Arts in Nature Festival - Visual Arts

2019 VISUAL ARTS LINEUP

2019 ARTISTS

JorgensonHeadShot - Amanda Jorgenson

Participants will create a drawing/painting of themselves – but in their animal form – by using their personality traits and the surrounding plant life at the camp.

Amanda Jorgenson is a natural science illustrator and artist, who strives to bring elements of the wilderness into the commotion of city life. Her art focuses on native plants and animals found in the Pacific Northwest.

Amy Wang & Nadine Emmons: Waiting Tides

Waiting Tides is an interactive space to raise awareness and understanding of projected rising sea levels. By creating a to-scale relationship between viewers and rising global sea levels, we hope to bring a physical reality to the often abstracted data of climate change.
Amy Wang is a mixed media artist currently located in Seattle, Washington. Their work is an evaluation of both racial and gender binaries not only as they are presented within the United States, but also as a non-gender-binary person of color. Through research and the creation of their work, they address how both these binaries are constructed, how they intersect, and how they may be exceeded. The visual and conceptual core to their work originates from the study of semiotics and it’s application within a Chinese American and non-binary identity.
Within my sculptural installations, I encourage a childlike wonderment for the complex systems and simple solutions of the natural world. I am enthralled by the balance and interdependence of the processes that sustain our world. Most recently, I have been inspired by the spectrum of light, cellular exchanges, and the impact of humans on our environment. These installations provide a shared experience, which promotes empathy and humility, encouraging responsibility to the world around us. This has led me to create interactive work that informs viewers through playful exploration.

Dream Hatching gives you an opportunity to help create an enchanting 5-foot wide nest, find your flock, and rekindle your Dream.

Constance Mears is an artist, a writer and mystic, who shares bird wisdom in workshops and at festivals. She is author of Dream Hatching: Bring Your Dream to Life and The Bumbling Mystic's Obituary. Her paintings of birds' nests can be seen at www.constancemears.com

IMG_0084 - Constance Mears
Constance-Mears-Dream-Hatching - Constance Mears
EliLaraPROMO - Eli Lara
DSC04915 (1) - Eli Lara

I'll be live drawing the performers and attendees.

Finding inspiration in the energy of the living psyche, Eli is interested in capturing the forms and figures of the natural world in a tactile, visceral manner. When he paints, he does so in a gestural and spontaneous fashion, capturing the emotions and movements of the living form, in turn revealing the psyche of both the subject and the observer.

Eli graduated from the University of Washington's School of Art with a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts in 2013. His focus is in drawing and painting. He currently lives and works in Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA, USA.

Francesca and Angie Headshot - Francesca Udeschini

Two canvas banners will become cyanotypes - an early form of photography with a distinctive cyan blue color. Different items collected from nature (leaves, flowers, pinecones) as well as our own drawings will be used on acetate to make "impressions" of their silhouettes on the canvas. Visitors can take part in an interactive workshop where they'll be able to make their own cyanotypes to take home

Francesca and Angie are interdisciplinary artists and scientific illustrators interested in drawing connections between nature and the human condition as a way of reflecting on our collective future.

windNowhere_small - Haein Kang

Wind is rising.
The tree trunk is swaying in the wind.
Trembling twigs make the leaves rub against each other.
The soft rustling leaves go around the tree,
and they are following the wind.

Wind from Nowhere is a data-driven installation that mechanically represents a beautiful moment of wind rising in a tree. The title comes from Samuel Butler's novel, Erewhon, which paradoxically symbolizes Utopia. If you spell ‘Nowhere' in reverse order, it becomes ‘Erewhon.’ The book is famous for predicting the emergence of artificial intelligence. In the fictional land of Erewhon, people destroy machines because of the fear that they could become conscious and threaten the very existence of human being.

Contrary to the novel, Wind from Nowhere takes the development of machine civilization positively and uses it as an aesthetic tool. It utilizes the pre-collected weather data from the weather site, www.wunderground.com. Hourly wind speed data from a particular day and place is applied to motor speed control. Numbers indicating wind speed become breeze or gusty wind.

Fluttering a series of vellum paper represents a moment when the leaves sway in the wind. Mechanical parts of soft material such as elastic linkages produce the organic movements of paper. The paper flapping by mechanical devices evokes the wind by appealing to the visual, auditory, and tactile senses. Wind data creates wind phenomena!

Haein Kang is a Korean-born multi-disciplinary artist who explores the infinite possibilities of artistic expression. Kang adopts cutting-edge technology to surprise you with the novelty and beauty of her artwork. She is researching the brain-computer interface for communication between body, mind, and machine in a doctoral program at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Kang began her artistic career by winning the grand prize in the installation art competition held by the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2002. She has been exhibiting her works in various venues in Korea and the U.S. including SOMA Museum, Seoul Museum of Art, Southern Exposure Gallery, Gallery 4Culture, ISEA, ICMC, etc.

Joselynn at the Installation - Joselynn Engstrom

Joselynn Tokashiki Engstrom: The Boys in the Barracks

The Boys in the Barracks – Found photographs: A rare look into one man’s snapshot of the Vietnam War.

“The Boys in the Barracks” consists of found photos and memories. When my father died unexpectedly 10 years ago, I went to Alaska to pack up all of his earthly belongings. I discovered a box of photographs squirreled away. Hundreds of little black and white polaroids from the 1960’s documenting his time living and fighting in the Vietnam War. Images of the bunkhouse, standing with friends, smoking, drinking, flirting with girls – just trying to be “normal” teenagers. I have spent hundreds of hours with these pictures looking for clarity and clues. I have found some answers and raised many more questions. These images haunt me – who were they? Did they survive the war?

When I found these photos, I knew that I had to share them – display them for people to reflect on, as I have; to breathe life into them and show a rare look into one man’s snapshot of the war. It seems that most everyone has someone in their family that fought somewhere.

I was raised listening to the bootleg records he bought while living in Asia. The music you will hear filling the bunkhouse are digitized songs from his vinyl collection, the soundtrack of his days in the war; the soundtrack of his youth.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to create this installation at a remote arts festival in the woods of Northwestern Washington. I have always wanted to show this in Seattle so that more people could view it. I am honored to have the opportunity to reimagine this installation at Camp Long and the Arts in Nature Festival.

Melanie Masson 1 - Joselynn Engstrom
“I am a product of the Vietnam War. My father met my mother while stationed in Okinawa. My father was a Special Forces, Green Beret during the Vietnam War. He raised me to be a survivalist and a fighter. He also taught me compassion and humility. He encouraged me to be curious. I was always curious about his time in Vietnam. I think that I was the only one he really told stories to…in fact his time there affected me so much that decades later I worked in Vietnam managing an organization removing the unexploded bombs that his army dropped. I used to tease him that I was cleaning up his mess…working in the same jungles that he killed in.” - Joselynn Tokashiki Engstrom (Excerpt: The Boys in the Barracks)
Joselynn Tokashiki Engstrom is an organizer, artist & community builder. A scientist by study, she has worked on many different projects from creating a research station in Central America to founding a circus company to running a political campaign. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Arts Corps, a Seattle-based youth education organization.
She identifies as 100% Hapa - born in Seattle to an Okinawan immigrant and an American Veteran of the Vietnam War.
My Father, Sergeant Gerald Allan Plank wore the Green Beret in the US Army Special Forces - Recon Teams: Louisiana & Hawaii. He voluntarily enlisted one month after his 18th birthday. He served in the Army from May 1967 to May 1973, many of those years in Vietnam.
babies in vietnam - Joselynn Engstrom
IMG_3975 - Julie Hepp

Manipulating natural materials based on relationships with place and space.

Jules is an Artist, Environmental Educator, Forest Therapy Guide and Owner/Operator of The Art of Connection. Jules does their work in partnership with humans and the environment through intentional education/guiding and artistic expression.

Vibrant and abstract acrylic paint pours inspired by patterns and movement observed in nature.

Julia Swenson is a modern abstract artist who works in her studio in Bellevue, WA. Specializing in large and vibrantly colored abstract acrylic paintings inspired by movement and patterns seen in nature. Her artwork communicates a range of emotions from spiking the viewer's curiosity, providing inspiration and joyful energy to creating a mesmerizing, meditative effect with more calming and neutral pieces.

IMG_20190327_140501_661 - Julia Swenson
Maker:S,Date:2017-1-23,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y
IMG_20190312_182920_869 - Julia Swenson
IMG_20190401_134707_893 - Julia Swenson
IMG_6823 - Kelly Mitchell
Half Life is a sound, textile, and sculpture installation which will transform the interior of a cabin into a dreamy, atmospheric environment that explores the viewer's relationship with life, decay, nature, and family.
P1230512_large - Kevin Hallagan
'Nonbinary' is a video installation that fractures the binary perspective of gender.
Kevin Hallagan is a Los Angeles based artist who aims to foster a sense of discovery and imagination in people who experience his work. Allowing concept to inform design, he employs a variety of techniques and mediums, each piece influencing the next in a rapidly evolving body of work.
17626278_10208489553818455_625930879489233613_n - Kevin Hallagan
Live Paint front - Orion Misciagna (1)
Through Art, Music, and Audience Participation we will create a piece that blends into the landscape and conjures the grandiosity of the natural world beyond.
Classically trained at Gage Academy and live painting since 2004, Orion has performed with many internationally known acts and built an impressive body of work. He paints at concerts in and around Seattle on a weekly basis.