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!

May
27
Sat
Workshop: Intuitive Multimedia Embroidery @ Ilwaco Artworks
May 27 @ 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Workshop: Intuitive Multimedia Embroidery @ Ilwaco Artworks

Intuitive Multimedia Embroidery with Chloe Jacobson

Learn 5 basic embroidery stitches while experimenting with expressive abstract multimedia techniques. We will play with stitching on top of watercolor washes on canvas fabric or fabric of choice.

I grew up in the dry, oaky lands of Southern Oregon and headed north to the lush forests of the Pacific Northwest to pursue a major in Visual Arts and Psychology from The Evergreen State College. I chose to pursue the healing power of the art process professionally through getting graduate degree in Transpersonal Art Therapy at Naropa University, and now practice as full time art therapist with the LGBTQIA population in Portland, Oregon. I am a multimedia artist specializing in embroidery, painting, and collage to express sensations, feeling spaces, and to tell stories of empowerment and liberation. I walk the edge of fine art and craft to explore the natural world through my lens as a queer art therapist. I blend media to reframe and re-contextualize, while offering simple messages. I especially seek narratives of natural perseverance, adaptation, justice, and resilience in the face of adversity or human constructs. My background in art therapy informs my process as being a platform for healing self-reflection, through making the latent, blatant. For more information visit chloekjacobson.wixsite.com/pdxemb

$60

Register

Yawa: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
May 27 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

 

Yawa, also known as Amenta Abioto, is a songwriter and producer from Memphis,TN and currently based in Portland, OR. In her one-woman performance, she builds vocal and instrumental loops from synth, drum machine, and kalimba creating atmospheric textures. Yawa surprises and tantalizes audiences with mind bending ideas while skipping vocally from soul-shaking gospel to smooth jazz. Her music is boldly mystical and soul-fired, and her raw live performances invoke elements of both theatrical and magical surprise. “

May
29
Mon
Opening Reception: Scott Braucht
May 29 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

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+.

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Curated by Nikki Cormaci

Jun
3
Sat
Jeremy Ferrara: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jun 3 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

 

Jeremy Ferrara: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

There is an innate tenderness about Jeremy Ferrara. His good nature is inescapable, and anyone within earshot of his quavering voice and quiet guitar is likely to swoon in sympathetic reaction. He’s a folksinger, and a song-diviner. His music is as fun as it is finely detailed. His new album Everything I Hold is exemplary of this style. Produced by Mike Coykendall, the LP features just Jeremy, his guitar, and voice, on eight songs that fill the listener with wonder, empathy, and joy.

Jun
10
Sat
Workshop: Clay Teacup Making (FULL) @ Ilwaco Artworks
Jun 10 @ 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Workshop: Clay Teacup Making (FULL) @ Ilwaco Artworks

Clay Teacup Making Workshop with Midori Hirose

Explore clay and create a one-of-a-kind tea cup with Midori Hirose. All levels and fun clay making tools are welcome!

Midori Hirose is a Japanese American interdisciplinary artist. In Hirose’s work, physical objects and materials are interchangeable with community bonds, recognizing space as a necessary part of the generative process through collaborations, historical narrative, perception (physiological and psychological), and storytelling. 

Hirose’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, and Disjecta Contemporary Art Center (now called Oregon Contemporary) for the Portland Biennial. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at The Lumber Room in Portland, OR; East/West Project, Berlin, Germany; Newberg Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland; and Fylkingen, Stockholm, Sweden. For more information visit midorihirose.info/ and instagram.com/midorihirose/

This workshop is full. 

Divorce Care: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jun 10 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Divorce Care: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Seattle independent rock band Divorce Care’s catchy guitar hooks and emotionally wrought lyrics are expertly hand-crafted for fans of pre-myspace-era emo. Bringing effortlessly nostalgic arrangements with a post-modern twinkle in her eye, singer/songwriter Bri Bloemendaal’s quietly powerful delivery simultaneously demands your attention while making you feel at home. Themes of love and loss are immediately apparent when you listen to Divorce Care’s debut album “Ladylike” (Produced by Andy Park), but scratch any deeper than the surface and you’ll observe Bloemendaal artfully wrestling with complexities of morality, feminism, and self-awareness. Underpinned by Seattle music scene veterans Matt Batey, Sean Lane and CJ Stout, Divorce Care’s powerhouse performance belie their new-kids-on-the-scene status, already making waves in the notoriously restless pool of PNW talent. 

Jun
17
Sat
Ida Jane: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jun 17 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Ida Jane has an eclectic style. Her music is Influenced largely by folk, alternative rock, and indie musicians such as: Fruition, Lucinda Williams, Mazzy Star, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Niel Young, Kacy & Clayton. Ida provides a mix of pensive, thoughtful songs as well as more upbeat, friendly, folk rock.

Jun
24
Sat
Music: Kelli Schaefer (solo) + Crowey @ The Sou'wester
Jun 24 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Kelli Schaefer: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

A few years disappeared into the forest of a global pandemic, but Kelli Schaefer and her brand new band trod through a new record this year, and it is expected to leap from the woods in 2023. With two full-length records and two EP’s already under her belt, her new record is another pivot in stylistic choice. This time, with a fresh take on the age-old singer-songwriter trope, Schaefer delivers haunting melodies over swirling woodwinds, piano, classical guitar, and upright bass. These songs could be the soundtrack to a modern gothic, a playlist for a trudge through the forest, the accompaniment to a subconscious mantra. As expected, Schaefer again demonstrates her refusal to confine herself to a single genre. Along with her bandmates Andrew Jones (bass), Ayal Alvez (piano, keys), Joey Binhammer (guitar), Schaefer is working to finish the record and planning tour steadily in the foreseeable future. The record was recorded live at Color Therapy with Ryan Oxford (Y La Bamba) and mixed by Alex Bush (Damien Jurado).

Crowey: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

What began as the solo project of Joey Binhammer (Die Geister Beschwören, Elektrokraken, Meeping, Whales Wailing), Crowey has grown into a psychedelic/folk soundscape project and collaboration between Joey and Kate Kilbourne (Mordecai, June Rose Band, Sweeping
Exits). Both multi-instrumentalists from Portland, OR, the duo crafts sweeping vistas of finger-style guitar, strings and vocal harmonies, exploring the deep well of human emotion and finding beauty in its darkest crevices. Layers of intricate orchestration evoke the sound of moving clouds. 

Jul
1
Sat
Brad Parsons: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jul 1 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Brad Parsons: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Brad Parsons is a singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist from Astoria, OR. His career collaborators include John Craigie, Bart Budwig, Horse Feathers, Cabinet, Fruition, TK & The Holy Know Nothings. In 2017, he released his debut album “Hold True,” followed by an EP, “The Starbird Sessions,” in 2020. Parsons has toured nationally and been a mainstay at festivals such as Northwest String Summit and Sawtooth Valley Gathering. 

Jul
8
Sat
!Mindparade: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jul 8 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
 
!mindparade dissolves traditional boundaries between pop, experimentalism, and composition, producing a kaleidoscopic output while retaining a strong sense of song craft. Based in Portland, Oregon, songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Alex Arnold collaborates with friends to flesh out the project’s recordings and live iterations, resulting in albums and shows that balance orchestrated rock, synthpop, experimental noise, and ambient group improvisation. The project has been self-producing records since forming in Bloomington, Indiana in 2011. !mindparade founded their own label, Neon Underground Archives, as a platform to release their experimental albums ‘Hypertonic’ (2020) and ‘Skyscapia’ (2023). For this performance at Sou’wester, the group will perform stripped down versions of their material in an intimate setting.