Welcome to Centrum, a music and arts community.

If you're passionate about art and creativity, you're going to love this place.

This is the residency building, and this is the residency program coordinator, Melissa.

Hi.

Hi.

Can you tell me what makes this program so special?

I think that one of the things that makes the Centrum Residency program special is that there aren't strings attached.

That people can come and focus on their art or their writing, and they don't have to produce anything.

They don't have to do anything outward facing.

They don't have to have, it's not a competitive edge to it, which I think some residencies can turn into.

We, Libby, my colleague and I just work to create this, these little communities of artists and writers, which is pretty amazing.

Beautiful.

What makes Fort Worden, particularly so much of a sanct..

It's beautiful.

It's remote.

There's no light pollution.

You can see all of the stars, and there's a forests and the ocea.. And I think that part of the, you know, for artists and writers, like part of the tricky part is that there's this hustle aspect, you know, and you have to make art and it's something that you love, but it's hard to fill yourself back up.

I think one of the things that Libby and I hope for all the residents is that they mostly have this sense of rest and joy while they're here.

Let's see, there's the In The Making Residency, the Curator Residency, which is, art curators, come in and spend a week in June.

We have the E.A.R., which is the Emerging Artist Residency for younger kind of new upstart artists.

That's in October, and they're here for a full month.

And then we have, we just started a Local Residency, which is great because our local artists and.. and then go back home and stay, but they have a space where they can come and do just focus on their art.

And there's some really wonderful local artists that have had some great experiences recently, which is exciting.

And then we have the most popular is the self-directed residency.

And so people come focus on whatever they need to focus on.

Usually they have a project in mind, but sometimes people just take walks and nap and we're like, okay, have at it.

Beautiful yeah.

Yeah.

Whatever inspires the creativity.

Exactly.

Can you tell me about a current residency work that they're doing?

Sam, Sam is here.

They've been here for almost four weeks.

They are one of the residents from the In The Making Residency, which has a more outward facing component.

They have something that they offer to the community.

So Sam is doing the High and Mighty Dream Quilts.

And you'll talk to them, but they're amazing.

They're, they are so gifted and, kind of like this, embody the spirit of what we hope the residency program will be.

They come in, they came in, and just, were like, welcoming and open and and excited and passionate.

And it's- That's what we hope that people will do when they come here is just to be able to feed into that and tap into th.. Well, I'm excited to meet them.

Yeah, they're pretty- Should we go have a chat?

Oh we should.

Oh we should.

Let's do it.

All right.

Okay.

How did yo.. Yeah.

So I.. and I always wanted to go to the West Coast.

I'm from Richmond, Virginia.

So it is completely different from my home.

So I got lucky to come to Port Townsend.

Amazing.

What have you done and.. Yeah, it has been really great because having a month of just I can work on my work is really good.

You know, at home it's a lot of hustle and bustle, but here I've been able to just dream a lot and be in this kind of robust community of heart and then have those dreams of that community come into my work.

Beautiful.

Can we take a look at your work?

Yes you can, come on!

Let’s go!

Alright, let's do ..

So tell me about your beautiful installation here.

Yeah, so this is the High and Mighty Dream Quilt.

I asked people to tell me their dreams, and then we write them down on small slips of paper, and I put them into these sheer quilt panels.

And then the whole thing together is called a configuration.

So each time I hang these, I don't make a plan.

And they just kind of hang the way they need to.

And it is just a large manifestation of everyone’s dreams.

Wow.

So these are dreams from people all over Port Townsend?

Yeah.

So this is from back home.

So Richmond, Virginia and some from North Carolina.

And then also this one is specifically from, Port Townsend that I made here.

Okay.

Can you tell me about this one?

Yeah, this is a personal one.

So I started the project in 2020, and I didn't know if it made sense to keep dreaming about anything.

And as I tried to find my reasoning for dreaming, this is how the project really started.

So when I got here, I decided to make a personal panel because I kind of had never done it.

So this is actually the words are from a poem that I wrote about the dream quilts.

This has been an exploration of the arti..

I'm Angela, thank you for exploring.

I'll see you.