In the women’s restroom at the Seattle Art Fair, there is a micro-climate of pragmatism amidst the extravagance. A woman adjusts her oversized plastic frames in the mirror as another straightens her silver-sequined dress. There is more lipstick (in fuchsia, flame orange and scarlet) than I have seen in the previous six months in Seattle. […]
Historians and cultural critics alike love assigning names to eras and identifying cultural moments, as well as the people and trappings that define them. It’s a curious irony that these namings only take place once the era has passed. We have a more difficult time defining the moments and cultures we currently inhabit. It often […]
There’s a family story that we like to laugh about over wine when my two sisters and mom and I get together, and it goes like this: the youngest of us, Rainee, was about eight years old. We were walking through a department store when she stopped at a rack of Sunday hats. Donning a […]
This interview is the first in a series about labor and art, a kind of “how the sausage gets made” of the visual world. We’re starting close to home (in fact inside my home) with my partner Tommy Gregory, who is the Sr. Project Manager for the Port of Seattle’s Public Art Program; at the […]
The thing about ceramics is that they’re just so smashable. You can hurl ceramics against the floor in celebration like the Greeks, shouting ‘Opa!’ in joyous abandon. Ceramics can split apart unceremoniously under the scalding water of a thousandth wash. Or, you can smash a ceramic with righteous indignation against the floor of your kitchen […]
This interview is the first in a series about labor in art, a kind of “how the sausage gets made” of the visual world. We’re starting close to home (in fact inside my home) with my partner Tommy Gregory, who is the Sr. Project Manager for the Port of Seattle’s Public Art Program, at the […]
There is a layer of heartbreak in Every Portrait Is a Vessel, the materially varied exhibition of works at Seattle’s Treason Gallery by artist Swoon, née Caledonia Dance Curry. The heartbreak doesn’t emanate from the works themselves, that part comes from the events that have elapsed as Swoon has been churning out similarly warm, layered […]
It goes without saying that the first amendment is important to artists. Freedom of expression is sacrosanct in the art world, a guarantee that whatever criticism (whether legitimate or ill-advised) artists want to lob at our culture, our government, or each other can be so tossed without legal consequence. Ostensibly, these statements are then weighed […]
When I ask her which issues are eating at her these days, artist Holly Ballard Martz digs her nails into her studio table in a mime of frustration before flashing a wide smile. “All of them,” she breathes, and then launches into a litany. “Immigration, reproductive rights, income inequality…money in politics period. I’m really upset […]
If I’ve learned anything from Cy Twombly as a painter, it’s that the elegant gesture (once learned) is almost impossible to unlearn. It’s one of life’s small tragedies that only children seem able to capture the perfect emotional timbre of line. When I draw an orchid with my six-year-old, mine looks like a flower but […]
