Calendar of Events

A 5 week series in Evans’ unique style of modern dance technique. Appropriate for dancers with some experience at the beginning level in modern, contemporary, ballet or jazz. All ages welcome. Evans built his technique on his profound study of ballet and classic styles of modern dance, anatomy, kinesiology and on a decades-long study of the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System. His work enables dancers to avoid dance injuries, extend their dancing years, discover personal uniqueness and embody dynamic expressivity.

5-Saturday sessions with Evans’ uniquely lyrical style of modern dance technique. Appropriate for dancers who have reached the intermediate or advanced level in modern, contemporary, ballet or jazz. All ages welcome. Evans built his technique on his profound study of ballet and classic styles of modern dance, and on a decades-long study of the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System. His work enables dancers to avoid dance injuries, extend their dancing years, discover personal uniqueness and embody dynamic expressivity.

A 5-class series:
Saturdays 1:00-2:30 pm,
January 11 – February 8,
at Madrona MindBody Institute

TUESDAYS, JANUARY 7-FEBRUARY 11, 5-8 PM

Picture yourself making that picture book! Maybe you’ve had a great idea in your head forever and want to move forward. If so, we will march step by step through the process of character development to story, right up to your own dummy, ready for submission!*

Join Dana Sullivan, writer and/or illustrator of more than 16 picture books and graphic novels for this intensive dummy bootcamp, focusing on playful doodling, storyboarding, inside stories of the publishing world and having fun.

Open to all levels of artistic training. Stick figures welcome. A perfect class for illustrators AND writers looking for a new perspective on their work. Plus, that kick in the back cover you may have been needing. AGES 16+

Required Supplies:

• Ream of copy paper

• Pad of “Mixed Media” paper, 9”x12”

• Pencils • Pencil sharpener

• Fine tip sharpies or other black markers

• One regular black Sharpie (fat, but not poster size)

• Watercolor set (cheap kid type is fine)

• Two watercolor brushes, one medium, one big and fat

• Cheap sketch pad, 5.5” x 8.5” or so

• Small bottle of india ink (waterproof)

• Something to tote all of the above in, so you can bring EVERYTHING to EVERY class

• Questions? email Dana at danajsullivan@comcast.net
  *actual results may vary. You’ve gotta put in the work.

ABOUT DANA

Dana has written and illustrated a bunch of published picture books, including Ozzie and the Art Contest, Kay Kay’s Alphabet Safari, My Red Velvet Cape, and Family Farm. He’s illustrated the Digger and Daisy early readers and the BodyOpolis series. His first graphic novel, Dead Max Comix , launches January 23 at the PTSA Grover Gallery (!) and he is currently behind schedule on Dead Max 3: Bully for You. Dana’s favorite color is dog and his favorite vegetable is peanut butter.

CLICK HERE FOR DANA SULLIVAN’S WEBSITE

WEDNESDAYS, JANUARY 15-FEBRUARY 5, 6 PM-8:30 PM

This class is for anyone wanting to learn the technique of painting with watercolors, or for those who have experience, but would like to hone their skills. Class direction will primarily focus on brush skills, and will lead into paper and paint fundamentals. Students will work with both dry and wet applications and will learn how to add color(s) without losing a picture by turning it to mud! Nothing tricky to it and you will be amazed by what you can do!

“Tracy Grammer is a brilliant artist and unique individual. Her voice is distinctive, as is her mastery over the instruments she plays.” – Joan Baez

“Her pure voice conveys the simple truths of these songs; her gifts as a musician are like that of a painter who is a master of chiaroscuro, offering light and shadow at every turn…. A treasured part of my music collection.” – Mary Chapin Carpenter

Called “a musician and singer of dazzling versatility” (No Depression), Tracy Grammer is among contemporary folk music’s most beloved artists. Renowned for her pure voice, deft guitar and violin work, and incantatory storytelling, Grammer has recorded and performed with Joan Baez and Mary Chapin Carpenter, headlined several of the nation’s top folk festivals, including Philadelphia Folk Festival and Falcon Ridge, and enjoyed 12 consecutive years as one of folk radio’s 50 top-played artists, both solo and with the late Dave Carter.

In 2018, Grammer released her eleventh record, LOW TIDE, which was the first of her albums to showcase her original songs. LOW TIDE was the ninth most-played album on folk radio in 2018 and was voted a Top 10 Album of the Year by Fish Records UK.

Don your finest blue & green gear REGARDLESS of whose battling for the 54th Annual Super Bowl and head over to Taps at the Guardhouse to enjoy $15 pitcher & chicken wing specials ALL DAY LONG. More details to come – save the date!

Realistic drawing is the essential foundation of every form of art! This weekend workshop in being offered for those of you who want to learn the fundamentals of realistic drawing but have been unable to take an ongoing course. You will learn an eight step process for drawing three-dimensional subjects with an emphasis on form, depth, value and texture, using a variety of techniques and materials. We will also cover basic composition, linear perspective, and observational drawing (drawing from life). The techniques you learn will provide you with a visual language to express your personal artistic vision.

SUPPLY LIST:

Sketch pad – preferably 11” x 14” or larger, @70-80#, bright white paper

Pencils – drawing set or one each of HB/#2, 4H, 4B and Ebony

Kneaded eraser

Stomp – about ½”, solid rolled paper stick (for blending)

OPTIONAL SUPPLIES:

Ruler

Battery operated eraser

Battery operated sharpener

Note: Instructor can provide optional materials.

ABOUT NONIE

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 10 AM -3 PM

Working with a combination of Putty, concrete powder and liquid adhesive, we’ll make the medium together and then intentionally or just randomly create ridges, valleys, and shapes, either realistic or abstract on both a birchwood plywood board and a foam core panel. It will also be possible to embed materials, like leaves, seed pods, etc.

Then we will paint on top with acrylic paints. Fun, and new techniques, endless possibilities. No experience necessary, and all supplies provided.

CLICK HERE FOR NINA’S WEBSITE

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9I7Ggq3tNJl_0gquY3vXA7Fveuehu8ga

“The road goes on forever…” – Robert Earl Keen

That line, from the great Robert Earl Keen song, certainly applies to the seemingly, endless wanderings of Ray Bonneville. Every now and then, you run across someone with a library’s worth of stories to tell. But unlike the raconteurs who regale friends with well-embellished versions of their exploits, these storytellers have lived so much, they reveal chapters of their hard-won wisdom slowly, carefully, like layers peeled from an onion.

Ray Bonneville didn’t even open his storybook until his early 40s, some 20 years after he started performing. But with a style that sometimes draws comparisons to JJ Cale and Daniel Lanois, this blues-influenced, New Orleans-inspired “song and groove man,” as he’s been so aptly described, luckily found his rightful calling.

Bonneville’s highway life began, more or less, at 12, when his parents moved their nine French-speaking children from Quebec to Boston. He learned to play a little piano, then guitar, but language and cultural challenges made school uninviting. But before getting expelled, he played weekends in New England with a young band that travelled in a 1957 Cadillac ambulance.

At 17, he joined the Marines, mainly to escape his devoutly religious, oppressively authoritarian father. That was just before Vietnam began showing up on the nightly news. He wound up there for more than a year. Post-discharge, he discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Paul Butterfield, James Cotton and other bluesmen, and taught himself to play harmonica in-between fares while driving a cab in Boston.

Bonneville spent the ‘70s in Boulder, Colo., where he formed the Ray Bonneville Blues Band, an electric five-piece, and got over his fear of flying by earning a commercial pilot’s license. “I was hooked bad right from the start,” he says. “When I was flying, I felt completely at home, like the plane’s wings were part of my body.”

He headed to the Pacific Northwest — first Alaska, then Seattle — flying wherever he could and playing rowdy rooms where listeners wanted to get their groove on, which helped him evolve a delivery that covered all bases. “My thumb became my bass player and my index finger became my lead guitar and rhythm player,” he explains. “My feet became my drums and with my harmonica and my vocal, made for a four-piece blues band.”

In Seattle, he got hooked on something else: his old friend, cocaine. Escaping to Paris, where he knew the language and could avoid temptation, he busked and played for boozy late-night revelers, but for the first time, Bonneville also encountered audiences who sat in silence, truly listening.

“It scared me,” he admits. “I realized that you’d better have something to say if you’re going to play in front of this kind of crowd.”

Returning stateside in ’83, he moved to New Orleans. Training pilots by day and playing at night, he was stirred by the city’s hypnotic undercurrent of mystery and magic, which hangs in the humid air like a voodoo spell. In his six years there, it seeped into his sound — and still ripples through it today.
His post-Katrina ode, “I am the Big Easy,” was folk radio’s No. 1 song of 2008 and earned the International Folk Alliance’s 2009 Song of the Year Award, but Bonneville wasn’t yet ready to write in New Orleans. That would take more living.

The romantic notion of becoming a bush pilot took him to northern Quebec’s wilderness, where he shuttled sportsmen via seaplane and played Montreal clubs in the off-season. That is, until, flying in fog, he almost hit a power line, and with no fuel left, barely found water to land on. After a nerve-calming whiskey, he decided his bush-pilot days were done. At 41, he moved to Montreal and began to write. He also began touring and recording; his 1999 album, Gust of Wind, won a Juno Award.

In 2003, Bonneville moved again, this time to Arkansas, where the fly-fishing was good. He began recording for Red House Records, and adding his talents to albums by Mary Gauthier, Gurf Morlix, Eliza Gilkyson, Ray Wylie Hubbard and other prominent artists. Bonneville also has shared songwriting credits with Tim O’Brien, Phil Roy and Morlix, among others. Slaid Cleaves placed Bonneville’s “Run Jolee Run” on his lauded 2009 album, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away.

Bonneville headed to Austin in 2006, and released Goin’ By Feel, his second Red House album. Allmusic.com gave it four stars, the same as Gust of Wind, Roll It Down and Bad Man’s Blood — which it calls his “magnum opus,” noting, “With darkness and light fighting for dominance … he’s stripped away every musical excess to let the songs speak for themselves.”

“I have roughly 12 lines to make a story, so every one has to trigger the listener’s imagination,” he explains. “I want my songs to be believed, so I work on them until I believe them myself.”

On Easy Gone, his fourth record on the Red House label, songs like “When I Get to New York,” “Mile Marker 41” and “Love is Wicked” percolate with hints of something sinister and sexy. In the bluesy “Wicked,” you can almost hear the finger-poppers lurking in the club’s corners — the ones who might get a little wicked themselves later on. Even the album’s lone cover, of Hank Williams’ classic, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” carries a groove and momentum that’s Bonneville’s alone. It’s haunting, like many of his songs. He populates a lot of them with society’s fringes: the desperate and dangerous, damaged and vulnerable.

“I like the criminals and the lost people,” he says. “That’s why I love Flannery O’Connor and those kind of writers. ’Cause I’m lost myself.”

Whether that’s true or not, he knows how hard it can be for our internal compasses to lock on the direction in which we might need to go. That’s the subject of “Where Has My Easy Gone,” written with drummer Geoff Arsenault. In it, he sings, In the heart of a seeker a needle swings/homing on some elusive thing/I looked in the endless sky down along the sea/I could not find my easy.

With just a few simple words, Bonneville clearly expresses his thoughts, while allowing space for multiple interpretations. Which, of course, is the essence of great songwriting, the kind that earned him an International Blues Challenge solo/duet win in 2012. He doesn’t pretend to understand how he finds that essence, however.

“The whole songwriting thing, to me, is mysterious, and I want to keep it that way,” Bonneville says.

Ultimately, what matters is knowing how to translate the mystery into music, and that, he understands perfectly.