Slideshow: "Jolly Good Prints" at Bluebottle

Watch a slideshow of pieces from "Jolly Good Prints" at Bluebottle. Above by Sara Hoover.

"Jolly Good Prints"
Where: Bluebottle Art Gallery, 415 E. Pine
When: Tuesdays-Saturdays through Dec. 31

As Erika Hobart noted in last week's issue:

When I was in college, all I wanted for Christmas was money. And lots of it. So I've written my undergraduate baby sis a check for a generous amount—yes, I consider $100 generous—the last two years. This year, however, she's SOL because I've decided to invest in more "meaningful" gifts. Bluebottle recently launched its holiday "Jolly Good Print Show" (through Dec. 31), which features awesome silkscreen posters ranging from $15-$100. Among the contributing artists are some of my favorites, Tad Carpenter, Cricket Press, and Anna Cote—who will even create a custom digital illustration if you provide her with a photograph. I plan on grabbing some general and customized prints for my entire family. It won't make little sis any richer, but her lackluster dorm room will look a whole lot nicer. Shoppers, also take note that the gallery is also offering 25-percent-off coupons during the duration of the show.


Nate Duval

Topics: Art Events and Visual Arts

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Art, Wine, and Pizza to Collide at Talarico's

Cool wine label, eh? This would be one of the offerings from Walla Walla's sensational Balboa Winery, and it's designed by Amy Glase (her husband, Tom, designs the wine). Thursday night, from 6-9, Amy's art will be on display at an unlikely venue: Talarico's in the West Seattle Junction, best known for its gargantuan pizza slices and boner-inducing pickup scene. Confession: I am personally quite fond of both Walla Walla and the Glases — in art, booze, and life — and they had the good sense to name their son Winston, sort of a throwback, southern name that has been inexplicably shelved in the annals of modern offspring nomenclature. It would touch this Delridge denizen deeply if you could come out, and next time you're in "Walla-Vegas" (my aun't ultra-clever nickname for the town so nice they named it twice), check out both the winery and Amy's downtown boutique, Fitts & Co.

Topics: Art Events

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Last Night: First Thursday at the Tashiro Kaplan Building

Image source: http://www.punchgallery.org/exhibitions/2008-12.html

A voyeuristic show, with video works by Ira Eduardovna, one of which features six simultaneously running screens, like an open box, showing the artist in a maid's outfit. The audience watches her clean from all angles.
See another two-channel video here.
Punch Gallery
Through December 27.

Continue reading "Last Night: First Thursday at the Tashiro Kaplan Building"

Topics: Art Events and Visual Arts

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Lighting the Park

As we've previously written, the new Counterbalance Park in Lower Queen Anne (aka Uptown) has been flickering with new LED lights that were part of the original design. (The park is located at the base of Queen Anne Ave. North, where it meets Roy Street.) But, for a variety of reasons, they've been delayed since the park's ceremonial opening in July. So now there's to be a second opening on Saturday, featuring a band from McClure Middle School, hot cider, and s'mores. (Mmmm, s'mores.) Details as follows:

Counterbalance Park, 2 Roy St., www.seattle.gov/parks. Free. 5-7 p.m. Sat. Dec. 6.

The $1.1 million makeover of the old gas station site, long vacant, was made possible by $300,000 from the 2000 Seattle Pro-Parks Levy, with the balance raised by the Uptown Alliance from various local benefactors. We applaud the effort. But we also wonder why the park is being rolled out twice, and why it's seemingly being built in stages, and why some portions of the design still haven't been implemented. And, moreover, who gets credit for the LED design versus the landscape architecture: Murase Associates, a Portland firm with a Seattle branch office; or Italian-born Seattle artist Iole Alessandrini? At least one SW reader has suggested she was fired from the project.

So we decided to ask her, and the city, and Murase what's going on with the "urban oasis" (that being the official city suffix to the name—how many other parks get such an honorific?)...

Continue reading "Lighting the Park"

Topics: Architecture, Art Events, Seattle Streets, and Visual Arts

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Spike Mafford's Gallery Space Opens This Saturday

Images by Spike Mafford, courtesy of the artist.

Perhaps you've wandered by Spike Mafford's long-lived Summit Ave. studio, plumb next to Top Pot doughnuts, and peeked at his photography through the window. A few years back, I remember encountering what I thought of as a gorgeous photographic interpretation of Wayne Thiebaud's Bakery Counter.


"Panaderia Verde", 1996
This prize-winning image earned the photographer a workshop in Oaxaca.

Speaking of Oaxaca, you might know Mafford's work without knowing it's his. The intensely colored photographs of Mexico displayed in light boxes covering the walls at Ballard's forever crowded La Carte de Oaxaca are Mafford's. (See some of those images here.)

Running into him a few weeks ago, Mafford was proud to tell me that he's been the best promoter of his own work. This Saturday he opens his studio space as a gallery. And he's hoping to create a bit of an art destination at Summit and Mercer, with his neighboring galleries Cairo and NoSpace.

Saturday, December 6, noon-late
SpikeSpace
611 Summit Ave. E., CAPITOL HILL
(206) 325-0540
www.galleriaspike.com

Topics: Art Events

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Audio Art

Heather Dew Oaksen's Still Point installation opens at Jack Straw Friday night and continues through Feb. 12 of next year. She'll give a talk on Jan. 23. Until then, you can visit during regular gallery hours (Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) to experience her AV collage of T.S. Eliot, and string theory. (What is it about string theory that's such catnip for artists? For all that people talk about it, how many actually understand it?) The exhibit promises to explore "the layered fluctuations and tension between dependence and independence;and the palpable connections between past and future." Which reminds me of a certain acid trip in the desert...but that's a different blog post.

Jack Straw New Media Gallery, 4261 Roosevelt Way N.E., 634-0919, www.jackstraw.org. Free. 7 p.m.

Topics: Art Events

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What's Your Animal?

Topics: Art Events, Ballet & Dance, Books & Authors, Film, Happenings, and Stage

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Hurts So Good at Hugo House

If you wonder (and sometimes I do) why the hell anyone would go to an author reading, Friday night at Hugo House provided a convincing answer. Wonderfully curated and unpretentiously hosted by program director Alix Wilber, this second installment of the Hugo Literary Series featured truly riveting "performances" by three disparate authors on the theme of Personal Injury. Richard Rodriguez (above) conveyed his sad and wry recollection of illness like he was creating it on the spot, his compressed poetic language seeming to gesture at everything. Sallie Tisdale was much more of a text reader, but her memoir of a Ski Patrol brother gathered an awesome power like the avalanches she described. Local boy Ryan Boudinot went all-comedic, closing out the night with an absurd piece, flawlessly delivered—wit, timing, vocal tics, bland Bob Newhart appearance, he's got it all. Musical guest Laura Veirs, being a singer-songwriter, naturally took heartbreak to be her Personal Injury, introducing the show with two pieces that were spare, tender and hooky. (And could you be more my type Laura? Damn.)

When I chatted with Rodriguez and Tidsdale at the afterparty, they both marveled at how game and supportive the packed house had been, in contrast to the kind of skeptical, show-me audiences they often encounter. Of course, that Seattle enthusiasm is too often just a self-congratulatory haze bestowed on mediocrity. What a pleasure to be there on a night when it was earned.

Topics: Art Events, Books & Authors, and Celebrity Sightings

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Annie Leibovitz on KUOW at 9 p.m. Tonight

Image: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780375505102.html

Whether you consider her a glorified fashion photographer, or one of our great documentarians, or both, you might be curious to hear the stories behind Annie Leibovitz's iconic photographs.

If you missed her sold-out talk at Benaroya Hall yesterday, on the occasion of her new book, Annie Leibovitz At Work, you can tune into KUOW tonight at 9 to hear the back story.

Topics: Art Events

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Art Event this Sunday

We know you have your Saturday plans covered with all the REVERBfest fun you’ll be having, but here’s a good hangover-friendly thing to do on Sunday. The Anne Bonny, that awesome junk shop/art gallery on Capitol Hill is hosting an art show of the late, Elena Steuber’s, unfinished project, Tragedy Brought Me Up. Her friends and family helped complete her vision and turned the unveiling into a party with food, cocktails, a raffle, and tons of crafts for sale. There will also be a silent auction of the art pieces with all the proceeds benefiting the Elena Steuber Memorial Fund at the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, an amazing organization Steuber loved. Drop by, it should be a fun party. The Anne Bonny, 1355 E. Olive Way, 4-9 p.m.

Topics: Art Events

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Tonight: Political T-Shirts by Artists, an Obama Fundraiser at Catherine Person Gallery

Image: Fay Jones

We Seattleites live in a political bubble. Even though just about everyone we know is as in love with Barack Obama as we are, the poll numbers for this presidential race, nation-wide, are closer than we'd like to believe.

Catherine Person Gallery hosts a fundraising event tonight, Fired Up, Ready to Wear, featuring artist-designed T-shirts for sale. Organized by artist Fay Jones, with Pam Keely (an Obama Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO), the event will feature T-shirts made by more than 40 Northwest artists, on sale for $25 each. All funds raised go to the Barack Obama Campaign for Change.

Participating artists include Fay Jones, Pam Kelly, Linda Davidson, Karen Ganz, Juan Alonso, Gail Grinnell, Kay Rood, Saya Moriyasu, Juliana Heyne, Ruth Tomlinson, Elizabeth Sandvig, Claudia Fitch, Marian Webb, and Robert Jones.

Not a slogan T-shirt wearer? One of these works just might hang nicely on your wall.

Thursday, September 25 from 6-8 p.m.
Catherine Person Gallery
The event is free and open to the public.

See Aimee Curl's take, here, in this week's Wire.

Topics: Art Events, Fashion, and News

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On Not Reviewing Shrek: Ethics and Greed

Personally I think it's a bit ridiculous that we in the press have some kind of ethical "understanding" with restaurants/theaters that we will give them time before reviewing them. They're charging the public (full price in many cases), the public's going to say what they think online and elsewhere, so why don't we just go ahead and have our say as well? We can always go back and revise our opinion as necessary.

But as is being demonstrated in the case of Shrek The Musical (which "opened" but not really last night), the public is invited to spend their money, the Space Needle flag flies, press attention is invited, but critics are expected to hold off. I asked Longenbaugh to weigh in. (His profile of Shrek star Sutton Foster is in the paper this week.) His thoughts are after the jump.

Continue reading "On Not Reviewing Shrek: Ethics and Greed"

Topics: Art Events and News

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Reminder For Tonight: Susan Robb At Lawrimore

Reminder for tonight: Susan Robb, whose mug was on the cover of our Spring Arts issue, will be unveiling The Challenge Nature Provides, a collection of photography and installations at Lawrimore Project.

For anyone who read our profile on Robb, this show will feature the much-much-anticipated installation piece she designed to be powered by her dealer's poop (or, as my boss-man Mark Fefer dubbed it: Crap Power). Prepare your mind...

Topics: Art Events

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Slideshow: Classic Crumb, From Mr. Natural to Janis Joplin

Click here for a slideshow, featuring some Crumb classics.

From The Weekly Wire:

"R. Crumb's Underground"
Where: Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., 622-9250, www.fryeart.org
When: Saturday through April 27
Cost: Free

I could never get into my brother�s comic books, with all those rippling, shaded muscles and dark backstories. Yet the 1960s cartoon caricatures of Robert Crumb, which did appeal to me�I even named my cat Fritz�had way more depth than all the shading in the world could have afforded my brother�s superheroes. With characters based on American archetypes�Flakey Foont, Angelfood McSpade, Devil Girl, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat�Crumb explored the complexities of the human condition. Of course, I didn�t entirely grasp all that when I was 10. The Frye�s "R. Crumb�s Underground" exhibit will be more than just comics, though; there�s a dark backstory to boot. �I was quite miserable for a good chunk of my youth,� Crumb told the San Francisco Chronicle. �I was chronically depressed between the ages of 17 and 25. Suicidal depressed � I felt like an invisible ghost moving but not able to affect anything around me � I lived those years on paper.�
— JEN HARPER

Topics: Art Events

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Wednesday, and Everyday: Giant Squid!

I'd like to to apologize to the hardworking people over at the downtown artspace McLeod Residence for incorrectly printing in this week's Wire that the reception for their current exhibit—artist Cassandra Nguyen's Giant Squid, along with Sami Khoury's "Glimpses of China" photographs—will be tonight. In fact, folks recited squid poetry and drank squid ink cocktails last Friday, an event I unfortunately missed due to Jersey Boys (post on that in a minute!).

The shows will be up through December 29. Once more, here's the poem by Tennyson, "The Kraken," that was printed as a preview.

"Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the lumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."

Now, if someone has the exact recipe of a squid ink cocktail, and a description of how said beverage tastes, my curiosity is raging!

Topics: Art Events

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