Beyond Bloedel

Updates & Milestones from Our Creative Residents

Our Creative Residents come to Bloedel Reserve for the chance to refresh, recharge, reimagine, and reinvigorate themselves and their innovative work. So what happens after they leave? Here’s a place to find out.

Sea of Ferns by Kimberly Trowbridge

Sea of Ferns by Kimberly Trowbridge

Posted: 02/2021
Kimberly Trowbridge: Into the Garden
Exhibition extended through June 27, 2021

Kimberly Trowbridge is a plein-air painter, lecturer, installation artist, and performer. She was a Creative Resident at Bloedel Reserve in 2018, and in 2020, she was named the Reserve’s first Creative Fellow. Over the last two years, she has created a body of work that was inspired by her time at the Reserve. That work comprises her first solo exhibition — Kimberly Trowbridge: Into the Garden — which is on view at Bainbridge Museum of Art now through May 9th.  You can read more about the exhibition and see some of the paintings on view here.

Kimberly has also provided us with a map that illustrates the locations around Bloedel Reserve that inspired specific works in the show. You can download a copy of that pictorial guide to bring along for your next visit to Bloedel Reserve.

Posted: 12/2020
Best of the Best

Gina Rae La Cerva is an environmental anthropologist and writer. She was also a Creative Resident at Bloedel Reserve in 2018. In May of 2020, her first book, Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food (Greystone Books), was selected by Amazon as a “Best Book of the Month”  in the Cookbook, Food, and Wine category. And we’re thrilled to share that Feasting Wild made Amazon’s list of “Best Books of 2020.”

You can read about how time spent at Bloedel Reserve was instrumental to Gina’s writing process here. Congratulations, Gina!

You can purchase Feasting Wild through the Bloedel Reserve Shop here.

Posted: 10/2020
What Goes Around Comes Around

Tony Drehfal is a remarkable wood engraver who spent time at the Reserve in 2019. His gorgeous engraving of a braid of sweetgrass is gracing the cover of the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer. There is a wonderful story behind that image and Tony’s residency at Bloedel Reserve. But we’ll let Tony tell it:

“There is a connection with my engraving of a sweetgrass braid Jeanne made (she makes many most summers and gives them as gifts to our visitors at Lumen Lake) and my creative residency at Bloedel Reserve. A few years ago, when Jeanne was reading the book, and I completed the engraving, I mailed the print to Robin Kimmerer’s office address at the college she teaches at. It took a few months before I got a reply. Robin was off for that summer, traveling and lecturing. Robin emailed me when she had the print and loved it, asking me if she could post an image of it on her Facebook pages. I replied yes. Laura Counsel (who managed the Creative Residency program at the time) followed Robin’s Facebook page and after seeing the photo of the print started following my Instagram account. That had me see who she was, and where I first saw photos of Bloedel Reserve. And I started following both Laura and the Reserves pages. When I saw the announcement for applying for the Residency, I submitted my application (at the last minute, as I almost forgot about it!).

A year after I sent the print to Robin, I got an email from the Japanese publisher that was printing the translation of Braiding Sweetgrass. They wanted to use my wood engraving on the cover, their [sic] seeing it — on Robin’s Facebook pages. I got a copy, summer 2018. As the Japanese read what is back to front for us, book orientation-wise, the cover image is on the back of the book.

I was contacted by the US publisher for the image use for the special anniversary edition in hardcover, I think at Robin’s request. I will be getting my copy soon, and I heard (from my contact at the publisher) that Robin mentions me in the foreword, a humbling honor, maybe that explaining how my engraving made this new book cover.

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