Sep 17 Thursday
On Thursday, September 17, from 4:00 – 5:00 pm, join Spokane-based teacher and naturalist Jack Nisbet for a presentation of fur trade era paintings that demonstrate how Plateau and Coastal peoples used intentional burning to manage the landscapes around them. With tribal oral accounts and early journal observations for context, we will explore details from these early artworks to shed light on relevant landscapes from "The Mirror that Nature Holds: From the Collections of Jordan Schnitzer and His Family Foundation".
Community Perspectives Talks & Tours invite individuals from our campus and wider community to speak about their unique interpretation of several works in the current exhibitions, charting connections among art, personal experience, and different disciplines.
About the Speaker | Spokane-based author Jack Nisbet has written several collections of essays that explore the human and natural history of the Columbia River drainage, as well as award-winning biographies of cartographer David Thompson, naturalist David Douglas, and homesteader/forest surveyor/physician couple John and Carrie Leiberg. The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau and David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work are published by WSU Press. In 2018, the Washington State Historical Society awarded Nisbet the Robert Gray medal for significant and long-term contributions to Northwest history. For more information visit www.jacknisbet.com
Image Credit | James Madison Alden, “Kootenai Falls”, 1860, National Archives
LOCATION | The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus.
The documentary by Abby Martin, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy”, reveals a hidden truth rarely questioned in mainstream reporting: the role of the U.S. military as the world’s largest institutional polluter tracing the link between war, empire, and ecological destruction. It uncovers how military operations poison ecosystems, accelerate global warming, and sacrifice the future for endless expansion; an unflinching examination of the untouchable institution playing an outsized role in the climate crisis.
Discussion following the film.
We once depended on handwriting for recording information. Then the printing press changed everything. We could record, store, and access information in thousands of copies. Five hundred years later, the digital revolution is transforming things again. Today, we get information from millions of websites in milliseconds with search engines and AI.
Technology has always shaped the way we’ve stayed informed, expressed ourselves, and stayed connected as communities. What lessons do earlier technologies, like print, hold for us today in the age of AI and digital overload? And why, despite the speed and convenience of newer technologies, is print more popular than ever?
At the end of the talk, audiences will get the chance to try printing on a portable press.
This free event is in partnership with Humanities Washington and Columbia Basin College. Doors open at 6:30.
Speaker BioGeoffrey Turnovsky is professor of French at the University of Washington. His teaching and research focus on the cultural history of early modern France and Europe, and the history of print, books, authorship, and reading. He is the author of Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France.
Geoffrey lives in Seattle.
Sep 18 Friday
Walla Walla Valley 25th Annual Quilt Festival, Sept 18-19,2026, $10 admission (valid for both days)
Exhibition of Exceptional Quilts- Vendor Marketplace- Silent Auction- Demonstrations Provided Hourly- Door Prize
National Featured Quilter: Sew Kind of Wonderful
Jim Hodges’ “Unearthed” exhibition is a monumental bronze cast of an uprooted tree stump. The truncated form resonates with majesty while also serving as a mournful reminder of humankind’s impact upon the natural world. The sculpture is suspended in stillness, suggesting what might have been above, stretching branches that had reached into the air towards the sun that once contained life in green and barky rough wildness. With this implication, and through our interaction with the sculpture, “Unearthed” opens generative thought toward relationships between environments and their communities. The work beckons us to consider fragility, ephemerality, as well as the sacredness of life.
This work-in-becoming had its first residency in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral in 2019. Imagine that in the confines of that edifice the sculpture absorbed metaphysical power from everyday spiritual practice, from a celebration of life observed in rites of faith, musical performances, readings, by a community’s presence, participation, and social interaction. “Unearthed” has its second residency at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University, providing the academic and regional community an occasion to approach the work through intentional participation.
In time, its roots will be reunited with the ground through burial, transferring its accumulated goodwill charged with incorporeal memories and energies into the Earth. Only its severed trunk will remain visible, indicating a new role in nature.
IMAGE | Jim Hodges, Unearthed, 2015 to present
LOCATION | The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus. Museum hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Closed Sundays, Mondays, and during University holidays and breaks.
Each year, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art presents selections from its growing permanent collection in an exhibition, offering fresh perspectives through thematic exhibitions, recent acquisitions, and curated installations.
Open August 25, 2026 through March 13, 2027, “JSMA Collects” explores the many ways artists, curators, and visitors connect with nature, place, and one another. Works on view reflect the relationships between environments and communities, while spring installations expand the conversation to themes of home, family, and everyday life, inviting reflection on the natural world and our place within it.
From its founding collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European paintings, the museum's holdings have grown to more than 4,000 works of art. Today, the collection spans the eighteenth century to the present and features a diverse range of regional, national, and international artists whose works illuminate the breadth and evolution of visual culture.
IMAGE | Etsuko Ichikawa, Vitrified, 2020
Form a Line
July 31 - Sept 20, 2026
Childhood's End Gallery presents Form a Line, a group exhibition of new work by four distinct Pacific Northwest artists. Finding common ground in bold representation of the natural world, Kathy Anderson, Colleen Cotey, Sara Gettys, and Julia Janeway each bring a practiced sensitivity to their chosen mediums. Through processes that remove material or add it, these four artists present new works rooted in an intimate knowledge of place and material.
Artist Reception - Saturday, Aug 8, 4-6pm
Childhood’s End Gallery222 4th Ave WOlympia WA 98501
Always FREE to enter
360-943-3724
[email protected]
The GRO Parade of Homes is a premier annual event presented by the Building Industry Association of Clark County (BIA), highlighting the latest trends and achievements in homebuilding. Visitors can explore a collection of newly built homes from local builders, each showcasing distinctive architecture, craftsmanship, innovative features, and modern design inspirations.
The event features a convenient single-site layout, with all homes located within the same community. This allows you to spend less time traveling between homes and more time exploring the latest in home design and construction.
Come see these Emerald's favorites, Treeus, with three part vocal harmony!
All ages free dinner show, 5PM-8PM!
