Artist Residencies at Centrum

Beyond the Biology

One of visual artist Elise Morris’s current projects is paintings on small blocks of wood, which get wrapped with cellophane and sold out of cigarette vending machines as part of the “Art-o-mat” project. The project is based on the premise of taking art, “repackaging” it, and making it part of the daily lives of consumers. Art vended from the machine can be anything small enough to fit through the dispensing apparatus.

Morris, who grew up in Torrence, California (just outside of Los Angeles), attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she double-majored in art and environmental education. Her environmental education training fed into a two-year Peace Corps stint in the Dominican Republic where she spent much of her time painting murals in schools and community buildings.

“In developing countries, the environment is often the last thing on anybody’s mind,” Morris says.

She did a lot of painting, instead. 

“The classroom walls were concrete, so you couldn’t hang anything,” she says. “So I’d paint them, instead. Maps, the water cycle, vowels, numbers, letters, the alphabet. The teachers all wanted me come to their classrooms to paint these murals.”

Morris also painted murals in public spaces of Villa Fundación de Baní, the town she was in.

When she returned to the United States, she moved to the Bay Area, receiving her MFA in art from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley in 2005. 

Morris’s training in environmental education helps her to paint from the inspiration of shapes in nature. “It’s amazing how fascinating they can be,” Morris says. “I’m interested in the color, and the shapes, and the emotional quality. Beyond just the biology.”

Morris, who works in oils, acrylic, and other mixed-media, exhibits work at multiple galleries in the Bay Area and been commissioned for work hung in hotels and in private collections. Recently, she’s been working primarily from photos of the natural world in which change is happening—decay or bloom, or the change of seasons. She uses them as a starting point for her paintings. But she doesn’t plan where she’s going to end up.

“I find my way to the end,” she says, “and see where it takes me. Generally all I have is the format—the size of the canvas.

“There is beauty along the edges of what we notice,” Morris says. “So much detail goes unseen. Nature has the most intense shapes. In your head it’s contained, and expected. But working from the actual natural world, and working from what you see rather than what you think you see, you find the unexpected.”

Morris will be presenting her first solo show in September, at the Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, California. The show will be made up of new work directly influenced by her experience at Centrum. Image pictured above is Emulate Spring, acrylic and oil on canvas, 24” x 36”, 2007.

Composer Bruce Trinkley

“I’m a sucker for anniversaries,” composer Bruce Trinkley says. “You name it. Whenever a centennial comes along, I want to be a part of it.”

Trinkley's current project is setting ten of poet Theodore Roethke's poems to music. Roethke, who was born in 1908, taught for awhile at Penn State, where Trinkley teaches. All of the poems that Trinkley has selected come from Roetke's first collection, Open House, published when Roethke was at Penn State. 

"I like centennials because they attract so much attention," Trinkley says. "They shine the spotlight on the person once again."

When setting poems, Trinkley follows his gut reaction. Is there something in the language (what the poet is saying and how he's saying it) that attracts him? "You need to believe strongly in the poem if you're going to set it to music," Trinkley says. "At some point it becomes almost a collaboration. Setting a poem is like a reading, with notes and rhythms. And if you're going to work so closely with it, you have to believe in the material."

Trinkley doesn't pick and choose stanzas. "If I can’t set the whole poem, I'll find another poem," he says.  He notes that writing for the voice is like writing for different instruments. He starts by reading the poem out loud a number of times, to find the natural rhythms of the piece and the melody of the words.

"Some poems ask to be read quietly," Trinkley says. "Others shout to the masses and call for a full concert choir and an orchestra."

The Creative Work of Darsie Beck

For Vashon Island-based artist Darsie Beck, it's impossible to separate his creative work from the rest of his life.

Beck is a watercolor painter, stone carver, and landscape designer who works out of his studio on Maury Island. He also teaches creativity and journal keeping workshops throughout the Puget Sound region.

He is a proponent of daily journal keeping and for many years has made it a part of his morning ritual. Beck feels that the process of writing  first thing every morning allows him to clear his mind and create a sense of order for the up coming day.

He writes in a free-flowing, unedited manner, and has found that writing helps solve problems, organize time around things that matter most and add structure and overall effectiveness to his life. A part of his morning routine also includes sketching and painting from nature.

He uses a day planner system that holds his appointment schedule and daily journal.

"Our world is fast paced and we are busier then ever. We have become a society of  doers with little time for personal reflection, or simply being." Beck says.

Beck is currently assembling a collection of his sketches, paintings and journal entries into a book-length work. He says, "I want to share my experience in journal keeping, the daily routine I follow and the exercises I employ to engage my creativity. I hope to inspire others to discover their own uniqueness through the rich and rewarding process of journal keeping."