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!
The Sou’wester Lodge is hosting a full weekend of in-person performances, music and installations, free and open to the public*, on Friday 5-10pm and Saturday 12-10pm April 1st and 2nd as part of the 3rd Annual Sou’wester ARTS WEEK.
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.
Performances, Installations and Events
Free and Open to the Public*
Friday April 1st
5:00pm – 10:00pm
and
Saturday April 2nd
12:00pm – 10:00pm
All are invited to pick up map and schedule at The Sou’wester and tour the grounds, experiencing in-person what 33+ artists and artist collectives have created after their week-long Sou’wester Artist Residency.
*The entirety of this event will be held in a manner that meets all state mandates and Covid-19 precautions. This event is free and open to the public within safety guidelines.
book a stay at The Adrift or Salt Hotel using promo code “artsweek”
Arts Week 2022 Artists and Art Collectives
Anthony Alvarado & Jason Walker
Kaitlyn Nelson / The Gyer V Project
Bobbie Robinson & Jordan Badger
Fox Whitney / The Gender Tender Experiment
This exhibition is based on studying sand under a microscope and is a
continuation of our project for The Sou’wester’s Arts Week 2022. We
collected sand submissions from volunteers from from January-March
2022, with samples coming from as far away as India and Egypt.
All of the audio was made onsite during our stays at The Sou’wester and
features various field recordings. Photographs of the sand were taken
with a camera phone through a microscope lens. You can view all of our
sand photographs on Instagram: @damaged.antennae
Sand submissions by: Rebecca Rassmussen, Sierra Handley-Merk, Ali
Kestel, Nancy Kunce, Dar Horenblas, Lindsay King, Dawn Stetzel, Kim
Slate, Neisha D’Souza, Meagan Hardy, Sarah Farahat, Andie Sterling,
Nicky Kriara, & Cory Gray.
she worked in stop-motion animation on feature films and commercials. She now runs
a ceramic design company called Niko Far West and paints large scale murals. Her
work is often experimental and graphic with references to the natural world and the
history of place. www.nickykriara.com
Cory Cray is composer and performer in Portland OR. He leads a group called Old
Unconscious that plays experimental instrumental music, and he records and tours
internationally with The Delines. He frequently produces and arranges for other
recording artists, composes for movies and television, and creates sound installations
for multimedia art pieces.
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!
Sou’Wester Arts is delighted to welcome artists Lindsay Costello & Erika Callihan whose exhibition What Else is Here? will be featured in our Gallery Trailer & Red Bus Microcinema April 14 – July 6. We hope you will join the artists for an opening reception with coffee and galettes on Friday, April 14 from 11:11 a.m. – 1:11 p.m.
What Else is Here? will be the culminating body of site-responsive work created by artist-friends Lindsay Costello and Erika Callihan during a week-long residency at the Sou’Wester. They’re thinking about rest, play, trust, the writing of Annie Dillard, and nature as a resource in healing C-PTSD. The exhibition will include a textile piece, soundscapes, paintings, and process drawings, plus a separate activation of the Red Bus Microcinema with Lindsay‘s diaristic 8mm nature films. Visitors will be invited to engage with the exhibition and the surrounding landscape through various creative and somatic prompts.
“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.
Portraits is a collection of film interviews shot both on super 8mm and digital formats. It includes a selection from the series Men in Ballgowns, exploring ideas of masculinity and femininity in the LGBTQ2SIA+ community. This work-in-progress highlights men wearing gowns in different environments filmed on super 8mm with audio interviews detailing how growing up LGBTQ2SIA+ reflects in their art. Portraits concludes with the short film Mel & Kate about letting go and moving on. // Sound is a collection of music videos featuring the short documentary We Will Be Heard about rappers that identify as LGBTQIA+.
Curated by Nikki Cormaci
JOHN & JULIE
“We Do”
An art exhibition in The Art Trailer Gallery July 14th-July 23rd 2023
Lifelong creative folks, John and Julie met in 2017, started drawing together and haven’t looked back. They each had established artistic practices – John is a painter primarily and Julie is a filmmaker primarily – however both are open to working in ways that push them out of their comfort zones and allow for spontaneity and improvisation. They have made drawings, paintings, films, sounds, saunas, and land art together. To celebrate their “first date anniversary” each year, they look at Wikipedia’s list of traditional wedding anniversary gifts and have a ritual of making art using the material assigned to that year. They cater the event, ie; order take-out, and reflect on the year past and the year ahead for their relationship. The result is this collection of works presented here on the occasion of their wedding taking place July 22, 2023. We Do: Saying Yes to a Relationship of Depth, Connection and Enduring Love is a book by Stan Tatkin that has been a guidebook for building John and Julie’s relationship.
John Frentress has made art since the age of three and studied art at Kirkwood College with Doug Hall who was an amazing multi-disciplinary artist. He went on to study and work at several schools and community education centers on the west coast and considers himself to be primarily a “proper” art school short timer, and an auto-didactic life long learner. Like many artists, he has a BS degree in Psychology. John had the privilege of occupying a studio in the Blackfish gallery in the Pearl district of Portland for 19 years – sadly the building is now sitting vacant waiting for a bulldozer. He works with brushes using oils, acrylics, sumi ink and watercolors – sometimes paints on light bulbs and other trash.
Julie Perini is a filmmaker, daily videomaker, diary keeper, video artist, reader, writer, teacher, question asker, raw nerve, hot spring hopper, product of white suburbs of New York and DIY culture of the 90s, and friend to many. Her involvement with the post-9/11 “War on Terror” spurred her work with prison and police abolitionist movements. She exhibits work in theaters, community spaces, galleries, campgrounds, storefronts, the sides of bridges, and many other venues. She sees movies in actual movie theaters. Julie likes old cameras and eats pancakes at a diner at least once a week. Originally from New York, she is a Professor of Art at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.
curated by Nikki Cormaci
“Barn Rave, 2011” by Tori Wheeler
ON VIEW
JULY 27 2023 – OCTOBER 12 2023
Tufted, and interactive artwork, Barn Rave, 2011 encapsulates the frenetic, feral exchange of energy found in a packed dance floor. The modular work recalls a night in a remote barn outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Its tessellated pieces intertwine, forming a hazy, abstracted scene of kids drenched in sweat, a barn filled with fog, hay, pulsating music, and a mix of suspicious substances. This ephemeral experience imprints neural pathways.
The puzzle-like components and imagery pay homage to a transformative and hedonistic celebration of youthful exuberance. The liberated sensuality and sometimes-brainlessness of infectious bassy beats become the unyielding desires to relinquish the burdens and constraints of adolescence in small town surroundings. The pieces move and connect, at times surpassing a perfect fit. Capturing the raw energy of dancing amidst others. Capturing unbridled energy. Their arrangement allows for infinite reconfigurations—a reflection of the ever-shifting nature of the dance floor.
Tori Wheeler is an artist, designer, and dancer whose work is influenced by ecstatic human exchange, touch and tactility, music-and-nature-induced-trance-states, and a dash of trickster humor. Their creative practice mirrors that of a desire path.
Tori holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design from the Kansas City Art Institute and works as a textile artist, gold leaf gilder, and fairweather graphic designer.
Curated by Nikki Cormaci
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
Each March The Sou’wester is given over to 30+ artists and art collectives for a week of residency work culminating in a public exhibition of performances, installations & studio tours. Arts Week highlights the creative process and experiential nature of the Sou’wester Artist Residency Program. Arts week 2024 hopes to create communal movement from the confluence of individual flow states. Through each of our visions, we come together to share in making something bigger. How does this energized space wash back on us? How does it inspire us, heal us, move us towards a sense of belonging? What do we take back from this exchange to seed our own revisioning?
Schedule and itinerary TBA
