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Several Logger faculty and alumni will be featured at the upcoming Art Party Festival in Darrington, Washington. The outdoor festival includes 24 hours of art installations, dance, music, workshops, theatre, readings, and interactive experiences. The festival is co-produced by Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts Jess K Smith ’05 and includes work by Assistant Professor of Art & Art History Dr. Mare Hirsch, and Jordan Moeller ’15. Participants are invited to take in the many forms of art, camp on site, join in a festival-wide meal, and dance the night away.

“Part of the gift of a festival like this lies in leaving routine and opening yourself up to being surprised by both the artists and just the whole experience of it all,” Smith says. “I hope that people leave being big fans of new artists and feel nourished in multiple ways; that they feel rested and inspired to make their own work or learn more about an artist.”

In addition to the many performances and installations, Smith is looking forward to the communal meal, where artists and attendees will sit down, family-style, to enjoy dinner together and build relationships over a shared appreciation of art.

“This will be my first 24-hour art festival and I am looking forward to witnessing the magic of the artists involved,” Adrian Kljucec ’17 says. “There is something about being an audience member for an immersive site-specific piece where you are not just being catered to so much as being invited to actively participate in the piece’s creation that is so special and inspiring. I truly cannot wait to experience what these amazing artists have in store for us.”

The festival is July 26 and 27. Attendees can find the complete schedule and purchase tickets at . 

Big Fan, Love Your Work

Smith first began dreaming of an outdoor art festival in 2022. Alongside co-producer Francesca Betancourt, she gathered a group of artists working in various disciplines for a micro-residency they called Art Party. Over the course of the long weekend, the residency morphed into an impromptu festival, with participants collaborating to produce new work to share with the group.

Smith recalls a moment at that first retreat that set the tone for everything that followed. The retreat started with all the participants introducing themselves and trying to build a sense of trust and community among a group of strangers.

“After the first person's introduction, I just said, ‘big fan, love your work.’ And then after each person introduced themselves, we all continued the refrain, "big fan, love your work.’ And it was silly, but there was something that felt so true about the ethos we wanted to create, starting from a place of support, interest, curiosity, love, and being a fan of each other,” Smith says.

Among the people invited to the first Art Party was Kljucec, who was immediately drawn to the idea of letting go of the urgency to create and simply to be present. He came with the intention of enjoying the retreat and supporting his fellow artists, which turned into an opportunity to do tarot card readings with the other participants.

“Tarot reading is a creative collaboration — visual interpretation of cards, historical dramaturgy of respective decks over centuries and cultures, storytelling, and ultimately engaging in meaning-making,” Kljucec says. “The expectation was to explore the space we were staying in and let it inspire us. What an inviting and affirming container to devise what felt relevant … no pressure, nor external expectations.”

Since that first event, Smith and Betancourt have hosted quarterly art parties, with each cohort coming from recommendations by previous Art Party artists. Along the way, they planned a festival to bring the ethos of the Art Parties to a wider audience.

Unexpected Collaborations

Mare Hirsch, assistant professor of art & art history, wasn't sure what to expect when she attended her first Art Party. Her background is in digital media and interactive installations, where audience members can interact with code in the real world. Hirsch has worked with particle physicists at Fermilab and oceanographers at NASA to help visualize scientific data. When Smith invited her to an Art Party, she was intrigued.

“The thing that struck me was how community-centric the Art Parties are,” Hirsch says. “It went a lot deeper than your typical residency. We were creating art, but also cooking together and spending time together, which allowed a level of intimacy and vulnerability from the start.”

At the Art Party, Hirsch met Meysha Harville and the two began to collaborate on two installations that will debut at the Art Party Festival. Pulse incorporates technology and spoken word performance to create an interactive experience for festival goers.

“There will be lights suspended from the trees and they’re going to be controlled through heartbeat sensors that audience members will get to wear,” Hirsch says. The interactive element means that exactly how the performance will unfold is impossible to fully predict. “That’s one thing I love about the type of art I do — it has a very generative quality. Meysha and I have a general structure, but when the inputs are people’s heartbeats, it makes for a fun, unpredictable space to work in.”

The Gift of Laughter

Jordan Moeller ’15 is excited to bring his comedy performance, The Gift, to the festival. Moeller, who was one of the producers of Ubiquitous They sketch group on campus, is a comedian based in Los Angeles. He’s married to festival co-producer Francesca Betancourt and also attended the first Art Party in 2023.

Moeller discovered a love of character sketches will performing in New York City and Seattle following his graduation from Puget Sound. He started working on a one-man performance centered on an unlikely subject: a frog that is suddenly endowed with human consciousness. 

“All my life, I’ve been obsessed with frogs. I think they’re fascinating creatures,” Moeller says. “But I also think that they’re intrinsically very silly. So, I wanted to write something that makes the audience think, but also has a sense of joy and play that are so hard to come by in our society."

At the core of the show is the idea that we can feel empathy for anyone and anything — even a frog. At the end of the performance, Moeller plans to go for a swim in the nearby creek and he hopes audience members will join him.

“Spending a weekend out in the beautiful Pacific Northwest wilderness, being frivolous and indulging in play and having fun and really consciously carving that out is what I'm really looking forward to.”