This just in: Susan Robb is opening a small exhibit of videos and photos on powder-coated steel shelves in the back room of Lawrimore Project, with a lecture by Robb at the gallery at 8. … [Read more...]

Johnny Ryan, most known for his Angry Youth Comix, is taking his characters inside the metaphoric big house in his head. Ryan opens an exhibit at Fantagraphics Gallery Oct. 10, 6 -9 p.m., accompanying the launch of his graphic novel, Prison Pit. … [Read more...]

ignores the view.Martin Parr, Snowdonia, via. … [Read more...]

Even though it's the first Thursday of the month, very few Pioneer Square galleries are opening shows tomorrow night. In the old days, when PS galleries marched in lock step, everybody opened on First Thursday and closed at the end of the month.That 12-show a year schedule was tough to maintain. Too tough, plus, it didn't allow for the work to sink in. Some galleries drifted toward 6-week shows, and others began to open and close when they felt like it. But never have so few galleries debuted on First Thursday.What's there is top of the line. … [Read more...]

Visual art goes to Jeffry Mitchell, on view at Ambach & Rice through Oct. 18. (Review here)Jen Graves on Mitchell getting his Genius Cake here. This year's other awards here. … [Read more...]

Transformation, trickery and transcendence in Seattle's Occidental Park: … [Read more...]

Previous post: Peter Santino is sorryRies Niemi:Okay, I am hopelessly biased - Pete has been a friend of mine for a long long time, and I respect his work immensely, and own a few pieces of it, too. But how is it so hard to comprehend that he is BOTH sincerely sorry, and ironic, sly, and making comments about the art world? Many of the best artists have not been 100% pure of art (or heart). The human brain, and soul, is perfectly capable of feeling two things at once. In fact, its probably incapable of NOT doing so. Santino, 1977, at and/or in … [Read more...]

Ray MortensonPrevious:Francis Bacon, viaThomas Moran via … [Read more...]

reads them at the zoo.Allora & Calzadilla, Hope Hippo, 2005 … [Read more...]

Alice NeelMaria Lassnig … [Read more...]

Lin Wei: Landscape, 2004 Zhang Huan … [Read more...]

In a video at Western Bridge, one child reads from Bill Clinton's welfare reform speech as others unwrap what prove to be empty boxes in a rapid-fire blur. "Work organizes life," observed Clinton, ringing the wrong bell. "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work will set you free") was on a sign over a Nazi death camp. Even without a Nazi echo in a piping voice, Clinton's plan assumed a fantasy, as DailyKos noted, that "hard work stocking shelves will lead Wal-Mart to pay you more than $7.50 per hour." Maria Marshall's President Bill Clinton, Memphis, Nov. … [Read more...]

takes them to bed.Larry Sultan … [Read more...]

Recycled Visions: The Films of Salise Hughes will be screened at the Northwest Film Forum Oct. 12, 8 p.m., courtesy of Third Eye Cinema, with live music from original scores.Still from There Were Houses Here, 2007.A primitive version of Tidal Wave here, which is stilted compared to the real thing but still good.Info from Web site: Visual artist Salise Hughes began experimenting with found film footage four years ago, creating her own unique process of digitally erasing and layering areas of the film image. Recycling is a major theme of her … [Read more...]

KUNSTFEHLER-FEHLERKUNST (Failed Art - The Art of Failure) ran at the ACC Galerie in Weimar till August 9th and is now at Halle 14 in Leipzig through Oct. 25. Peter Santino's contribution is a field of sand hemispheres that spell an apology in Braille. If the blind read it, they'll ruin it. Ambivalent regrets are nothing new for the (former Seattle) Northern California artist. In various forms, his apology text has been in motion since 1995, when, presumably, he first realized the error of his ways.Translation: Whomever,On January 25th, 1968, … [Read more...]

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After running on a regular basis earlier in the summer, Stokley Towles' Waterlines surfaces again for two performances at Noodle Works Studios, Oct. 18 and 25. (Info here) Wrote Brendan Kiley about Towles' 45-minute survey of Seattle waterworks:  It's about the rats in your toilets (they're really there), about the invention of near beer (as a safe alternative to drinking water, since the low alcohol content supposedly killed germs), and about a local man named Mel who has walked 90 percent of Seattle's sewer pipes (the things he's found … [Read more...]

Allen RuppersbergDan WebbWebb's Fortress (above) is currently in From Whence that Rainbow Came at Ambach & Rice.Another view: … [Read more...]

Laura OwensClaire Cowie … [Read more...]

The trees you know are Roxy Paine's. They're all over the place, including at the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. (Image via SAM)The tree you're less likely to know:Chris Sicat, Redwood Tree Top (Tag a Log) 2009, Graphite on redwood, 14 feet tall (Image via)Sicat hand-colored a 14-foot Redwood log with pencil, which he intends as a dialogue between two natural elements: (from Otis)I begin with looking at the wood form and the flow of the grain. I smoothen the wood to prep the drawing surface, which is a paradox in that it is a … [Read more...]

2009 P-K Awards here, average award, $16,000. Seattle artists on the list are:Rick Araluce, Etsuko Ichikawa, Ken Kelly and Alex Schweder. Congrats all. … [Read more...]

If Culture Grrl's list of stories missed by the New York Times is accurate, the NYT culture desk would be wise to give it some thought. Her complaints would have more weight if she had gone on to say what she appreciates about NYT's arts coverage. In visual art, at least, it's stellar. I don't understand why so many art bloggers have a hard time coughing up a compliment for the Times. Constant nitpicking against it gets old. Reminds me of Olive Oyl's dad saying over and over in Popeye, "You owe me an apology!" Let me get my form letter of … [Read more...]

Referring to this post, no-last-name-offered Eric wrote:Regina. I read with interest your claim that Seattle has 10 top galleries. In what way top? Try as I might, I can come up with only four that even marginally live up to that description: Greg Kucera, James Harris, Howard House and Lawrimore Project.There are more than 10 I'd call top.The first meaning of top is that I see every show, even the rare ones I'm not looking forward to, because I respect the dealer's record and know the opportunity exists to be surprised. These galleries are … [Read more...]

Kiefer, Your Golden Hair, Margarete (Dein goldenes Haar, Margarethe), 1981Nan Goldin, Sunset Like Hair, 2003Susana Raab, Hot Dorothies, 2009Gala Bent, French Braided, 2007-2009Nayland Blake, Gorge, performance restaged in 1998.Lauren Grossman, Behold, 2003 via Howard HouseJennifer Zwick, Hanging, 2007Alice Wheeler, Self-Portrait as Wicked Witch of the West, 2002 … [Read more...]

Dapper white boys and comely white girls enjoyed themselves in the comic-strip version of college life until the late '60s generation popped the bubble. In Frat Rats, Roger Shimomura painted the prelapsarian experience but added another icon dear to the hearts of the greatest generation: Racism.Shimomura paints racist incidents from the racist's point of view. The Asian male posing for the camera is a buck-toothed lizard. His yellow hand wraps the slender ankle of an all-American girl. Anyone looking at his paintings is seeing through the eyes … [Read more...]

Via … [Read more...]

Every year the MacArthur Awards embrace the individual efforts of the country's artists, scientists, economists and (still employed) reporters, reminding them that whether they are in or out of the mainstream, their excellence counts. This year, three of the seven in the arts are visual: Mark Bradford for collage painting, Rackstraw Downes for oil painting, Camille Utterback for video. That leaves Heather McHugh, who is a poet; Deborah Eisenberg, a short story writer; Edwidge Danticat, a novelist; and James Longley, a documentary filmmaker.I … [Read more...]

A few exhibits I almost missed, and one I still have...Michael Howard at Francine Seders through Sunday. His acrylics are paintings under construction of houses under construction. Earlier versions were more elusive in subject matter, featuring houses that could go either way, being built or torn down. Present ones look abandoned. Nobody's working on them, but there they are.His watercolors are very Fairfield Porter but with a twist or two, such as the tree in the image below, which seems to be suffering from some tree plague instead of serving … [Read more...]

Turns them into parched plains, with lettering running in dry gullies.Alison Keogh is at Francine Seders Gallery through Sept. 27. … [Read more...]

Cosmetic change has a bad rap, but not Tirana, Albania, a blighted city revived by the application of squares of color to crumbling buildings, celebrated by Anri Sala in "Dammi i Colori" (Give Me the Colors), from 2003.Two public projects tapping the same vein are among the most successful in Seattle's recent history: Dan Corson's Wave Rave Cave under a freeway off-ramp on Alaskan Way in Belltown, and Sheila Klein's Roosevennavelt: Columnseum, 10 acres of wasteland under the 1-5 freeway on Roosevelt near 65th St.Corson's site is a strip between … [Read more...]