Artist Profiles

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Shepherd Center resident artists/ Photo: Marissa Natkin

Charles Emerson

Charles Emerson is a fine arts painter concerned with form, spatial and atmospheric modeling with color. A native Californian, he has lived in Boston, New York, Venice, and now, Seattle, Washington. He studied painting at the University of Southern California (BFA), Boston University (Graduate), and at Yale University with Josef Albers (MFA). Then, receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to Venice, Italy, he stayed two years painting and researching Byzantine art ideas and works. In New York, he painted portraits and did some commercial projects before returning to Southern California as an artist-in-residence (fours years) at the La Jolle Museum of Fine Art/San Diego Art Museum where he became interested in museum work, curated several shows, and taught and lectured extensively.

During a brief residency at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, he visited Seattle and found the place he had been looking for, a place best suited for his art development. After many studio moves, usually just a step ahead of a developer, he found the best of all possible places and had the opportunity to move into the Good Shepherd Center. An urban oasis with beautiful grounds, quiet, and a light-filled loft, it is an ideal work-live space. He plans to leave “only feet first”.

Emerson has taught at the Seattle Academy of Fine Art, which recently changed its name to Gage Academy of Art, and where he will be teaching in the fall of 2008. In the meantime, he has dedicated himself wholly to painting, a few on-going critique groups, and an occasional specialized painting workshop for advanced color studies.

Jan Haag

An accomplished writer, poet, textile artist and graphic artist, Jan Haag is a Washington native whose background also includes dancing, acting and directing. As former Director of National Productions Programs for the American Film Institute, she administered the Independent Filmmaker Program, the Academy Internship Programs and founded AFI's Directing Workshop for Women.. Her original needlepoints have been shown in solo exhibitions in California and most recently at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Her graphic art and paintings have been sold in galleries, festivals and museum shops. She's written some 5,000 poems, as well as novels, plays and film scripts. A portion of her work is posted on her website: janhaag.com . Her volunteer work ranges from teaching English to the Thai monks in Auburn, to being a micro paleontology helper at the Burke Museum, helper at the University of Washington's greenhouses and, at present, a Docent at the Volunteer Park Conservatory. As one of the Six Attic Artists of the Good Shepherd Center she continues to feel that "to be in an eyrie in the sky, in 11 acres of 'almost country' in the middle of Seattle, is offering an artist paradise on earth." Having written a poem almost every day during her six years in residence, she, at present, is working on JOCASTA, a play to complement Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX. "My morning companion, when she shows, is Mt. Rainier, and my roommate is Shiva-purna, a white-booted, opinionated, Siamese, whose father may have been a Yeti."

 

Julie Cascioppo

Julie is the newest resident at GSC. She applied at the beginning and was put in lottery. She had to wait 4 years before someone moved out, and now she is absolutely ecstatic to be living in this small enclave of artists, Jungian psychology and beautifully cultivated nature.

Julie is a well known for her cabaret shows at the Pink Door, jazz and blues singing here and abroad. Paris, Istanbul, Bangkok, New Delhi, New York as well as in Seattle.

In 2007 Julie was awarded a grant from the Jack Straw Foundation and completed an original song series of her travels and singing experiences abroad. This is now available, entitled I LOVE BEING ABROAD. Her most recent trip abroad was in India and she is presenting a one woman show for the community; It will entail original songs, anecdotes of her experiences and a plot and story line to follow her title I LOVE BEING ABROAD, the India chapter! This performance will take place June 27th 2008. It is also a benefit for an orphanage Julie became a benefactor for in India.

Love and Peace

Julie www.juliesings.com

To learn more about Julie, please see:

Julies's bio (pdf)

Liner notes for I LOVE BEING ABROAD by BILL W.

Jere Smith

 

Roger Tompkins

The Internal Revenue Service classifies Roger Tompkins as a "qualified performing artist," a term that doesn't quite tell the story of this skilled actor, director, choreographer, juggler, magician and former Ringling Brothers clown.

Tompkins, who also teaches drama, is looking forward to the space his new live/work unit will provide for another of his passions - creating intricately designed theatrical masks that he has sold all over the world. In fact, he was, at one time, the only American to have successfully sold theatrical masks in Italy, where the art form is more prevalent.

Terming the view from the fifth floor of the Good Shepherd Center "inspiring," he is looking forward to moving into affordable space designed specifically for artists. "I think it's wonderful that Seattle is trying to take care of its artists. If you lose the artists, you lose your vision as a society."

Mary Welch

Mary Welch has found the Good Shepherd Center Chapel and grounds to be a total inspiration for site-specific installations. It is the basis for Form: The Chapel Trilogy. The 1st, Closet (2002) regarded form. It was a group show of 22' dresses that referenced the history of the building - nuns, 'wayward' girls and large exquisite space.

Using light, sound, time and sculpture, the 2nd solo installation 7 Chairs: Interpreting the Chakras conveyed the energy of form. Both shows were well attended and well reviewed.

The 3rd part of the trilogy, Ashes to Ashes, will regard releasing form. The 'pimp my green coffin' approach to burial will be a group show of nineteen artists from San Diego, CA to Vancouver, BC that opens November 1, 2008, All Souls Day, for a two week run.

Using the grounds, Mary made the video Begin that premiered at the NW Film Forum's 7th Annual Local Sightings and shown on the local arts station Channel 21. She thought it was great fun to work with in house Fluid Films on that project. The recycling bins and dumpster is a veritable font of materials for the recycled fashion shows Haute Trash (www.hautetrash.org) that she has been involved with since 1987. Working under the name Wayward Girls Productions - Lift Up Your Skirt and Fly pretty much sums up her supreme pleasure of living and working here.