The 2024 Artist Talk Series is presented in collaboration with the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program. Join us for this free event in person in the Alchemy dome or via zoom using the information below.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171339245

Meeting ID: 831 7133 9245

Ben Driggs is a Chicago-based artist and construction worker interested in the nature of workmanship and the home as an artist built environment. His work often engages abstraction through the materials and processes of the building trades along with aluminum casting, coppersmithing, sun prints, mosaic and ceramics. At Alchemy Art Center he will be working toward making a ceramic tableware set for his home.

Learn more about Ben here.

The 2023 Artist Talk Series is presented in collaboration with the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program. Join us for this free event in person in the upstairs room at the SJIMA, or via zoom using the information below.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171339245

Meeting ID: 831 7133 9245

Sarah Gonzales Busse, based in San Antonio, TX, works in print and natural dyed textile focusing on individuals as signifiers and paradoxes within the human condition. She is drawn specifically to how individuals and groups inhabit intergenerational histories, cosmology patterns, sacred geometry, and cultural geographies. Her work often features women and children as primary messengers and receivers within natural, domestic, spare or abstracted landscapes.

Her materials and approaches have ranged from painting, drawing, and sculpture, to more recently working with natural dyes and traditional methods on paper, print, and textile works, as she reacts to being an artist and mother in these times of evolving cultural narratives, performative digital living, and really dire global climate and economic uncertainties.

Jenna Tessler (She/They) is an artist working through her ideas in the mediums of photography, mixed media, and writing. Her art practice is influenced by her minor in expressive art therapy that emphasizes process over attaining a final product. Through artmaking, she aims to bear witness to and further process her own experiences, especially ones that feel untouchable, difficult, or traumatic. The work that she will be sharing centers around the neurodivergence in her family and the relationship she has to her brother. She self-identifies as a “Glass child,” a term used to refer to the sibling of someone with a disability.

Jenna earned her BFA in Photography in 2021 from Lesley’s School of Art & Design (formerly Art Institute of Boston, MA). She has spent the last couple years exploring some of what the arts world has to offer. Notably, she has assisted at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, New Mexico, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin Headlands, CA and the Photo Center Northwest, Seattle, WA.

Join us in the Alchemy dome on Wednesday, 10/25 from 6-8pm for a pop up show featuring the work of our October artists-in-residence and their middle school mentees!

Sarah Gonzales Busse is our textile artist-in-residence and Jenna Tessler is our photography artist-in-residence. During their month-long stay with us, they have been mentoring two groups of middle schoolers in their respective disciplines. The work of their mentees will be on display along with the work of these two talented visiting artists!

About Sarah and Jenna:

Sarah Gonzales Busse, based in San Antonio, TX, works in print and natural dyed textile focusing on individuals as signifiers and paradoxes within the human condition. She is drawn specifically to how individuals and groups inhabit intergenerational histories, cosmology patterns, sacred geometry, and cultural geographies. Her work often features women and children as primary messengers and receivers within natural, domestic, spare or abstracted landscapes.

Her materials and approaches have ranged from painting, drawing, and sculpture, to more recently working with natural dyes and traditional methods on paper, print, and textile works, as she reacts to being an artist and mother in these times of evolving cultural narratives, performative digital living, and really dire global climate and economic uncertainties.

Jenna Tessler (She/They) is an artist working through her ideas in the mediums of photography, mixed media, and writing. Her art practice is influenced by her minor in expressive art therapy that emphasizes process over attaining a final product. Through artmaking, she aims to bear witness to and further process her own experiences, especially ones that feel untouchable, difficult, or traumatic. The work that she will be sharing centers around the neurodivergence in her family and the relationship she has to her brother. She self-identifies as a “Glass child,” a term used to refer to the sibling of someone with a disability.

Jenna earned her BFA in Photography in 2021 from Lesley’s School of Art & Design (formerly Art Institute of Boston, MA). She has spent the last couple years exploring some of what the arts world has to offer. Notably, she has assisted at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, New Mexico, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin Headlands, CA and the Photo Center Northwest, Seattle, WA.

The 2023 Artist Talk Series is presented in collaboration with the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program. Join us for this free event in person in the upstairs room at the SJIMA, or via zoom using the information below.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171339245

Meeting ID: 831 7133 9245

Charlie Bloede received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with a Concentration in Printmaking from Kansas State University in 2023. During her time at Kansas State, she was awarded the Mark A. Chapman and Cheryl Mellenthin Fine Arts Scholarship and two Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry Undergraduate Research Scholarships. She has exhibited work in the Mark A. Chapman and Cheryl Mellenthin Fine Arts Scholarship Exhibition, the Kansas City Artists Coalition’s 2023 Undergraduate College Student Exhibition, and multiple other print-based exhibitions.

Cozette Ellis is a visual artist and illustrator. Her preferred medium is watercolor and colored pencil, but she has spent most of her time at Alchemy honing in on her screen printing and block printing techniques as well as learning ceramics. Her work is largely focused around emotion and how that is expressed and experienced in the physical body.

Camila Giraldo is a mixed-media artist based out of Chicago, Illinois. She works with ceramics, crochet, drawing, and photography. She has been working with clay for over 10 years, but recently has been enjoying practicing different hand building techniques, as well as glaze chemistry. She has also been crocheting since childhood, a skill taught to her and practiced by her Colombian aunts and mother. Her diverse skills allow her to create pieces that seamlessly blend various mediums, resulting in artwork that is personal and thoughtful.  She currently works with teenagers at a Chicago park district studio, and has an internship at GnarWare, a community ceramics studio serving the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

The 2023 Artist Talk Series is presented in collaboration with the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program. Join us for this free event in person in the upstairs room at the SJIMA, or via zoom using the information below.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171339245

Meeting ID: 831 7133 9245

Jean Behnke is a printmaker and sculptor working with wood and cast bronze. She has lived for 35 years on Lopez Island and is represented by Smith & Vallee Gallery in Edison and Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho.

“My approach to making art is inventive and the start of this process is motivated by my innate bearings. I am often drawn in by inherent qualities of the materials and gathered objects, and by simple impulses to combine things.”

Joe Cooper is a mixed media sculptor who has been living and working on San Juan Island for over 30 years.  Joe’s work can be seen  in Friday Harbor at Paula West Pottery, the home studio he shares with his wife Paula. 

“My intention is to create a tactile and visual record of process. I work with oil paint, encaustic, canvas, paper, various metals, wire and wood to arrange responses to natural and man-made architectures.  I seek to find a balance between organized pattern and random marks. I am fascinated by the intrinsic properties of various materials, which I explore through contrast and juxtaposition.”

The 2023 Artist Talk Series is presented in collaboration with the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program. Join us for this free event in person in the upstairs room at the SJIMA, or via zoom using the information below.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171339245

Meeting ID: 831 7133 9245

Paula West is a studio potter living on San Juan Island, Wa. Originally From Connecticut, she moved to San Juan Island in 1990 and in 1993 set up her small, home based ceramic studio. She works in porcelain and stoneware clay to create handmade vessels that merge function, craft and art. Currently, she is exploring soda firing. This process involves spraying a soda ash solution into the kiln at 2300 degrees. The soda ash vaporizes and moves through the kiln along the path of the flame, forming a glaze on the pots. This creates unpredictable, dynamic and subtle surfaces, a collaboration between kiln, flame, atmosphere and maker.

San San Juan Island artist Alisha Merrick is a painter, illustrator, and enamelist. Her work features bold colors, and minimal designs inspired by nature and Scandinavian sensibilities. You can often find her in her carefully curated brick and mortar shop, FERN, which displays much of her work across a variety of media, as well as the work of other regional artists and craftspeople.

“My work is … an emotional connection to the necessity of beautiful things, merged with my strongly rooted love of nature. The same natural palates, organic patterns, and minimal designs repeat themselves over and over in my work.

I strive for a balance of these influences in each intentionally made, hand fabricated piece. Interesting color combinations, sometimes bold, often muted, that echo the inherent beauty of the shapes and patterns found in nature. Every artistic creation is unique, and that is something to be embraced and celebrated.”

Alchemy Art Center Dome

1255 Wold Rd, Friday Harbor, WA 98250

$15 donation at the door

For driving directions and accessibility info, click HERE

Please join us for this very special music event in the dome! Alchemy welcomes Olympia-based experimental sound musician Arrington de Dionyso and musicians-in-residence Emerald Vernon-Lapow and Rob Summerlin, and kicks off the 2023 East Coast tour of John Bellows and Glenn Hendrick.

Arrington de Dionyso conjures Utopic Spaces with multiphonic vocal work & minimalist instrumentation. It is shamanic seance meets rock and roll ecstasy; “TRANCE PUNK” combining traditional ritual trance, electrified experimental approaches, dancehall rhythms, gamelan scales and mystically inspired Indonesian incantations. Arrington is visiting from Olympia, Washington.

music - https://arrington.bandcamp.com/

art - https://arringtondedionyso.bigcartel.com/

Ephemerald is a musical Artist-in-Residence this month at Alchemy. The foundation of her songwriting was initially composed via omnichord, a vintage electronic autoharp of sorts made by Suzuki. She has more recently put her discipline into guitar and hovers her soft emotive lyrics above suspended picking progressions. Ephemerald currently records, performs, and collaborates out of the Bay Area.

https://on.soundcloud.com/k4JgD

Rob Summerlin is also joining us from the Bay Area. His lyrics are often character-based and narrative-driven. He just celebrated a recent album release of his songs by hosting an all inclusive prom in the Bay Area community. This month at Alchemy he is focusing on a new musical, working out songs on piano.  Me and You and Jackie and Mike

Local luminaries John Bellows and Glenn Hendrick have teamed up as a stripped down psych folk duo and put together a handful of songs featuring flute, bass, and harmonies by Glenn with John’s finger-picked tunes. They will showcase a few new songs before taking off on their 2023 East Coast tour.  

https://johnbellows.bandcamp.com/

The 2023 Artist Talk Series is presented in collaboration with the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program. Join us for this free event in person in the upstairs room at the SJIMA, or via zoom using the information below.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171339245

Meeting ID: 831 7133 9245

Julia Nadbornik is a photographic artist from Phoenix, Arizona. Raised by an artist, she grew up having a love and respect for art-making since childhood. She is currently pursuing a BFA in photography from Arizona State University. Her work focuses on alternative photo methods made with botanicals, textiles, and other mixed media. These methods are used to create works about identity, nature and their interactions with one another.

Sarah Hart received her BFA from the University of Washington and MFA from CalArts. She has done extensive photographic, video, and web work in Russia, Western Europe, and the US. She has taught in the photo/film/media departments at Hampshire College, Rutgers University, and she taught for 20 years at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her photographic and film work includes extensive environmental and social documentary projects, including as Executive Producer of Return of the River, the acclaimed documentary film on the removal of the Elwha River dams.

Join members and resident artists for our first ever Alchemy Holiday Sale! Vendors will be set up in the Dome. Expect pottery, prints, textiles, and other wonderful handmade gifts!

Join us for our last pop-up show of the year! Featuring the work of Casey Reagan Sulli Yost, Katey Rissi, Nicolai Otte, and Cozette Ellis!

Light snacks and beverages will be available. Don’t miss this show!

You are invited!

Our 2022 Artist Talk Series is hosted at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring St. Please join us for an evening of discussion and work presented by visiting and local artists. Light refreshments will be served.

This talk will also be offered via Zoom!

To view a video recording of this talk, click HERE.

Featured image: Enter II by Shannon Borg

Katey Rissi is an artist, herbalist, and educator based in the Pacific Northwest. Her artmaking practice is interdisciplinary and process-oriented, with a focus on printmaking and fiber art. Katey’s work explores ecological relationships, place, ancestral connection, and environmental grief. She also runs an herbal medicine project, the Salish Sea Apothecary, focused on herbal mutual aid. Katey is a resident artist at Alchemy as part of the Artists in Community program. You can learn more about her on her website.

Shannon Borg is a painter, writer, and art and business coach. She started painting at age 50, studying in the Trowbridge Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. She lives in the San Juan Islands where she is a member of the Friday Harbor Atelier community of artists. Her oil paintings capture the strangeness and mystery of the beaches of the San Juan Islands.

You can learn more about Shannon on her website.

Alchemy Art Center Dome
1255 Wold Rd
6pm-9pm, musical performance by Emerald at 7pm

Directions/Accessibility

Come see what Alchemy’s amazingly talented August/September artist cohort has been up to this summer! This is the culminating event for Lenore Wan, Cozette Ellis, and Emerald VL, all of whom have been living and working at Alchemy and interacting with the SJI community through free art activities for the past two months.

Lenore Wan is a multidisciplinary artist from Seattle working in the realms of ceramics and illustration. She loves to capture playful forms and colorful patterns in her work. At Alchemy Art Center, she’s been developing hand-building and glazing techniques, as well as fabric painting. She loves to work spontaneously and loosely to capture the explorative process of art making. 

Cozette Ellis is a visual artist and illustrator who has spent her time at alchemy working with different forms of printmaking and learning ceramics. She is inspired by the human body in all its forms, especially incorporated with color and pattern. 

Emerald VL is a visiting artist from Berkeley, California. She has a background in drawing & painting, and has spent her time here at Alchemy focusing on her music, and learning screen printing & ceramics. At the show on the 27th Emerald will share some art, and a set of music she has written during her time on island.

These visiting artists are part of Alchemy’s Artists in Community Program, which is made possible by support from the NEA, ArtsWA, Tulalip Charitable Fund, San Juan Island Community Foundation, and by the support of the SJI community.

Our 2022 Artist Talk Series is hosted at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring St. Please join us for an evening of discussion and work presented by visiting and local artists. Light refreshments will be served.

This talk will also be offered via Zoom!

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89552451464?pwd=NmxXRnZpbHVzZFRjMGtxd0FFb2V0UT09

Meeting ID: 895 5245 1464

Passcode: 606934

Marsha McAllister is a long-time San Juan Island resident and accomplished artist. She travels fluidly between sculpture and painting, always seeking innovation in her materials. Her work is always rooted, however, in her concern and love for the environment. Family road trips during her childhood “inspired a lifetime fascination for the natural world, and the magnified experiences of divided space / divided people / what is left behind.” You can learn more about Marsha’s work on her website.

Glenn Hendrick was born in Los Angeles, raised in the Midwest, and has been living on San Juan Island since 2013. She earned a degree in painting, drawing and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006, and now creates work in a variety of media including ceramics.

Glenn is the other half of the organizational component of Alchemy, as well an instructor. You can learn more about Glenn’s art on her website.

Our 2022 Artist Talk Series is hosted at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring St. Please join us for an evening of discussion and work presented by visiting and local artists. Light refreshments will be served.

This talk will also be offered via Zoom!

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81189613341
Meeting ID: 811 8961 3341

Maria Michaelson is a San Juan Islander, and founder of Alchemy Art Center. After growing up here on the island, she attended California College of the Arts. During her 20s she practiced interactive community art and spent 2 years living in Africa learning bronze casting, before returning to the island to focus on ceramic figurative sculpture. Hear her story, and the origin and inspiration behind Alchemy during her artist talk!

Ananya Chiara Bernardo (she/her) is a visual artist from Silver Spring, Maryland who is currently exploring different mediums. She mostly works with silkscreen prints but is learning mediums like textiles, collage, ceramics and digital art. Her work uses bright colors to delve into personal growing pains as a means of expression.

Ananya Bernardo and Vince Cuadra are living and working at Alchemy Art Center this summer as part of the Artists in Community Program. This program brings young and emerging artists from all over the country to share their skills, learn, and create art, while engaging in the SJI community. Artists in Community is made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtsWA, the San Juan Island Community Foundation, Tulalip Charitable Foundation, and by donations from community members.

6pm-8pm
Alchemy Art Center Dome
1255 Wold Rd.

Come see what our amazing interns and visiting artists have been creating! Prints, ceramics, and more will be for sale… plus, our some of our youth mentees might show some of their work as well!

Light refreshments will be served.

Please join artists Nikyta Palmisani, Juniper Blomberg, Anya Gleizer, and Pablo Fernández Velasco as they discuss their creative collaboration and exploration how ecological boundaries can transform one’s sense of a place.

Nikyta and Juniper are local Lopez artists. Anya is an artist and researcher at Oxford University, and Pablo is a researcher at Trinity College Dublin. Integral to their common project is a focus on local food and the boundaries one encounters in the effort to eat locally and therefore limit the use of non-local resources. The act of procuring, preparing, cooking and eating food (an art ritual in itself) has deep parallels with the act of making art – it reflects how our bodies and spirits are nourished, and also where this nourishment originates from.

This presentation will be held in the dome at Alchemy. For more information on how to get here, please visit our contact page.

Our 2022 Artist Talk Series is hosted at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring St. Please join us for an evening of discussion and work presented by visiting and local artists. Light refreshments will be served.

Maya Noga Djiji is a visual artist from California who loves exploring different mediums. On top of her love for exploration, she also loves to use a lot of color. With her saturated palette she makes work with ceramics, textiles, glass, printmaking, and much more. Her work touches on the playful nature of magic, the delicate beauty of life, and the intricacies of death.

Maya is living and working at Alchemy Art Center in June and July as part of our Artists in Community Program. The featured image for this event is a detail of an installation created during her 2021 residency at Alchemy.

Adrian Kilpatrick is a collage and mixed media artist who is currently residing on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. His art deals with modern day alienation, surrealism, nature, politics, fantasy and dream states. His primary focus is to create an open dialogue by transporting viewers of his works to realms that parallel our own reality, and cause us to question our current human condition. Materials gathered from old picture books, magazines, and brochures found from various thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales form images that ultimately encapsulate the moods/cultures/ideologies found throughout human development and shows us the different influences that our past has over our modern day lives.

Our 2022 Artist Talk Series is hosted at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring St. Please join us for an evening of discussion and work presented by visiting and local artists. Light refreshments will be served.

Sarah Aineb is a visual artist, mostly working in printmaking, comics and film, based in San Francisco, CA. With most of their work being autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, their work explores the invisible connections between feeling and space and time. Whether it's a singular drawing or a series of prints or a narrative comic, Aineb's works illustrate the emotional imprint of personal histories on physical landscapes, altering how we see space and feelings. They express honest and somewhat secretive lore behind the scenery of the San Francisco Bay Area by focusing on personal symbols/mythology and sacred landscapes, real and imaginary. Sarah is living and working at Alchemy Art Center April and May as part of our Artists in Community Program. The featured image, Nightanza, is a reduction screen print by Sarah Aineb.

Sam Ford is an artist from Friday Harbor, specializing in pen and ink illustration. His work has been featured on album covers, posters, and other music-related art, as well as business logos and his first published graphic novel, a retelling of the horror classic “The Willows” adapted by Nathan Carson. In addition to his art, Sam plays music, drumming in his long-running metal band Wizard Rifle, as well as performing in the John Cameron Mitchell productions “Homunculus” and “How to Talk To Girls At Parties,” among other projects. You can learn more about Sam’s work on his website.

Peter Chan is a San Juan Island resident of 26 years and a freelance illustrator, visual development artist, and concept designer for the film and game industries. His experience spans almost 30 years in the entertainment service (LucasFilm, LucasArts, Pixar, DreamWorks, Paramount, to name a few).

If you’re curious about what it means to be a visual development artist (concept designer) for films and games, please stop by and join us. He’ll be sharing some of his artwork from various projects, breaking down his compositions, and sharing his visual (storytelling) process. If there’s time left over, he’ll be available for Q&A.

http://peterchanconceptart.com/

Katey Rissi is an artist, educator, medicine maker, and activist. Her art making practice is interdisciplinary and shifts between printmaking, illustration, collage, natural sculpture, textiles, and photography. Themes present in her work include ancestral skills, ecology, environmental grief, ancestor work, unsettling/ decolonization, and what it means to be connected to community and place.
Rissi holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Western Michigan University with a focus in Photography and Printmaking. She will be living and working at Alchemy Art Center for the month of August- check out our class page for information on her workshop!

Danielle Dean is an artist, educator, and curator based on San Juan Island. She received an MFA in photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and her work is included in public and private collections throughout the country.
“I want my work to inhabit the threshold between vastness and intimacy. I am interested in working with the dimensional space of photography in new ways by combining traditional photographic techniques with painting, printmaking, and small sculptures. My images begin with black and white film exposed through antiquated lenses. The old optics allow the light and atmosphere to impress themselves on the silver of the film. With the steel and lead sculptures, I am working in collaboration with the sea and earth of the island to patina the objects. The work is about light, the elements, the alchemy of nature and chance.”

Amy Simons is an American artist who has lived in the Midwest, Northwest, and now the Southwest. Her current research explores monotypes on handmade paper, often incorporating textiles as physical components, inky ghosts or deep embossments. Amy holds a BFA in ceramics from the University of Washington and is currently a graduate student in printmaking at Arizona State University. She will be living and working at Alchemy Art Center for the month of July- check out our class page for information on her workshop!

Joe Miller is an abstract painter based on San Juan Island. His shimmering compositions are sublime studies in pattern and color, informed and inspired by his natural surroundings.
"I bring the desert with me from the first half of my life as an artist,and mix it with the glacial erratics and forests here on the island. Out of this brew abstractions rise and I lay them down on the canvasses I craft for their support."

Katy Collier works in multiple disciplines including printmaking, drawing, quilting, and text. Her richly layered compositions are visually stunning testaments to workmanship and craft, to major themes running through her work. Katy is based in Greensboro, NC where she also teaches at Guilford College. She will be living and working at Alchemy Art Center for the month of June- check out our class page for information on her workshop!

Laura Bauer is a mixed media artist based on San Juan Island. Working primarily in encaustics, Laura is always pushing the boundaries of painting as a medium, even crossing into sculpture. Her works buzz with a playful energy that can belie the laborious processes through which they are created.

What are the arts for? Why do we need them and how do they help us? How do music, movies, tv shows, novels, paintings, sculptures, plays, ballets, and all the rest of our arts contribute to human survival?

Lonnie Potter discusses the practical, social, and evolutionary function of the arts—how they help each one of us survive and thrive by growing the core skills we need to adapt and improve ourselves and the world around us.

Lonnie Potter is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked in music, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and poetry. Lonnie began his art talks in 2018, with Other Wise: The Practical, Social and Evolutionary Purpose of the Arts, a series of four talks over the course of the year. In 2020 he started his most recent project: a podcast based on a book from those talks called Arts & Survival. He lives and works in Omaha, Nebraska.

Following overwhelming community response to last year's performance at Alchemy Art Center, the Space Lady is back for more!

Last July, Susan Dietrich lived up to her 20-year musical legacy with a truly magical performance in the Dome. Her versions of “Strawberry Fields," “Ghost Riders in the Sky," and “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night” brought an otherworldly quality to the beloved songs. On one original, she lamented the state of humanity and, with a crying theremin, passionately animated a prayer for Mother Earth. On “Oh, Brave New World” the whole room sang along with the chorus, with many audience members in tears by the end.

$10 Donation at the door.
Local musicians John Bellows/Glenn Hendrick will open.