camp week is currently full. Feel free to register for a different summer camp week.

Who says you have to animate alone in the dark? Each student will build their own puppet with organic material, then the group will play a collaborative game outside where we create a stop motion animation together. Students will receive a copy of the final animation, and can bring their puppets home with them.

REGISTER

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DIY Screen Printing with Azenath and Ian

Screenprinting is a hands-on medium that allows students to reproduce any artwork they want in multiple colours and on many mediums. Our workshop, aimed at beginner students, will show how to undergo the entire printing process using a combination of recycled, homemade and a few purchased tools. Students will leave with the handmade screens and prints they made in the workshop, a booklet of historical art and propaganda prints from our collection, and inspiration and understanding to help them start screenprinting on their own.

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Grief Retreat with The Portland Grief house

Two night retreat with guided meditations and sound healing

Who/How much: w/Julia Francis and Laura Green of The Portland Grief House $498-807 includes lodging

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

FREE Public screening in The Sou’wester Lodge

12/1/23 at 7 p.m to open our Winter exhibition in our Red Bus Theatre featuring

Wide Blue Yawn – An experimental documentary film by Eva Knowles

The idea for Wide Blue Yawn occurred to Eva after observing a UFO while alone on the beach in October 2020. She always had a powerful relationship to the Long Beach Peninsula, having grown up coming here for family getaways since she was a child–and so, after her mysterious encounter she decided to embark on deeper research of this place and make a film about it. Wide Blue Yawn attempts to capture layers of history at the mouth of the Columbia River and to honor the specific feelings evoked by the rugged pacific northwest geology, the spiritual presence of the first human inhabitants (the Chinookan people), and all that has unfolded since Lewis and Clark hit the scene in 1805. Wide Blue yawn spans centuries and wonders at how we ended up here, in our strange present reality.

Eva Knowles was born in 1990 and grew up in Bonney Lake, Washington. Her films are shot with a handheld digital camcorder and have an intimate and personal feeling. As an artist Eva is concerned with the mysterious, the sublime, and the mundane. She has worked as a teacher, a farmer, and also practices reiki. She has many projects in the works about fascinating topics.

Contact: email: eeva.knowles@gmail.com / instagram

Curated by Nikki Cormaci

Contemplative Rest Retreat

Contemplative Rest: Our Basic Peace Work
A weekend-long retreat with M Freeman
Fri, Feb 9 @ 7:00pm – Sun, Feb11 @ 11am

In-person only at: