Artist-in-Residence

Nolan is a multi-disciplinary artist - potter, printmaker, and painter. Having lived his entire life in rural SW Washington, he has a deep appreciation and admiration for the Pacific Northwest landscape and the people who live in it. It is from this place of love of both nature and people that Nolan creates his work - mostly utilitarian pottery and block-printed clothing for people to use in their everyday life. During the artist residency, Nolan looks forward to growing his knowledge of the mountain through observational drawings and paintings that will inspire future work to share the beauty of SW Washington with others.

View Nolan's work on his Instagram page.

Art, for Tamra, is a joyful journey of exploration, discovery, and expression. Drawing from her background in graphic design and illustration, Tamra strives to create work that balances technical precision with the freedom of creative experimentation.

Tamra's practice thrives on both yupo and canvas, allowing her to explore and
celebrate the unique qualities of each medium.

Each painting feels like a delightful adventure, reflecting her love of discovery
and the beauty that emerges when water, color, and imagination meet.

Thank you for joining her on this artistic journey. You can find Tamra's work at https://www.tamrasheline.com/.

Michele is an American landscape artist. She works with gouache, acrylic, and assorted pencils on watercolor paper. Her drawings tend to be quite large (75"x55" is a standard size) and colorful. The imagery in her drawings comes from direct observation. The final work acknowledges, however, that time and memory obscure. Thus the original observation is allowed to shift, fly away, or get buried under an accumulation of other observed aspects of the landscape. The end result feels more akin to moving through a landscape, than to being still.

At the moment Michele feels compelled to make images of volcanoes. She is in pursuit of landscapes in motion. In July and August of 2026 she will embark on a research trip to Mount St Helens; the site of the first disaster in her memory. For three weeks she will hike on and make drawings of the active volcano. In the year that follows she will make large-scale studio drawings exploring the opposing forces of destruction and creation at this iconic American locale.

Find more of Michele's work at http://www.michelelauriat.com/.

Shelby is a Washingtonian, born and raised. She has a deep love for spending time outdoors…and often finds that her art + creativity are inspired by the natural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. Shelby has a deep and personal connection to the grandeur of Mt. St. Helens, as she summited the peak with her dad in 2020.

Emma is an Illinois-native, excited to continue exploring the vast beauty of the northwest. Having studied wildlife biology and ecology, alongside graphic design and fine art, she is especially interested in the geology and unique beauty of the volcanic landscape.

Together, Emma and Shelby are excited to combine their passions (art and the outdoors) through various printmaking mediums rooted in experimentation. Their hope is to produce art that is inspired by and reflects the beauty and complexity of the Mt. St. Helens blast zone!

Emma's Instagram

Shelby's Instagram

Jennifer is a landscape photographer whose training as a geophysicist taught her something essential: scientists and artists are both storytellers. Her camera started as a tool to study and document, and evolved as a means of exploring the themes of time, place, motion, and light. She is drawn to the balance between the truly ancient and the instantaneous - places that call to be both studied and felt. Jennifer's work seeks to encourage curiosity and experience as a way of understanding our relationships with nature.

Learn more at https://www.windinglightphotography.com/.

Shannon Jarvis is a sound artist and facilitator whose work explores the relationship between frequency, nervous system regulation, land, and presence. Through crystal harp, singing bowls, field recordings, and site-responsive listening, she creates immersive experiences that invite people into deeper coherence with themselves and the environments around them. Having lived in the Cispus Valley during early childhood and experienced the eruption of Mount St. Helens as a formative imprint, returning to the mountain through this residency feels both personal and devotional.

She hopes to engage the mountain not as subject matter, but as collaborator.

Learn more about Shannon on Instagram.

Gloria's practice considers how landscapes are preserved, replicated and reimagined through synthetic material systems. Working across sculpture, animation, and installation, she constructs botanical and geological replicas that blur distinctions between the organic and the artificial. At Mount St. Helens, Gloria hopes to archive part of the volcano’s process of succession and transformation by documenting plants and geological specimens through watercolor, mold-making and sound recording drawn from the surrounding ecosystem.

Learn more at https://www.gloriafanduan.com/.

Jessica Bonifas is a Seattle based filmmaker, photographer, and dedicated environmentalist. Her practice includes shooting on film with her beloved Super 8, hand painting film, and using her 35mm photo camera to create avant-garde art. Working harmoniously with the land, she uses natural resources and involves themes of nature in much ofher work to convey the connection between humans and the environment.

Learn more at https://jessicabonifas.com/

Margie and her granddaughter Willa came to Mount St. Helens from the prairies of Minnesota. Willa is an artist who draws, paints, and works with clay. She will led the painting portion of their "Leapin' Lupines!" Workshop. Margie is a writer/photographer who loves to garden, and shared how lupines shaped the slopes of Mount St. Helens by rebuilding the soil after the 1980 volcanic eruption. Lupine is her favorite flower.

Natalie was first introduced to haiku in college in the 1970’s, and immediately felt a connection with this simple way ofexpressing a deep and immediate experience of nature. In the last few years, her writing has flowed from her many ramblings and trips around the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Writing gives Natalie great joy, and she feels that it’s a gift. She finds equal joy sharing haiku with others, and passing that gift on. They, like her, find that this simple form of poetry helps them go deeper into their experiences of the natural world. She genuinely believes that anyone can write haiku!

Ada Beale is a musician interested in exploring sonic landscapes by integrating electronic synthesis, contemporary piano, sampling and field recordings to immerse the listener in a moment in time and space. Their current music project explores the geological history of Mount St. Helens through its eruption and its effects on not just the landscape and wildlife, but the people of the Pacific Northwest. With their interest in sound design, environmentalism, and spacial immersion, their concept album will transport the listener to Mt. St. Helens to explore the history of the volcano and its impact on our region.

Check out the song created during their artist in residence on Bandcamp.

Kellie's astral photography inspires awe and captures the etherial nature of the world around us.

Learn more at www.kellieodonnell.com.

As a scientist, I ask questions. I observe. I learn. I teach. As an artist, I do the same. With an Artist Residency at Mount St. Helens this summer, I will finally have the opportunity to blend my two contrasting worlds as a scientist and an artist, to create art that informs and educates and breaks down the barrier between art and science that most of the general public fears. To me, the path to breaking that barrier is to lead with curiosity. My paintings tell a story of my connection to science and nature, and through my art I establish my purpose. The next step in my art journey is to transform my art into educational material that makes the audience engaged in learning without it being scary and unapproachable. With St. Helens’ rich, dynamic ecosystem and MSHI’s commitment to science and education, I plan to learn from the land and share my unique perspective with visitors, students and other educators at MSHI through pages in a scientific sketchbook and a large sketchbook-style illustration with a series of vignettes that teach about the resiliency of the landscape of Mount St. Helens.

Learn more and see examples of her incredible sketchbooks at https://www.arinraeart.com/.

Creating art in the powerful and ever-evolving landscape of Mount St. Helens is a deep honor and a natural extension of Susan's life’s work. As an Artist, Empowerment Coach, Educator, Outdoor Adventurer, Community Builder, and Rites of Passage Guide, her work is rooted in transformation, connection, and presence. Her mission is to empower and inspire people to connect with the wisdom of nature—both within themselves and in the living world around them. This mountain offers profound teachings in resilience, renewal, and beauty. The Mount St. Helens Science and Learning Center also shares a similar mission- to connect people with nature through science, the arts, and adventure recreation, making this a perfect fit!

Learn more at Susan's website, www.susanelizabethatthetreehouseartstudio.com

Jackie Roberti (she/her) is a writer and illustrator based in Boston, MA. She is self-studied, mainly through bringing her sketchbook and paints everywhere she goes. During her residency she created an illustrated field guide of the Mount St. Helens base camp area, aiming to teach about the area's flora and fauna from a whimsical, artistic perspective.