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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. The usual others will be open as well, even though they are nearly all at the end of a run.

Matthew Offenbacher …

and Tony De Los Reyes…

open at  Howard House.

Also, Tim Roda …

and Drew Daly …
open at Greg Kucera. That’s all in the way of mainstream galleries. Fortunately, mainstream galleries aren’t the only ones in the Square. Soil opens what looks like a fascinating invitational lineup, and Punch is auctioning off its entire group show, $10 per ticket.

I’m in. Among other tempting offerings, the piece below, by Ries Niemi, is calling my name.

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.

Transformation, trickery and transcendence in Seattle’s Occidental Park:

[Read more…] about Coyote Consciousness

Previous post: Peter Santino is sorry

Ries 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 Seattle:

Santino is sorry because he did not become recognized as an artist by the powers that be. And by the time we get to 50, any artist who is halfway honest with him or herself is probably sorry as well. Santino is sorry because he did not accomplish all his grand plans, the ones he had when he was young and snarky and commenting on blogs.

At Roscoe Louie in 1979, in Seattle:

detail

[Read more…] about Ries Niemi on Peter Santino’s career apology

Ray Mortenson

Previous:

Francis Bacon, via

Thomas Moran via

reads them at the zoo.

Allora & Calzadilla, Hope Hippo, 2005

Alice Neel

Maria Lassnig

Lin Wei: Landscape, 2004

Zhang Huan

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. 13, 1993 charts a Sisyphean cycle. Unwrapping nothing reverses into clean-up before rolling on again. Still, the idea that the work parents do (or don’t do) influences their offspring is undeniable.

Marshall is part of Parenthesis, an exhibit that examines the connective tissue between parents and children. It’s art made from life’s glue.

Because Parenthesis is largely video, its curator (Western Bridge director Eric Fredericksen) worried that sound overlaps would produce a muddle. Instead of retreating to headphones, he hired theater designer Jennifer Zeyl to shape the space to contain individual sounds as well as enlarge the theme.

She created a house with the trappings of home, based on the upper-middle class tract version she grew up inside. (Photo via Best Of)

Before you enter, you’re already inside, having passed by Ann Hamilton’s video Still 3 from 2001 inset into a wall by the reception desk. Still 3 is small and easy to ignore, but once you stop, you’re hooked. It features a mother’s voice as she examines an ultrasound video of her baby.

I think a lot of the very abstract quality of my work – and the literal
quality of it – is always dealing with a state or a place or an edge, a
border, a threshold, a place that’s in between. (more)

Behind the Hamilton are a cluster of terrific photographs: Kerry Tribe‘s Dad’s Books, My Film Equipment from 2006; Sally Mann‘s Burgers from 1988, when her children were young; Matthew Cox’s impenetrable Family Portrait, shot in 2008 on a digital camera with the lens removed, and Tina Barney‘s The Son from 1987.

Instead of Barney’s usual Upper East Side Manhattan wealth, she offers Upper West Side intellectuals, and yet the subject is the same: parents and children. (Image via) What could this kid have done to be subject to such heat? Missed an appointment with his S.A.T. coach?

[Read more…] about Western Bridge: “Parenthesis” as entangling alliance

takes them to bed.

Larry Sultan