Jul 30, 2018

YES! Youth Environmental Stewards create Mandalas with Nature at Fort Flagler

I had the pleasure of facilitating mandala making with natural materials for a group of young stewards as a part of the Youth Environmental Stewards (YES!) Program offered by the Northwest Watershed Institute (more info below).  Our activities took  place during their weeklong intensive camp stay at Fort Flagler, near Port Townsend, Washington.

Another artist and friend Rebecca Welti worked with the group around issues of ocean and plankton, health and awareness. With the help of a microscope they viewed freshwater plankton, collected from Rebecca's frog pond, then created drawings of the plankton they witnessed.

I gave a short presentation about art work with, and in nature. Then afterwards the young stewards collected natural materials from nature surrounding them to create their own mandalas.  

It was inspiring to see them engrossed in their creations!  The images that follow give  a hint as to their work and process.























Youth Environmental Stewards (YES!) Program   NWI coordinates an accredited high school class in which students from three schools work side-by-side with natural resource professionals from seven organizations. Over the course, students experience watershed science from headwaters to bay and dedicate 30 hours each to environmental projects in East Jefferson County. Some students intern with experts to pursue in-depth biological projects. Partners include: Jefferson Land Trust, North Olympic Salmon Coalition, United Good Neighbors, Port Townsend Marine Science Center, and Jefferson County Public Health Department.

Northwest Watershed Institute (NWI) is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation founded in 2001. NWI's mission is to provide scientific and technical support to protect and restore fish and wildlife habitats and watershed ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest.  NWI works with willing landowners and partner organizations to conduct innovative, science-based model projects to assess, protect, and restore watersheds and habitats.   NWI also provides educational events and programs for students and volunteers of all ages to promote understanding of watershed ecology and conservation.


***   If you're interested in being inspired by some stunning nature mandalas check out  https://www.morningaltars.com/about/  .  Day Schildkret is internationally known for Morning Altars and has inspired tens of thousands of people of all ages across the globe to renew our relationship to nature, creativity, and impermanence with the ritual and practice of earth art.  Day is the author of the book, “Morning Altars: A 7 Step Practice to Nourish Your Spirit Through Nature, Art and Ritual” .

Feb 17, 2018

Open Studio Feb. 25 at Fort Worden

Included in my last post was the proposal I wrote for an artist residency at Centrum which I received and have been working with during February.   Once again I'm fascinated by how different lived reality is than planning for it and thinking about it.  Not that it should come as any surprise...

Rather than making something new right now, I'm using my time to reflect, clean out  and organize old work with hopes I can put it to rest so that my new work can find me. 

Within my piles I found a couple poems which seem like good guides during this time.





I'll be holding an Open Studio Sunday, Feb. 25th, 3:30 - 6 pm
At Fort Worden 205 building - above Corvidae Press - where I've been working

During this time I will invite visitors to reflect and comment on some of the questions I've been considering, which may serve as material for future work.  

























Also there will also be a sharing wall for posting copies of your favorite poems and quotes which have inspired your creativity.



You can see more studio photos on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/glolamson/


Feb 9, 2018

Proposal for 2018 Artist Residency at Centrum

The following is a proposal I made to Centrum in Port Townsend for a month long artist residency in February 2018.  In future posts I will share how it evolving, but for now I just want to mark where I started.

PROPOSAL by Gloria Lamson for 2018 Centrum Residency:

In the last year I’ve been inspired to review the photographs and artwork I’ve created in the last 45 years. With this residency I want to reflect upon and re-contextualize my artwork as a whole, with the fresh seeing that can come with distance and hindsight. 

I’m requesting a Centrum artist residency to use the large studio upstairs in the 205 building from February 1st- March 4th 2018 (or whatever portion of that time I can have).  My purpose is to create an installation as well as review, organize, and edit images of my art/photography work of the past 45 years.  With fabric stapled from the west to east side of the 2 large north walls, I want to create a river-like form as a visual stream of my work and life. This structure would serve as a matrix to which I would then affix a selection of small prints of my artwork in relationship to each other and the time when they were created.  

I have often envisioned the relationship between my life and artwork as a mobius strip, giving me the sense that my art and life are woven together through out time. This installation would be a navigable chart of my work and creative process that would allow back and forth reflection, at a glance. Allowing me to a chance to examine the joys and pathos, the hilltops and valleys various stages in my work. This installation would give me a ‘place’ to explore the personal art story of my life.

This Centrum studio time would support the work of editing and organizing my artwork for a self-published book (or books), which I will continue to work on after the residency.    

To give you a sense of the kind of material I will be working with I am including the some of the images below.

Over the past few years I have used the form of a river in my three different “Life Stream” site responsive installations.  Initially I developed the form during my artist residency at Playa in Southern Oregon, 2015 and included the following poem as a statement. 

~ Life Stream~

I imagine,
our lives are like threads,
weaving through time.

Emerging at birth from an ocean of consciousness,
and returning again at death.

In between,
a mystery, we call life.

In between,
we dip in and out of that larger stream,
at times immersed, submerged,
renewed or humbled,
as the current carries us along.

In between,
we play with possibilities of who we are and who we might be,
with what we’ve been given
and what we choose.

Alone and together,
we weave the fabric of our lives.
~
I expanded upon this work for a solo exhibition at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, 2015. 
In 2016 I created another version of “Life Stream” for the Shunpike Storefront Program for one of Amazon’s street front windows at South Lake Union in Seattle. 



I think of my proposed Centrum installation as ‘My River of Time’, a personalized vision of ‘Life Stream’.  The February installation would be a process of ‘connecting the dots’ both literally and metaphorically to be able to see the big picture of my work, emerging from a selection from my collected images.  


Some of my work in the past reflects my fascination with point to point linking (images below). As a kid when I saw the ‘connect the dot’ puzzles, in the newspaper, I often imagined that if only the connections were drawn in some precise way that some part of life’s mysteries would miraculously be revealed.

My work often grows out of a particular time and place. Centrum at Fort Worden is special place to which I have a deep connection.  From my first artist residency in 2002 to having my art studio in the 205 building from 2011-2014.  It seems like the perfect location to bring together past, present and…what’s next.

The images I want to review and edit begin with my black and white film photography from the 70’s such as the three images below.


And would include reviewing some 20 years of images of interactions with/in nature and installations in architectural environments, such as images below.

Current work can be seen at http://glorialamson.blogspot.com/ and an archive of selected past work at http://www.glorialamson.com.