“The Living Experience” Lecture Event at Field Hall

Port Angeles Fine Arts Center presents The Living Experience, a lecture event held at Field Arts & Events Hall on March 8 from 2PM-4PM. The Living Experience shines a light on death workers and historians whose practices engage mortality with curiosity, care, and creative rigor. From working in morgues, to being an autopsy photographer, to researching the history of books bound in human skin, to creating mourning jewelry, this lecture event will look to challenge cultural taboos, honor traditions and the deceased, and offer an honest look at what it means to work within the death industry—where science, art, ethics, and remembrance often intersect.

Featured speakers include Megan Rosenbloom, author of Dark Archives; Dr. Marianne Hamel, forensic pathologist and co-founder of the art collective Death Under Glass; Nikki Johnson, forensic photographer and co-founder of Death Under Glass; Gina Iacovelli, owner of Mementos Entwined, known for her Victorian-inspired mourning jewelry; Astrid Raffinpeyloz, Death Doula with Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County and Carmen Watson-Charles, Cultural Manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Together they explore how death work can be both deeply human and profoundly illuminating—inviting us to reconsider our relationship with mortality, memory, and deeper understanding.