Creatives Connect

Calling all who think, make, write, or speak creatively! Gather with us at Jasteka Cultural Center for Creatives Connect, a free, monthly program that provides space and snacks for our community’s artists and creatives to meet, learn together, and find inspiration. 

Free, registration appreciated.

Each program will include: 

6:00 – 6:30pm: Time to enjoy the Jasteka collection and meet others

6:30 – 7:00pm: Snacks and an open mic show & tell

7:00 – 8:00pm: Informal learning opportunities and Q&A, featuring a different presenter each month.

Featured Presentation: 

Rebecca Norton on Neuroscience, Art, and Love  

Neurons that fire together wire together — but what happens when desire does the wiring? In this talk Rebecca Norton traces Donald Hebb's theory of neural plasticity through Bliss and Lømo's landmark 1973 discovery of long-term potentiation, using it as a lens for twenty years of poetry, landscape imagery, and stories of love and heartbreak. Blending neuroscience with an existential-phenomenological approach to meaning and choice, the speaker asks: how does attraction compound into association, and association into art? What emerges is a new body of work — evidence that we are, in the end, made of what we've loved.

Featured Presentation: Elizabeth Foley on Envisioning Joy

Led by printmaker Elizabeth Foley, this Envisioning Joy workshop is an opportunity to think about and visually express ideas about joy. Through open response questions and free drawing we will explore the shapes, colors, and places of joy. The purpose of this time is to give participants a moment to pause and reflect on habits and understand for themselves what they need to have joy in their lives.

Image: Elizabeth Foley, Glistening, 2025, Woodcut and collagraph framed in natural wood frame, 21x21 inches.

Featured Presentation:  

Rick Banda on Street Photography: Interpreting the Image  

Photographer Rick Banda will present on Street Photography. The talk considers the photographer’s duty of care in the moment of making, the role of consent and voluntary narrative, and the viewer’s responsibility to approach photographs with interpretive humility rather than projection or closure—treating the image not as evidence of a condition, but as an open site of shared human presence.

Image by Rick Banda

Featured Presentation:  Valerie Sullivan Fuchs on 

Entanglement and Spooky Action at a Distance: The Language of Water   

In this presentation, artist Valerie Sullivan Fuchs will share her research, artworks, and phenomenological experiences through which she investigates the entanglement of humans and natural environments. Einstein once described quantum mechanics as “Spooky action at a distance” where an invisible world of atoms composed of even smaller particles, can be moved and affected by being observed or without being touched. Through artistic experiments and performances, Fuchs has experimented with transference of energy to water through spoken words and writing—experiments that result in astounding photographic and video art installations.

Featured Presentation: 

Ashley Thursby Kern on the Nature of Movement   

Inspired by the installation Aaron, Elliptical Glass by James Turrell, Ashley Thursby Kern will lead a movement workshop and discuss the importance of the "nature of movement" and how connecting more deeply with ourselves enables us to connect more deeply with others. Wear clothes that will let you move freely. Seating will be available for anyone who needs supported movement.

Image: James Turrell, Aaron, Elliptical Glass, 2012. LED light, etched glass, and shallow space.

August 2026: Karen Gillenwater on Visual Thinking Strategies