During an artists’ residency at Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture, the magic can happen just about anywhere: In the studio, at a community event, out in the field, or even at the kitchen table.
Writer and journalist Erika Bolstad experienced the latter during her first residency at The Ranch in 2021.
“I finished my first book there. I don’t know that I wrote the very last words, but I definitely came up with the idea for the last chapter while having a conversation with one of my fellow residents, Roger Peet,” Bolstad said.
The casual chat with Peet — an artist, printmaker and writer from Portland — provided Bolstad with a clearer path to the end of Windfall, her 2023 book about family inheritance, environmental exploitation and the American dream.
“We were discussing what I was thinking about the book and that conversation with him helped me clarify some of my thinking, which was really cool,” Bolstad said. “I had a deadline to meet and a lot of distractions at home, so having that special space (in Sisters) was instrumental to finishing.”
Since then, Windfall has been praised by BookPage as “a timely, insightful and important read” and named a finalist for the 2024 Oregon Book Awards.
Bolstad has spent the past few years exploring documentary filmmaking, bringing to the medium a journalistic approach she developed at Stateline, Climatewire, the Miami Herald and the Idaho Statesman, where she was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
In 2020, she earned a master’s degree in multimedia journalism at the University of Oregon, a few years after moving back to her home state.
“I was living in Washington D.C. and I had just kind of forgotten how beautiful it was here in the summer,” Bolstad said. “I remember calling my husband and saying, ‘When you come out to visit, let’s look at houses.’”
Now based in Portland, Bolstad has been focusing her efforts on filmmaking, producing a short film called To Be Rich that she describes as a companion to Windfall. And she’s currently elbows deep in a new project, Monumental, a film about an American city reckoning with its symbols of westward expansion in a nation divided over who belongs on pedestals, if anyone.
She plans to work on that during her residency, and also “do some writing that would further my next book project,” she said.
If her past experience is any guide, she’ll find the inspiration she needs at The Ranch — it’s just a matter of finding it.
In an Artist Talk and Film Screening, Erika Bolstad will show her short film The Elk on Sept. 10 from 6-7 p.m. at The Ranch. This event is free and open to the public, but requires advance registration.
Bolstad will also participate in the Studio Tour alongside fellow residents Donna Kaz and Liz Obert on Thursday, Sept. 17 from 5-6:30 p.m. at The Ranch.
