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Museums
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
Departures and Arrivals: Artists in Abstraction BIMA offers an "intense session in art vocabulary" with this group exhibition focusing on the artists' idiosyncratic approaches to abstraction. The roster is intriguing, ranging from textile artist Jono Vaughan to ecologically focused Mary Coss to UW professor and painter Denzil Hurley. (Through Sun Sept 29)
Bellevue Arts Museum
Maria Phillips: Hidden in Plain Sight Instead of being completely paralyzed into inaction by the overwhelming lack of response to climate change and environmental degradation, Seattle artist Maria Phillips is diving headfirst into interrogating her own consumption habits. Using non-recyclable plastics and single-use items generated by Phillips and her family over the course of nine months, the artist has created a two-part exhibition at BAM. The first part will feature a series of jewelry pieces and small-scale works accompanied by a video installation. The second will be a large-scale, immersive installation that's meant to confront viewers with the role that plastic has in our everyday life. Spooky, beautiful shit. JK (Oct 4—Feb 2)
Robert Williams: The Father of Exponential Imagination The work of Robert Williams is sick, perverse, offensive, violent, erotic, profane, and firmly without any sort of god to speak of. That is also precisely why it is incredible. A technically skilled draftsman, Williams's works are often psychedelic, depicting an alternate, unhinged reality. He is naughty to the nth degree, hemmed in neither by "good taste" or any type of moral responsibility. In addition to being an artist and comic book illustrator, Williams was also a key figure in the California hot rod scene of the late 1960s. This exhibition coincides with the release of a major new monograph of Williams's work, published by Fantagraphic Books and due out in November. JK (Oct 4—Feb 2)
Emerge/Evolve 2018: Rising Talents in Kiln-Glass The winners and some finalists of Bullseye Glass Company's competition, which has been going on for the past 18 years, has kiln-glass on display. Some take geometric vase-like forms, like Andy Plummer's ovoid I Moved on Her Like a Bitch; others are weirder, like Evelyn Gottschall Baker's eerily realistic Bones-Group. (Through Sun Jan 12)
Frye Art Museum
Pierre Leguillon: Arbus Bonus French artist Leguillon's medium is the exhibition itself. In this show, he uses 256 photographs by or inspired by the 20th-century photographer Diane Arbus, as well as appropriations of her eerie postwar Americana. (Sept 21—Jan 5)
Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection Why does femininity "unsettle"? The museum curates a selection of mostly 19th- and 20th-century German paintings of women that either challenge or reflect the traditional "female" traits of meekness and sexual submission. Many mysteriously suggest a narrative without overt indications of a story. This exhibition asks viewers to consider the act of looking and its relationship to power, gender, religion, and morality. (Sept 21—Aug 23)
Donald Byrd: The America That Is To Be Local Tony-nominated, Bessie-winning choreographer Donald Byrd's dance pieces confront the horrors of contemporary society: gay-bashing, war, racial terrorism, misogyny. This installation, Byrd's first solo museum show, uses archival footage and artifacts to advance the artist's idea of a future America, "multi-racial in every aspect." (Oct 12— Jan 26)
Recent Acquisitions: Toyin Ojih Odutola In Toyin Ojih Odutola's portraits, skin moves, glows, shines, and radiates. The way she renders black skin—at the beginning of her career, she worked in ballpoint pen—gives her 2-D drawings a dimension that I've never quite seen before. Her work is dynamic, beautiful, and challenging. The Frye recently acquired a suite of prints by the Nigerian born, New York—based artist and plans to show it in the inaugural show of the new exhibition series Recent Acquisitions. Though Odutola's practice has expanded beyond pens and into painting and printmaking, all of her work is informed by a sense of the tactile, the topographical, the subversive. JK (Through Sun Dec 8)
Henry Art Gallery
Carrie Yamaoka: recto/verso New York—based artist Carrie Yamaoka's work is molten, glass-like, distorted as if you're looking into a fun-house mirror. She skips the traditional canvas and wood panels, opting instead to compose a lot of her work using resin or reflective Mylar. The result is a slipperiness of both form and style: The material is the thing. In recto/verso, the exhibition covers Yamaoka's work from the early 1990s to the present, including some of her early text-based explorations and chemically altered photos. JK (Through Sun Nov 3)
In Plain Sight This group show is stacked. Featuring some of the best and most interesting artists currently working nationally and internationally, In Plain Sight "addresses narratives, communities, and histories that are typically hidden or invisible in our public space (both conceptually and literally defined)." The work in this exhibition isn't confined to one particular gallery but is spread throughout the entire museum. Particularly of note is Iraqi painter Hayv Kahraman and her work surrounding memory, gender, and diaspora; Kiwi visual artist Fiona Connor, who deals in the overlooked infrastructure we are surrounded by; and the vibrant mixed-media pieces of Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson. JK (Nov 23—April 26)
Museum of Glass
Richard Marquis: Keepers American studio-glass master Marquis has works in permanent collections across the globe, from the Carnegie Mellon Museum of Art in Pittsburgh to the Koganezaki Glass Museum in Shizuoka, Japan to the Finnish National Glass Museum. This retrospective of clever, inventive, asymmetrical "keepers" (Marquis's favorites from his archive) spans his 50-year career. (Sept 28—Nov 29)
Transparency: An LGBTQ+ Glass Art Exhibition Philadelphia's National Liberty Museum organized the US's first LGBTQ+-only studio class exhibition in 2017. Now, the Liberty Museum will team up with the Museum of Glass to bring the works to the Northwest. See pieces by Sabrina Knowles, Jenny Pohlman, Joseph Cavalieri, Pearl Dick, Kim Harty, Jeff Zimmer, and others. (Oct 12—Sept 27)
Translations: An Exploration of Glass by Northwest Native Carvers and Weavers This glassworks show features pieces made in the museum's hot shop by family members of "three of the Pillars of the Evergreen Longhouse"—Mary Ellen Hillaire (Lummi), Gerald Miller (Skokomish), and Hazel Pete (Chehalis)—with the aid of Dan and Raya Friday. Old weaving and carving treasures from the families' collections are juxtaposed with the new glass interpretations of baskets, sculptures, and bentwood boxes. (Through Sun Nov 10)
Alchemy 5: Transformation in Contemporary Enamels This juried exhibition, traveling from the University of Oregon, pays tribute to the "alchemical" process of firing powdered glass to produce vitreous enamel, a coating that can turn glass, metal, stone, or ceramic into a shining object of deep, sheeny colors. See some of the best enamel-coated objects in the world. (Nov 23—May 31)
Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI)
Seattle Style: Fashion/Function The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the phrase "Seattle fashion" is North Face windbreakers and hiking shoes worn to the mall. This exhibition will explore "how elegance and practicality co-existed and converged in Seattle wardrobes" with pieces from the MOHAI's extensive clothing collection. The Stranger's own music calendar editor, Kim Selling, along with frequent collaborator Adria Garcia of Indian Summer Vintage will be hosting their own night of fat fashion at the exhibition called Big Mood, which will include a market, fashion show, and live music. JK (Through Mon Oct 14)
Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation The long and varied history of Indian Americans stretches back to the 19th century, and this exhibition explores their contributions to American life from the age of railroads to the civil rights movement. (Nov 2—Jan 26)
Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)
Prince from Minneapolis Prince's "If I Was Your Girlfriend" did to my erotic imagination what the flower revolution did to the earth millions of years ago—transformed a monochromatic vision of sexuality into one blooming with color. Listening to the song for the first time in 1986, I realized that sex was more (if not all) about play, rather than function, mission, or purpose. Many years later in college, I learned that this form of play was not specific to humans, but was the state of things in nature—most developed animals are not blind and efficient fuckers, but conscious wasters and abusers of sex. Fucking is mostly waste, wonderful waste. And lovers are only fully such when they are playful, when the borders between them are destabilized, when the sex is purely the energy of sex—a glowing substance that's there to be exploited and explored. Prince will never die, especially with exhibits like this one at MoPOP that uses nearly 50 artifacts (instruments, photographs, artworks, clothes) to delve into what made the late soul-pop artist a superstar. CM (Through Sun Jan 5)
Nordic Museum
L.A. Ring: On the Edge of the World On the Edge of the World is the first exhibition of Danish artist L.A. Ring's work in the United States. Ring worked within the Symbolist and Realist traditions in the early 20th century, documenting the change in lifestyle occurring during that period in Denmark. Though extremely important to both Danish and Nordic culture, he is relatively unknown outside his native land. The exhibit will feature 25 key paintings that best represents the work Ring did as a whole. The Nordic Museum will also be offering a special aquavit cocktail in their café, Freya, in honor of this exhibition—you can't miss it. JK (Sept 14—Jan 19)
Glacier Lose yourself in gorgeous prints of Iceland's varied glacial landscapes by photographer Ragnar Axelsson (aka Rax), whose pictures have been published in Life, Time, and National Geographic (as well as in his home paper Morgunblaðið, Iceland's second-largest newspaper). (Through Mon Sept 30)
Olympic Sculpture Park
Regina Silveira: Octopus Wrap Brazilian artist Regina Silveira was drawn to the PACCAR Pavilion's immediate surroundings. "The topography of this park is really special because it crosses many lines of traffic flow, from cars to trains," she told The Stranger via telephone from her home in São Paulo. "I found it magical and was really impressed with the park's strategy to take over the plot of land." That focus on Olympic Sculpture Park's decidedly urban context inspired Octopus Wrap's design: a series of black tire track adhesives that crisscross the pavilion's walls and ceiling, all emanating from tiny motorcycles. Wrapping the building in such a fashion (a longtime practice of Silveira's) makes the glass building stand out rather than blend into the landscape. GS (Through Sun March 8)
Seattle Art Museum
Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum The Capodimonte Museum in Naples is a treasure trove of delights, ranging from the Renaissance to the Neapolitan School. And they are going to be bringing some of those delights to our little corner of the Northwest. Focusing on how the human body can express "love and devotion, physical labor, and tragic suffering," viewers will get the chance to revel in the unwieldy greens of El Greco, the soft, cloudlike skin of a Titian figure, and all around badassery of Artemisia Gentileschi. JK (Oct 17—Jan 26)
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas: Carpe Fin Yahgulanaas has been producing "Haida manga," a new style marrying Haida formline with Japanese manga storytelling and other visual influences, for nearly two decades. SAM has commissioned a major new work from Yahgulanaas: a 6-by-19-foot watercolor mural based on a Haida story about a hunter "taken underwater to the realm of a powerful spirit." The mural—accompanied by a 19th-century headdress made by Yahgulanaas's relative, Albert Edward Edensaw, a naaxin robe and pattern board, and the artist's sketches—comments on environmental issues and humanity's relationship with nature. (Nov 1, 2019—Nov 1, 2020)
Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness Zanele Muholi is a titan of art and photography. I remember first encountering their photographs of black LGBTQI South Africans in college and being stunned by the honesty, intimacy, and strength that Muholi brought out in their subjects. In a time when being a queer black South African rendered an individual invisible or subject to extreme prejudice and violence, Muholi's work subverted and exalted this marginalized group of people. In Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Muholi becomes the subject, taking staged self-portraits using found materials like pads, cowrie shells, and washing machine tubes to "challenge perceptions of who and where they are." JK (Through Sun Nov 3)
Natalie Ball: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Snake Natalie Ball (Klamath) was last year's winner of the prestigious Betty Bowen Award, which means she gets $15,000 and a solo show at SAM. Cool! Ball makes sculptures out of found objects, cloth, and other unusual materials, refashioning perceptions of Native American history. When she showed work at METHOD in August 2018, Stranger contributor Emily Pothast called her pieces "enigmatic, potent, and visually stunning." (Through Sun Nov 17)
Gentleman Warrior: Art of the Samurai This exhibition means to correct the misconception that samurai did little but make war. Twenty pieces from the museum's collection and two suits of armor reveal the warriors' refinement. In these works, see them take part in tea ceremonies, Noh theater, and Buddhist activities. (Through Sun Dec 1)
Material Differences: German Perspectives This gallery is dedicated to post-WWII German art, including Anselm Kiefer's large, thickly layered canvases and Katharina Mann's giant mouse sculpture, supplemented by photos of the Russian front by Dmitry Baltermants. The works offer fascinating glimpses into the trauma of dictatorship and war, and the ways in which artists have grappled with new representations. (Through Sun April 26)
You Are on Indigenous Land: Places/Displaces Traditional and contemporary art of Native peoples reflects matters of land, ancestry, and kinship through modern forms and handicrafts like basketry and weaving. Go for the artists' mastery of their media, but also for a reminder of the deep roots of pre-Western cultures and the urgency of sovereignty and environmental issues. (Through Sun June 28)
Claire Partington: Taking Tea There's a sense of caution that immediately overtakes anyone who steps into the Porcelain Room at Seattle Art Museum, which is interesting given that porcelain is actually hella strong. Featured artist Claire Partington even told me it bounces. Don't knock anything over, though. Partington's site-specific installation features six ceramic figures, each with its own story to tell about the history of international trade, gender, empire, slavery, and conspicuous consumption. Her use of material and symbolism connects her work with many pieces already in the room, activating the gallery in a way that feels fresh and immersive. JK (Through Sun Dec 6, 2020)
Tacoma Art Museum
Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Their Circle: French Impressionism and the Northwest The Impressionists, far from ethereal or wishy-washy, were artistic badasses, turning traditional academic painting on its head. Don't miss this chance to see paintings by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Gauguin, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas, plus American artists inspired by these innovators. (Opens Sat Sept 28)
Bart at TAM: Animating America's Favorite Family This unauthorized look at the first 13 seasons of The Simpsons features 100 animation cels, scripts, and drawings in a zanily decorated exhibition space. (Through Sun Oct 27)
Immigrant Artists and the American West This exhibition helps rediscover stories and experiences of immigrant artists in Western expansion with works by people from Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Russia, and Sweden. (Through Sun June 14)
Galleries
A/NT Gallery
Path with Art: Hear & Now Trimpin is a musical genius who builds room-sized art installations that are also instruments. Picture a Rube Goldberg machine exploded all over a room, but one you can play Beethoven on. This year, Trimpin again partnered with students from Path with Art, a nonprofit that works with homeless people to create original works of art. Together they constructed a new sound sculpture bursting with poetry, visual art, and, of course, music. RS (Oct 2—Nov 30)
A Touch Of Light: Incarcerated Veteran Artists Seattle-based arts organization A Touch of Light curates the artwork of prisoners from around the country and the world, in an effort to promote social change and give prisoners a second chance. (Oct 29— Nov 30)
Festals of Seattle: Holidays of Diversity See holiday artwork courtesy of the multicultural festival producer Festál. (Dec 3—28)
BONFIRE
Magic Box: Defining Words in a Digital Age Butoh dancer and artist Shoko Zama and poet David Thornbrugh present an interdisciplinary dialogue between collage/painting that evokes dictionary illustrations and ekphrastic writing (i.e., poetic commentary on the works of art). (Through Sun Sept 29)
Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA)
Girlfriends of the Guerrilla Girls This show at CoCA brings together Seattle artists who identify themselves as feminist and also do not have gallery representation. The lineup includes ceramicist Hanako O'Leary, who creates vagina vessels and Japanese Hannya-inspired masks that replace faces with labias. It's pretty metal. Ann Leda Shapiro's sexually explicit Anger—which the Whitney Museum of Art refused to hang in her one-person show in 1973—will also make an appearance. Stranger Genius Award winner C. Davida Ingram, as well as Sheila Klein, Alice Dubiel, Deborah Faye Lawrence, Cecilia Concepción Alvarez, Dawn Cerny, E.T. Russian, and the Guerrilla Girls themselves round out the show. JK (Through Sat Sept 21)
Davidson Galleries
Robert Connell and Michael Kareken Connell uses sumi ink and acrylic to create glimpses of Pacific Northwestern beauty, from dreamy swaths of sand, trees, and water to de Chirico-like images of Georgetown's industrial brick buildings. Kareken, a professor at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, produces evocative monotypes, paintings, and drawings of thickly wooded landscapes. (Oct 3— Nov 2)
Eva Pietzcker Pietzcker is a Berlin-based artist who mainly works in Japanese woodblock prints, in which watercolor is painted onto the block that is then hand-pressed into soft paper. She makes masterful use of subtle color and shadow, depicting ghostly weeds, glinting waters, and ikebana flowers peering out of vases. (Nov 7—30)
Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery
Gina Siciliano: I Know What I Am: The Life & Times of Artemisia Gentileschi I've said it before and I'll say it again, Artemisia Gentileschi was a fucking badass. One of the most accomplished painters of the 17th century, her paintings have an emotional and technical depth that's unrivaled. Gentileschi is most famous for painting themes like Susanna and the Elders, Judith and Holofernes (which depicted Gentileschi's rapist as Holofernes getting his head expertly sawed off—a legend), and Judith and Her Maidservant. Gina Siciliano's first graphic novel tells the story of this woman who braved the male-dominated art world to become one of the most formidable figures of Italian painting. JK (Oct 14—Nov 5)
Short Run Marathon Prolong the excitement of the year's biggest indie comics event in Seattle, Short Run, with this exhibition of select festival guests. (Nov 8—Dec 11)
Foster/White Gallery
Janna Watson In 2018, Emily Pothast wrote for The Stranger: "In the early 20th century, nonobjective painting was seen as something revolutionary. Today, it feels almost quaint and anachronistic, as though every painting for its own sake that the universe could possibly need has already been made. The large-scale mixed-media works of Toronto-based painter Janna Watson stand in defiance of this trend. Large brushstrokes and small bursts of color wiggle and dance on soft gradients like visual music." (Nov 7—26)
G. Gibson Gallery
Photo Finish: A Group Exhibit of Photography This exhibition promises a range of photos by artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, including Paul Berger, Marion Post Wolcott, Michael Kenna, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Walker Evans, and many others. This will be G. Gibson's final show as a traditional gallery. (Through Sat Oct 12)
Gallery 4Culture
Ann Leda Shapiro: Diagnosing Disasters Acupuncturist Shapiro is not an outsider artist—she attended the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California, Davis in the '60s—but her cut and painted works on paper have that brute but beautiful look. She combines fanciful depictions of human anatomy with equally inventive riffs on nature, animals, and microbes. (Through Thurs Sept 26)
Ghost Gallery
Red List: Moths & Butterflies The Xerces Society conservation nonprofit keeps a list of endangered butterflies and moths on the continent of North America. Browse it, and you can encounter such wondrous species names as the "scarce streaky-skipper" and the "regal fritillary." This exhibition, featuring collagist Lisa Myers Bulmash, aims to wake you up to the growing plight of our loveliest pollinator insects. Some proceeds from art sales will benefit Xerces. (Thurs Oct 10)
Glass Box Gallery
SPACEFILLER: Fantasy Parameter Spaces For Seattle-based duo Alexander Nagy and Alexander Miller, their collective name, SPACEFILLER, is a reference to both their role as artists (one who fills space) and Conway's Game of Life, a mathematical model. (A "spacefiller" is a pattern that wants to spread out indefinitely.) In Fantasy Parameter Spaces, the duo will be taking over the white cube and installing interactive "mini universes" that invite the viewer to "play with the parameters of algorithmic simulations in order to reveal the complicated relationship between order and chaos." Expect light projection, sounds, sculptures, and tactile electronics. JK (Through Sat Oct 12)
Greg Kucera Gallery
James Castle: Drawings Castle was born deaf in 1899 and was not truly recognized for his talents until the 1950s. As a young artist, he worked with soot, spit, and homemade implements. (Through Sat Nov 2)
Whiting Tennis: New Work Tennis's colors cohabit uneasily, and even the symmetrical designs look unstable. He favors compositions that don't allow the gaze to rest, but jostle it from shape to shape: intestinal tangles, chaotic patchworks, smudgy mazes, indefinable objects in confrontation. But this graphic agitation also appeals to the viewer's sense of play and freedom. Far from severe, the forms he invents are variously insectoid, childlike, flailing, drooping, and prowling. JZ (Through Sat Nov 2)
Norman Lundin: Remembered Detail Norman Lundin's still-life paintings study not just objects but mini-environments, bare interiors in dim morning light or wintry domestic spaces. (Nov 7—Dec 21)
Paul Rucker: New Work In past exhibitions, this Guggenheim Fellowship-winning artist and cellist has meditated on such topics as police shootings, racism, slavery, and other atrocities against African Americans and other people of color. His 2016 series Forced Migration, for example, used animation and acrylics to expand upon the image of an enslaved person on a Confederate $100 bill. Expect a similarly blistering approach to American history and politics in his next show. (Nov 7—Dec 21)
Housewright Gallery
Northwest Influencers The Housewright Gallery is a new art space in Georgetown run by Tim Pfeiffer and Steve Hoedemaker. Their inaugural exhibition is Northwest Influencers, a show that's not about the most followed Washingtonian on Instagram but about a collection of artists from the influential Northwest School. Featuring paintings, works on paper, and sculpture, and spanning both pre- and post-WWII, the exhibit focuses on the influence these artists had on West Coast Modernism that reverberated throughout the art world. Among the artists included in the show are Mark Tobey, Peter Camfferman, Paul Horiuchi, Margaret Tomkins, Glen Alps, James Fitzgerald, and Ngaire Hixon. JK (Through Sat Oct 26)
James Harris Gallery
Mary Ann Peters: traveler Mary Ann Peters's black-and-white paintings suck you right up. Crafted using white ink on black clayboard, to me, they most resemble an etching. It's as if you're gazing at a dark landscape from behind a sheet of heavy white rain. But those black-and-white drawings are only one portion of her work. In her seventh show at James Harris Gallery, the Seattle artist will be exhibiting installation, sculptures, paintings, and drawings that "questions and interrogates" the space between truth and fiction when it comes to the West's perception of the Middle East. JK (Sept 14—Oct 26)
Fay Jones Fay Jones is known for her monumental Westlake Station mural, for her Joan Mitchell Grant in 2013, and for her evasion of overt symbolism in favor of playful figurative allusions. These new watercolors are based on the changing views outside her bedroom window. (Nov 7—23)
Koplin Del Rio Gallery
Robert Pruitt: The Majesty of Kings Long Dead New York-based artist Robert Pruitt will debut new pieces along with old work at his KDR show. A skilled draftsman, Pruitt combines elements of Afrofuturism, black power, and pop culture to create tender portraits of black people. In his newer portraits, the subjects are rendered in charcoal, sometimes adorned with gold leaf and color, while the white space surrounding the subject is filled in with coffee stains. The coffee gives his subjects a hazy sort of glow, an aura that smells like breakfast, and it ages the paper in such a way that it's almost as if you've stumbled upon an artifact. JK (Through Sat Sept 28)
Linda Hodges Gallery
Jed Dunkerley and Cable Griffith Jen Graves has written that Dunkerley's drawings of machines erase "the nature/human binary and [replace] it with a new mixture that did not separate human activity from other processes in nature." In this series, he paints scenes wherein "technology and human ingenuity overwhelm the natural world," in the words of the gallery. Cornish professor Cable Griffith's abstract landscape paintings are similarly concerned with the melding of the natural and artificial realms. (Through Sat Sept 28)
David Hytone David Hytone has worked in paint, ink, paper, ceramics, and large-scale collage. His latest paintings on okawara Japanese paper blur the lines between geometric abstraction and the macroorganism. (Nov 7—30)
Oxbow
Ginny Ruffner During this residency, Ruffner (who has been called "the most irrepressible spirit in Seattle art" by former Stranger critic Jen Graves) continues her rich explorations of augmented reality, featuring virtual visuals blooming from glass sculptures. The studio will be open to the public for several events. (Sept 29—Nov 9)
Paramount Theatre
Re:definition 2019: The Latinx Diaspora Juan Alonso-Rodríguez's Latinx art series continues with 2019's second round of artists: Arturo Artorez, a Mexican artist who has lived a truly extraordinary life; interdisciplinary artist Tatiana Garmendia, who makes gorgeous, sometimes erotically-tinged work; and Cuban-born Hugo Moro, whose multimedia pieces are born from a "recursive and tangential thinking process." (Ongoing)
Push/Pull
Specswizard and Keef Cross Charles Mudede has written: "Specswizard is a veteran. His entire life has been devoted to the art. It's almost impossible to imagine him doing anything other than rapping, making beats, and painting mystical urban images on walls." See his character designs for the forthcoming Gibson Comic Anthology alongside pieces by tattoo and comics artist Keef Cross. (Through Wed Sept 18)
Hayden Stern: Trans Tarot Stern asked for selfies from the trans community, then transformed these pictures into a tarot deck representing gender as "a mystical process of transformation." Come see these reverent expressions of self-confidence and self-love, and pick up a deck for your queer divination purposes. (Sept 19—Oct 15)
Myra Lara: Everyday Cry-sis Urban living is A Lot—especially a city like Seattle where the disparities between the rich and the poor are at untenable levels. We pride ourselves on being liberal, green, and socially conscious, and yet don't tax big business, don't have enough public transit, and rent is through the roof. It's exhausting! Artist Myra Lara will be exploring "the realities of life, political priorities, and social justice" in our fair, emerald, technocratic city in her latest cartoon series, Everyday Cry-sis. JK (Oct 17—Nov 19)
SOIL
Coley Mixan, Liz Mputu, and Richie Brown: Re-Thinking Digital Nature Curated by art critic, curator, and occasional Stranger contributor Leah St. Lawrence, A Digital Nature brings together three artists who explore themes of "health, humor, the body, and emotional prosperity" and our experience of "the digitized" in our daily life. Coley Mixan is a musician and an artist, creating trippy and thought-provoking work. Liz Mputu is Very Online, using digital platforms to grapple with topics like white privilege, sexuality, and digital embodiment. And Richie Brown—an animator who calls himself the hypothetical son of Walt Disney, Robert Crumb, and Andy Warhol—brings his kooky and unconventional animations to the show. JK (Through Sat Sept 28)
Stonington Gallery
Salish Brilliance: Dan Friday and Maynard Johnny, Jr. Lummi glassblower Friday crafts exquisite sculptures based on Native practices like, in this case, cedar bark weaving and totem carving (his great-grandfather, Joseph Hillaire, numbered among the masters of the latter). The objects pay homage to the intricacy of the traditional craft while adding his own asymmetries and vividly contrasting colors. His fellow Coast Salish artist Maynard Johnny, Jr. (Penelakut/Kwakwaka'wakw) paints brightly and beautifully on paddles and canvases. (Through Sun Sept 29)
Raven Skyriver and Preston Singletary This collaborative show will feature the work of two Tlingit glass artists who approach the medium from different points of view. Raven Skyriver's work is more in tune with the rhythm of ecosystems and animal life, while Preston Singletary draws from narrative mythology and traditional objects. Skyriver will be exhibiting glass sea creatures from both oceans and rivers; Singletary will be presenting works on paper, glass, and bronze depicting shamanic implements, woven hats and baskets, and legendary characters in his distinct style. Put simply, this will be good! (Oct 3—27)
Stonington Celebrates 40: Fortieth Anniversary Group Exhibition Celebrate 40 years of top-notch Northwest Coastal and Alaskan art with a Native focus as this excellent gallery hosts a group exhibition. (Dec 5—31)
studio e
Gillian Theobald: And the Language Was Beauty Gillian Theobald's paintings are absolutely, deliciously tropical. They remind me of the most fantastically patterned fabric that makes up the '70s dress of my dreams. I'd like to drape myself in her images and forms. She paints abstract-ish landscapes that build "a meditative, slow space using families of color playing off each other," like a call and response. In her first solo show at studio e, Theobald—who was a finalist for the 2017 Neddy Award—will be exhibiting new paintings, drawings, and bas relief collages made of found paper and paint. JK (Oct 3—Nov 16)
Traver Gallery
John Kiley and Dante Marioni Jasmyne Keimig admired John Kiley's "carefully balanced" abstract glass sculpture at the 2019 Seattle Art Fair. See more of his work alongside that of Dante Marioni, whose lovely and justly celebrated glass art is often a throwback to the beautiful, symmetrical design of Venetian, Greek, Etruscan, and African traditions. (Oct 3—Nov 9)
Wa Na Wari
Xenobia Bailey, Henry Jackson-Spieker, Marita Dingus, Nastassja Swift: Installations The new Central District gallery Wa Na Wari is accomplishing something beautiful: nurturing the legacy of black creativity in the neighborhood, formerly a bastion of Seattle's African American culture, by, among other things, exhibiting the work of excellent artists. This group of installations should be an impressive demonstration of the possibilities of this approach, with four prominent black artists contributing new work. Crochet master Xenobia Bailey, who's had pieces exhibited in many museums, and crafts marvelous trippy hats, mandalas, sculptures, and more out of textiles. Guggenheim Fellowship winner Marita Dingus produces mixed-media sculptures using salvaged materials. Accomplished sculptor Henry Jackson-Spieker, known for small- and large-scale sculptures, "explores tension, balance and symmetry" and innovatively interrogates gallery space. Rising Virginian artist Nastassja Swift creates felted fiber dolls as well as paint, print, and performance works. Any one of these artists would be worth seeing; taken together, they make up something unmissable. JK (Through Sun Sept 22)
Chantal Gibson, Brenetta Ward, Storme Webber, Moses Sun: Installations The new black-focused art and community center presents another group show with work by Vancouver-based educator/artist/poet Chantal Gibson, art quilter Brenetta Ward, Two-Spirit First Nations interdisciplinary artist Storme Webber, and meditative abstract artist Moses Sun. (Oct 18—Dec 28)
Winston Wächter Fine Art
Amanda Manitach: Mirrors Seattle artist and Stranger Genius Award finalist Amanda Manitach spends hours creating delicate graphite drawings, from which white capital letters call out at you against a smoky, sketched Victorian wallpaper background. "YOU ARE A MOTHERFUCKING STAR," "XANAX HELPS," and "CALM THE FUCK DOWN" are a few of the phrases you'll find in Manitach's work. For this show, the artist will be debuting new work in the same vein, but on mirrors. JK (Through Sat Oct 5)
Tracy Rocca: The Rockies In her fifth solo exhibition at this gallery, Rocca shows airy abstracts based on family photographs from the Rocky Mountains. (Through Wed Oct 30)
Art Events
Burke Museum
New Burke Grand Opening Fete the opening of the University of Washington's improved and greatly expanded Burke Museum of culture, anthropology, and natural history. (Oct 12—14)
Cal Anderson Park
AMPlify Memories: Temporary Installations Horatio Hung-Yan Law's AIDS memorial will remind Capitol Hill denizens of the queer community's past tragedies. Before its completion, the AMPlify Memories series will provide a space for important local artists—David Rue (who will present choreography every third Friday), Gabriel Stromberg, Pete Rush, and Timothy White Eagle—to eulogize those lost to the disease through dance, visual art, and music. (Through Fri Nov 15)
Everywhere
Museum Day Get cultured for free at one of the museums participating in Smithsonian's Museum Day. All you need to do is download the ticket from the Smithsonian's website, grab a companion, and show your pass at the Museum of Pop Culture, the MOHAI, the Wing Luke, the Bellevue Arts Museum, the National Nordic Museum, the Museum of Flight, or other institutions out of town. Choose carefully, though, because you only get one. (Sat Sept 21)
Gage Academy of Art
Drawing Jam This isn't one naked person trying not to breathe too hard in front of a handful of art nerds. No, this is a whole crowd of art nerds with an entire building full of models, naked, clothed, in drag, holding instruments, and/or wearing funky costumes. Your ticket includes art supplies and access to many instructor demonstrations. If you get hungry, grab something from Off the Rez food truck. There will also be a holiday market to shop from if you get hand cramps. (Sat Dec 7)
Inscape
Open House The former US Immigration and Naturalization Service building was turned into artist studios. Now is your chance to peek inside Inscape and see what these 30+ artists working in "installation, painting, clothing design, jewelry, photography, ceramics" and more have been doing all this time, on all five floors. Be sure to stop in on Maggie Argiro and Sanwal Deen, the artists-in-residence. (Sat Oct 5)
Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI)
BIG MOOD: A Night of Fat Fashion The sun setting behind the Olympic Mountains as the sky turns a sherbet orange? Big mood. That photo of Diana Ross eating a rib while dressed in a silk slip? Big mood. An event centered on fat people and fat fashion, hosted by Stranger music calendar editor Kim Selling and Indian Summer’s Adria Garcia, the brains behind events like More Fats More Femmes? Big mood! A night of performances, live music, a pop-up market, talks, and a style show with vendors like TomboyX and Universal Standard? BIG. FUCKIN’. MOOD. JK (Wed Sept 25)
Pratt Fine Arts Center
Fused: A Festival of Glass As part of the Refract glass festival, celebrate one of the coolest art centers in the city with music by the renowned Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary's band, Khu.éex' (Dave Segal calls them "a unique fusion of robust funk, fiery, Pharoah-esque jazz, and Tlingit vocalizing and storytelling"), a live bronze pour, demos by local talents Dan Friday and Etsuko Ichikawa, plus food, drinks, and a DJ. (Fri Oct 18)
Seattle Art Museum
Asia Talks: The Brush and the Sword Thomas Conlan of Princeton University will speak at SAM's Asia Talks series. He'll reveal what the samurai were really like in the Japanese Civil Wars period, beyond the stereotypes held in the West. (Thurs Oct 3)
Saturday University Lecture Series Visiting academics will deliver talks on topics in Asian art, archaeology, history, and culture: UC Berkeley's Sanjyot Mehendale with "The Begram Hoard of Afghanistan" (Oct 12), Northwestern University's Jun Hu with "Picturing the Buddha's Last Moment" (Oct 19), Northern Arizona University's Derek Heng with "Goods, Ships, and Cultural Diversity" (Oct 26), New York University's Hsueh-Man Shen with "Authentic Reproductions in Buddhist Art" (Nov 2), and Northern Arizona University's Zsuzsanna Gulasci with "Zoroastrian and Manichean Arts" (Dec 7). (Oct 12—Nov 2 & Sat Dec 7)
Seattle Design Center
Art Under $100 Find affordable gifts from over 100 "crackerjack artists" offering paintings, glass, fabric art, ceramics, jewelry, and more priced under one Benjamin. (Sat Nov 30)
Town Hall
TUF Art Collective Takeover The Seattle art and electronic music collective TUF will provide a platform for Seattle artists and performers who are marginalized on account of their race or gender. Through visual work and performances, they'll pose questions like "How do we build the spaces that we want to live in? Why is space needed in a city for art? How do we hold space for each other?" (Sat Sept 21)
Art Walks
Second Fridays
Second Saturdays
Third Thursdays
Second Fridays
Second Thursdays
First Fridays
Second Saturdays
First Thursdays
Third Fridays
Second Thursdays
