Submitted by The Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College will officially open the new 2000-square-foot Carving Studio, the latest addition to the Indigenous Arts Campus, on Saturday, April 13 at 1:00 p.m. The free, public celebration will include a special performance by Henare and Tawera Tahuri, Māori visual and performing artists from Aotearoa/New Zealand.”
The new Carving Studio will provide teaching and learning opportunities for the creation and presentation of Coast Salish and other Indigenous art forms, including monumental sculptures such as welcome figures, story poles, and ocean-going canoes.
“The 800 square foot Carving Studio that we built in 2012 allowed us to provide residencies at a scale and number that we had never had the capacity to provide. However, the limited square footage allowed for only one large-scale project at a time, or up to ten students working on small projects. The increased scale and square footage of the new Carving Studio will allow us to not only continue to serve tribal artists throughout the Pacific Rim, but also to offer classroom instruction at Evergreen’s 25:1 student-to-faculty ratio,” according to Tina Kuckkahn-Miller, Vice President of Indigenous Arts and Education at Evergreen.
“The Indigenous Arts Campus provides art-making opportunities within a setting that affirms Indigenous cultural heritage and identity, while providing educational opportunities that foster collaborations across generations, within various media and among tribal nations.”
The project will expand the capacity of the Indigenous Arts Campus as a cultural and artistic hub of creativity in the Pacific Northwest. Evergreen’s Indigenous Arts Campus, which includes the Longhouse and its associated arts studios, provides the primary setting in which to enact the Longhouse’s mission to support Indigenous arts and cultures through artist residencies, art shows, sales and exhibitions, summer school classes, technical support, grant-making, and gatherings of Indigenous artists.
For more information contact Mario A. Caro at caroma@evergreen.edu or (360) 867-6718.
