(Photo, Art in America)Carrie E. A. Scott is the new (and first) East Coast director for Seattle gallery Ambach & Rice, owned by Amanda and Charlie Kitchings.Since May 2008 and ending recently, she was director at Nicole Klagsbrun in New York. Before that, she was director at James Harris and ran the nonprofit space known as the Hedreen Gallery. Each month she plans to spend a week in Seattle and three in New York. Scott:I'll be doing everything a director does - curate and coordinate with clients and artists. Amanda and Charlie want to … [Read more...]

The opening of Cupcake Royale on Capitol Hill earned ecstatic notices from Seattle art bloggers, some of whom are personally involved.Joey Veltkamp of Best Of will serve as art curator after the first show, curated by Roy McMakin,  who with Ian Butcher (both from Domestic Architecture) designed the space. (Check the Best Of link for artists now on view.)Not only is the place lovely, it features seriously good art perched in various nooks and crannies. If you want to know who did what, however, you have to follow the corridor to the … [Read more...]

Nazi gnomes here.From Eyeteeth via C-Monster, Picasso gnome. (Elliott Arkin's Seedbed) … [Read more...]

Will CottonLee Stoetzel Dan WebbSusana RaabFred Muram, Three Hands Feeding Me Garbage, video, here.Anyone celebrating the essential act of keeping body and soul together? William Carlos Williams, This Is Just To SayI have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor breakfast.Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold. … [Read more...]

Doggie-style perspective isn't above a grade-school joke. The myopic have four eyes. (4-Eyed Dog, Pencil on paper)Currently at Ambach & Rice, Eric Yahnker draws as if the camera hadn't been invented and he's the unreliable narrator assigned to keep a record. Exactitude is his straight man. He renders tongue, teeth, slack lip, the golden shine on the short hair to set up the punchline.Another artist who drew this well would stick to drawings, but Yahnker has the nervous energy of a comic on stage. Visual jokes tumble from him. Part of the … [Read more...]

Somewhere between Polly Apfelbaum and Pae White is Bradd Skubinna at Francine Seders, with maybe a dog's left jog over to Richard (Dick) Elliott, whose murals are made of bicycle reflectors. (Photos Spike Mafford)On the floor, Skubinna's starburst pattern of plastic discards, Gabe Liked Jazz, radiates outward from a meticulously color-coded center. Plastic trays for apples, small appliances, meals to go, light bulbs and muffins inflect a wall with ripples of translucent patterns accented with the remains of torn labeling. A blue screen made of … [Read more...]

The Northwest Film Forum is a one-stop shop for the Seattle's cultural life, a hub that draws from visual art, theater, dance and music communities, recognizing the fluid reality of contemporary art. With a 30 percent drop in income, however, the forum needs help if it is to continue its programming at present levels, not only the film programming but the summer filmmaking camps for kids, screenwriting and film editing classes, filmmakers brought to town and the movies it is instrumental in getting made.  Director Lyall Bush is asking … [Read more...]

There's a crow in my neighborhood who wants me dead. Its screams when it sees me are heart-stopping. Do I look like someone who kicked a chick? I watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds with a niece intent on seeing the classics. I wouldn't have picked that one, but when the hapless human herd is strafed by birds, I thought of one whose venom might be keeping it up nights.Vanessa RenwickJean-Luc Mylayne takes an entirely different view, offering a fusion of factual clarity and high romance. Jessie Henson liberates hers from embroidery.Facts aren't … [Read more...]

Last fall, members of the Seattle Art Dealers Association (SADA) attempted to define who in their view is a singular artist for an exhibit titled, Century 21: Dealer's Choice.Predictably, the results were mixed. Just because dealers align themselves in a group doesn't mean they have anything in common. Like every other city with a thriving gallery scene, Seattle's galleries run on different tracks. Many specialize in intimate home decor. As long as there is a market for art that contains no criticality in its approach to content, there will be … [Read more...]

Charlie Finch on the charmed trio, all now demised, of Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage: The last of a great triumvirate, Merce Cunningham, died over the weekend. I'm the least dance-savvy person around, but it's fair to say that not a day has passed in my art existence without contemplating Cage, Rauschenberg and Cunningham. What they possessed like the Three Graces passing a chalice was an unstinting awareness of the world around them and its positive possibilities. When the garbage truck loads up at 4 in the morning, Cage … [Read more...]

In response to this post, Henry Art Gallery director Sylvia Wolf writes:As a response to the concern voiced above, I am pleased to report that the Henry Art Gallery is strong. Managing and thriving in this economic recession calls for bold steps from Henry leadership. As Washington State's oldest art museum (founded in 1927), the Henry has been through tough times before. What has sustained the organization through past highs and lows is the pioneering spirit that has made the Henry a cultural leader and model of innovation in the Pacific … [Read more...]

Photographers sneak up on people or catch them on the fly. Walker Evans went so far as to rig his camera so it appeared to be focused elsewhere for his Subway series, Many Are Called. Inside-Out: Portrait Photographs from the Permanent Collection at the Henry Art Gallery concentrates on portraits that are collaborative. The subject understands the scrutiny and has prepared a face to meet it.Edward Curtis: Among others, Bill Holm defended Curtis against Christopher Lyman's 1982 debunking study, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions. which … [Read more...]

Dominated by the Christianity for more than 1,500 years, art in the West continues to be seeded with its signs and symbols. They exert a magnetic pull over imagery that may or may not have been created to declare them.Lauren Grossman's use is intentional, if not reverential. (Below, Clear Christ and Behold, via Howard House)From his literal youth, Michael Lucero from 1978, via Howard House:Folkert De Jong's could be accidental, but it's real in any case, a crucified figure who has become his cross.Extended arms can be enough. (Damien Hirst)A … [Read more...]

Jasper Johns' light bulbs came from comic strips. They remain a constant that pops up in his sculpture, prints, paintings and drawings. Jasper Johns: Light Bulbs is a survey of their appearance from 1957 to 1976, in 17 prints and six sculptures, at the Henry Gallery. Johns, who also has a starring role in Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-78 at the Seattle Art Museum, likes his bulbs burnt out, which is possibly a joke on his status as the idea man of contemporary art.I love this survey, which originated at the Museum of Contemporary … [Read more...]

In a good economy with a sold middle class, factory work seems dreary. Is this all there is? What about my hopes and dreams? In a bad economy with an eroded middle class, whatever factory work remains is an enviable a safe haven. As Bob Dylan put it in Tangled Up in Blue, "lucky just to be employed."Cao Fei's My Future Is Not A Dream has a human-clog-in-the-machine feeling without the usual rage or desperation, because in this video, each clog is conscious of his/her contribution. Then there's the magic: A ballerina appears en pointe as a dying … [Read more...]

Panda is a quivering mass of sexualized ectoplasm that in video time contorts from vaginal to floral to a closeup of a dragonfly in heat and back again. As it collapses under its own metaphoric weight, the image reemerges as something else. Panda is a survey of the fluids that make life possible, created by dripping shaving cream onto a lit and transparent surface. Drawing (in shaving cream) by Jeffry Mitchell. Video by Tivon Rice. At the Henry through September 27. … [Read more...]

Previous post, none too flattering to gnomes, here.Ries Niemi comes to their defense:"Gnomes are always vulgar and almost always in the wrong." You ought to hear what gnomes have to say about Art Critics! British PM John Major's Father was a professional maker of Garden Gnomes, and Phillipe Starck's gnomes are friendly and lovable.Personally, besides being a member of the Troll liberation front, I like gnomes quite a lot, and find them neither vulgar nor in the wrong. However, I take a very dim view of poetry. … [Read more...]

In February there were layoffs (Jen Graves' story here). After that the Henry Art Gallery curtailed its hours (closed on Tuesdays as well as Mondays.) Now nobody on staff is working full-time. From director to curators, education and development heads, everybody's hours have been cut to 32. Soon: Why the Henry is worth a visit right this minute. PS: Although the Henry is in no danger of closing or even starving itself into insignificance, it's useful to remember the rule that applies to democracy too: Use it or lose it.  … [Read more...]

From the Center for Tactical Magic Web site, to file under Credit Where It's Due:Black Panther History Marker In a collaboration with David Hilliard (former chief-of-staff of the Black Panther Party) and Jeremy Deller (artist), the Center for Tactical Magic joined in designing and installing a commemorative historical marker at the intersection of Oakland, California's Market Street and 55th Street. The sign reads: (front side) On August 1, 1967, this stoplight was installed as a result of a community initiative spearheaded by the Black … [Read more...]

Seattle, Olympic Sculpture Park, Louise Bourgeois - Eyeball Benches (Image via) New York, Franz West, The Ego and the Id. NYT slide show/story here.While the West invites use, sitting on an eyeball isn't for everybody. Bourgeois' three sets of benches have been in place at southwest edge of the park for almost two years, beside her Father and Son fountain, yet they remain a hard sell for the sore of foot. Unless they're children, they look at them and continue to stand. Bourgeois: They are the expression, in abstract terms, of emotions and … [Read more...]

Anyone heading to Seattle to see highlights of the Seattle Art Museum's Asian collections will land in the wrong country. Luminous Jewels: Masterpieces of Asian Art from the Seattle Art Museum (100 objects) opens Saturday at the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo and will tour in Japan through July 19, 2010. SAM's Asian art holdings are usually cited among the top five in the U.S.Included in the exhibit:Deer Scroll (Poem Scroll with Deer) 1610s 13 1/2 x 410 3/16 inchesCrow Screen, one of two, both are in the show. Early 1700s. Each 61 9/16 x 139 … [Read more...]

Obama's in the White House and the sun is shining, but money continues scarce for art museums, which are all (nearly all) engaged in serious cost-cutting.  The question is not, who's cutting back, it's how they're doing it.AJ blogger Judith H. Dobrzynski exhibited a fine grasp of this issue in her post, Museum Hours: Time for a Change.Cutting back on evening hours seems clueless, and self-defeating. A few museums do seem to get this basic fact. When Seattle Art Museum recently cut hours, it announced that it will be … [Read more...]

The Bellevue Arts Museum's artsfair. Old. Big. In a parking lot. For the first time, missing its capital letter.  … [Read more...]

New and relatively new. Under Michael Darling, the modern and contemporary galleries at the Seattle Art Museum are in frequent motion. New at SAM is an occasional series that will highlight what slips into the museum's galleries without a lot of fanfare.Virginia and Bagley Wright own Living Room, Scene 2 (below) from his 2003 Krefeld Project, plus a set of the final photos of the series, promised gifts.Never has the divide between classically cool modernist architecture and the people who inhabit it been as decisively painted as in this series, … [Read more...]

High (Will Ryman via)Low (Ellensburg Muffler Men, via) … [Read more...]

Steve Davis photographs the marginalized, imprisoned and down on their luck.The 2007 flood in Washington State drew him outdoors.Currently at James Harris his series of landscapes titled The Western Lands. The photo above is lit and framed as if a body of brown water bordered by drowned trees were a face. Familiar but strange, each scene is devoid of humans but imbued with evidence of their presence. Richard Misrach comes of mind, naturally. His series, On the Beach, opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and has been touring ever … [Read more...]

From Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-78 at the Seattle Art Museum, Yoko Ono's  Painting to Hammer a Nail invites the audience to pick up a nail and pound it into a wood panel painted white.Two weeks ago, the audience decided to up the ante. (Story here.) Instead of continuing to pound nails as per the artist's request, they turned her piece into a community bulletin board.Two photos from yesterday, from SAM's Nicole Griffin.Credit goes to SAM for letting viewers be their own version of participants. As Anne Midgette, the … [Read more...]

In the catalog for Dirt On Delight: Impulses That Form Clay now at the Walker, co-curator Jennelle Porter wrote about Jeffry Mitchell: The repetitive labor required to make such works is apparent, and one of the many themes in Mitchell's work along with redemption, transcendence, sex, death and hope. She refers to Mitchell's high style featured in Dirt, such as his rococo fortress of a pickle jar from 2005. (Click to enlarge.) Currently at the James Harris Gallery, 49 pots serve as examples of his low. They include Green Peony, 2009, … [Read more...]

Artist Ottmar Hoerl was startled last month when prosecutors in Nuremberg threatened to charge him with violating Germany's ban on Nazi symbols. After extensive news coverage, the state announced Wednesday that it had decided to drop the charges, as his gnomes were intended to deride Nazis rather than promote them. Story here.Anselm Kiefer began his career in the 1970s with photos of himself giving the salute at sites of atrocities. However confusing such imagery is in contemporary Germany, the Nazis would have surely detected the mockery and … [Read more...]

 Debra Baxter You Turn Me Inside Out (glove) Carved alabasterBaxter again, carved alabasterCynthia Camlin, Melted 6, These drawings are of icebergs, but they bring to mind the pudding-under-crust collapse of the aging body. Had Hamlet lived longer he'd have seen his flesh melt. Camlin is in Return to Departure at the Kirkland Arts Center till Aug. 6. She has a solo show at Monarch Studios till Aug. 26. … [Read more...]