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!
Let’s write some memoir! This workshop will help us move past resistance and start to unlock memories and develop them into stories. The key is to start to understand the events of your life into elements that you can use to tell the most effective story you can. Let’s get into some of the particulars of how memoir functions and do some writing in class to get momentum with our stories.
Nick Jaina is a writer and musician living with his family in Oakland, California. He was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2015 for his memoir Get It While You Can. He has composed music for film and ballet, and toured the world playing a unique mixture of music soundscapes, songs, and readings.
Workshop cost $20
Lindsay Clark : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
“A rare exhibition of the weight that minimalism can bear in contemporary, reflective folk music. ”
Lindsay Clark finds balance between traditional and english folk, country, and her own version of experimental folk that seems to come from within. Exquisite and pitch perfect, her music speaks of quiet revelation, with a background of (usually her own) multi-tracked vocal arrangements. With influences ranging from the Beach Boys, Elizabeth Cotton, Joni Mitchell, Appalachian folk, her classical upbringing, and her father’s record collection, she blends many worlds into a uniquely warm sound. She has carved out a vibrant place as an artist with a penchant for poetry, rich harmony, and a style of self-taught fingerpicking influenced by Nick Drake, John Fahey, and others.
Originally from the small gold rush town of Nevada City, CA, she now resides in Portland, OR. Her sound has been described as “folk with angelic vocals washing over smooth edges” (1859 Magazine). She has shared the stage with musicians such as Alela Diane, Adam Torres, Nat Baldwin (Dirty Projectors), Ryan Francesconi (Joanna Newsom), Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Michael Hurley. “Crystalline” was released in 2018 via boutique German label Oscarson.
Her forthcoming full-length album (which she wrote, produced and co-arranged), Carpe Noctem, features guitarist William Tyler, Alela Diane, Sage Fisher (Dolphin Midwives), Alexis Mahler (Shook Twins) & Andy Rayborn (Paper Gates). It was engineered and arranged with Jeremy Harris (Vetiver, Adrienne Lenker, Hand Habits), and is out 6/24/22 with Audiosport Records (NL). She has also recently collaborated on Michael Hurley’s latest release, Time of the Foxgloves (No Quarter Records). She is currently at work on her first collection of lyric memoir-in-essays. PRE-ORDER CARPE NOCTEM
Peter Donovan : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Peter Donovan is an astute musical storyteller. His perceptive songs span genres and feature narratives based on both real-life and fictitious characters, written with a contemplative heart. After finding success and a dedicated fanbase with Seattle’s All The Real Girls and his side project The Rose Petals (alongside Elijah Ocean), Donovan returns in 2022 with his first proper solo album, This Better Be Good.
His previous releases spun expertly-crafted character sketches that earned plaudits from Paste Magazine, Consequence of Sound, American Songwriter, and more. With This Better Be Good, Donovan spreads his wings, combining the plaintive soul of indie rock, the heartfelt sincerity of Americana, and the stirring studio pageantry of ‘70s singer-songwriters, drawing them together to explore more intimate depths.
This Better Be Good is Donovan’s most personal effort yet; a loose concept record about the ups and downs of an ultimately doomed romance between two people. The songs are more reflective than bitter; more nostalgic than sad. It’s an album about learning and growing from lived experiences and reflecting on past failures in the interest of future successes. Donovan has managed to create an album that is sonically nostalgic and modern at once, both soul-stirring and dripping with heartache. It’s a roadmap of his past seen through fresh eyes, and a triumphant first step in this new chapter.
New Victorian : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
New Victorian is the ethereal, small-rock project from Portlander Scott Taylor.
In this workshop students will use transparent objects to create moving image cyanotypes without the use of traditional filmmaking equipment. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate how to clear coat 16mm film with cyanotype solution, compose creative film sequences with pre-coated stock, properly expose in the sun, and develop and tone images using household chemicals. At the end of the workshop, we will splice and project our sequences. Participants are encouraged to bring translucent fabrics, objects, 16mm negatives, transparencies and other materials to enhance their creative journey.
Stephanie Hough is an experimental filmmaker, production coordinator and director of photography whose work explores repetition, gender, relationships and emotional landscapes. Her films HOW TO FEEL (DV, 2010), HEART (16mm, 2013), SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE (Super 8, 2016) have screened in the NW Filmmaker’s Festival, Portland International Film Festival, Experimental Film Festival PDX, BendFilm, The Boathouse Microcinema, TriBeca Film Center and more. As an educator with the Northwest Film Center, Pacific University and the PNCA, Hough has a passion for sharing analog film techniques and making learning accessible for all.
Workshop cost $70
Register for all three Analog Film Workshops for $150
In this workshop we will use plaiting and twining to create a small basket. We will be weaving with hand harvested and natural materials, including cedar bark, cherry bark, sea grass and iris leaf. We will be creating unique shapes and designs using these 2 techniques.
Rose Covert is a constant maker and an artist who creates in many directions. Her paintings, sculptures and woven works have been displayed throughout the Pacific Northwest. Most recently Rose has been engaged in woven sculptural work made of plants growing within a 30 mile radius of where she lives. Rose makes these very intricate and wild shapes by weaving one stick at a time, thus creating pathways to follow and build upon. As a member of the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild and a childhood educator Rose moves seamlessly between student and teacher, learning from the materials, the process and the people she works with.
As a teacher Rose is drawn to engagement and embodiment, beginning by exploring the mediums and materials we’ll be working with then using our senses and intuition to get a feel for what we’ll be making. Her teaching style has an emphasis on the magic and play of making, using questions and conversation as a way to encourage connection and imagination.
Workshop cost $80
!mindparade (unplugged) : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
!mindparade is a psychedelic/experimental project that formed in Bloomington, Indiana. Originally the solo bedroom project of Alex Arnold, the live show and recordings are fleshed out by a revolving cast of musicians utilizing electronics and orchestration. !mindparade’s beautiful cacophony of bombast is pleasantly bewildering. Wild flourishes of dreamy psychedelic instrumentation zoom past you in all directions like standing in the middle of a busy intersection.
Currently based in Portland, Oregon, USA.
Jeremy James Meyer: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Jeremy James Meyer is an artificer of song. A songwriter’s songwriter. He crafts redemptive songs full of woody rock ‘n’ roll tones. His deep, penetrating voice has a wide range, and is especially captivating in his droning, lower register. He spent the last decade drifting around, a tool belt troubadour, working carpentry by day, bringing folk music to the people at night. As with most well traveled songwriters it’s hard to tell where the road ends and Jeremy James Meyer begins. His songs seamlessly blend plain-language and poetic lyricism. They wander from personal truth to outlaw legends. He’s capable of cathartic protest songs, cosmic country canticles, and dive bar sing-a-longs. Whenever, and however your path crosses with Jeremy James Meyer’s (and it will) prepare for an enchanting, psychedelic trip through cosmic American music.
“Alive and OK by Jeremy James Meyer is a lesson in what country music can be. This is not the pop country of Nashville. This is real country music with stories and melodies that keep the listener engaged. Whether it’s a foot stomper or a song made for slow dancing, Meyer delivers songs that will get you moving.”
“Last year was a devastating time for fans of Americana, country, and pretty much anyone who loved a well-written song with the passing of Walker, Prine and Billy Joe Shaver all in the span of six months. It’s heartening though to know there is another generation of talented singers and songwriters eschewing current trends and fads and focusing simply on writing timeless, relatable music agnostic of specific genres. Meyer is certainly one of those acolytes to the greats, alongside peers like Todd Snider and Hayes Carll carrying that tradition into the future.”
In this workshop we’ll explore elemental printmaking techniques, creating multiples or one-of-a-kind prints with a rolling pin or tiny press. Monotypes are a painterly print, using Akua Non-toxic soy and honey based inks with brushes, brayers, stencils and templates, ferns, feathers or leaves. We’ll do Trace monotypes, Foil printing and Collograph to create fantastic textured surfaces. We’ll also explore Gyotaku, the Japanese art of fish printing, using rubber fish to transfer ink onto paper or fabric. Other elements addressed will be chine Colle’, making a stamp, relief printing, printing on fabric, everyday items you can use for art, Scratch Foam printing, Stamping with Easycut, Tape design plates and more! Workshop is 10AM-2PM and cost is $90.
Jane Pagliarulo received a BFA in Printmaking from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She cut her teeth as a fine art printer at Hand Graphics in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From 1989 to 1996 she printed lithographs, woodcuts and etchings. As a monotype printer she has worked one-on-one in creative collaboration with artists having tremendously varied conceptual and technical approaches. As a result Jane strays beyond the traditional boundaries of printmaking. In 1996 Pagliarulo moved to Oregon, founding a printmaking workshop in Hood River. In 2007 she co-founded Atelier Meridian, a collaborative membership printmaking studio in Portland, where she teaches workshops and prints editions. In her own prints, Pagliarulo approaches the landscape with an abstract realist’s eye for the edges and shapes found in the expanses of the American West. Unique spacial tensions are created with the push and pull of brush strokes and erasures. Unpredictable marks and subtle veils of color are employed as the printmaking process delivers mysterious surfaces of ink in confluence with paper. She exhibits nationally and is represented in Portland by the Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery and Print Arts Northwest.
Bijoux Cone: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Bijoux Cone (Formerly Bryson Cone) is a visual artist, filmmaker, musician and producer based out of Portland OR. Bijoux Cone’s debut album “Magnetism” was released February 19 on LA based label Cleopatra Records. Her forthcoming sophomore album is pending release.
Bijoux Cone’s music explores themes of love, loss and identity paired with lush melodramatic synth pop and disco synth grooves.
The live band includes/has included members such as:
Bijoux Cone (FKA Bryson Cone, Reptaliens, Gary Wilson & The Blind Dates),
Hannah Blilieh (The Gossip, Chromatics), Bambi Browning (Reptaliens, Blouse),
Ben Steinmetz (Kyle Craft), Thomas Mabus (Reptaliens, Wampire),
Chris Hoganson (Fur Coats, Wampire) and Cat Hoch (Blackwater Holylight).