A three-year planning process for Fort Worden State Park is coming to a close this summer. We urge you to review the planning documents posted on the Washington State Parks website at the end of this month.
Please be part of this important conversation about this place we all love. Comments concerning the planning documents should be directed to Kate Burke at kate.burke@parks.wa.gov by June 13th.
Join us at Fort Worden for our annual Mothers’ Day Brunch and Open House. There will be activities and events for the whole family, starting as early as 8:30AM through till 4PM Sunday May 11th.
While the Fort celebrates 106 years, this will be Bon Appétit first Mothers’ Day Brunch at Fort Worden. Bon Appétit, which specializes in fresh locally grown produce and artisan products, started its new service at Fort Worden last December. They’ve quickly won over foodies and are honored to have exceptional culinary talent, such as Executive Chef Jay Payne, and Souse Chef Hope Borsato, join their expanding team.
The lavish Mother’s Day Brunch will be offering advance reservations between 10AM and 2PM, (Sorry - The Brunch has Sold Out. However, read-on and enjoy the Open House, and call 360.344.4440 to reserve your FUTURE brunch table!) Price is $18.95 per person, with children 4-8 $9.50. Featured edibles will include: Made to Order Omelets & Waffles, Hand Carved Beef, Black Forest Ham Eggs Benedicts, Apple Sausage Links, Roasted Organic Potatoes, and Local Lake Lummi Salmon, Nash’s Produce, Mount Townsend Creamery Cheeses, Pane d’Amore breads and Pastries by Anca.
Between bites, and available to be enjoyed by all park visitors, a fort full of information and opportunities will be featured.
In the Commons lobby visitors will find volunteer information and opportunities from many of the fort’s campus partners.
A special gift basket full of unique products from Peninsula College, Copper Canyon Press, Centrum, Fort Worden’s Guard House Gift Shop, Madrona MindBody, and others will also be available. No purchase is necessary; Mom’s aren’t required to be in attendance to claim the basket.
Outside of the Commons many of the forts enterprising partners will be open with plenty of special reasons for folks to visit. Among the offerings, visitors will enjoy:
• Madrona MindBody (Gym – building 300) will be open from 8:00 to 2:00 and will offer free classes for Mom’s during our Sunday 8:30 a.m. Yoga Class and for our 10:00 a.m. SoulFull Sunday Class.
• Port Townsend School of Woodworking (Old Power Plant – building 315) will be teaching a course on Homeshop Cabinet Making during the Open House and we welcome visitors to stop in and watch our students build cabinets for the School's bench room. The School will also be offering a drop-in kids session for kids where they can have fun assembling small wood projects.
• Friends of Fort Worden Guardhouse (Jail – building 300) will be open and offer a 10% discount off their selection of great new merchandise.
• Carefully refurbished guest rental Houses 10, 353 and the Castle will be open to the public. Featuring lighting by Port Townsend’s Vintage Hardwardware, and well appointed craftsmanship by dedicated Fort Worden maintenance staff.
• Newly renovated JFK meeting and event facility will be open with a gallery of art works by Centrum’s artists in Artists in Residence program.
• Traditionally popular museum’s and interpretative sites such as Commanding Offers Quarters (building 1), Marine Science Center, Natural History Center (at beach), and Coastal Artillery Museum (building 201) will all be open 12-4, and free admission gifted to one mom per party.
• The Point Wilson lighthouse will offer free tours by the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Fort Worden is Washington's state park conference center for recreation, arts, culture, history and the environment. It is a confluence of creative learning, recreation, and retreat opportunities for people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.
Originally artists Sean Edwards, Jim Hobbs, Maria Glyka, Lisa Peachey, Ellie Reid, and Daniel Whibley were drawn together because of their overlapping interest in working with space, place, and site. Be it pragmatic and rational, poetic and futile, or historic, and cultural, they each use their artistic practices to investigate how they relate to, and experience these terms.
For their residency at Centrum, they have created new, individual works, which are either inspired by, or are incorporated into the specific location and architecture at Fort Worden and the surrounding area.
Their works will be shown in Batteries Quarles and Randol, situated along the main gun line, as well as in their studio—Building 205 (upstairs). Quarles and Randol are the bunkers up past Memory's Vault. The installation will be open from 11am-5pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You can access this area through the gate near Copper Canyon Press and bear to the right at the first opportunity. We'll have signs to get you to the gate.
ADA Volunteers will be on hand Saturday from 3-4 pm to guide installation viewers.
There will also be artists in studio in Building 205 on Saturday from 3-5pm to show work in an Open Studio. They will discuss—through dialogue and through the works themselves—how they deal with and are affected by the notions of space, place, and site.
Fort Worden State Park Conference Center is hosting its Third Annual Wildlife and Nature Art Expo on Saturday October 6th from 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday, October 7th, from 12 noon to 5 pm in Building 204. Admission is $5 per family or $2.50 per adult for both days; Friends of Fort Worden are free.
International and regional artists will be showcasing their original paintings, carvings, sculptures, and photographs during this two day event.
Artwork this year will have an emphasis on the sea otter to raise awareness of endangered and threatened species. Steve Jeffries of the Department of Fish and Wildlife will offer a slide presentation: “The Recovery of Washington’s Sea Otter Population” at 2:00 pm both Saturday and Sunday in Building 204. Many of the artists will be highlighting the sea otter in their art work.
Other events:
Artist line-up includes:
David Kitler of Calgary, Canada, recently featured in Wildlife Art magazine, will be displaying his talented paintings of birds of prey, song birds, small mammals and waterfowl. His work has been the highlight of the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, SC, Waterfowl Festival in Maryland and the Wild Arts Festival in Portland OR. He was also awarded Best in Show at a variety of shows and was one of the winners in the 2002 Arts for the Parks competition.
Jocelyn Russell of Friday Harbor, Washington is an extraordinary bronze sculptor as well as a talented painter. Her work is exhibited in galleries in Washington, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Oregon. Jocelyn was been the featured and encore artist in the NatureWorks Wildlife Art Show in Tulsa OK and named one of the Artists of the Millennium in Wildlife Art magazine in 2000. Her monuments have been commissioned for the City of Tulsa OK, Albert Lea High School in Minnesota, and Brigham Young University in Utah.
For more information, visit wildartexpo.org
If you missed last night's Cistern Dedication Concert, here is a jumpy cell-phone video with surprisingly good audio. The concert was, in fact, professionally recorded, so we'll try to have a good quality sound sample available at some point. This August 8, 2007
recording of Stuart Dempster, Kevin Karnes, David Marriott, and Brian
Pertl was made at the dedication of the Dan Harpole Cistern at Fort Worden State
Park.
Centrum has been engaged in planning for the future of Fort Worden as a center for lifelong learning. The last phase of this process is officially underway, with the recent posting of a "Request for Qualifications," seeking individuals or teams to lead detailed final planning efforts.
As part of this effort, Centrum, Fort Worden, and the Quimper Foundation have begun convening a series of significant conversations with Fort partners about how we can work with one another to develop and sustain a "partnership economy" that will promote and support Fort Worden as an internationally significant learning center.
On June 14, 2007, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission renamed the Fort Worden cistern the “Dan Harpole Cistern” in honor of Harpole’s life and work in the arts.
Nearly two-hundred feet in diameter and fourteen feet deep, the cistern was originally built as a water supply system when Fort Worden was a military base. Now, the empty cistern’s 45-second reverberation time is popular among recording artists.
While the assistant director at Centrum, the multidisciplinary nonprofit arts organization that provides arts workshops, artist residencies, and public performances at Fort Worden State Park, Harpole was the key figure in helping musicians gain access into the cistern. He also tried to get the cistern designated as “Washington’s Official Instrument” in recognition of its unique acoustic properties.
Harpole helped musicians navigate government red tape and record safely.
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Stuart Dempster, a professor at the University of Washington who was one of the first musicians to record consistently in the cistern, said that it was thanks to the “tireless advocacy” of Harpole that musicians were able to record there.
“One of Dan’s greatest strengths was bringing people together,” said Centrum program manager Peter McCracken. “He was able to find common ground among widely divergent groups of people.”
“Harpole dedicated his career to educating the public and policymakers about the importance of the arts to community life,” said Centrum executive director Thatcher Bailey. “His personal and professional mission was to create opportunities for connecting people to the arts.”
In addition to serving as Centrum’s assistant director, Harpole served on the Port Townsend City Council from 1994 to 1996. In 1995, then-Governor Gary Locke appointed Harpole to the Washington State Arts Commission; he was elected chairman in 1998.
Harpole also served on the Jefferson County Commission from 1997 to 2000. In 2000, Harpole moved to Boise, Idaho, to become executive director of the Idaho Commission on the Arts.
A week before his death from a rare form of cancer in December, 2006, Harpole was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman’s Medal in recognition of his service to the arts in the United States.
On August 8, at 7 p.m., Stuart Dempster will give a free concert in honor of Harpole at Centrum’s re-naming dedication of the Cistern. Dempster and multi-instrumentalist Brian Pertl will perform from inside the Dan Harpole Cistern. Speakers will pipe the music up to audience members seated on the lawn above.
The Friends of Fort Worden is sponsoring its 3rd Annual Wildlife and Nature Art Expo October 5-7, 2007 in Building 204.
This year we will be highlighting the sea otter as part of an awareness of the endangered and threatened species. Artists are encouraged to display your art work that depicts sea otters. We will be promoting that as part of this yearâs overall program.
In order to participate in this annual event, we require that you have expertise and are an established painter, carver, sculptor or photographer. If you wish to participate, there is an application available on line at www.wildartexpo.org. Those who wish to participate must submit the application, $100 for the booth fee and 8-10 images either on a CD or photographs of the work that you will be displaying. Upon review and approval, those selected artists will receive a confirmation letter. Submittal of the application does not guarantee space in the exposition. Your booth fee will be returned if your work is not accepted. Applications submitted without the booth fee will not be considered. Space is limited. All applications must be received by September 15th to be considered.
Artists who are notified of acceptance must be prepared to set up artwork on Thursday, October 4th from 8am to 5pm or Friday October 5th before 3pm and take down on Monday, October 8th.
You are obligated to stay set up until the end of the show on Sunday, October 7th. There is no breakdown of booths prior to 5pm on Sunday October 7th. The exposition times will be 5 â 8pm opening reception Friday, October 5th, 10am to 5pm Saturday October 6th and noon to 5 pm on Sunday October 7th.
For more information, visit the website at www.wildartexpo.org or email WildArt@wildartexpo.org.
American Sign Language (ASL) supporters and practitioners of all skill levels are invited to gather at the Hot Java coffee shop for an inaugural chat, Wednesday June 1st, 5:30-6:30PM.
Hot Java is the coffee shop café located at the south entrance of Fort Worden’s Commons dining and event facility. Bob Saring, GM of Guest Services Food concession at the Fort will be the ASL event host. For more information contact Bob at 360.344.4440 or e-mail: wordengm@guestservices.com.
Centrum and Guest Services are just two of the Fort Worden partners continually committed to enhancing visitors accessibility offerings and resources. Learn more about this endeavor on our Information Center site.
The leadership of Representatives Lynn Kessler (D-Hoquiam) and Kevin Van De Wege (D-Sequim), as well as Senator Jim Hargrove, and advocacy from the Fort Worden Advisory Committee, led to $465,000 being earmarked in the state legislature’s 2007-09 budget to complete the long-range planning process for Fort Worden State Park.
In January, after a public process, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission approved a conceptual plan to transform Fort Worden State Park into a center for life-long learning.
The goal is to turn Fort Worden into a place dedicated to discovery, retreat, and renewal. Funding secured by 24th District legislators will provide for architectural and site design, business and operations implementation, and site and facilities use plans.
“These funds represent a commitment to change that will be of enormous benefit to peninsula residents as well as visitors from around the region,” Fort Worden Area Manager Kate Burke said.
Funding to complete the planning process for Fort Worden was not included in Washington State Parks’ initial request to the Governor, so members of the Fort Worden Advisory Committee, as well as individuals interested in the future of the Park, traveled to Olympia to lobby legislators.
“Centrum, the Marine Science Center, Peninsula College, Copper Canyon Press and all the other institutions providing year-round educational programs at Fort Worden are remarkable assets in our district. We are thrilled to support the evolution of this truly innovative partnership,” said Kessler, the House Majority Leader.
Van De Wege concurred. “I have attended Centrum programs and enjoyed countless visits to Fort Worden State Park,” he said. “I am delighted that so many thoughtful citizens have been involved in good planning for and stewardship of this extraordinary resource.”
Jim Hargrove, Senator from Hoquiam was also critical to securing support. He said that that careful planning is a prerequisite for smart capital expenditure.
Burke added that there was a great deal to accomplish in the months ahead. ”We are so grateful for the support of a terrific legislative team,” she said, “as well as all the community advocates who have helped us to think bigger and smarter about what is possible.”
Centrum and it's fellow resident partners organizations are fortunate to be located at the crown jewel of Washington's state park system. Fort Worden State Park is a 434-acre multi-use park with
over two miles of saltwater shoreline and a wide variety of services and facilities.
The park rests on a high bluff overlooking Puget Sound. Many historic buildings
remain at this 19th century military fort.
Over it's 100+ years of service, Fort Worden has been a military fort, a center for juvenile rehabilitation, and since 1971, one of the most popular state parks in Washington.
