Godzilla (exhausted) in Bellevue

Plot summary: An aging monster who feeds on chaos beached itself on suburban shores. As Satan said, surveying hell, "What do mine eyes with grief behold?" Godzilla feasts on cities, adding its havoc to havoc. In Bellevue, the shopping capitol of the region, the orderly flow of commerce had a soporific effect. The beast staggered into Open Satellite, curled its 50-foot-long, 10-foot tall body around the pillars and fell asleep, breaking into soft, rumbling snores.

SIMPARCH's exhausted is a rough-and-ready construction devoid of get-up-and-go: animal instinct on the fritz. Visitors can stroll through its back end and crawl out its mouth. Made in handyman-garage style of green U-V fabric over a plywood skeleton with duct tape claws, it's Jonah without slime, danger, turbulence or redemption.

SIMPARCH's Matt Lynch and Steven Badgett built it in 8 days with a little help from a few friends. Kevin Drumm's soundtrack of guttural snores and slurps derives from orchestrated chorus of appliances, some of which appear to need a tuneup.

Is the Eastside coming into its own? The Bellevue Arts Museum's embrace of crafts proved an excellent move. The Kirkland Arts Center is a little jewel, and Open Satellite is as ambitious as any arts center its size in the country.

Only one move remains: Embrace the purse.

Ries Niemi, Walk Thru Designer Handbag. (2007, Stainless steel, 5' x 10' x 14')

A better title would be A Pocketbook Now. Empty yet imposing, weighty yet insubstantial, it's an apocalyptic metaphor in the heart of Bellevue's consumer culture. Like exhausted at Open Satellite, Walk Thru Designer Handbag blooms where it's planted, in the latter case at the entrance to the Bellevue Arts Museum.

Alas, its appearance there has been occasional. Now's the time to buy it and make it a permanent part of the experience of visiting a museum whose neighbor across a wide, traffic-clogged street is a shopping mall.