The Clouds are Lifting:

1 | Sarah Fetterman “Winter and Spring in Stained Glass” & “Belly”

Winter and Spring in Stained Glass is a rumination on the journey we take every winter. It felt like a rite of passage when I first moved to Washington. Something everyone goes through together. As we are nearing the turning point toward warmer weather and the colorful flowers and skies of spring, I wanted to create a sort of portal to demarcate and embrace this transition. Even though it is part of a yearly cycle, spring feels new every time. I wanted the colors in the work to reflect the brightness and excitement, while also fading out at times to speak to where this transition began.

While creating ‘Belly’, I was thinking about the feminine curves of my body that came through my lineage from my grandmother. This piece speaks to motherhood’s roll in both myth and reality, in re-birth, agriculture, and fertility. Rebirth much like that of spring, which brings new and renewed life to us after its long awaited re-entry.

Sarah Fetterman is a Seattle-based artist. Fetterman attended Bennington College and the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Her work has been shown at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Seattle Center, Center on Contemporary Art, Soil Gallery, Price Sculpture Park, Port Angeles Fine Art Center, and Hybrid Space. She is excited to announce that she has accepted a scholarship to attend Forging Focus, a six-week blacksmithing intensive this year. She is currently working on a sculpture for the City of Shoreline. She teaches welding lessons from her space in Ballard.

Artist Website: http://www.sarahfettermanstudios.com/ | Instagram: @sarahfettermanstudios

2 | Lindsey Champlin and Quinlyn Johnson – “Flowers in the Park”

Flowers in the Park is a collection of handmade tulips, sculpted and cast in phosphorescent polymers. While discreet sculptural forms during the daytime, the sun’s light charges the blooms and come nightfall the tulips will begin to gently glow. Roughly a hundred of these tulips will be planted among the flowerbeds, their soft light a beacon of springtime, a tribute to the power of the sun. 

Lindsey Champlin and Quinlyn Johnson  are close friends and longtime coworkers. With a four year working relationship at John Grade Studio, Champlin and Johnson maintain individual practices, with a combined sculptural background in wood, casting, metals, and soft sculpture. Champlin is a visual artist whose work explores concepts of identity, perception, relationship and the subtle systems that exist around us and in us. Her processes are deeply rooted in research and often involve strategies of distillation and recombination. Johnson’s sculpture explores the usefulness and value of everyday objects. Replicating low value domestic objects in wood, metal, concrete and other low craft and high craft materials, Johnson repurposes how the physical form of objects are used and understood.

Lindsey’s website: https://www.lindseychamplin.com  | Quinlyn’s website is: https://quinlynjohnson.wixsite.com/arts

Lindsey’s instagram: @lindseyjune_613 | Quinlyn’s instagram: @quinlyn_art

3 | Boomslang Creatives ”Illios” 

‘Ilios’ is a greek work for Sun God. Inspired by the notion of coming out of winter, Ilios is an embodied expression of the great power of the sun as a swirling mass of gasses that our world is depended on and drawn to. Ilios’s brightness and glow encapsulates the gravity of the sun, as well as the impact on its surroundings casting an orange glow reminiscent of stunning sunsets. We hope Ilios draws Freeway Park visitors towards it in reference to the movement we find ourselves in naturally, drawn to the true sun which is ever so slowly breaking free of its gray winter confines. 

Boomslang Creatives is a two-person team comprised of Darren Edwards and Erica Bush. Boomslang is an art, design, and fabrication firm dedicated to telling stories through sensory enhancing means and creating beautiful spaces for all.  Our artwork takes inspiration from the beautiful world around us and articulates it in a reimagined capacity. 

Artist Website: https://www.boomslangcreatives.com/ | Instagram: @boomslangcreatives

4 | Dustin Curtis “La Grotta” & “Crankie, eg.”

“La Grotta” is a shadow theatre piece visually exploring Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Using light to manipulate the puppets and scenery, viewers accompany the protagonist on their  journey to enlighten as they realize and reflect own what was their current state. 

Crankies are an old form of storytelling. Using backlight surfaces, images are laid out and  attached in order for the scroll to be “cranked” in a moving panorama. This story “The Stars  Tonight” is set to music by Patrick Wolf. As we missed love ones, we are reminded of their 

Dustin Curtis is the founder of Trivia Puppet Company. Having performed from the Pacific  Northwest to Italy; Trivia Puppet Company presents new work inspired by training with Teatro  Gioco Vita, (Italy), where he studied thanks to a generous UNIMA-USA Education Grant in  2017. An Alumni of the O’Neill National Puppetry Conference. Dustin also studied stop motion  puppet construction and film in Prague. Dustin serves to the board of Directors for Puppeteers of  America, currently as President of the board. 

Artist website: www.triviatriviapuppet.com | Instagram: @triviapuppet | Facebook: /triviapuppet

5 | Scott Keva James “Crepuscular Motion”

What does light do?  It comes out of darkness to reveal, to give shape and texture to make color.  It show us direction, defines space and cycles to help us track time. Crepuscular Motion is a Is a playful exploration of the qualities of light, combining real and imagined imagery into scenes that play themselves out on the canvas of the Canyon Fountain.

Scott Keva James is a Seattle-based audio/visual artist, who works primarily with found imagery and light, using video and projection in installation work and live visual performance. He has a keen interest in time, texture and flow. His education in Landscape Architecture informs interventions in real spaces intended to create real, multi-dimensional experiences. In his work lyrical patterns emerge and slide along the continuum between organic and inorganic, nature and artifice, abstract and concrete. In his professional life he has creative-directed multimedia stage shows and implemented complex, immersive environments.

Artist Website: https://www.scottkevajames.com/ | Instagram: @skevajames

6 | Roldy Aguero Abloa: “ININA” – to glimmer or glow

In some parts of the Pacific, navigators who sail under moonlight use bioluminescence as they travel. They search the surface of the seas for glimmers and glows to help guide their path, leading them to a catch or bringing them back home. For this piece, I would love it to feel that we can also search for the light, even at night. That there are quiet and wondrous moments that can help guide us along our path, if we are open to looking.

Roldy Aguero Ablao is a mixed queer CHamoru artist and cultural practitioner from the island of Guahan. They explore culture, heritage and gender in their work, using fashion, photography, sculpture and performance as places of embodiment, sovereignty and joy. They also love cats, thrift shopping and social justice. 

Instagram: @hafaroldy

7 | Heather Dawn Sparks: “Edge Effect”

The edge effect describes how there is greater biodiversity of life where two or more ecosystems overlap. Hand cut designs of Sword Fern, Nootka Rose, Elderberry, Pacific Trailing Blackberry, and Salmonberry emerge to create a forested understory of light. The wing tips of Owl cut the sky to let cyclical moons shine through. Crafted from sparks searing through steel, “Edge Effect” conjures the wilds of nature into shifting spectres of shadow and light.

Sparks Designs is a creative team based out of Lookout Arts Quarry (LAQ), a 60 acre former rock quarry turned collectively owned art and event center located in Nuwhaha, Coast Salish territory. As licensed contractors and lead builders within an arts community, Sparks consistently collaborates with a diverse team of artists, innovators and builders. Spark’s has created installations for over 6 countries, 30 cities and 40+ global art events including showings at the Lightcatcher Museum, Museum of Anthropology, Port Angeles Fine Art Center, Luna Arts Festival, PDX Winter Lights, Chan Center for Performing Arts, and the Vancouver Chinese Cultural Center. As place based artists, Sparks has been collaborating with Coast Salish designers for the past 5 years as creative support for Indigenous led theater and animations that share traditional localized wisdom.

Artist website: www.sparksdesigns.xyz  | Instagram:@Hdawnsparks

8 | Jessica Jones: “Solar Projector”

The Solar Projector is a shadow box installation that features the motion of the sun while projecting images across a painted screen. Chloroplast (used in plants for photosynthesis) is the inspiration for the image cast by the suspended color dome. People may enter between the color dome and the screen to further activate the installation through movement and shadow. As the sun tracks across the sky, the images cast on the screen also shift. On March 31st for “The Clouds are Lifting” at Freeway park, there will be a shadow dance performance inside the Solar Projector. Themes of balance and reawakening into Spring will be played with for this Equinox performance. The spotlight used to illuminate the installation on this night will track the position of the sun on the other side of the planet through the course of the event, connecting the Northern and Southern hemispheres through light. Outside of the performance time, anyone viewing the Solar Projector will be welcome to go inside to create shadows. 

The idea of balance within the time of equinox is a valuable one. Can we recognize the points of connection that exist across this planet? And in Seattle, where we’ve been missing the light and each other through the winter, can a return of comradery come with a return of the light?

Jessica Roxann Baca Jones (she/they) is a Seattle based light and movement artist. A graduate of the University of Washington School of Drama, she studied theater production and design. She has worked in numerous venues in Seattle and beyond including as the Technical Director at Velocity Dance Center from 2019 to 2022. Jessica has produced independent performance art pieces using shadow puppetry and dance since 2014, favoring collaborative and community driven work. Jess makes art for climate actions with 350 Seattle Artful Activists and plays trumpet with Burn Out Brass Band.

Instagram: @jrbkjones