Space is always the issue at Suyama Space, the Seattle art center thinly disguised as an architect's waiting room. Big, raw and barn-like, it overpowers artists who fail to take its personality and proportions into account. Failures are rare, because Beth Sellars is in charge of the lineup.Thanks to the global consciousness of her curatorial vision and to architect George Suyama, who runs his firm around the gallery he donates to the public, Suyama Space has become one of the top art venues in the region. The price is right (free admission), … [Read more...]

When Douglas Britt, art critic for the Houston Chronicle, was in Seattle last month, he made videos of Target Practice at the Seattle Art Museum and Jason Hirata and Sol Hasemi at the Dirty Shed, which is, truth in advertising, a dirty shed behind Betsey Brock and Eric Fredericksen's house. Good picks, Douglas. My Dirty Shed story here. Jen Graves here. … [Read more...]

Some artists need to live by water.Others need community.There are artists who don't care where they live...As long as they can work there.Seattle's Jay Steensma died in 1994 of a heart attack at age 52. Although manic-depressive, he was on medication to control it for his final seven years and his career blossomed, if such a career can blossom. Part of his problem was volume, volume, volume. If we are lucky, some curator is going to dig through his crazy, slapdash excess to find a stellar core of solitude and weather.  He painted small … [Read more...]

Elizabeth MurraySusan RothenbergJean-Michel Basquiat and Keith HaringFay JonesKaren GanzJulia HaackSabrina Small … [Read more...]

Hiking along the Nooksack River in the Cascade Range around Mount Baker, Claude Zervas began to focus on campsites filled with burnt evidence of previous habitation.One he carried home in his truck, rocks and all. Besides the usual shotgun shells, it contained the charred remains of an upholstered chair. Who burns a chair in a forest? Somebody too drunk to forage, too wet to plow. Most of the camps Zervas saw were well made, dug deep and surrounded by rocks, but scattered like chickenpox scars on a lovely face, their careful construction could … [Read more...]

Garrett DurantMichael Spafford … [Read more...]

Penrod … [Read more...]

BentHelmut Stallaerts, from We Make Money, Not Art … [Read more...]

R. Allen Jensen allows a rare (to me) sighting of his work on Oct. 2, when he opens at the Smith & Valley Smith & Vallee Gallery in Edison, with a reception for the artist Oct. 3, 5-8.  Jensen has been making his deformed scarecrows, ruined collages, deft drawings and ornately framed assemblages for more than 40 years. His paintings are scores for a disaster, giving mourning a shape and sealing it into art. Writing about Jensen's work in 1969, Tom Robbins (then an art critic), put his finger on the strengths of it, that it has … [Read more...]

From a bulletin board, say in a grocery store: Hello, everybody. (UbuWeb, via) … [Read more...]

Makes pillows: … [Read more...]

Jeff DeGolier, Two Skies with a HoleFord Gilbreath, Duwamish River … [Read more...]

Kader Attia, still from video Aftermath. Attia opens Sept. 21 at Galerie Christian Nagel. On Nov. 3, Comedy of Change premieres in London, featuring the Rambert Dance Company. The piece is inspired by the thinking of Charles Dawrin, and Attia served as its artistic designer. Attia denies that he is a provocateur.The word provocative has spectacular implications. I believe only in poetry.And I believe in him. … [Read more...]

Boy genius Jacques-Henri Lartigue, My Seaplane and Me in My Bath, Paris, 1906G. Gibson Gallery: Along with its exhibit of Lartigue, Marion Post Wolcott and Imogen Cunningham, the gallery offers on Sept. 30 at 6:30 films by Lartigue,  Wolcott, Roy Stryker, the FSA photographers and Imogen Cunningham.Cunningham is also at the Seattle Art Museum through Aug. 29, 2010. Email from SAM curator Marisa Sánchez:In support of Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham, Christina DePaolo worked with the Imogen Cunningham Trust and … [Read more...]

From Studio Ephemeral: … [Read more...]

From Swamp File via This Isn't Happiness … [Read more...]

(Previous post on Hirst's legal dispute with a teenage street artist here.)The Chinese government hasn't filed suit yet, but it could. Its sweatshops produced a jewel-crusted skull before Hirst did.Expose of the China-to-Hirst link, such as it is, here. Mexico has a better claim and could use the money.I know a candy company that could sue Jim Riswold.John LeKay thinks that Hirst got his skull idea from him (here, scroll down for image). LeKay says he in turn got the idea from a Mayan crystal skull. More about artists who say Hirst copied them … [Read more...]

In response to this post, Sanford Robinson wrote:Hirst's presumption is that he's entitled to have it all. With meticulous craft and at astronomical expense, a human skull is encrusted with diamonds. This objet d'art, commissioned by Hirst, transforms the memento mori and invites us to see ourselves as creatures doomed to die, obsessed with money, and entranced by trinkets. It is intended to become his icon, his brand, his logo, like Warhol's can of soup. But more than just a way to enhance his artistic reputation--such as it is--the … [Read more...]

...all thy passions, match'd with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine--TennysonTomorrow night, beginning around 6:30, Lucy Lucia Neare's Theatrical Wonders presents the 12th edition of Lullaby Moon at Warren G. Magnuson Park. (Details here.)While this event could easily fall into the dread category of a sprites-dancing, whimsical reverie, I know sane and sensible people following its once-monthly (on a full new moon) procession through Seattle who are ravished by its charms.Wrote Josh Trujillo (his photo to the left) … [Read more...]

Previous:From C-Monster: The graffiti artist who stole a buncha pencils from a Hirst installation at the Tate Modern is now threatening to sharpen them. In response to my reposting C-Monster, an artist emailed me:That's cute, Regina, but you're missing the point. One artist vandalized the work of another. The pencils aren't just pencils, any more than Claes Oldenburg's bat is just a bat. In a more rational world than the one shaping up online, art critics would support the artist, not the vandal.I think it's worth remembering that Damien … [Read more...]

Faught, from Eugene, is an unraveling fabric installation artist. More on Betty Bowen Award for Northwest artists here, now in its 31st year. Faught receives $15,000. Seattle's Jenny Heishman and Matthew Offenbacher each get $2,500 special recognition awards. The trio will speak at the Seattle Art Museum Oct. 23, 6-7, followed by a reception. Free admission. … [Read more...]

...is a newspaper. (via) … [Read more...]

Email from a friend:When it is time to pick up your kids, try pulling a root beer from the back of the refrigerator. Watch the glass milk bottle slip and fall. Try to catch it! Watch it break into large, clear pieces. Watch the milk, glass and blood pour through your fingers. Drop your keys into the recycling can. (You will find them in a few days! They will be sticky.) Run to the bathroom, leaving a trail. Decorate the entire bathroom in red. Watch the toilet paper disintegrate into bright red mush. Put on more and more toilet paper. … [Read more...]

Gretchen Bennett placed her memorials to weeds and rubble amid weeds and rubble at the corner of 12th Avenue and Jefferson Street in Seattle. If Joseph Cornell's cabinets could be found inside curio shops instead of museums, the effect would be similar. (Her gallery here.)(A project for Capitol Hill Housing with assistance from Steve Zielke.) … [Read more...]

In Seattle, both left James Harris to sign on at Ambach & Rice. More on Ambach & Rice's expanding empire here.  Mitchell: McMakin : … [Read more...]

Katy Grannan:I will walk upon the beach... (via)Zoe StraussBare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang (via) I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.(via)Sometimes they do.Elizabeth SandvigTip TolandLife-sized, ceramic stoneware, detail: … [Read more...]

From email:  The NYTimes recently published an image of Ambroella trichopoda as the sole surviving member of the oldest extant family of flowering plants, "a small shrub found only on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific." I am reminded of our good friend Wes and his accosting Kathryn Hepburn on the stairs of the Burke Museum, giving her a fossil flower from Republic, and in his charming but star-struck manner, inadvertently comparing her to same. Ou sont les fleurs d'antan? I responded:Wes was so star-struck. Reminds me of … [Read more...]

From C-Monster: The graffiti artist who stole a buncha pencils from a Hirst installation at the Tate Modern is now threatening to sharpen them. (Jonathan Jones opines. Art Observed.) … [Read more...]

Or at least rotate it.Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (via)Standards and Double Standards is an interactive installation created by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer which is comprised of fifty buckled belts that hang from motors in the ceiling and a computerized tracking system. The belts will slowly turn so that the buckles face people walking by. If only one person is in the space, all the buckles will face him or her. If several people are present and moving around, there is more movement, as the belts closest are the ones influenced by each new presence. The … [Read more...]

If I get my passport in time, having foolishly allowed to lapse, I'm going to catch Death & Objects at Vancouver's Or Gallery, featuring Debra Baxter, Dawn Cerny, Barb Choit and The Goggles (Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge). Through Oct. 17. Cerny is well-known in Seattle for her drawings. What she's showing north of her home town is new. … [Read more...]