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!
Saroon: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Saroon is the genre-fluid creative outlet for the prolific multi-instrumentalist producer/composer ayal. The project is founded on the idea that genuine self expression can act as a beacon for others to relate, and actualize themselves. Over the last year Saroon has released diverse albums such as Gilgul, a piano based instrumental album that describes the process of reincarnation starting at the moment of death and ending at conception; ODDDITTIES VOL.1, an electro-pop album comprised of a collection of songs written for his songwriting podcast Honest Jams; and Dive 1, a collaborative ambient album in which ayal collaborated with members of Bathysphere records who made improvised beds of synths on which ayal recorded clarinet arrangements. Through the music, ayal attempts to express the breadth of experience, from existential grief, to the silliest relief, to the hearts of the vulnerable, and the first cat in space, and what it means to live the lives, and the deepest connection, and waffles.
COMMUNITY CLAY PLAY
At Ilwaco Artworks
Clay Play is a casual, beginner-friendly session where you can learn handbuilding skills to create a finished piece! Ages 10+ w/an adult or ages 14+. $35/person. Register for any four Clay Plays for $100.
August Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 8/25: Ilwaco Art Walk Drop-in (1-4p no rsvp necessary): Mono Print Tiles.
- 8/31: Soft Slab Cups
September Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 9/1: Carved Bowls
- 9/8: Handled Cups
- 9/15: Reliquaries (AKA Ornate boxes for special items)
Wings Over Willapa Festival Clay Plays:
Register for 9/21 or 9/22 Here
REGISTER for all other Clay Plays, Here
Please email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist!
Ilwaco Artworks Community Clay Studio – 109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist or if you experience any issues with checkout. If you are trying to register for multiple events and run into a checkout error please try purchasing them separately. Thank you! Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
COMMUNITY CLAY PLAY
At Ilwaco Artworks
Clay Play is a casual, beginner-friendly session where you can learn handbuilding skills to create a finished piece! Ages 10+ w/an adult or ages 14+. $35/person. Register for any four Clay Plays for $100.
August Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 8/25: Ilwaco Art Walk Drop-in (1-4p no rsvp necessary): Mono Print Tiles.
- 8/31: Soft Slab Cups
September Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 9/1: Carved Bowls
- 9/8: Handled Cups
- 9/15: Reliquaries (AKA Ornate boxes for special items)
Wings Over Willapa Festival Clay Plays:
Register for 9/21 or 9/22 Here
REGISTER for all other Clay Plays, Here
Please email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist!
Ilwaco Artworks Community Clay Studio – 109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist or if you experience any issues with checkout. If you are trying to register for multiple events and run into a checkout error please try purchasing them separately. Thank you! Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
Live Music: Chief Ahamefule J. Oluo
6/8. 8p. FREE
Chief Ahamefule J. Oluo (he/they/them) is a Nigerian-American multi-instrumentalist, composer, writer, comedian, and creator of live performance and theater. They were a founding member of the award-winning experimental jazz quartet Industrial Revelation, a Mellon Creative Research Fellow, a Creative Capital awardee, an ArtistTrust Arts Innovators award recipient, and a semi-finalist in NBC’s Stand Up for Diversity comedy competition. Oluo co-produced comedian Hari Kondabolu’s Waiting for 2042 and Mainstream American Comic for Kill Rock Stars, and the album Who the Hell is Dwayne Kennedy? by the eponymous stand-up legend. They premiered two autobiographical music-based performances at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival: Now I’m Fine (2016), which the New York Times described as “a New Orleans funeral march orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg,” and of which Time Out New York said, “A day later, it’s as though I grabbed a live wire; I can still feel the electricity in my skin”; and Susan (2020), which Brantley called “virtuosic” and “crackerjack.” Oluo has written for television, including the stop-motion animated comedy Santa Inc.on HBO Max, starring Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen. They have also appeared on This American Life. Now I’m Fine was adapted into the film Thin Skin, starring Oluo, who also wrote the score and co-wrote the script. Thin Skin won Best Director at the Harlem Film Festival. Oluo’s work has been commissioned, presented, or invited by On the Boards, PICA, the Meany Center, the Clarice, Seattle Theater Group, and REDCAT.
COMMUNITY CLAY PLAY
At Ilwaco Artworks
Clay Play is a casual, beginner-friendly session where you can learn handbuilding skills to create a finished piece! Ages 10+ w/an adult or ages 14+. $35/person. Register for any four Clay Plays for $100.
August Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 8/25: Ilwaco Art Walk Drop-in (1-4p no rsvp necessary): Mono Print Tiles.
- 8/31: Soft Slab Cups
September Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 9/1: Carved Bowls
- 9/8: Handled Cups
- 9/15: Reliquaries (AKA Ornate boxes for special items)
Wings Over Willapa Festival Clay Plays:
Register for 9/21 or 9/22 Here
REGISTER for all other Clay Plays, Here
Please email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist!
Ilwaco Artworks Community Clay Studio – 109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist or if you experience any issues with checkout. If you are trying to register for multiple events and run into a checkout error please try purchasing them separately. Thank you! Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
COMMUNITY CLAY PLAY
At Ilwaco Artworks
Clay Play is a casual, beginner-friendly session where you can learn handbuilding skills to create a finished piece! Ages 10+ w/an adult or ages 14+. $35/person. Register for any four Clay Plays for $100.
August Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 8/25: Ilwaco Art Walk Drop-in (1-4p no rsvp necessary): Mono Print Tiles.
- 8/31: Soft Slab Cups
September Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 9/1: Carved Bowls
- 9/8: Handled Cups
- 9/15: Reliquaries (AKA Ornate boxes for special items)
Wings Over Willapa Festival Clay Plays:
Register for 9/21 or 9/22 Here
REGISTER for all other Clay Plays, Here
Please email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist!
Ilwaco Artworks Community Clay Studio – 109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist or if you experience any issues with checkout. If you are trying to register for multiple events and run into a checkout error please try purchasing them separately. Thank you! Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
Jun 15
Glazing & Surface Decoration Techniques Workshop
w/visiting artist, w/Charlotte Deason Robillard $80
Students will learn about a variety of ceramic surface decoration techniques. We will provide each student with a bisqued tumbler that they’ll decorate and glaze during the workshop; students are also welcome to bring a piece of their own bisqued work. We’ll go over masking and resistance methods, overlapping glazes, painting with underglazes, using stencils, and techniques for getting clean precise surface designs as well as more organic freehand designs. No previous ceramics experience is required.
Saturday 2-6p
Location: Ilwaco Artworks
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.
COMMUNITY CLAY PLAY
At Ilwaco Artworks
Clay Play is a casual, beginner-friendly session where you can learn handbuilding skills to create a finished piece! Ages 10+ w/an adult or ages 14+. $35/person. Register for any four Clay Plays for $100.
August Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 8/25: Ilwaco Art Walk Drop-in (1-4p no rsvp necessary): Mono Print Tiles.
- 8/31: Soft Slab Cups
September Clay Plays | 10a-1p:
- 9/1: Carved Bowls
- 9/8: Handled Cups
- 9/15: Reliquaries (AKA Ornate boxes for special items)
Wings Over Willapa Festival Clay Plays:
Register for 9/21 or 9/22 Here
REGISTER for all other Clay Plays, Here
Please email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist!
Ilwaco Artworks Community Clay Studio – 109 1st Ave N Ilwaco, WA
Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
email ilwacoartworks@gmail.com to join a waitlist or if you experience any issues with checkout. If you are trying to register for multiple events and run into a checkout error please try purchasing them separately. Thank you! Inspiration photos are credited and linked in our “Ideas & Inspiration” page.
Always Moving / Magical in Motion By LAURA HEIT + MONA HUNEIDI
- OPENING FILM SCREENING 6/16/24
- FREE AND OPEN TO ALL
- FILM WILL BE SCREENING DAILY 11a & 4p or by request with the front desk
“I am interested in everything that is opaque, that which takes place in secret and behind curtains or in the shadows. My aim is not to make clear or justify, rather I aim to watch/show as if in a dream. My work focuses on the minutiae of human behavior, obsessive habits, arduous matters of the heart, betrayal, espionage and inexplicable phenomenon. These themes are the impetus and the architecture that builds the sets, the mise en scene and the characters I create.
I use wood, glass, transparencies, wire weaves, paper dolls, found objects, doll parts, shadows, tea leaves and texture to create space and the characters that inhabit it. I believe that everyday articles are curious when taken out of context and that still objects, no matter how pedestrian, are magical in motion.” — MONA HUNEIDI
Always Moving / Magical in Motion features the stop-motion, live-action puppetry, hand drawing and computer animation in the short films of artists Laura Heit and Mona Huneidi. Sometimes fantastical, sometimes abstract, sometimes in orbit, these films visualize the things we cannot see, fears, hypothetical stars, moments inside catastrophes, and the future. On view at The Sou’Wester’s Red Bus Microcinema, 3728 J Place, Seaview, WA, June – September, 2024, with screenings at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily. A special closing event attended by filmmaker Laura Heit will take place in September. More details to come.
Laura Heit is an interdisciplinary artist who currently lives and works in Portland Oregon. Her work has been exhibited and screened in the US and abroad, at venues including Track 16 (Los Angeles, CA), Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), Adams and Ollman (Portland, OR), The Schnitzer Museum of Art (Eugene, OR), The Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland OR), She Works Flexible (Houston, TX), REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), MoMA (NYC, NY), Millennium Film (NYC, NY), Pompidou (Paris, France), TBA Festival (Portland, OR), the Guggenheim Museum (NYC, NY), Walt Disney Hall (Los Angeles, CA), and Detroit Institute of the Arts (Detroit, MI) among others. Her grants include; 2016 Oregon Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship, Artist Project Grant Regional Arts & Culture Council including the 2014 Innovation Award, The British Council, and the MacDowell Colony. She has previously held positions at PNCA as chair of Animated Arts, SAIC, and Cal Arts where she was co-director of the Experimental Animation Department. Her book Animators Sketchbooks was published in 2013 by Thames and Hudson.
Mona Huneidi is an animator/filmmaker who was born and raised in Kuwait. She went to primary schools in Lebanon and Kuwait and arrived in the US in 1980 to pursue her education. She holds a BFA in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. She worked as an assistant producer for television productions in Kuwait in the late 80s and early 90s. Upon returning to the US, she joined the pre-production team at Imago Theatre working as a puppeteer, a dramaturg, prop master and a set dresser. She earned a Drammy award in 2004 for the projection design on the play Missing Mona. She writes, creates and produces her own animated films, which have been shown locally at Performance Works Northwest, Imago Theatre Cabaret and PCC’s Art Week. Her work has also been screened internationally at Festival Du Cinéma Bruxelles, Festival De Cine Internacional De Barcelona, Animacam Online Animation Festival Galicia, and the Cannes Short Film Festival.
Curated by Nikki Cormaci