If Joesph Beuys is right that anything can be art and John Cage is right that anything can music, then Roy McMakin's furniture makes perfect sense. His chairs, tables, chests and stools both deliver and undermine the idea of utilitarian subservience. Within the fine craftsmanship of  their construction is a subversive insistence on a right to be wrong. Currently at Ambach & Rice is McMakin's Five Chairs and Ten Tables, a sweet little show with a large contemplative back beat.  Remember Alice's uncertain relationship to an … [Read more...]

...for the memories, America. (Via Michelle Nicolosi) … [Read more...]

She's serving roasted cauliflower:Looks like broccoli to me, which reminds me of E.B. White's tagline for a 1928 New Yorker cartoon drawn by Carl Rose (Image via)On Thanksgiving in Seattle, a pipe froze at my house and burst, just in time for a house guest, who's arriving from Portland in an hour or so. Fortunately, we are eating elsewhere, and there are buckets of snow in the bathroom for that homey historic touch. As Strauss wrote in her email:Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Whether you celebrate it or revile it, have a great day filled with … [Read more...]

Chris Engman's photos are evidence of his interventions. Using the deserts of Eastern Washington as stage sets, he constructs material plays about his process. Six barrels become a triangle, the red always in the middle bottom and the other colors rotating. He shoots a photo, rearranges the barrels and shoots again. Time passes in the sky, which shades from blue to mottled dark to white. VARIATIONS, 2010 Archival inkjet print 52 x 44 inches Edition of 6Titled Dust to Dust, the exhibit at Greg Kucera Gallery is overhung, which is a problem for … [Read more...]

Rachel Maxi paints landscapes and still lifes you can carry in your pocket, your purse or briefcase. Larger ones are never bigger than two arms extended. She gives her portraits of ordinary places an extraordinary glow, as if a street sign, garbage bin, stretch of roadway or flower in a vase were a monk at the moment of enlightenment. I missed her recent exhibit at G. Gibson Gallery, but Gail Gibson was kind enough to unwrap a few to show me. From 12th Ave S., North Beacon Hill, 2010 oil on panel, 18 x 24 inchesFrom Columbia City, 2010 oil on … [Read more...]

Toronto's Kelly Mark belongs to the generation that identifies itself with the word "slack." In 2006 in front of the Henry Gallery (website currently down), she reprised her performance from Toronto's The Power Plant. Carrying blank signs, her group presented an opening night audience with her idea of militancy, chanting: What do we want?Nothing!When do we want it?Never!Her videos, drawings, wallpaper, sculptures and photographs strike a deadpan note, like Buster Keaton but minus his anxiety. I Don't Need A Therapist, 2008 Crosstitch on … [Read more...]

From Patrick Holderfield's cell phone. A narrative is easy to sense but hard to decipher. … [Read more...]

Portland's Ellen Lesperance won the Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Award in September, much to to the befuddlement of many in Seattle, who'd never heard of her. She has an exciting website, especially for feminists who appreciate the wider progressive history of their movement. Her site opens with rousing chants from decades-old street actions, currently, We don't want Cruise! Using archival footage, Lesperance photographs sweaters worn by demonstrators and  recreates them, first in yarn, second abstracted in gouache on paper. Five of … [Read more...]

In the 11 years he has operated his aesthete's paradise/curio and jewelry shop in Ballard, called Souvenir, Curtis Steiner has never featured himself in a solo show, till now, through Dec. 3. The insects in his ink drawings on paper - Insects and Alphabets - step on dainty feet out of 19th Century England, when entomology was a pastime as common as chess, surrounded by the kind of elegant handwriting that helped define the leisure class. Each insect holds court on the page, antenna twitching, surrounded by the calligraphy known as cursive. Last … [Read more...]

From The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockT.S. EliotAnd indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -- [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] Image (part of a series titled Shanghai Expo), comes from Marsha Burns' daily photo stream, which she sends to a fortunate few via email. There is no other way of seeing it. You have to know her. There are, of course, other poses to strike on the way to the exit. I saw an elderly man walking … [Read more...]

No matter how wide the panorama or abstract the result, all painting is still life, a frozen arrangement of shape, color, mood and space. Ripe: Juicy Contemporary Still Life at Seattle Pacific Art Center takes a more traditional view, focusing on objects painted in cunning display, or, in the case of Linda Hutchins, sewn. When I think of ripe and juicy, Marilyn Minter comes to mind, and John Currin. I like my ripe in the edge of rotten: leaves in the fall, not early blooms in the spring. For hard core still life, nobody beats the 17th Century … [Read more...]

There are moments when the correct answer to the question - What are you thinking? - is nothing. You're listening to your stomach gurgle or staring at your shoes, your hands, your sleeping dog. Public personalities are paid to snap, crackle and pop. Curated by Sara Krajewski, Harry Shearer's The Silent Echo Chamber at the Henry Gallery presents them as they wait for the go light and the text prompt. They sit in their seats with nothing to do and no one to share it with. Surrounded by dead air, they slump and grow slack. I'd love to see … [Read more...]

Last September, Artist Trust announced the finalists for its new Arts Innovator Award, which delivers $25,000 to two Washington State artists each year, the first three years funded by Dale and Leslie Chihuly. Early in October, the Artist Trust panel picked its winners: Leo Saul Berk and Margie Livingston. Jen Graves decried these choices, calling them "devastatingly conservative." I'm tempted to say that by her reasoning, the fascinating people at parties are the ones who wear lamp shades and dance on tables, but I want to take the … [Read more...]

The pleasure of engaging a old task comes from the tally-ho sense that a time-out will produce improvement. Surely a refreshed and renewed writer will find purpose, tone and image to clarify complexities into an amplitude. The chess master in Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union had no such hopes about his game. Returning to test yet another challenger, he said, "All the blunders are there on the board, waiting to be made."Onward to blunders: In New York last month, I imagined time spread out before me like Wallace Shawn's dinner with … [Read more...]

I'm back, better and will post Monday. Thanks for your patience, notes and concern. Antibiotics, take a bow.  Tobias Wong … [Read more...]