Today marks the halfway point of Joan Stuart Ross and Sandy Bradley’s visual arts project (July 15-August 15). Here is the latest update from the studio:

Sandy Bradley
“I made 10 more of the off-center square tiles with grass impressions yesterday, and I will make a final few today. I have to work on the slab roller before the sun hits the back yard. We should have enough for two assemblies. We might want to glaze a set of those. I also make about 4 native clay tiles per day — limited by the forms I dry them in in this case. Those tiles crack into pieces, and I intend to fire the pieces for replacement in order.

We changed the electrical outlet at the studio yesterday and will schedule moving the kiln into place for firing as soon as we have a quorum for the lift, which is 3 people or more. Tomorrow I take the day off for my sister’s birthday — an important annual appreciation. I’ll bring another batch of drying tiles up today. Maybe we can actually bisque fire a few on Thursday…”

Joan Stuart Ross
“Some encaustic paint application on a few of the fired tiles might be interesting, in place of and/or in addition to glaze–the Greeks painted with encaustic on marble, wood and clay and it’s perfect for textural treatments.

I will begin work on some 4″ x 4″ encaustic-over-wood inserts for the clay tiles after this weekend. The rhythm of the embedded encaustic over wood pieces inside the clay surround should be a nice cadence.”

“I took the crumbly goat footprint tiles to Cyndy’s studio — trying to look as productive as Joan! The footprints might not work. Next: layered clay, cross sectioned cuts to mimic grass or seaweed or wind….. they also might not work, as in not hold together.

Next 8″ squares with 4″ holes in them, the holes off center. Then hammered spartina grass into the surface. Those might work.

Now, hurry up and DRY. I said Dry! Not warp! Just dry nice and flat!

Started preparing another batch of dredge spoils to try the goat footprints again. This time, I hold the goat and place his feet in the clay. None of this voluntary art business! Then, as a special treat, I’ll trim their hooves.”

Photo by JSRoss

Sandy Bradley
“It occurred to me that the depth of relief in the surfaces I make in the clay might want to be reflected in the wood squares as a level of contrast in the paint. I think it could be really unifying. It would also make lighting a huge issue in hanging the piece. I’m listening to my favorite show on KMUN: Shady Grove. It’s Old Time Music, and tonight they’re playing a lot of (blush) ‘me.’ I was really stunned to hear my guitar playing from 1975, and to appreciate how very strong it was, and how succinctly it related to the lead instruments. My playing was informative in a unifying way. Somewhere there’s a parallel between that bass line on my guitar and the depth of relief in the tile, vs. the degree of contrast in the 2-D elements.”

Joan Stuart Ross
“Yesterday I spent the day working on three panels with the imagery of the snowy plover, one of the themes for the series of images I plan to investigate and use in my work. My list of images includes: oysters, oyster shell stacks, marsh grasses, lichen and branches, boats and boat formations, berries and other flora…I’m combining oil paint, collage and encaustic, emphasizing texture and varying surface treatments. I think that they will play off Sandy’s clay and vice versa–positives and negatives/darks and lights will perhaps make areas that will add to the drama of the combined panels. Then we won’t need to worry about lighting; the surfaces will imply their own light and shadow.”

Photo by JSRoss

On July 20, Sandy Bradley describes the beginning of her Espy-sponsored project with Joan Stuart Ross:

“Great! I say to myself. This will be easy. Make the tiles, for starters. Er, no. Get the clay from Ilwaco — find the dredge spoils and take yer buckets. After some searching for the best stuff, I brought home about 15-20 gallons of clay chunks. Half of it I knocked into smaller chunks and crushed through a 1/2 inch blunger, then hydrated it. The other half I put in the cement mixer with water for an hour or so, then poured into tubs. All are in the greenhouse now, drying out.

Then I dug into the studio and found about 20 lbs of last year’s dredge spoils, which looks a lot closer to being workable. If the weather permits tomorrow, I’ll work them into tiles, or at least slabs for future use. I even found my sample chip from my test firing last year, and it shows that it shrinks by 1/8 upon bisque firing. So the wet tiles will need to be 9 and 1/8″ before drying and firing.

Funny that we both landed on 8″ squares as being the size of element we’d work on. It just seemed too easy….. Maybe it’s just like two little old ladies deciding that painting bunnies would be a good idea. Are we connected, or are we trite?
I’m enjoying whichever we are.”

Espy Visual Artist in Residence Joan Stuart Ross shares an update on her project with fellow resident Sandy Bradley:

“Sunday night we were welcomed by a memorable evening of conversation and a delicious dinner at Polly’s house. Yesterday Sandy, my pup Cody, and I checked out local imagery—we took photos of goats, the ocean, and various flora. I took a self-portrait of the two of us. The work of looking, and being “open” to seeing, is tiring–while one is trying to receive lots of information, one is also trying to focus on specific details—the two are related, and at the same time, opposite, endeavors.

Today, after meeting at noon, we decided that Sandy would go to the Port of Ilwaco to gather some clay and that she would begin to work on 48 8” x 8” ceramic tiles; I would begin painting studies for a group of 8” x 8” oil and encaustic panels—we will use several configurations of materials and repetitive imagery. We’ll work in our own media, and perhaps later, might add to/embellish each other’s panels. We’ll be in touch each day. I’ll mostly work at the Sanctuary studio; Sandy will work there when she is ready to do a bisque firing; we will collaborate on their placement and order when it is time to put them together into larger formats.

Some history: Over the years, both Sandy and I have experimented with varied applications of the materials we love—Sandy’s music, performance and ceramics, my paint and ink. Our paths have serendipitously crossed many times as we’ve volunteered for various causes. We were both long-time members of the Bumbershoot Festival Commission; Sandy has volunteered as an auctioneer for many non-profits, including the Folklife Festival and the Glass Eye Scholarship Fund; I donated my artwork to these same groups to be auctioned off by Sandy.

We have always had a mutual admiration of one another’s work, and are delighted to see how many times we overlap and concur with ideas about rhythm, placement and the conception of visual ideas. Sandy thinks in rhythms and repetition of sound/images; I’m interested in pattern, specific images as icons, and the use of color to indicate mood and emotional response to land/sky/water and their denizens. We both are interested in finding the “pattern within the pattern.” These ideas relate to a choice of vocabulary in our aural and visual language.

Importantly, Sandy and I have met and re-met here at Willapa Bay. When visiting in 2001, my husband, John and I discovered that Sandy had moved here to be with her husband, Larry. I called Sandy last summer when I was here for an Espy residency; and we got together and began to plan for this summer’s residency with ideas based on our visions, impressions and dreams of the luminous Bay. Polly Friedlander and Cyndy Hayward supported our intentions, and now we are starting our project!

Sandy and I hope that our experiments with indigenous form and its pattern and repetition will offer us opportunities to apply as a team for public art projects through the WA State Arts Commission. We spoke with Cyndy, who has generously donated the use of her Sanctuary’s artist’s studios to us, about a possible installation at Adelaide’s, her Ocean Park Bookstore and Espresso Café. We hope that other venues will present themselves as our project progresses.”

Written July 17, 2007
Photo by JSRoss

On July 15, visual artists Sandy Bradley and Joan Stuart Ross (of Nahcotta, WA and Seattle) will begin a month-long collaborative project sponsored by the Espy Foundation. Joan and Sandy will create a series of mixed-media panels exploring pattern and repetition in the local landscape: “Our nature-referenced photos, drawings, and paintings of the natural and human-made repetitive forms that activate the Willapa Bay landscape in SW Washington will be inspiration for visual abstractions of texture and pattern.” Joan Stuart Ross is an established Seattle-based artist and art teacher. Sandy Bradley, host and producer of NPR’s “Sandy Bradley’s Potluck” from 1984 to 1996, currently lives on Willapa Bay as an artist and community activist.

Michele Carlson / Visual Artist / Oakland, CA
Michele creates works on paper and ties them to written narratives to create collections of work that are dense with information and ideas. She says, “I engage in a critical examination of the cultural, political and historic images that make up grand historical narratives and am interested in what happens when the person who views them cannot relate to what they are seeing. The work hopes to examine this space through the isolation, dislodging and refiguring of popular and historic images, and the fictions they can produce.”

Brian Hart / Writer / Austin, TX
Brian is working toward finishing a book set in Idaho that follows “a family broken up by violence and brought back together by injury.” The first six chapters of the novel were awarded the Keene Prize for Literature. (Pictured below.)

Steven Miller / Visual Artist / Seattle, WA
“I create performance-based photography and fictive narratives. I seek to aggrandize aspects of my identity that society would punish me for, and thus create a dialogue to expose the hypocrisies of our conservative culture. I am concurrently working on two bodies of work; Wild Boys externalized the fears and misrepresentations of queer culture, while Bound addresses the psychological connections and disconnections between self and others.” Steven is preparing for a September 2007 solo show at Davidson Contemporary in Seattle and plans to use his month in Oysterville in post-production of his photography collection.

Eman Quotah / Historical Writer / Rockville, MD
Eman is the Espy Foundation’s first annual John McClelland Historical Writing Resident. She is nearing completion of the first draft of her first novel, which tells the story of the son of an esteemed calligrapher growing up in 13th century Iraq. Eman will devote her residency to researching medieval Islamic society and finishing her initial draft.

Domenica Ruta / Writer
Domenica is a fiction writer currently living in the United States.

Suzan Sherman / Writer / New York, NY
Suzan is an established writer who is currently working towards completion of a novel that follows a girl in the 1870’s riding the Orphan Train, a controversial social program that sent orphaned, destitute, and unwanted children to the West on trains to be raised by farm families.

Katie Yale / Environmental Essayist / Columbia, MO
Katie is the Espy Foundation’s second annual Environmental Writing Resident. She has recently earned her Masters in Environmental Nonfiction at the University of Montana in Missoula and works seasonally as a wildlife science technician. A poet as well as an essayist, Katie writes to bridge the gap between what she calls “science-minded” and “humanity-minded” people by using an approachable form of lyrical storytelling to discuss her experiences with and knowledge of environmental science and conservation.

We would like to thank the following treasured friends of the Espy Foundation:

Robert Thurston and the Thurston Charitable Trust, for initial and continuous significant support of Espy.

Joan Davidson and the Kaplan Fund, for significant contributions during the beginning stage that made our existence possible.

John McClelland, Jr., a founding trustee who has provided intelligent, caring advice and significant financial support continuously. The annual John McClelland Historical Writing residency was created in 2007 in his honor.

Theodor Schuchat, Espy Advisory Trustee and member of the Library Committee, for his support, presence, and caring from the beginning.

Paul Dickson, who made our library significant with his contribution of nearly 2,000 books on the English language and its usage–including important reference works on dialects, slang, and wordplay.

John Morse, President of Merriam-Webster, for dignifying the newly formed Espy Foundation in 2000 by donating a complete set of Merriam-Webster dictionaries.

Arnold Roth, New Yorker cartoonist, who believed in us and spoke, joked, and sketched images for every Espy occasion.

Anna Skibska, for her continuous, passionate support not only in public relations by spreading the word, but also for her many, many contributions of glass sculptures for auction–that frequently sell twice!

Cynthia Hayward, for making the Sanctuary studios available for the use of Espy residents, and for much other support.

The Ruins, who has graciously and generously allowed us to use their space to meet and tell our story.

Dale Chihuly, for his standing offer of The Boathouse for our events.

Voiko Tanev, Digital Seattle, for computer support over the years.

Jack and Audrey van Kinsbergen, for donating computers to the Espy Foundation from its inception.

The Espy Foundation is hosting five writers and two visual artists for our June 2007 residency. After meeting in Oysterville on June 1st for a welcome dinner with Espy president Polly Friedlander, the seven residents retreated to their workspaces to write, paint, and fine-tune their work.

Visual artist Michele Carlson is using studio space at the Sanctuary, generously donated by Cyndy Hayward. Seattle photographer Steven Miller is staying in accommodations new to the Espy Foundation: the Village Loft in the heart of historic Oysterville, owned by Leigh Wilson. The loft is a perfect haven for Steven, who lives in a busy artists’ community in Seattle and is glad for solitude and quiet to prepare a new series of photographs for an upcoming show at Davidson Contemporary. Each of the five writers in residence, including John McClelland Historical Writer Eman Quotah and Environmental Essayist Katie Yale, have private writing space in and around Oysterville.

In addition, residents are enjoying exploring the community–touring a nearby goat dairy, walking and biking through state parks, and sampling local foods. Writer Suzan Sherman, who works on Times Square in New York City, has had a life-changing encounter with locally-caught crab from Jimella’s Seafood Market & Community Store. “It was the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. I’m going to buy one crab for every week I’m here,” she said delightedly.

Eman Quotah and Katie Yale at the new Espy property