Artist of the Week
The Jack Straw Artist of the Week Podcast highlights work created through the Artist Residency Programs at Jack Straw Cultural Center.-
Rasheena Fountain - The Blues Woman Touches Down in the Pacific Northwest
Rasheena Fountain’s Jack Straw Artist Support Program project Dropped Down Blues is on view in the “How to Carry Water” exhibit at The Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx). Dropped Down Blues is a speculative blues fiction and poetry audio-visual project set in Pipers Creek, a 1.4-mile stream located in Carkeek Park in Seattle. The project includes nature field recordings, speculative fiction, poetry, and guitar riffs based on fieldnotes, observations, research, and guitar performances during the November 2022 visits to the creek during salmon run.
In the summer, Fountain spent time in the studio with a Jack Straw engineer to hone the audio (poetry, speculative fiction, field recordings, and guitar performance) for the project as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program. If you are in Corvallis, Oregon or nearby, check it out, along with the other artists who are in the exhibit. The “How to Carry Water” exhibit is the vision of curators Ashley Stull Meyers and Kelly Bosworth and will be on display at PRAx until December 21.
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Transonic - Hook Jab
Jack Straw artists Transonic recently released “Hook Jab,” the first single produced with help from their Jack Straw Artist Support Program residency. Follow them at @transonicmusic to hear what comes next.
Applications are due November 25th for Jack Straw’s 2025 Artist Support and New Media gallery programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Athr - LORA KROFT
“LORA KROFT” is a sneak preview of Jack Straw New Media Gallery Artist Athr’s exhibit D BUTTERFLY EFEKT. The installation, opening Friday, November 1, is an extended reality music album – an immersive experience where sound and visuals blend together to create virtual worlds.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Moonyeka and House of Kilig New Media Gallery Podcast
Jack Straw artists Moonyeka and Heidi Grace Acuña of House of Kilig talk with Jack Straw producer Carlos Nieto about their Jack Straw New Media Gallery installation flourish like an ocean’s grief.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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So’le Celestial - Numa’lo
During their artist residency with Jack Straw, So’le Celestial composed and produced a 5 track soundtrack titled Numa’lo – meaning, “revive, do again, return” in Fina’ CHamoru (the CHamoru language). This soundtrack explores So’le’s journey as a Trans & Queer, CHamoru, chronically ill, and disabled person. Numa’lo audibly illustrates So’le’s inner soul’s movements through life, love, grief, and death. So’le hopes to turn this soundtrack into a short film in the near future.
Jack Straw will host a listening event on Friday, October 11th, featuring Numa’lo, as well as soundscape works by Jack Straw resident artists Gregg Dietzman and Perri Lynch Howard.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Leanna Keith - Al-Wahdat al-Wujud
Leanna Keith’s album body of breath, available September 27th and produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program, is a concept album exploring the bass flute as a living, breathing, organism. “Al-Wahdat al-Wujud” was composed by Nebal Maysaud. Other composers featured on the album include Josh Hou, Heather Bentley, Kaley Lane Eaton, and Kevin Baldwin.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Tom Baker – Deeply Lodged I: Gather
Tom Baker’s album Deeply Lodged includes music from multiple Jack Straw Artist Support Program projects. “Deeply Lodged,” a work for solo piano in three movements, is performed by Cristina Valdés.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Tokio Florist Project New Media Gallery Podcast
Jack Straw artists Susie Kozawa and Brigid Kelly talk with Shin Yu Pai, Seattle’s Civic Poet and host of the podcast Ten Thousand Things, about their Jack Straw New Media Gallery installation Tokio Florist Project.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Bridge of Eights - The Sleeping Tune
Gregg Dietzman‘s 2023 Jack Straw Artist Support Program project resulted in the soundscape album Sound and Light Signals. The sounds here were recorded at various locations along the Inside Passage of the Pacific Northwest, including “the Haida Náay I´waans (Whale House) in Kasaan, the cupola of Five Finger Lighthouse in Frederick Strait, a boathouse on Kupreanof Island, on a boat at anchor in Eucott Bay, and in chapels in Port Townsend and Friday Harbor,” and edited and mixed together in the studios at Jack Straw Cultural Center.
Jack Straw will host a listening event on Friday, October 11th, featuring Sound and Light Signals, and soundscape works by Jack Straw resident artists So’le Celestial and Perri Lynch Howard.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
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Foleada - Creoxote
Jack Straw resident artists Foleada released their new album of Brazilian Forró music, Eu Vou Pra Lua, this summer. Forró, a cultural mainstay of Northeast Brazil, describes not just a musical genre but a way of life, a celebration of dance, love, and community. On Eu Vou Pra Lua – Portuguese for “I’m Going to the Moon” – Foleada gives Forró a contemporary Northwest spin, exploring the music’s soulful rhythmic tradition with four originals and four standards.