Artist Residencies at Centrum

Susan Silverman: Painting in the Pacific Northwest

When Susan Silverman talks about painting in the Pacific Northwest, she talks about the light. “It’s a filtered light,” she says. “There’s a softness to it, from the clouds. It can rain all day but at the end of the day the light is there, coming through, beneath the clouds, down low.” 

Silverman, a New Hampshire-based potter and painter who studied pottery in Japan, says that “Pottery is held in that culture as a high form of art, like sculpture or painting would be in this country. There’s a sense and sensibility about the functional daily rituals of life, closely related with the vessels that you use. There is a presentation, and textures and shapes, and a certain understated look to Japanese art that is unique. And those are the kinds of things I look for, in my own work. I am trying to say more with less.”

Silverman heard about the Centrum creative residency program from a friend, Mayumi Tsutakawa, whom she had met in Japan. They had both grown up in Seattle, but never met. (“I went to Garfield,” Silverman says. “She went to Franklin. A different world. I would never have gotten to know her if we hadn’t gone to the same study program in Kyoto.”)

Much of Silverman’s work concerns bringing out the feelings that objects and
landscapes evoke. “For some reason, the whole time at Fort Worden I was using deep blue or this incredible reddish orange,” she says. “Real emotional colors that weren’t necessarily related to the subject matter of what I was printing.” Silverman adds that “the process of the work is important to me—the little anomalies that come up, the places where you can’t quite control everything. Those are the places that I look for expression.”

Elisabetta Bastai: Painting Nature

Nature served as a constant companion during artist Elisabetta Bastai’s childhood. She and her younger brother would often visit several horses that her parents’ friends kept in a mountain field in northern Italy. When her brother died of leukemia, at the age of seven, she went back to that field. There was only one horse left, a gray mare called Luna. In a subtle, unconscious way, she says, her connection to that horse became a connection to her brother. As Bastai began drawing, her first work was of horses.

After that, her bond with nature intensified. Every summer she explored and hiked in the mountains and snorkeled off the Tuscan coast. Bastai collected plants and seashells and began to take landscape photographs and experiment with oil paint. In her late twenties, she moved to Ireland and ended up working at a riding stable. She kept drawing in her spare time. A year later, she moved to Scotland and began to paint in acrylics.

Nature landscapes feature prominently in Bastai’s work. Experiences as a professional photographer in Bangalore, India, and work in Washington state at the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest led her to start asking questions about how people relate to the landscape. “I’m fascinated by the contrasting ways that people see nature,” she says. “For example, looking at the different relationship that the Native Americans and the pioneers had with the forests. How do people relate to landscape? Why do people interfere the way they do?”

One of Bastai’s art forms is a series of drawings that she called “maps,” a cross between a naturalist’s journal and a personal diary in which text and images intermingle. “When you experience a landscape, you experience it with more than your eyes,” she says. “You experience smells and sounds that trigger thoughts and memories. I found that by including text into my drawings I was able to add things I could not include by painting alone.” Bastai also continues to sketch and paint landscapes in a more traditional way. In 2004, her interest in horses re-emerged in a series of drawings entitled Poseidon’s Horses. In this body of work she explores relationships between landscape and myth, and combines her memories of the Mediterranean Sea with the colors and forms of the Pacific Northwest. 

Ben Moorad: Empowering Writers

As a writer, twenty-six-year-old Ben Moorad knew that writing could be a powerful force in changing lives. In order to make it accessible to a greater community, he co-founded Write Around Portland, a network of writing groups for people who couldn’t access writing or community because of income, isolation, or other barriers. Write Around Portland, which is now in its seventh year, offers people the opportunity to write and have their writing heard in a supportive, safe environment.

                “When you hear the stories of someone different from yourself, and put yourself in their shoes, you have a greater capacity for empathy,” Moorad says. “You’re also more likely to protect their freedoms in other areas.”

The workshops last for ten-week periods, and focus on generating new writing, as well as the revision of existing writing. At the end of the ten weeks, all of the workshop groups come together for a public reading of their work. Katrina survivors, people affected by HIV/AIDS, survivors of domestic violence, seniors in foster care, Vietnam War vets, sexual minority youth, and other groups read and listen to one another.

“If people are given the space to express their fears, their desires, their fantasies, and their histories, it has an inherently humanizing effect,” Moorad says. “Speaking and listening to each other, in community, helps us recognize one another’s innate humanity.” Moorad gives as an example the term “welfare queens,” saying: “If you don’t actually know anybody on welfare, terms like that shape your thinking. But if you know or speak with someone on welfare, you know that isn’t their experience. And once you’ve heard their stories, you can’t reduce them to stereotypes.”

Write Around Portland has run over two hundred and forty ten-week workshops, and has helped nearly two thousand people access writing in community. Enrollment in the Write Around Portland workshops is currently overflowing. The program is trying to increase the number of workshops offered.  

Jason Cortlund: Writer and Director

Watching television one evening, screenwriter—and 2006 Centrum creative resident—Jason Cortlund saw a news report about old-growth Douglas firs that were being “poached” in the middle of the night. The poachers would sell the wood to buy methamphetamines. Cortlund, who had grown up near Salem, Oregon, was familiar with the story. “I knew the picture, what it was like to be poor, under pressure, and macho,” he says. Research led to the script Lumberjunkies, one of two feature-length film projects that Cortlund is developing.

Cortlund’s first film, Nightstand, in which a U.S. Army helicopter mechanic embarks on an affair with an officer’s wife, played on the festival circuit in 2002. The project was completed with his partner, Julia Halperin, with whom Cortlund has been writing and filming since 1996. Their work has screened widely at film festivals and cinemas across North America and Europe.

Their current work is the Interstate project, a series of short video experiments designed around circus footage at an encampment alongside a busy Texas highway. The shorts critique surveillance. Part One focuses on footage of caged zoo animals—elephants and zebras—while tracers from passing automobile traffic flash across the screen. Part Two is rife with contemporary resonance, featuring a pop song from Iraq—with a gunfire-inspired beat—as the soundtrack for a caged tiger dance video. Part Three is in the process of being edited; Cortlund visualizes a piece that critiques the current vogue of media sensationalism. 

2007 Artists in Residence

JANUARY
Jean Stefancic (Writer, Pittsburgh, PA)
Richard Delgado (Writer, Pittsburgh, PA)
Ellaraine Lochie (Writer, Sunnyvale, CA)
Patrick Carrington (Writer, Wild Crest, NJ)

FEBRUARY
Anne McDuffie (Writer, Seattle, WA)
Katie Humes (Writer, Bellingham, WA)
Diane Wilkinson (Visual Artist, Houston, TX)
Syrenka Slettebak (Writer, Seattle, WA)

MARCH
Lisa Olsen (Writer, Hadley, MA)
Valerie Powell (Visual Artist, Pullman, WA)
Isaac Powell (Visual Artist, Pullman, WA)

APRIL
Eric Barber (Composer, Shoreline, WA)
Bonnie Nelson (Writer, Forks, WA)
Darsie Beck (Visual Artist, Vashon, WA)
Bruce Trinkley (Composer, State College, PA)

MAY
Theresa Lovering-Brown (Visual Artist, Aptos, CA)
Luke Jennings (Writer, Seattle, WA)
Susan Gofstein (Visual Artist, Chicago, IL)
Courtney Westcott (Musician, Seattle, WA)
Peter Noy (Musician, Seattle, WA)

JUNE
Jane Ashley Butler (Writer, Iowa City, IA)
Ellaraine Lochie, (Writer, Sunnyvale, CA)
Linda Buckmaster (Writer, Belfast, ME)
Leslie Brody (Writer, Redlands, CA)
Robert Rice (Writer, Bozeman, MT)
Jolie Kaytes (Visual Artist, Moscow, ID)
Elise Moore (Visual Artist, Oakland, CA)
Patrick Carrington (Writer, Wild Crest, NJ)
Gregory Harris (Writer, Cambridge, MA)

AUGUST
David Owen Hastings (Visual Artist, Seattle, WA)

SEPTEMBER
Joseph Woodridge (Visual Artist, Seattle, WA)
Patricia Staton (Writer, Astoria, OR)
Artists Trust (EDGE program, Seattle, WA)
Hillary Raphael (Writer, New York, NY)
Marc Fendel (Musician, Seattle, WA)

OCTOBER
Rachel Bravmann-Bevens (Writer, Seattle, WA)
Nancy Sirkis (Photographer, New  York, NY)

DECEMBER
Laura Kaminsky (Composer, New York, NY)
Rebecca Allen (Visual Artist, New York, NY)
Jim Hobbs (Visual Artist, Seattle/London)

How to apply for a residency

The Centrum Creative Residency Program accepts proposals on a rolling basis from artist and creative thinkers for self-directed retreats.

As space allows, Centrum offers its housing and studio facilities to:

1. Any past Centrum artist or faculty member;
2. Other artists and creative thinkers who submit a brief proposal for how they would use their time and a professional resume/vita. This proposal is reviewed by the Centrum program committee.

Residencies are awarded on a space-available basis, in week-long blocks.

Weekly Residency Fee:  $300

Residency facilities include 2 and 3 bedroom houses with equipped kitchens, linens, and various other amenities. Print, painting, and rehearsal studios are also available for rental by creative residents.

Please direct all inquiries and proposals to:

Sally Rodgers
sally@centrum.org
360-385-3102 x128
PO Box 1158
Port Townsend, WA 98368

Residency Resources

Centrum’s location at Fort Worden State Park offers residents a portfolio of resources. We offer modest, 2-3 bedroom cabins and apartments, some with small studios, and upright pianos. Print, painting, and rehearsal studios are also available for rental by creative residents, including a non-toxic print studio featuring a 30” American French etching press. Recording studio time can also be arranged at Fort Worden’s Synergy Sound studio.

What is a Centrum Artist Residency?

Established in 1980, Centrum's artist residency program aims to create an environment where ideas, music, writing, art and more can be developed, and eventually disseminated.

Centrum residencies are about time and space. With both, you’ll have the opportunity to grow as an artist or creative thinker.

Our residencies are open to artists, thinkers, activists, performers —anyone involved in creative endeavors. A residency may involve either the solitary creative work of an individual or the interactive work of a group. It can focus on a single genre or be multidisciplinary. A residency may involve active engagement with other Centrum programs, artists, and communities, or it may serve as a reflective retreat.

Residencies are awarded on a space-available basis, in week-long blocks (Friday-Friday). Residencies are available as space exists in Centrum facilities--generally January through June, and August through December. Some resources are available year-round.