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!

Jul
25
Tue
Summer Art Camp: DIY Screen Printing @ Ilwaco Artworks
Jul 25 @ 9:00 am – Jul 27 @ 3:00 pm

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.


Nov
10
Fri
Grief Retreat @ The Sou'wester Lodge
Nov 10 @ 2:00 pm – Nov 12 @ 1:00 pm

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

What: We will spend the weekend in conversation with the non-human world; asking what medicine we can offer and what we can take. Except for grief spills and vocalizing during sound healing, we will keep conversation with humans to a bare minimum. We’ll use guided sound work, yoga practice and meditation to let spoken language shift away from the center of our attention. We’ll listen deeply, and talk sincerely with the world around us, and believe what we hear and learn. Retreat pricing includes various Sou’Wester lodging options. Full event details and itinerary found here: https://www.juliafrancis.com/retreats 

Email: info@griefhouse.org 

Dec
21
Thu
Collective Release (camp)Fire @ The Sou'wester Lodge
Dec 21 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Collective Release Fire 

Outside in the trailer court in front of the lodge, we will gather into an expanded moment of presence with the weight of the world, a time of reverence through lively celebration of the complexity of existence in togetherness, where whatever wishes to unfold may do so naturally through the intentional lighting of a fire.  There will be pieces of paper and pens on which to write and reflect and then offer the writings into the fire, instruments with which we can play, and an invitation to donate whatever resources are available, financial or otherwise, to Source Food and Goods, a group offering community aid to the local Palestinian community in Portland, OR .

*No drinks in public. Quiet hours after 10p.
Feb
9
Fri
Contemplative Rest Retreat @ Sou'wester Lodge
Feb 9 @ 7:00 pm – Feb 11 @ 11:00 am

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:

The Sou’wester Lodge
3728 J Place
Seaview, Wa 98644

The Brief
Explore, savor, and rest in the numinous through this weekend-long retreat with contemplative guide, media artist, and writer, M Freeman. Inspired by decades of heart-centered contemplative practices and by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness teaching that rest is our most basic peace work, Freeman’s Contemplative Rest cultivates engagement in the mystical realm and nurtures awe as a profoundly fortifying resource.

We’ve all had unforgettable experiences of awe. Maybe it was on a hike, or holding a newborn, or watching a flock of birds. Maybe it was in moonlight, or with your cat, or in a hospital room. This spacious weekend features practice sessions in which Freeman will lead participants through exploring and honoring recollected moments, and will then guide folks into reverent, somatic, contemplative rest. Participants will be invited into reflective writing, to share reflections and insights, and to enjoy lots of solo relaxation time. All this wonder happens along the stunning Washington State coast at the Sou’wester Lodge and Vintage Travel Trailer Resort.

How much: Retreat fee is sliding scale, starting at $325 – Tickets

Lodging is additional. The Sou’wester has set aside select lodging options for retreat participantsBook lodging directly here with the Sou’wester.

Event details at marilynfreeman.com

About M Freeman

Media artist, writer, contemplative, spiritual director, and independent scholar, M Freeman works at the intersections of reckoning and resiliency, queerness and film, and contemplative, creative and social art practices. Author of The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory and Contemplative Practice of Media Art (The 3rd Thing, 2020/winner of the Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for Creativity & Innovation) and creator of Cinema Divina (short films for contemplative practice), Freeman is the founder of Contemplative Rest: Exploring, Savoring & Resting in the Numinous; and co-curator of Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time-based Disturbances. Their text and media arts essays have been published in or at The Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, TriQuarterly, Blackbird, Rolling Stone, Abbey of the Arts, and Good Symptom. Their films are screened on PBS and in galleries, spirituality centers and festivals worldwide. marilynfreeman.com.

M Freeman photo by Anne de Marcken

Jun
16
Sun
Film Screening: Always Moving / Magical in Motion By LAURA HEIT + MONA HUNEIDI
Jun 16 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

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