Museums
Off the Walls (Sept 15â16): We miss the Asian Art Museum. So this event is a welcome little interludeâbefore the renovation starts in full, they're opening their doors to the public so we can explore the museum and enjoy special installations created just for this weekend. Activities on Friday include a lecture on 15th- century Jain manuscripts by Ayla Joncheere and a reception featuring an electric Indian fusion band and DJs. Saturday promises a community day with family-friendly art-making, and an evening event with music, dancing, art-making, and a cash bar.
Electric Coffin: Future Machine (Through Sept 10): Known for their almost painfully ĂŒber-hip and high-concept interior-design work that elevates hand-drawn, street-art-inspired murals and Pacific Northwest kitsch to a new level in office spaces and restaurants around the city, Future Machine at Bellevue Arts Museum is Seattle creative design studio Electric Coffin's first foray into the realm of fine art in a museum. Future Machine is an evolving installation that will unfold over seven months of collaborations with artists, industry leaders, technology innovators, nonprofits, and other "creatives." The installation's transformational phases will loosely follow the process of an idea materializing into reality to create "new forms, and functions, and technologies" that embody their vision of the future. If that sounds a little ambiguous, it is, but it's probably worth checking out to see how the installation grows and changes in this time span. AC
Humaira Abid: Searching for Home (Sept 22âMar 25): Born in Pakistan and based in Seattle, Humaira Abid works in wood carving and miniature paintingâtwo very different media, related by their capacity to hold rich, meticulous detail. Her previous bodies of work have tackled socio-cultural norms, gender roles, and relationships, often expressing very intimate and personal narratives. Abid's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, Searching for Home is a site-specific installation revolving around the stories of immigrants and refugees in the Pacific Northwest. Political yet poignant, this work renders the humanity of families affected by far-reaching forces into magnificent, stunning forms. EP
Walter McConnell: Itinerant Edens (Oct 20âFeb 11): Artist and ceramic art professor Walter McConnell is known for doing something unusual with his clay pieces: not firing them. His wet ceramic pieces are often intricate, complicated, and enormous, and anyone looking at them would never question how "finished" they are. His latest exhibit, Itinerant Edens: A Measure of Disorder, looks terrifying. McConnell took full-body scans of live models, made 3D plaster molds based on their bodies, and cast terracotta clay models from the molds. He then created nature-inspired pedestals, put the human figures on top, and sealed the scenes in tall, thin terrariums. The end result looks like a dystopian version of the Natural History Museum. To maximize uneasiness, visit at the end of the show's runâbecause the pieces are unfired, they will change and morph over the course of the exhibit.
Cut Up/Cut Out (Through Oct 22): Organized by the Bay Area's Bedford Gallery, Cut Up/Cut Out is a traveling survey of international artists using decorative cutting and piercing to transform ordinary materials like paper, plastic, metal, and rubber into astonishing works of art. From the delicate Mexican folk art tradition of papel picado employed by Carmen Lomas Garza to the filigreed oil drums and land mines of Cal Lane, the range of scale, materials, and techniques exhibited makes Cut Up/Cut Out a must-see for anyone who loves seeing impressive feats of creative labor. EP
Tess Martin: Ginevra (Through Oct 22): Tess Martin's story-driven animations vary wildly in terms of medium, and include paint on glass, marker on glass, photographs and cutouts on paper, and paint and people on a mural at Cal Anderson Park. Her latest short film, Ginevra, is based on Percy Shelley's emotional and unfinished poem of the same name, and this time features paper cut-outs filmed on a multi-plane animation stand with lights and colored filters. Some speculate that Shelley's poem is based on the true story of a woman who appeared to rise from the dead after a plague swept 13th-century Florence. At this exhibit, see the film as well as a selection of cut-outs.
Making our Mark: Art by Pratt Teaching Artists (Nov 10âApr 8): The Pratt Fine Arts Center is a true resource for the community. It's the most grassroots, accessible place to make art of all kinds, from starting out in prints or clay or metal sculptures, to using large-scale or arcane equipment to realize a grand project that will be exhibited at a museum. And over the years they've had an incredible roster of teaching artists, including Buster Simpson, Marita Dingus, Mary Anne Carter, Preston Singletary, and Cappy Thompson. Making our Mark will showcase pieces by more than 250 past and present Pratt teaching artists, including those listed above, reminding local arts lovers exactly how much they owe to Pratt.
Manuel Ălvarez Bravo: Mexico's Poet of Light (Sept 23âDec 31): See 23 photographs by renowned Mexican photographer Manuel Ălvarez Bravo, who is known for his seven-decade career capturingâamong many other themesâurban life, the nude form, folk art, and the work of muralists including Diego Rivera. Many of Bravo's images come across as anthropological photojournalism, and others focus closely on texture and shadows, zooming in to create abstract, sometimes surreal mini-scenes removed from culture and politics. This exhibit will feature images that "show the artist's ability to synthesize motifs of Mexican religious and indigenous works and plant forms (such as agave leaves) with a Modernist approach to image making."
Storme Webber: Casino: A Palimpsest (Through Oct 29): Storme Webber is a Two-Spirit First Nations (Alutiiq/Black/Choctaw) interdisciplinary artist, curator, writer, and performer who creates socially engaged texts and images at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, memory, and spirit. Through the exhibition of archival photographs, installation, and experimental storytelling, Webber uses the pre-Stonewall working-class LGBTQ history of the Pioneer Square neighborhood as a point of departure to shed light on the hidden stories of the marginalized people in Seattle's present and past. Expect to see the historical made timeless, and the timeless made tangible. EP
Alison Marks: One Gray Hair (Nov 10âFeb 4): The Frye continues its outstanding track record of programming multimedia investigations of identity, tradition, and history with Alison Marks's first solo museum exhibition. Rejecting the notion that Native art must function spiritually to be considered legitimate, Marks uses unexpected materials and imagery drawn from contemporary internet culture to reimagine customary Tlingit forms as something fluid, playful, and made with whatever materials are available. Through her work, Marks constantly asserts that "culture is not stagnant"ânew media create an ongoing context for new forms. EP
Kraft Duntz featuring Dawn Cerny: Fun. No Fun. (Through Sept 10): For Fun. No Fun, 2015 Genius Award nominee Dawn Cerny and artist/architectural team Kraft Duntz (i.e. David Lipe, Matt Sellars, and Dan Webb) filled the Henry's open lower level gallery with a maze-like structure of staircases, walkways and elevated platforms. It's a playful installation that toys with themes of expectation and disappointment as it simultaneously delights and confounds. EP
Summer Wheat: Full Circle (Through Sept 17): Brooklyn-based visual artist Summer Wheat is known for her abstract expressionism and colorful paintings that depict chaos, often through everyday figures and scenes. This exhibit features a series of large-scale paintings and intimate drawings that explore the big and small: the sun, the moon, and the stars, alongside quotidian events and chores.
Doris Totten Chase: Changing Forms (Through Oct 1): This summer, the Henry presents the first retrospective of Seattle/New York artist Doris Totten Chase (1923â2008). Chase started out as a painter and sculptorâone of very few women associated with the Northwest School. In 1968, she shot a video of dancers interacting with her sculptures, and soon she was using Boeing's computer imaging technology to produce early and influential computer-generated video art. Chase lived and worked in New York during the '70s and '80s, and today her video and film works are in the collection of MoMA. Now is your chance to see them in the other city Chase called home. EP
If You Don't They Will: no. NOT EVER. (Through Oct 1): If You Don't They Will is a Seattle group that has a topical yet always relevant goal: to provide "creative and concrete tools for countering white nationalism through a cultural lens." See their latest work, an interview-based oral history exploration that features Pacific Northwest community organizers and highlights their experience fighting white nationalism (which exists all over the Northwest, but is especially prevalent in Eastern Washington and in the KKK hub that is our neighboring state, Idaho).
Jacob Lawrence: Eight Studies for the Book of Genesis (Through Oct 1): It's been 100 years since American artist Jacob Lawrence was born, and Seattle is celebrating appropriately. Seattle Art Museum's gigantic, unprecedented exhibit of all 60 panels from his Migration Series drew large crowds in April, and now there's an exhibit of silkscreen prints at the Henry. These works explore the Genesis creation narrative ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," etc.) and are based on Lawrence's experience listening to sermons at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
Viewpoints: Brian Jungen (Through Oct 8): Brian Jungen is a Canadian artist of Swiss and Dane-zaa Nation ancestry. He is best known for works that combine consumer aesthetics with pop-culture representations of indigenous people, like faux Native masks crafted from Nike Air Jordans or a whale skeleton constructed from plastic patio chairs. For this iteration of Viewpointsâa rotating series highlighting works from the Henry's collectionâfour related drawings by Jungen are on view. Dating from the late 1990s, shortly after the artist's graduation from Emily Carr University, these early drawings use the visual ambiguity of silhouettes to create unexpected composite images of identity in relation to global consumerism. EP
Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI)
Seattle on the Spot: The Photographs of Al Smith (Opens Nov 18, Ongoing): According to Al Smith's 2008 obituary in the Seattle Times, Smith never considered himself a professional photographer. But his photographs of the Central District, jazz clubs, and the African American community in Seattle number in the tens of thousands, and their quality, depth, and breadth are unparalleled. In particular, his documentation of the Jackson Street jazz scene has helped preserve memories of a relatively fleeting but culturally formative time in our city's history. Smith's archive is gigantic, so selecting images for this exhibit will be tough, but there will almost certainly be shots of a few famous musicians touring in Seattleâhe photographed legends including Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Jimmie Lunceford, Kathryn Dunham, Lionel Hampton, Erskine Hawkins, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.
The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited (Ongoing): There was no true show business precedent for Jim Henson's innovative combination of hip, humanist wit, and streamlined puppet design and operation, and there are no true descendants of his ability to hybridize the legacy of vaudeville with the modern possibilities of TV and cinema. Henson's ability to be utterly hilarious, genuinely warm, and actually educational made him a radical figure in the arts, and as Hamlet said about his late father, we shall not look upon his like againâwhich makes this exhibition of puppets, sketches, storyboards, scripts, photographs, video clips, and costumes from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth (among other Henson projects) an indispensable opportunity to celebrate his genius. SEAN NELSON
Northwest African American Museum
Daniel Minter: Carvings (Through Oct 8): Daniel Minter's whole body of work deals with history, prioritizing cultural iconography whether depicting Blackness in the American South or portraying the African Diaspora across the world. At this exhibit, see Minter's painted woodcarvings and linoleum block prints, created originally for use in children's books. These are the memories and symbols he's passing on to a new generation.
Christopher Paul Jordan: Latent Home Zero (Through Oct 2): As you walk through the Olympic Sculpture Park, pause to peer through a binocular telescope created by Christopher Paul Jordan (muralist, painter, sculptor, teaching artist, and winner of Cornish's 2017 Neddy Artist Award). In the telescope you'll find Latent Home Zero, a site-specific exploration of displacement, history, and African American migration that is described by the artist as "an interactive silent film."
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors (Through Sept 10): I am happy to report that the show is just as spectacular as everyone's Instagram makes it out to be. I'm also happy to report that it's infinitely more thoughtful, infinitely more nuanced, and infinitely more infinite than I thought possible. Mika Yoshitake fittingly arranges Kusama's works into a narrative and aesthetic loop. When you first walk into the gallery, you see a lot of Kusama's bright, new abstract paintings and sculpture. Then you walk into the room full of all the infinity mirror installations and the chairs covered in soft sculptures that look like yams. Then you walk into The Obliteration Room, where attendants hand you some polka dot stickers to stick all over a white room. You end where Kusuma began in the 1950s: with a bunch of eery, surreal polka dotty/stripy paintings. The effect of seeing all that bright artwork, of course, is that everyone turns into a giggling, bubbly, excitable child. But there's plenty of darkness in Kusama's work, too. RICH SMITH
Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect (Oct 19âJan 15): Born in Pennsylvania 100 years ago this summer, Andrew Wyeth is an American realist painter associated with Regionalism. His paintings and drawings generally include figuresâsometimes in a landscape, sometimes in contemplatively-lit interiorsâthat simultaneously present drama and stillness. In the 1970s and '80s, he painted over 247 studies of a German-born woman named Helga Testorf, resulting in some of the most intimate and compelling examples of 20th century portraiture. Organized in partnership with the Brandywine River Museum, Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect presents over 100 works by this quintessential American artist. EP
Denzil Hurley: Disclosures (Through Nov 5): UW professor Denzil Hurley creates paintings that are almost sculpturalâand perfect for a period in which committed citizens are taking to the streets with signs every other weekend. His monochrome canvases mounted on sticks and poles will challenge the way you think about communication, and how it relates to both artistic expression and the way we interact with the world at large. Look forward to a thoughtful take on signage and meaning conveyed through dark, layered blocks of color.
African Renaissances (Through Mar 4): This exhibit highlights the power of the African continent by imagining a futuristic renaissance, featuring regalia and furnishings that were originally seen in the courts of the Benin, Asante, Kom, and Kuba kingdoms, alongside art created by Maasai, Fulani, and Ndebele women, as well as contributionsâincluding a music videoâfrom Baba Tendai, a contemporary musical leader living in Seattle.
Zhi Lin: In Search of the Lost History of Chinese Migrants and the Transcontinental Railroads (Through Feb 18): Seattle artist and UW professor Zhi Lin's work has drawn on Chinese-American history to explore uncomfortable truths as well as quotidian realities. Christopher Knight at The Los Angeles Times described some of his work in 2009: "At Koplin Del Rio, most of Lin's landscape drawings are made on sketch-pad-size paper using pencil and thinned Chinese ink. Their modest scale and simple materials yield a sense of the artist sketching on-site, as if taking pictorial rather than written notes of what he sees â a method employed by countless 19th century artists from the American East traveling through the Western frontier. Lin could have used a camera (period photographs of the Chinese laborers at work are not scarce), but drawings connect eye to mind to hand in a powerful and thoughtful way."
We Are the Ocean: An Indigenous Response to Climate Change (Through Nov 12): 71% of the Earth's surface is covered with water, and our bodies are filled with it. Our health and survival depends on water, and yet our oceans are filled with plastic, our coral reefs are dying, and oil pipelines threaten to poison our rivers. Curated through a community process involving educators, artists, and indigenous communities, We Are the Ocean presents the work of artists who call the Pacific Ocean home. Through objects, installation, poetry, and oral histories, this exhibition engages with the history of climate change while providing a wealth of creative, philosophical, and spiritual insight for the future. EP
Year of Remembrance: Glimpses of a Forever Foreigner (Through Feb 11): Former Stranger visual art critic Jen Graves wrote that Roger Shimomura's 2009 exhibition Yellow Terror contained "art that he hopes will lose its power." Unfortunately, his work (paintings crowded with snarling Japanese stereotypes, prints about American concentration camps, and collections of racist objects) has become intensely relevant. Shimomura's pop-art social critiques are highlighted alongside Lawrence Matsuda's poetry in Year of Remembrance, a show that fits an impossible amount of history, writing, video, and visual art (centered on Shimomura's and Matsuda's own experiences of internment) in what is essentially two short hallways. There are maps, photographs, pamphlets, shooting targets of "Jap" caricatures, a piece of fence from a Seattle detainment center, and a collage of 1942 articles with titles like "Jap Evacuation Blow to B.C. Lawns, Flowers" and "Use of Grounds to House Japs Won't Halt Fair at Puyallup." There's also a binder stuffed with current news clippings. In this moment, at the Wing Luke, stare straight at an ugly American truth. Remember that Roosevelt is not a perfect liberal hero and that a busy schedule is not an excuse for apathy. JR
Teardrops That Wound: The Absurdity of War (Through May 20): Portland artist Yukiyo Kawano is a third generation hibaku-shaâa survivor of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her life-size replica of "Little Boy" (the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima) is crafted from kimono silk and strands of her own hairâcontaining DNA bearing witness to this history. In Teardrops that Wound, curated by SuJ'n Chon, Kawano's work stands in dialogue with the work of other Asian Pacific American artists who use transformative strategies to deconstruct the horror associated with the imagery of war. EP
Galleries
John Criscitello: In Code (Sept 7â28): John Criscitello is well known around Capitol Hill for his public art about anti-gentrification featuring "Woo Girls" and homophobic Amazon bros. This new show features "rock stars, reimagined album covers, and printed garments," communicating "gay identity and the fragile architecture of masculinity" through traditional media, video, and installation.
unstable objects (Through Oct 14): This group show about instability will examine "sculptural forms that undertake peculiar affiliations between structure and ambiguity, transforming (dis)figured objects into questionable bodies of inquiry," highlighting work by artists including Amina Ross, Steffani Jemison, Diedrick Brackens, Martinez E-B, and Lisa Jarrett.
Unarmed (Sept 7â30): Demian DinĂ©Yazhi, an indigenous DinĂ© (Navajo) transdisciplinary artist from Portland Oregon, is the winner of the 2017 Brink Award. As a guest curator for September at Bridge Productions, DinĂ©Yazi has brought together the work of photographer Kali Spitzer, ceramicist and sculptor Lia Greisser, and photo, video, and performance artist Nika Kaiser. The work of these three young artists seems married by an interest in effusive form that revels in its own embodiment. The title implies vulnerability, the most difficult thing to cultivate in times of violence and uncertainty. I can't wait to see how these artists fill the space. EP
Sustaining New Patronage: A Brainstorm Project (Oct 12âNov 4): This group show investigates the complicated workings of the gallery world, a pressing issue as galleries in Seattle and around the world struggle to adapt to new approaches to art buying. This show will explore "the idea of 21st century patronage, how the ways people engage with the art world is changing, and how people from varying economic backgrounds may gain and benefit from artist and gallery relationships outside of or in addition to buying art."
Emily Gherard (Nov 9âDec 2): In 2014, when Emily Gherard was nominated for a Stranger Genius Award in Art, Jen Graves wrote: "Emily Gherard's paintings and drawings of subtle shapes and textures look like there's some real, alive thing in there. You can't make out what it is for sure, but you know it's there. In one piece, a dark patch gleaming up from a field of static is like an underwater creature detected in sonar view. In another, a series of shapes assemble themselves like rocks that have cascaded down a mountain into a haphazard pileâbut each rock is bulgy and soft at the edges. As much as they're rocks, they're fleshy bodies that shift and twist and press against each other. They may as well be strangers on the bus."
Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery
Johnny Appleseed (Oct 14â31): If you're a regular Stranger reader, you might recognize the style of Noah van Sciver's darkly funny comics. His latest project, Johnny Appleseed, is a graphic biography of the legendary missionary/seed-dropper created in collaboration with Paul Buhle (among many other accomplishments, Buhle is known for his historical takes on radicalism and his nonfiction graphic works). See selections from Johnny Appleseed until Halloween and get your copies signed at the opening party.
Short Run Marathon Art Show & Festival Reception (Nov 3âDec 6): Short Run Comix & Arts Festival is an overwhelming yet essential Seattle indie experienceâcelebrate the event with this accompanying art show featuring works by local favorites including Gemma Correll, Tom Hart, Anders Nilsen, Julia Wertz, Leela Corman, Rebecca Artemisa, Jordan Crane, Nishat Akhtar, and Anders Nilsen.
Shawn Huckins (Oct 5â21): Shawn Huckins is known for his humorous Pop Art and meme-inspired mixed media works that mash together images of early American figures and politicians with contemporary internet speak. On Huckins' website, he writes: "Imagine what Lewis & Clark could have done with the internet while exploring the American west."
Robert C. Jones and Cable Griffith (Sept 8âOct 14): Robert C. Jones is a Seattle touchstone, having taught art at the UW for the awe-inspiring span of 38 years. His colorful gestural abstractions are embedded with Matissean black lines, and are a pleasure to look at. See Jones's paintings and drawings alongside soft and skillful paintings by Cable Griffith, the Seattle artist and professor at Cornish College of the Arts.
Terry Leness and Marion Post Wolcott (Oct 20âDec 2): Architectural and landscape paintings by Terry Leness will be on display alongside historical images by renowned Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott.
Chris Engman and Dan Webb (Sept 7âOct 28): Greg Kucera is the gold standard for established Seattle galleries, and Chris Engman and Dan Webb are two of the most sophisticated artists currently working in the Pacific Northwest. Engman takes photographs that combine built environments with landscapes in ways that dare you to figure out how they were created. These spaces are illusory yet functional; mysterious yet matter-of-fact. Webb is a master woodcarver who creates figures so real they might seem to leap out of the block, if they weren't also tethered by forces outside their control. Together, these artists marry natural environments and forms with artifice in a way that transcends both. EP
David Byrd and Michael Dailey (Nov 2âDec 23): This exhibit offers beautiful works by two very different artists. In 2014, Jen Graves wrote about Michael Dailey's glowing abstractions as compared to Rothko: "The comparison is half-aptâset side by side, you'd see that the paintings of Dailey and Rothko are not actually all that similar. But their magical effects are." David Byrd, on the other hand, created paintings that had "both soul and style" that were inspired by his own life, often focusing on the 25 years he spent working at a VA hospital.
Elizabeth Mputu (Sept 9âOct 28): Fans of Elizabeth Mputu's work have probably experienced it digitallyâtheir work often resides in a computer screen, from the guided meditation video they made after a grand jury failed to indict anyone after Sandra Bland's death, to the interactive and informative web installation Broken Windows that dealt with police brutality, vulnerability, and security. This exhibit offers Seattle audiences the chance to see what Mputu can create in a gallery space.
Wong Ping (Nov 11âDec 16): Hong Kong-based artist Wong Ping is known for his cutesy, creepy, trippy animations (Jen Graves especially liked "the story of the impotent man who waits in the bedroom closet while his wife does sex work"). Don't miss his brightly colored and metaphor-driven stories.
Leiko Ikemura and Alwyn O'Brien (Sept 7âOct 14): In 2012, Jen Graves wrote, "Alwyn O'Brien's ceramics are the smartest to come out of the UW's great program in the last few years, and the sexiest, too. They're like patches of weeds embedded with video feeds. In that tangle of porcelain you might find a mysterious photograph of a blindfolded crowd in a meadow, say. All you know for sure is that you will follow these curving transports." See pieces by O'Brien alongside a variety of haunting, shadowy, and symbolic works (including paintings and ceramics) by Leiko Ikemura.
Mary Ann Peters (Oct 19âNov 25): When Mary Ann Peters was nominated for (and later won) a Stranger Genius Award in Art in 2015, Jen Graves wrote: "Early this year, she showed a breakthrough body of work in new media and new approaches. There were small, intimate paintings based on photographs taken from the internet (ranging from pictures of war to placid, mystical landscapes), capturing that duality of being close but not being there. There were cast-bronze pita pockets, the food burned away in the casting process, pitas now both bread and bronze, delicate and unbreakable, here and gone. There was a large, mesmerizing installation of a hidden garden, and a woven tapestry based on an old satirical cartoon. And still there were those classic, dust-stormy abstracts, which demonstrate yet again that Peters is, as has been obvious for a very long time, one hell of a painter. From here, she could do anything."
BorderLands (Through Oct 29): Pedro Lasch and other Pacific Northwest artists will use various media to delve into "nationalism and belonging." See works from the City of Seattle's collection by Anida Yoeu Ali, Ryan Feddersen, Satpreet Kahlon, Henry Luke, Ries Niemi, Crystal Schenk, C.A. del Rosario, and Inye Wokoma.
Ryan Molenkamp and Jed Dunkerley (Oct 5â28): Molenkamp continues his series of expressionistic, eruptive landscape paintings titled Fear of Volcanoes, while Linda Hodges welcomes a new member to the gallery: Jed Dunkerly. In 2010, Jen Graves wrote that Dunkerly's drawings of machines "made the fantastic more fantastic by making it ordinary and even flat" and "dissolved the nature/human binary and replaced it with a new mixture that did not separate human activity from other processes in nature."
Sofie Knijff (Sept 7âOct 13): Based in Amsterdam, Dutch-Belgian photographer Sofie Knijff mixes documentary techniques with staged settings and costumes to create dreamlike images in which the real and fictional become difficult to distinguish. Drawing on her background as a theatrical peformer, Knijff crafts dramatized simulacra that reveal unseen truths behind what is seenârealities that can be felt or intuited are illustrated as though they are real. This fascination with identity, performance, and theatricality suggests questions as to the ultimate nature of self. Who are we, and how did we become that way? What aspects of identity are a mask, and what is the truth behind them? EP
Markel Uriu: Detritus (Through Sept 23): Seattle artist Markel Uriu's work includes trippy, dreamlike, nature-inspired sketches and expansive, ever-changing installations featuring live plants. This exhibit, Detritus, will explore "concepts in Buddhism and Wabi Sabi of impermanence, decay, and a resulting wealth of growth."
Julia Freeman: The Grand Drape (Dec 1âJan 6): This new show by Julia Freeman is described as an "installation/performance/stage" exhibit that will deconstruct cultural symbols and patterns. Last year, Jen Graves wrote about Freeman's work on display at Glass Box Gallery: "Freeman's work demonstrates her immense research. Quiet Alter is a portrait of how the free-market drug industry manipulates those most vulnerable, carrying out colonialist, capitalist violence without any need for malicious intent. It's just the system. In Freeman's board game Pharmakon, made with Steven Miller, the playing cards are multiple-choice questions about drug history, politics, and economics; 'Chance' cards typically reward the CEO player with billions. 'Chance' cards are based on horrifying actual events."
Terry Turrell (Oct 5â29): Northwest artist Terry Turrell makes highly textured multimedia work (with an emphasis on painting and sculpture), often using recycled materials.
UnWedged 2017 (Nov 10â30): UnWedged is Pottery Northwest's annual Juried Contemporary Ceramic Exhibition. This time, it will be juried by acclaimed ceramic artist Patti Warashina, who makes figures and objects that are emotional, imaginative, and fearlessly strange.
Tatiana Garmendia (Through Oct 14): This new exhibit by interdisciplinary artist Tatiana Garmendia will explore issues related to homelessness. In 2013, Jen Graves wrote: "Tatiana Garmendia has made some of the most gorgeous things. The main subjects of the exhibition are her erotic drawings that are burned into paper, not drawn on, using a tool that's like a pen, but on fire. She paints between the burn lines in pastel watercolor, in a process she describes as cooling the heat of the burns. You can almost hear sizzling."
Closed Quarters (Through Sept 29): UW MFA alumn and 2013 Stranger Genius Rodrigo Valenzuela recently accepted a faculty position at UCLA. For Closed Quarters, he returned to Seattle as a curator. An exhibition of video art that highlights the relationship between domestic environments and privacy, gentrification, and intimacy, Closed Quarters presents the work of Zachary Fabri, Shana Hoehn, and Kenneth Tam. Taken as a group, these three works represent distinct strategies for investigating the potential of domestic spaces as sites of vulnerability to tease out the poeticsâand potentialâof how we relate to each other as bodies. EP
Zaria Forman: Antarctica (Sept 9âNov 4): This exhibit featuring work by Zaria Forman is inspired by the month she spent aboard the National Geographic Explorer in Antarctica. Jen Graves wrote about Forman's "large, majestic" images of disappearing arctic glaciers in 2014, calling her "highly talented at conjuring mesmeric scenes of turbulent water and sky in pastels" and "fastidiously precise," and comparing the drawings to "dramatic, high-contrast photographs." She also added, "It is not surprising that these romantic spectacles are flying off the walls into collectors' homes."
Art Events
Artist Talk with Storme Webber and Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Sept 14): Storme Webber will join with curator Miranda Belarde-Lewis for a discussion of Webber's exhibit Casino: A Palimpsest.
Zaria Forman: Antarctica: Beyond the Familiar (Sept 9): Zaria Forman has been creating images of disappearing glaciers for years. This in-gallery interview conducted by Gage artistic director Gary Faigin will "immerse Formanâand usâin the immediacy of our shifting landscapes."
Art Walks
Second Fridays
Third Thursdays
Second Fridays
Second Thursdays
First Fridays
Second Saturdays
First Thursdays
Third Thursdays
Third Fridays
Second Thursdays
