Lifting the Sky: PEM's Annual Fundraising Dinner & Party

Dinner | Live Auction | Dance Party | Art Experiences

Join us for this celebration of creative community! Your gift will provide valuable funds for the inspiring programs, exhibitions and education initiatives PEM offers each year.

This year's theme of Lifting the Sky is drawn from a story Marie Watt first heard from Upper Skagit elder Vi Hilbert. The story continues to inspire Watt's jingle cloud forms today. As the story goes…

…the sky was starting to press down on the people. Overwhelming the world with darkness, it became incumbent on the people — who spoke different languages and didn’t necessarily understand one another — to find a common vocabulary, even just one phrase, that would allow them to work together. The word they found is yəhaw̓, which means to proceed, to go forward, to do. Working together using sticks and saying that one word, yəhaw̓, they pushed up the sky. The clouds were lifted together, hoisted by many hands just as they were created by many hands. These were the first steps in a rhythm of healing and gathering, of being and hearing together.

More information on PEM Prize Artist Marie Watt can be found here.