The Lopez Library is very excited to announce our 2024, Fresh A.I.R. (Artists in Residence!)
This year-long program has the goal of creating high quality artistic content communicating the Lopez Library’s Strategic Mission: Where Possibilities Thrive: Nourishing Minds and Strengthening Community. AIR’s will be creatively emboding the Vision: To be the trusted heart of the community; inspiring wonder, fostering connections, and empowering individuals to thrive through lifelong learning.
We are very proud and honored to have these talented 9 Artists in Residence! Meet our 2024 Fresh A.I.R.’s below.
Each A.I.R. will offer a free public workshop/class/lecture during their residency, and be a featured exhibiting artist for our monthly First Saturday Art Walks.
Juniper Irén Blomberg (she/her) was born and raised in the San Juan Islands and believes in the necessity of story and the magic of tea and the nourishment that can be drawn from both. She believes in her ancestors, in the natural world, in honesty, and reciprocity. She works in the alchemy of creativity, which appears most frequently in the form of fine art, folk craft, historically influenced textiles, and the written word. Her alchemical and creative practice is in deep relationship with place, the link between past and future, the feminine, and the folk. Through her work, she endeavors to share the gold of these relationships in a way that supports a nourishing future— one that we can all thrive in.
Project: My goal with my time at the library is to work on ongoing personal textile projects that are ethics-driven artistic pieces and wearable, functional, and durable garments inspired by historical fashion, as well as ongoing visible mending projects for myself and others that will hopefully inspire my fellow island-dwellers to explore the possibility of extending the life of their own clothing items by altering and mending them instead of adding preventable textile waste to the landfill.
Juniper will be teaching a Visible Mending workshop on Sat, March 16 from 12-2 pm, and will have her opening exhibition on Sat, April 6 from 5-7 pm, with artist talks at 5:30 pm.
Camilla Wildman: I am a children’s book illustrator, and I use both watercolor and various printmaking methods to create my work. Within my work, I like to mix themes of playfulness, peacefulness, exploration, and the natural world. Through the stories and accompanying paintings I create, I urge children to revel in this time of their life, and use their time to play with their friends, create anything that comes to mind, and explore the world around them. I take inspiration from the greats, such as Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak, but I am interested in making modern stories for modern kids.
With my paintings, I utilize watercolor to create the worlds I have in mind. The color, the translucence of the paint, and the unexpected patterns all lend themselves to the dreamy and nostalgic imagery I aim to create. With printmaking, I primarily utilize silkscreen and woodcut/linoleum block printing. These methods of printmaking tend to be laborious and limiting, which makes for great design challenges. My prints tend to use limited color palettes, and are very heavy on shape and line. I tend to simplify my style to fit this very punchy and graphic method, but I find this simplification can be more effective, depending on what I’m trying to communicate.
Project: In the format of a children’s book story, I will showcase the various creatures that call Lopez island and the surrounding area home. My goal is to help young people understand the importance of respecting other living creatures, and the natural spaces we all share.
Julia Mira: I inhabit a world that shimmers and sparkles with cockles, embroidery threads, coffee, Douglas-firs, rants, stardust, inkle looms, dogs, silver bracelets, indigo-dyed Medieval garments, fungi, iPads, firewood, and (of course) primroses. Oh, also books, tiny wooden boxes, trucks rusting in the woods, puppets, juvenile chinooks, spreadsheets, scarves, frogs, and (of course) marinated artichoke hearts. My art reflects that.
Project: In the fall, I will collaborate with Barbie Paulsen to highlight the many opportunities that come from living in the Lopez Island fibershed: Making spindles from locally sourced objects, spinning local wool, dyeing with local plants and fungi; and bringing the resulting yarns together into a personal project and/or a woven tapestry of the Lopez Library.
Claire Waterman:Who am I becoming here? What do I notice? What am I missing? Where do I feel welcome and belonging? Where do I feel unwelcome? I want my work to be an invitation – a space for people to participate in conscientious and gentle pathways to tell our stories and listen to each other. I want to help create space to think about the places we live in and work in and share. Our intimate and private places impact our interactions in public space and how we see ourselves impacts how we see each other. I want to learn to encourage the communities where I am to consider their own feelings and conceptions of place, as well as the feelings and conceptions of others who share the same places.
Project: Place is an intimate holder of stories, of sorrows and grief and stuff we want to keep hidden. It also holds immense possibilities for welcome and belonging and tenderness. While at the same time, the ways in which we shape places holds possibilities for neglect, indifference, and brutality. I hope that we can expand and remain attentive to our collective and individual perceptions of our place here, of our neighbors, and of ourselves so that we can be more welcoming and a community buoyant in our care.
Barbie Paulsen: After a lifetime of working in fiber, primarily weaving and associated textile arts, I am struck by how much the fiber world has woven itself into our language and culture, in both vocabulary and as metaphor. Weaving creates a web that binds us together, both literally and figuratively. It connects us with our past, interweaves with our present, and draws us to pathways to the future.What does all of this mean to us on an ordinary day on Lopez? Weaving provides opportunities for us to play, to collaborate, to create, to work together, to enjoy beauty and texture. We can all share the joys of working and playing with yarn, without prior training, without needing to invest in equipment and supplies. It is one of the oldest, and one of the most accessible crafts. The basics are simple, and yet one can spend a lifetime following the thread of a specific aspect or technique. Through exploration of weaving we can learn more of who we are and more about the land and the community where we live.
Project: Julia Mira and I share a love of teaching and a love of sharing our excitement about the world around us. With fiber as our medium and spinning, dyeing and weaving as our method, we hope to bring the community along with us on a journey of that touches on the Lopez fibershed, the textile roles of the plants and animals around us. We will demonstrate, teach and involve the Lopez community as we come together to learn a new technique, or an interesting fact, or new ways of looking at the people and places that make up our life on Lopez. No prior experience necessary, and no commitment. Bring only your enthusiasm, and join us as we spin, dye and weave the path from raw fiber to a finished tapestry of the Lopez Library.
Molly Ware: “Wild Freedom! That’s what your art makes me want to say.” The fellow artist who’s just uttered
these words to me then turns to the instructor, pointing at a mark on my canvas and asks, “Can she do that?”
This is exactly what I want my art to do: Invite us into possibility beyond internalized limits and watch as our mind grasps for something to hang onto.
Falling in love with experimental, abstract painting is the last thing I ever imagined I’d do. But it’s the best modality for allowing my creative impulses and learning to work with my mind’s judgments, expectations, and dependency on rules. Using large canvas and paper often I begin with eyes closed. The mess of scribble I see when opening my eyes helps me practice painting emergently, reclaiming the “yes within” that Audre Lorde speaks of. I hope my work encourages all who feel drawn to greater creative expression to give themselves permission to express what’s true inside, finding the way back to that wild freedom we once knew before society and learning “the right way” had its way with us
Project: What might we create if we could let go of trying to make good art and get better at following our creative impulses? In this project I (and we) will play with freeing up our creativity using abstract painting practices to: make new and unexpected marks, forget about the rules, learn to paint emergently instead of having a plan, and practice working with our rational brain’s judgements and fears along the way.
Jules McLelend:
I love color and metal. I began making jewelry when I lived in Bellingham. I started out taking a jewelry class at a small studio there with friends. I learned to saw metal, solder and design jewelry. I was captivated and wanted to keep learning and practicing. I joined another group of jewelers makers at larger studio and where we would meet and share ideas.
I took jewelry classes in Seattle, Oaxaca, Mexico, Gallup, NM as well as visiting Tucson for the largest jewelry shows in the USA. I value taking classes and sharing info with others. I was helping build our house on Lopez and my home studio was born. I like to go to junk stores, hardware stores, and pick up unique items I could incorporate in my work, so my work involves as I try new things. I currently work in copper, sterling and brass using enamel, power coating, leather, patinas and what strikes my fancy. I discovered a tool maker who rescued old hubs from the jeweler manufactories who have gone out of business. He remakes them in steel and jewelers use them in the process in a hydraulic press. I feel in love with this process and use it all the time. I like to share information.
Project: I will share my jewelry making tools and process with students as they explore techniques of stamping and cutting metal with disc cutters and hammer with handmade stamps on metal and leather and I will share examples of my work.
Jeff Rolfzen and Rocky Steen-Rolfzen: are a songwriting duo also known as The Lark and the Loon. Named after the state birds from which they were born the two bring their distinct writing styles together in what they call an exploration in the etymology of American music. They take inspiration from prewar blues and jazz, Irish dance music, Sea shanties, and dustbowl folk songs. Seasoned performers at home and abroad Jeff and Rocky bring their songs to life with a shotgun shell crate turned stomp box, antique washboard, accordion, resonator guitar, and other acoustic instruments. Front and center through their performances are their vocals which focus on the harmonies that two singers can find.
Rachel Brumer: Visual Artist
Rachel Brumer
I’m a Northwest fiber artist making 2 and 3 dimensional work, layering textures, working with a cameraless photographic process called Van Dyke prints, and with an ever evolving language of shapes. My most recent body of work is imagined landscapes which are not recognizable as particular geographic places. Rather, they are fragments of nature and human existence recomposed as scenes where mind and memory build associations—an arc of earth holds continents of flowers and rich soil. These are not renderings of an actual landscape, but a reimagining that incorporates both randomness and narrative. Based in the current global environmental crisis, this body of work is a poetic demonstration of the Earth and human responsibility.
Before pursuing fine art, I spent many years touring the country as a professional modern dancer, and later worked as an interpreter of American Sign Language. No stranger to alternative modes of expression, I’m a fierce believer in non-verbal experience and the power of art. I love teaching, and have been a teaching artist at regional organizations including Mission Creek Correctional Facility, Path with Art, and Seattle Public Schools. My work can be found in both private and corporate collections, and I’ve had numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the US, including Swedish & Harborview Hospitals (Seattle, WA), City of Seattle Courthouse, Tacoma Art Museum, University of Washington Special Collections & Museum of Arts and Design, (New York City, NY) among others. My work is represented by Patricia Rovzar Gallery, (Seattle, WA), Seattle Art Museum Gallery, (Seattle, WA), Ann Connelly Fine Art, (Baton Rouge, LA), and Fresh Paint, (Los Angeles, CA)
Project: In partnership with the Lopez Island School and the new Artist in Residence program at the Lopez Island Library, my project is called Hack your Hoodie. I’ll be working with middle school students at the Lopez School with the support of Jamie Tread, art teacher. Students will create “art hoodies”, and the project will culminate with an Art Walk at the library, with students wearing their creations, and interacting with viewers at the Art Walk. Students will be addressing such topics as sustainability, as many materials will be sourced from TIOLI, and the Lopez community. They will learn surface design techniques such as embroidery, drawing, painting, dyeing, appliqué, frottage, techniques for applying text, and piece work. Slides will be shown with work from historical references as well as very contemporary fashion, ousider art, and fiber techniques from around the world. We will witness the limitless creativity of middle schoolers as they transform the beloved hoodie into a work of art.
Artists will be working in direct response to one of seven strategic priorities (SP):
Foster Community Cohesion – We provide a space for dialogue, collaboration, and shared experiences. We cultivate an environment that celebrates the rich tapestry of our community and fosters connections among individuals and groups.
Promote Environmental Stewardship – We are committed to nurturing a sustainable future for our island, its community, and the planet. Our goal is to minimize our ecological footprint by implementing green practices, offering educational resources on environmental topics, and providing a platform for promoting eco-conscious initiatives.
Embrace Inclusivity – We support community members to create an inclusive and welcoming environment where people of all backgrounds, abilities, and identities feel valued and represented. Through diverse collections, accessible resources, and inclusive programming, we strive to celebrate the richness of our community and ensure that everyone feels seen, heard, and empowered.
Enhance Library Infrastructure; Elevate the Experience – We offer an outstanding experience for the community. Our goal is to invest in improving library infrastructure, including upgraded technology, comfortable spaces, and relevant amenities. By enhancing our facilities, we aim to create a dynamic and inviting environment that meets the evolving needs of our patrons, ensuring that the library remains a hub of knowledge, inspiration, and connection for years to come.
Ignite Lifelong Learning Adventures – We believe that learning is a lifelong journey that never stops. Our goal is to ignite a passion for continuous learning by offering diverse educational resources, engaging programs, and interactive activities for all ages. We aim to empower our community to explore new horizons, expand their knowledge, and embrace the joy of lifelong learning, opening doors to endless possibilities.
Promote Island Resiliency – We recognize the many challenges people face in living on a remote, rural island community. Limited affordable housing opportunities, rising cost of living, a strained health system, fragile food system, and unreliable transportation options are among a host of issues the island faces. We will support the sharing of knowledge and encourage dialogue to foster understanding, support, and collaborative solutions for island resiliency.
Nurture Youth and Opportunities for Growth – We are committed to providing a nurturing environment that supports the personal, emotional, and psychological growth of young minds. Our goal is to offer diverse learning opportunities, engaging programs, and interactive experiences that keep youth excited and engaged. By fostering a love for reading, curiosity, and lifelong learning, we aim to empower the next generation with the tools they need to succeed, thrive, and seize every opportunity that comes their way.