Past Gallery Exhibitions

I’m fascinated at the interior depths you can wander in while in the mountains and the forest. I’m equally intrigued by the depths you can travel to within yourself while creating art. This work happily combines the two.

Artist: Barry Johnson Seattle-based artist Barry Johnson works explore a deep investment in his cultural heritage. His work was created to combat the overarching absence and erasure of Black figures throughout time. Noting how canonical Western history has obscured and annulled Black history, Johnson’s work echoes this deletion only to reclaim that very same space. Johnson's portraiture series displays a unique range of techniques. Elements of collage, stoic faces and partially obstructed figures are emblazoned by bold strokes, shapes, and colors that imbue each of his characters with zeal and strength. The duality between the sober expressions of the figures and the vivacity of the canvases is the artist’s pointed reminder to the audience that the contributions of artists of color are vast and yet rarely acknowledged. Johnson addresses this inequality and he and his figures alike demand better. As tangible, personal investments to right a flawed narrative, each of the works presented evoke their own energetic tenor and comment on the mental trauma in dealing with the effects of an ever intolerant and racist society. Johnson has received the Edwin T. Pratt Award, smART Ventures award, GAP Award, and was a finalist for the Conductive Garboil Grant, Neddy Award and Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award. Johnson’s work has been shown and collected throughout the nation. He’s also created multiple permanent artworks regionally, including an immersive mural for Facebook’s Bellevue Office during his Open Arts Residency with them and a large-scale permanent fabrication and sculpture for the Midtown development in Seattle, WA.

Artists: Xin Xin Artist Statement: My works are a series of maps filled with pockets of love and loss in our lives. Happiness comes and goes during times of loss, grief, mental health struggles, and life transitions. Each piece and title recorded past thoughts and reflections.  In the uncomfortable spaces, these repetitive marks represent growth (steps) and grief (tears).  Life is full of chapters closing, opening, and re-opening. We go through the white spaces of reflection and the dynamic path of the growing pains. With a variety of color, movement, and emotion I lay out our stories. But not everyone gets to hear these stories. I encourage viewers to step close and away from the works. From a distance the works almost become invisible. From afar, everyone’s life looks almost perfect. In reality, we are all struggling in silence.  I want to create a comforting feeling that you are not alone. I hope that one day we will come out of the fog. We will love a little harder and feel the grief a little less. We will continue moving on to the next unwritten chapter in search of happiness. I am honored and humbled to have my first solo exhibition here at Arts West. I hope you find a moment of comfort and joy with this show! Limited Edition Prints Limited-edition archival Giclee prints are available upon request. They will be signed, numbered, and mailed anywhere in the United States and Internationally. Starting price per limited print is $80. If you are interested in purchasing a limited-edition print, please email me at artxxin@gmail.com. Let me know the title of the piece(s) you would like to purchase. Ordered prints will be mailed within four weeks. Artist Bio: Xin Xin is a visual artist who explores healing traumatic emotions through watercolor abstraction. Xin was born in Beijing, China, and emigrated to Washington with her family when ...

Artist: Jake Prendez   Artist Reception: Thursday May 12th, 5-7PM Jake Prendez is a renown Chicano artist and scholar. He is the owner and co-director of Nepantla Art Gallery on the border of West Seattle and White Center. Jake creates art with a specific focus on themes relating to Chicana/o culture, activism, social justice, pop culture, and satire. His artistic style ranges from indigenous iconography, social realism, portraiture, to colorful pop art. www.jakeprendez.com

Artist: Vanessa Ly Because expressions make the best impressions… Originally a Boston-based architect / artist, I have ventured my way to Seattle to explore what everyone calls the “west coast vibes” in a continuation to indulge in my obsessive passion – illustrating the intriguing puzzles of my mind. Trained with the rigor mindset of one profession yet adapted to the abstract of another has created this fixation of intertwining mechanics and organics as reflected in many of my subject matters; there is always the interest of engaging the rigidity of one element that is typically man-made with the looseness of another that is part of our nature to create a composition where characteristics of both are shared and equalized. With a playful heart in mind, hopefully each piece can compel the viewers to question why? Please enjoy, comment, and share =) Interpretations are welcomed. https://vanesly.wordpress.com/

Artist: Gary Rubin Gary Rubin was born in Brooklyn, NY and now lives in Kirkland, WA. He works primarily in graphite and draws every day without fail. Gary obtained a BA in Drawing and Sculpture from University of Oregon and has shown in juried group exhibitions throughout the United States and online. This is his first solo exhibition. www.garyrubinart.com/ www.instagram.com/garyrubinart Artist's Statement Entering 2020, my goal was to return to art and commit to creating one drawing a weekend for the year. When the stay-at-home order went into effect in March of that year, I found myself drawing every night and throughout the weekend. It was drawing that has kept me centered and motivated, giving me purpose during isolation. In my isolation, my connection with the outside world has been primarily through the pieces I've created. I have selected subjects that inspire me - that evoke an emotion or tap into one of the many feelings I have had, while we all dealt with the challenges of the COVID and racial injustice pandemics. The subjects all lived within the frame of my television. And from these subjects I created compositions, with a sketchbook, set of pencils, and an eraser that all reside on a TV tray. I never know what the finished product will look like until I stop drawing. And when I stop, it’s because it feels complete and incomplete at the same time. It is not only with what I draw but what I don’t draw, allowing the negative space to complement and oppose the graphite. These selected small works are among the 900+ I created while in isolation over the past two years. I feel so privileged to bring my work out of my home and to share with you. I am honored and humbled to have my first solo exhibition here at Arts West. I am thankful for their ongoing work ...

Artists: Daniel Kytonen is a visual artist based in Seattle, Washington, with a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Washington. His accomplishments include numerous exhibitions, including work shown at South Seattle College, ArtsWest, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, Confluence Gallery, and Emerge Gallery. His solo exhibitions and public work include projects through Shunpike Storefronts, Spaceworks Tacoma, the Spokane Public Library, Spokane Arts Signal Box Projects, and Redmond Lights. In 2017, he was a recipient of the Spokane Arts Grant Award (SAGA). Additionally, Daniel has had work commissioned by Forza Coffee Company, showcased in publications like Ruminate Magazine, and was a recent artist-in-residence through Brehm Cascadia. Meet the artist at the Open House on August 8th from noon to 3PM.

Artist: Max Marlett Symbols and Archetypes: Modern Reflections of the Past Marlett is driven to investigate the thread that connects the symbols and archetypes of classic stories to generate a new perspective for his subject matter. By looking at life through a lens outside of time, he can get to the heart of what remains the same throughout human history. Despite the new era of technology we are living in, we are faced with the same desire to live with a life of purpose. Through these juxtapositions, he hopes to express the dominance of nature over human innovation, an remind people of our ephemeral relationship with the natural world. ENTER THE VIRTUAL GALLERY Bio Max Marlett was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Gonzaga University in 2015. Max works primarily in oil on canvas and oil on panel. Painting from life has been fundamental for his development, but he also paints from sketches, collage and photography. This year, Max has a painting accepted in the Center on Contemporary Art's Member show in 2020. In 2019, he received the Kent Summer Art Exhibit Purchase Award from the city of Kent, Washington. Max also has two paintings on permanent display at the Paragon Restaurant in Seattle. Recently, Max has been inspired by works in cultural anthropology, gonzo journalism, and horror movies from the 1980s. Above all, Max believes that it is important for the artist to create their own world in order to have a dialogue with modern culture. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington and shows his artwork throughout the Pacific Northwest.   To see more of Max’s work visit his website at maxmarlett.com or Instagram @max.marlett  

Artist: anna macrae Fantasy Landscapes  -   Anna Macrae uses bold colors and shapes to describe vertical and horizontal viewpoints of potentially urban and city landscapes. Playful color-field inspired paintings are generated on embedded textural surfaces with overlapping information and marks. These surreal landscapes renderings inform a dialogue and connections between human imprint and natural forms as they give way to the evolving notion of fantasy habitats. Bio -  Anna Macrae was born and educated in England, and has lived on the Eastside of Seattle since 2001. She considers herself a lifelong artist, and from an early age she surrounded herself with art making. Her mother and grandmother were both artists, their skills were often put to use in a more practical and domestic environment, but their approach to life instilled in Anna creative possibilities in everyday objects and situations. She gained qualifications in Civil Engineering, but her passion has always been for art making, and engagement in community based arts interactions. She is self-taught, which she feels allows her to be unrestricted in her practice, as she gives herself the freedom of no rules to follow.

Artists: Artist Statement for Sabella, the monarq The complexity of identity has fascinated me for some time now. What strikes me most is how paradoxical the idea of selfhood is. For instance: we are always ourselves and yet constantly in flux, changing and developing based on a multitude of different factors and environments. In each of us there is the possibility of becoming someone else—or at least demonstrating a multiplicity that makes us unique and gives us life. My move to the Pacific Northwest led me to re-examine the factors shaping my identity. New geography and culture sparked new ways of looking at both internal and external landscapes. Pressing questions arose: How do I make a home after leaving home behind? How do I integrate the past into potential futures? Channeling these concerns through photography, collage, pattern making, and portraiture, I have developed a multidisciplinary body of work that engages this fundamental yet elusive concept of selfhood. To explore identity through my photography, I embrace the limitations of analog form while pushing at its boundaries. My polaroids visualize the fragmentary terrain of the remembered as a small flash of a moment, a little out-of-focus. They serve to represent the subjective experience itself: its shadows, its bursts of color, its layers. By carefully manipulating the photographic process, through the use of double exposure, for example, I create layers that simulate our recollections, the way they overlap, blur and distort. Images encountered in daily life—of foliage, of a shelf of books—appear through reflective surfaces that texture and distort. They speak to how true selfhood is multifaceted. It has fractures but also patterns in ways of being. In this way, my artwork articulates a modulating identity in search of new modes of expression. Understanding that one’s self and place are ever on shifting ground, my work decontextualizes and defamiliarizes the many articulations of identity in order to formulate, ...

Artists: Rae Akino BIO Seattle based, self-taught visual artist. What began as a coping mechanism for depression and anxiety became a lens to examine and understand the world. Being closeted, a slave to others expectations, and losing one of the most important people to their existence caused a mental, emotional, and spiritual paralysis. The need to escape turned into isolation, until they were encouraged to draw their way out of it. Influenced by music, theater, literature, film, life, people, etc; the DC native uses bold colors and expressive form to explore identity, sexuality, Afrocentrism, spirituality, mental health/ awareness, consciousness, and self. Centering the viewer into an emotional, mental, and spiritual connection with themselves opens the door to endless possibilities. Awakening desensitized emotions lead to the questions that spark conversations.   STATEMENT Living in a society where boxes and labels are a way of life, forces one to hide and resent the parts of themselves that are not accepted.   Never being strictly one thing or another fostered the realization that “I am all things” “We are all things.” Telling stories that are unheard, or undervalued gives greater meaning to any work. My objective is to make the viewer connect and think outside themselves or what they know to be true.   To see beyond the pretty picture on the wall.

Artists: BETHANN LAWSON BIO BethAnn Lawson is modern-impressionist painter who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, she was taught by and is heavily influenced by her surrealist painter-father, who was a founding member of the San Francisco Street Artist Association. After graduating from the Institute of Design in San Franscisco, she moved to Seattle and spent over three decades as a textile designer, graphic designer and illustrator, but returned to her love of painting after the passing of her father in 2011. STATEMENT Through my large paintings, I'm able to play harder, expressing thoughtful, bold, colorful images and concepts without parameters. I can lose myself for hours inside of each one as I take apart the images an carefully put them back together emphasizing colors, rhythms and patterns, bridging the gap between abstraction up close and realism from a distance. I am always striving for the delicate balance between industry and nature, between meticulous and impetuous, between painting as a physical object and invoking a redolent memory. Fascinated by people and design, I hope to capture little glimpses of life containing whimsy, the secrets of strangers, and the amazing architecture of both nature and man.

Artists: Anna Jannack VOLUMES This word has several meanings. It can be used to refer to a book, to identify a particular book in a collection, to talk about the amount of space an object occupies, to describe a container in terms of its capacity, a quantity or amount, and even to describe the quantity of sound. This line of inquiry explores volumes referring to books, volumes referring to the amount of psychic pain and or periods of turmoil stored in our human mind. These paintings talk about our ability to store and catalogue what has happened to us, our ability to both retrieve and forget. Sometimes volumes of anguish exceed our capacity to process our own experiences, and we then become readily available to feel the intensity of any injury, no matter how small the provocation.  Other times we can thrive and integrate even the most horrid moments of our lives and the most unbearable pain. Sometimes the library of our minds seems complex beyond comprehension and other times it seems simple and poetic.   ARTIST STATEMENT I usually find myself wrestling with issues like time and memory. The never ending curiosity to understand how our perception of the world comes together inside our brains hunts me. How does the mind come together? Sometimes it seems as if the mind is a dress with many pockets. Memories seem true and vivid or inaccurate and unreal. How does one differentiate between what is real or not? During this process, I retreat into a world of materials where I get lost in curiosity and exploration...always looking for the answer that sometimes comes and other times, it evades me. I try to make things simple by organizing and clustering themes into lines of inquiry. These lines of inquiry are sometimes open, closed or bifurcating into new lines of inquiry. This is done in an effort to make ...

Artists: MARY MAKI RAE ARTIST STATEMENT My aim as an Artist is to create Art that is beautifully strong and graceful. Art that will inspire and delight with the magic of color and the beauty of the simple joys of life that make all of us the happiest: Flowers in the sunshine, bright-colored fruit & table settings, green landscapes with lush trees and birds, the sea with sailboats in the distance, and flowing figures painted within dream-like settings. Art that is at once simple andmeaningful and will last-! At this time I am rather “Flower Obsessed” and I enjoy observing and working from real flowers and plants, brought in from outside and placed around the studio on tables and near my paints and palette. Bright mid-morning daylight is preferred, one that intensifies the vivid colors contained in the bouquets.  I never really arrange the flowers in a certain way in a vase, instead I choose each flower individually, and paint them one by one in an original composition on the canvas.  I’m also inspired by found objects that possess a bold shape, pattern, or texture. On a prepared white canvas (ranging from 10”x10” up to 30”x40”) I paint in my subject matter exclusively with acrylic paints for backgrounds and details (sometimes utilizing sponges, stencils, or other artist’s tools.) Often to finish - I add more details of something totally unexpected. I feel that Art is always needed to lighten our lives, now more than ever. ARTIST BIO Graduated from Bellevue High School Attended Seattle Central Collage for two years – with Certificate.  Studied Commercial Art – Life Drawing – and Composition. Worked in collaboration with Robert Rae on Commissions from Nordstrom,Microsoft, and R.E.I.for 3-Dimensional Art – Utilizing techniques of Design, Woodworking, Carving, and Painting. Designed and Illustrated Three Children’s Books for Viking/Penguin, which were distributed world-wide in Canada, England, Australia, & New Zealand. Designed and Developed ...

Artists: MAY KYTONEN Join us on Thursday, February 14 at 6pm for West Seattle Art Walk (special this month: Passport to Love, with prizes and more)! Enjoy light refreshments, meet the artist, and see this remarkable exhibit up close. Free and open to the public. BIO May Kytonen is a visual artist based in Seattle, Washington, creating work sourced from her mixed Taiwanese heritage. She earned a degree in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from the University of Washington in 2012, and has exhibited her work throughout the Pacific Northwest. She has won several awards, including a smART Ventures Mini Grant through the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and an Artist Trust GAP Award in 2017. May's work is an exploration of Asian-American identity and connection. ARTIST STATEMENT I transform paper into sculptural forms sourced from my life and culture. My process began with a longing for connection, wondering where I belonged between cultures as a biracial, Taiwanese-American. Wanting to bridge that gap, I became curious how Chinese and English, the languages of my family, might interact in a joined, physical form. As I took newspaper, spun yarn and began knitting, new questions and curiosities arose for me. What did it mean for paper to break, disintegrate, or be left undone? How was something as fragile as paper able to transcend its original form? What visible and invisible forces caused connection within the work? As I continue to create this work, my thoughts about identity have shifted. My work begins a map of how one can stretch out and let the folds of self breathe easy, even in the midst of dissonance. Website: maykytonen.com

Join us on Thursday, Dec. 13 at 6pm for West Seattle Art Walk! Enjoy light refreshments, meet the artist, and see this beautiful exhibit up close. Free and open to the public. Artists: Jolyn Wells-Moran Artist Statement Jolyn Wells-Moran uses her sense of nature (the art) and medium (impasto oils) to paint what she considers, "the spirit of nature." She explains that she aims for a spontaneous, textural and emotionally expressive translation in paint. Artist Bio Jolyn originally painted in and taught watercolor, but that was interrupted by higher education, a career in mental health and parenthood. She returned to painting, although in oils, twenty years ago and became a full-time oil painter six years ago. She studied Art throughout school and college; at the School of Drawing and Painting, Institute for American Universities, Aix-en-Provence, France; and with numerous master oil painters. Jolyn's instructors included Slava Koralenkov, Katherine Stats, Michael Situ, Camille Przewodek, Charles Emerson (Gage Academy of Art), Erik Jacobsen, Kathryn Townsend, Mitch Albala and others. Much of her work is done en plein air (outdoors, from nature). She is a member of Plein Air Washington Artists (PAWA), Women Artists of the West (WAOW) and the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Artists (PSGNA).   Jolyn shows her work in galleries, juried shows and other venues, including as a guest with Women Painters of Washington Gallery; in the PAWA 2017 juried show at Tacoma Art Company Gallery, Tacoma; in the PSGNA’s "Maritime Motifs: Master Marine Artworks by NW Artists,'' Seattle; at the Gardens at Bellevue Square, the "Little Gems" 2016 juried show, Scott Milo Gallery/Plein Air Artists of Washington (PAWA), Anacortes, WA; solo shows; many more. Jolyn has won honors from both international and local competitions, and enjoys teaching all ages. She teaches art to children in Baja California Sur for five to six months of the year. See an article about this at; https://www.outdoorpainter.com/outdoor-painter-teaching-children-art-in-mexico/ . ...

Artist: ARAMIS HAMER Join us Thursday, October 11 at 6pm for an Artist Reception with Aramis Hamer! Enjoy light refreshments & see the exhibit up close. Free and open to all in celebration of West Seattle Art Walk. Artist Biography Aramis O. Hamer is a visual artist and muralist living in Seattle, WA. Her subject matter is inspired by the cosmos, music, nature, divine femininity, and the complexities throughout the Black culture. From a very young age she always loved to create, but at the age of fifteen she discovered her love for acrylic paints. With the supportive art community in the Pacific Northwest, Aramis has been able to exhibit her colorful creations at many different exhibitions in the greater Seattle area- including the EMP Museum, Paramount Theater, Martyr Sauce Gallery, Columbia City Gallery, and more. Aramis created the iconic purple goddess in 2016 for KEXP radio station at Seattle Center which became a catalyst to her art career. You can find many of her designs all over the city including Jimi Hendrix Park. As a self-taught artist, Aramis lets the pull of her imagination be her guide. Her adventure is just beginning, and she invites others to join her on this journey. Learn more about Aramis’ work at www.aohamer.com Artist Statement I am a splash acrylic painter and muralist who loves making a mess. As an emerging artist, I spend majority of my days in the studio creating the colorful images that are slowly becoming my signature style. The basic themes found in my work are strong color contrasts, exaggerated subject matter and drip techniques where I try to stretch the boundaries of surreal, pop, and abstract art. Integrating imagery of my people and urban landscapes reflects the environment in which I was raised. I love to incorporate spray paint related to my admiration of street art. Music is definitely one of my main ...

Join us Thursday, 6/14 at 7:30pm for a free Artist Reception with Robin Jones, the artist behind the newest exhibit in our Gallery, 'The Here and After'. Enjoy light refreshments and hear insights into the work from the artist herself. Artists: ROBIN JONES ARTIST STATEMENT Drawing from my love of figurative painting and of animals and the natural world, my most recent work focuses on specific animals that are endangered, accompanied by the next generation of humans. As we humans continue to expand our presence on the planet, we are displacing, endangering, and threatening other species with extinction. They are endangered due to habitat loss, trophy hunting, palm oil deforestation, climate change - the planet we will hand to future generations could be vastly different from the one we now know, devoid of many of the animals that currently make up the Endangered Species List. Most of these works I would categorize as ‘activist art’. Some I have chosen to gild with gold or silver leaf, which adds dimension and a dynamic shifting of light and shadow. Other figurative pieces are inspired by my many years working as a professional actor in the theatre - these are characters from plays and actors in the process of working. And several are of, or based upon, women I admire. As both painter and actor, I’m drawn to female characters who are warriors, leaders, rebels, misfits, and eccentrics, some of whom are represented here. With all of my paintings, I strive to capture spirit- whether animal or human - inner life, emotion, the soul of the being that I’m painting. This, to me, is perhaps the most important thing of all. ARTIST BIO Robin began painting in earnest 10 years ago, the day after Hurricane Ike hit Houston, Texas, where she had been living while working at the Alley Theatre. For two weeks after the storm, with no ...

Artists: Michael Dinning Join us Thursday, May 10 at 6pm for a free reception with artist Michael Dinning to see the work up close and learn more from the artist himself. Enjoy light refreshments and learn more about 'Who We Are', artist Michael Dinning, and more. Bio My name is Michael Dinning and I am an artist in Spokane, Washington. I am a graduate of Washington State University, where I studied sculpture, lithography and art history. Upon graduation in 1987 I pursued an artistic career in Seattle, working primarily as a painter. I was fortunate to work with a group of artists in the 90s at the West Seattle Artist Warehouse, where we staged group shows and worked in a creative and collaborative environment. About 14 years ago I moved to Spokane, changed careers, got married, and started a family, and largely shelved my artistic pursuits. A couple of years ago I shifted gears again and restarted my artistic career, returning to my sculptural roots by incorporating found objects with painted canvas, creating mixed media wall pieces and sculptures. Although these last few years have easily been the most fruitful of my artistic life, the past always informs the present, and everything that I have create now is built upon a unique foundation of work from deep in my past and the full span of my life. Statement A love of history and a sense of place, the joy of family, the intrigue of music and a sense of social awareness all combine and recombine as central threads in my artwork. There is a beating rhythm in life, an unseen central beat, that compels us to return, again and again, to those people and things that intrigue us and bring us joy. These people and things, ideas and affections, build and overlap, creating personal layers within us that define who we are. There is an ...

Artists: ERIKA NICOLE Join us at 6pm on Thursday, March 8 for a free reception - meet Erika Nicole, learn more about Loaded Heads, and enjoy light refreshments. BIO Erika Nicole is a figurative artist, native to the South Seattle region of the PNW.  As a child, she spent the majority of her time exploring the lush outdoors and drawing.  Art always felt a very natural way to communicate, express and understand not only herself, but the world around her. The human figures, animal and plant forms that preoccupied Erika’s early art explorations can be found in her work today.  Erika attended the University of Washington’s Fine Art School, majoring in Fine Art - with an emphasis in traditional drawing and painting.  It was here she first experienced live models and discovered her interest in the human form.  Exploring what it means to be human, Erika’s artworks stem from a desire to communicate love for living and a passionate curiosity to better understand the human spirit.  After obtaining her BFA, she relocated to Eastern Washington, where she currently works in a variety of media from mural works, to mixed media oil portraits from her home studio. STATEMENT I am on a mission to create works of art that will positively impact our complicated world for the better through personal connection.  Hinging on the human experience, my work is a raw and responsive interpretation of bold personalities, experiences and truths. In many ways, my art is an extension of my identity.  My work explores what it is to be human with the intent of sharing my love for living and passionate curiosity to better understand our experience of spiritual and physical existence. Throughout my life, I have been drawn to the complexity, beauty, and individuality of the human figure.  The female form is my main communicator, exploring themes of metamorphosis, transformation, memory, nature, nostalgia, vibrant color, ...

Artists: students from chief sealth international and west seattle high schools Visual Narratives: High school students speak is a brand-new exhibition of work by students at Chief Sealth International and West Seattle high schools. Join us on Thursday, February 8 at 6pm for a free reception with the artists, as part of the West Seattle Art Walk, with light refreshments.

Artist: HARRY GOLDSTROM Twenty Five Years: A Photographic Landscape Retrospective Join us for a free Artist Reception with the artist, Harry Goldstrom, on Thursday December 14 at 6:30pm. Enjoy light refreshments, explore the exhibit, and meet the artist in person! Artist Statement Photographically I believe there is a symbiotic relationship between the landscape and music, particularly my favorites of Celtic, Classical, and Jazz.  I first became aware of this during my college years as geology major when my interest in photography became serious.  In photographing the landscape, I find the elements of form and symmetry to be omnipresent and as a result continually make the comparison between a symphony of the landscape and a musical score. The inter-twining of these two art forms evokes similar feelings within me.  Photographing a stand of trees at dusk brings to mind a Loreena McKennitt composition, a Niamh Parsons piece, a haunting Enya score, or a Ralph Vaughn Williams orchestral composition in a quiet and reflective moment. Conversely, photographing a scene created by dynamic geologic forces or manmade abandoned structures evokes works of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.  Musicians create emotion with scores and instruments.  My attempts to convey emotion consist of capturing the ubiquitous form and light which comprise both the natural and abandoned landscapes. Although traditional in the sense that my work follows in time only the classic masters of Weston and Adams, I find great individuality and freedom of expression in completing any given photograph.  While I enjoy immensely the mechanics of the process, of greater significance is the fact that I revel in spending time at the places where I choose to photograph.  My photographs represents not only how I envisioned a given scene but also my attempt to convey the emotion felt while I was viewing one symphony and simultaneously listening to another. By sharing this collection of photographs then, the intent is that emotion will be evoked within and pondered by the viewer.  Perhaps ...

Artists: CODY A. FRENCH Cody A. French is a Seattle, Washington based artist. Born in Seattle in 1992, Cody found his passion in drawing and painting while living in Montana. He studied at the University of Great Falls and taught himself watercolor techniques in the cities of Rome, Naples, Perugia, Capri, and Corciano with the Montana Alliance Italy Study Abroad Program. Cody completed his B.F.A. at Cornish College of the Arts in 2017 and is pursuing his career in Seattle. Cody A. French is represented by the Lynn Hanson Gallery in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square. Find him online at: codyafrenchart.com Join us for a free Artist Reception with Cody A. French on Thursday, November 9 from 6pm-7:15pm.

Artists: Seán G. Griffin   Artist Reception! Join us Thursday, 9/14 at 6pm for a free Artist Reception with the artist himself, Seán G. Griffin, and enjoy light refreshments. Seán G. Griffin is a local actor who has worked at all the major theaters in Seattle and across the United States.  In Seattle he had starring roles at The Seattle Rep, Intiman, ACT, Seattle Children’s Theatre, 5th Avenue Theatre, Book-It and The Empty Space. He has appeared in 6 Broadway shows, several motion pictures, many network television shows, and countless national and local commercials. Born in Limerick Ireland he immigrated to the US in 1956. In his paintings Sean works to capture the constantly changing qualities of natural light and color. In his women with afros series he harkens back to the turbulent times of the late 1950’s and 1960’s and tries to pay homage to those strong African American women of the Civil Rights Movement. His paintings can be seen throughout the United States including New York, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Laguna Beach, Indianapolis and Seattle. If you are interested in purchasing any of his work please find the painting number on the side and contact Sean at 206-390-3401 or seanandbernie@msn.com

Artists: Jaidee Weber Nick Bombacie Robinick Fernandez Tarsha Rockowitz Lindsey Zielke This new collection of work is in direct support of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). 100% of the proceeds from all artwork sold at this exhibit will benefit the NEA. Please join us at 6pm on June 8 for a reception with the artists to enjoy light refreshments and discuss the work.

Artists: Exploration and Manipulation is a sampling of student work from Chief Sealth International & West Seattle High Schools. Working closely with art instructors Katie Elm, Michelle Sloan and Carolyn Autenrieth, we are incredibly proud to showcase this diverse collection of work from these talented young artists. As Katie and Michelle point out in their introduction for the exhibit, several of the student artworks "deal with social issues that may be difficult to look at, but are important issues that society deals with every day." Meet the artists! Please join us on Friday, April 27 at 5:30pm for a free reception with the artists and instructors.

Artists: Lauren Boilini & patty haller Lauren Boilini - Artist Statement In my current body of work I look at the idea of excess, when images of excess become meaningless and fall into the realm of pattern. This idea of gluttony is reflected in our current culture. We are a hedonistic society, always looking for more until the more we are looking for loses its meaning. My studio practice has consistently been large scale, mural-sized oil paintings, though I often work directly on the wall exploring painting as installation. The dimension of my work relates to the size of the human body and the potential for painting to physically overwhelm the viewer. I work directly on the wall as I experiment closely with the architecture making paintings that engage floor to ceiling. Research, reading and exploration are vital to my studio practice, consistently driving my work forward. I continuously seek and study epic narratives, creating my own for each work. I am fascinated with crowds of people converging in one space at one time. I investigate various events and practices that bring large numbers of life forms together to discover how beings interact when driven together in mass quantities. This includes religious practices, festivals, holidays, political gatherings, orgies, feeding frenzies, stampedes, riots, migrations, etc. Recently I have been drawn to images of battles and duels, where opposing forces fight for the same space. I am interested in what drives us to violence and destruction of life. This particular body of work features a re-telling of the narrative behind paintings created over the past six years. I have given these works a backstory that explains the origin of their conception, a story told after the fact. These paintings document a fictional island inhabited by only male members of various species and the destruction they have brought. In 2016 I received a GAP grant through Artist Trust to publish a book of drawings modeled as a graphic novel that develops this narrative. I am happy ...

Artists: bruce savadow & JESSICA hoffman   BRUCE SAVADOW ARTIST STATEMENT I was born and raised in Baltimore Maryland. I started photography in the early 80's after many years of drawing, water color, pen and ink, painting, collage and doing some sculpture. While taking a course in silk screening at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, I found I liked the technical and mechanical aspects of the process to achieve an artistic goal. After earning an Associate of Arts Degree from the Community College of Baltimore and a B. F. A. in Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, I gravitated towards photography as a way of recreating the printing process found in silk screening. I enjoyed the control and creativity in every aspect of photography. For me, just taking the photo was only half of the artistic product. So many of the aesthetic decisions are made in the darkroom or digital darkroom. I honed my darkroom and photographic skills working for sixteen years at various newspapers as a photojournalist and as a freelance photographer.  My concentration now is fine art photography.   JESSICA HOFFMAN ARTIST STATEMENT My artistic training is in photography, video, and book arts. I am not bound to any one medium, preferring to let the initial idea of a project dictate the medium most appropriate. The link between my work lies in the structure of narrative. I am most comfortable as a storyteller, whether that involves creating a story, recording a story, or interpreting someone else's story. Found objects that are based on communication and memory, such as a letter, a photograph, or an audio recording, inform my work. I am interested in the disconnection and/or reconnection to the original object that exists after its function and context are deconstructed. My need to explore these various means of creating narratives, has lead me to where I am ...

Artists: Philip LaDeau + julia Heineccius

 Works - junko Yamamoto & Akiko Masker Artist Reception - Thursday, August 12 - 6 - 7:30pm Junko Yamamoto www.junkoyamamoto.com   junko@junkoyamamoto.com In my work, I explore space and memories. The space between atoms, cells, between people, objects, air, stars, water and sky; the cosmic glue which holds us and the universe together. I like to push and pull, bringing other dimensions. My process combines brush painting, layers of color and shapes, with brayers that give printmaking or stamp like quality. Brush strokes mimic calligraphy gestures I used to practice in my youth. The layering process is enhanced by my use of color and shape, suggesting textile, landscape and familiar pop culture. My forms and strokes that reappear and disappear in all of the pieces signal cell divisions, electrons and atoms as well as consciousness and interconnectedness. Unity as a whole is my foundation. 2016   Akiko Masker While studying art in Japan, I became interested in Ukiyo-­‐e, a genre of Japanese art that was popular in Japan from the 17th to 20th century. Often translated as “scenes from the floating world,” Ukiyo-­‐e was popular with many in Japan because of its mass-­‐produced use of woodblock prints. This popularity also stemmed from the oft-­‐depicted scenes of fleeting beauty and pleasure both from the realm of nature and from that of society. I was also greatly influenced by the western tradition of art and have been fascinated by my experience of coming from a small fishing town in Japan to Seattle. Such experiences have led me to find a way to express the often fleeting beauty of the modern world. In my work, I experiment with the interplay between the material world and the “floating world” but with a more modern take on the “floating world.” I start with a material object such as a canvas. I then take a digital picture, manipulate that image, print it, ...

  June 16 – July 28 Artist Reception:  Thursday, June 16 – 6-8 PM. Two artists, best of friends, delve into their inner workings via opposite materials and images. The drawings and paintings in this eccentric show reveal inclinations toward solitude, openness, self-reflection, sensory stimulation. introversion and emotional expression.  1st image: Ellen Ziegler, from Headlong drawing installation, 18″x72″ each, gouache and marker on vellum, 2016 2nd image: Nola Avienne, Undersense, micaceous oxide and eye shadow on roofing paper, 44″x40″, 2016    

"Epicritic,” adjective (Collins English Dictionary), relating to or denoting those sensory nerve fibers of the skin that are capable of the discrimination of touch or temperature stimuli. Over the past few years I have been interested in depicting a sense of my own garden. A garden is never just a moment in time, a mere view; it includes all the moments in shaping that garden --- cutting, digging, hauling, hundreds of repetitive tasks. Every experience of making a garden resides in the hands. This idea of tactile memory is the catalyst for my recent work Epicritic Memories.

Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday, December 17th, 5:30-7:30pm Using organic forms, Polina Tereshina and Colleen RJC Bratton seek to manifest the intangible. Real Time brings into consideration the moments in our lives that evade definition. Bratton's soft geometry focuses on the narrative of two individuals following the exchange of a covenant. Tereshina considers the peculiar areas of our emotional landscape by alluding to tensions and subtle sensations through a range of evocative forms. Together their work is an introspective look at real abstractions through a formalist approach.

Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday, November 12th, 6:00-7:30pm Art proposes an alternate value system based on aesthetic properties or the beauty of an idea. Doilies inhabit a strange place in this system. Craft objects originally admired for their elegance and as demonstrations of their maker’s skill, doilies have been stripped of their aesthetic value by contemporary taste. They’re now so out of style that I can buy one on Ebay for $12. Aesthetic value (the lack of) trumps the value of labor, the value of the hours and months it took to make these objects. Some doilies do stick around, out of sight in drawers and cedar chests, but nonetheless saved. Why? Because of affect. We love their maker—our mom, aunts, grandmothers, and godmothers. The care women lavished on these works is a visible artifact of the work they did caring for others, caring for us. Love, like art, proposes an alternate value system.

<h4>Max Cleary &amp; Joe Rudko</h4> Reception &amp; Artist Talks: Tuesday September 15th, 6:30-8:30pm Joe Rudko and Max Cleary make use of existing photographic imagery the way an abstract painter might use paint, with thoughts of composition, form, texture, color. The difference between this collage-like process and abstract painting is that the ingredients of the resulting pieces are inherently and more obviously meaningful. A blue rectangle that is made from a picture of the surface of the ocean lends itself to narrative more forcefully than a blue rectangle made with ultramarine and cobalt blue. With both Rudko’s and Cleary’s work, though, the implied narratives never feel forceful. The shapes of recognizable imagery have been so altered that they become small fields that one must navigate visually before remembering what these shapes and colors usually do and then reconcile that with what they have been made to do here. In Max Cleary’s <em>Building a Thing to Forget</em>, rectangular shapes of what looks like ocean, rock, grass and dirt make up an entity that is suspended or momentarily posing in a portrait-like composition. This character seems to be on the verge of becoming, rather than being firmly realized. Cleary writes: “I’m interested in that middle stage of reaching and in the idea of it perpetuating; to never successfully reach the end point.” Joe Rudko’s <em>Backdrop</em> is an assembled grid of black and white photographs in which the human subjects have been transported elsewhere. What is left is white negative spaces that double as charged abstract subjects. Rudko writes: “The juxtaposition of existing imagery and handmade mark making references a contemporary culture that functions in the uncertain space between the virtual and real, the abstract and the definitive. When time seems to stretch, and space seems to fold inward, we can begin to reexamine how we author and interpret the experience of seeing.” - Susanna Bluhm, Gallery Director

Rodger Greene, Bill Hodge, Stephen Rock Reception & Artist Talks: Thursday July 9th, 6-9pm Stephen Rock, Bill Hodge, and Rodger Greene use pieces of familiar things (like wood, words, Styrofoam balls) to create things that startle with their newness yet simultaneously draw attention to the thing that was once familiar. Rodger Greene’s chunky, obviously handmade sculptures look like pieces of Coney Island fixed themselves up and hit the road Muppet-style to become art objects. Clumps of stripes jut out of scalloped edges at odd angles and invite you to think about abstract painting in three dimensions with no attempt at seamless illusion. Greene writes, “Relating pleasure in discovery and engagement with perception remains my aim.” Bill Hodge glues bits of reclaimed plywood together (most often salvaged kitchen cabinet doors), cuts it into strips, and pieces them together. The compositions are primarily two-dimensional patterns and designs that play off of the intricate markings inherent in the wood itself. Wave-like shapes undulate over a dense array of browns: siennas, ochres, umbers. Hodge writes, “My art is inspired by the beauty that hides just below the surface of old, well-worn, discarded wood that has outlived its original usefulness. I find satisfaction in giving old wood a new purpose and reclaimed beauty.” Stephen Rock paints with watercolors on prints he makes of digital collages. The opaque, hard-edged digital imagery is interrupted by soft, blotchy, semi-transparent mark-making happening in the negative space of the digital image. Images and words are cut up and arranged with more attention to what makes sense visually than preserving the original meaning of the image or text, though hints of meaning and original contexts peek through the abstraction. Rock writes, “The images are influenced by an evolving urban aesthetic that is a mash-up of cultures and conversation, a style of visual dialogue that consumes and reconfigures itself into a new language for the hyphenated, abbreviated, multilingual ...

Lydia bassis, sue danielson, ken deroux, koji kubota, junko yamamoto Reception and Artist Talks Thursday June 11th 6-9pm “What appeals to me, but can also frustrate me, is the central difficulty of abstraction: that while there may not be any “rules,” each painting develops its own internal logic, which cannot be known when the process begins.” --Ken DeRoux   This Spring, ArtsWest Gallery presents The Moon is Free, a group show featuring five artists exploring the internal logic of abstract painting: Lydia Bassis, Sue Danielson, Ken DeRoux, Koji Kubota and Junko Yamamoto. Lydia Bassis thinks of the system of shapes that populate her paintings as a private symbolism. A triangle made up of hundreds of short graphite lines has a soft green zigzag halo hovering above and around it. This green, sky-written zigzag has its echo in the more sturdy zigzags below, whose contents are almost too fluid for their lines. Bassis writes: “I’m interested in how a specific place, space, thing, object, or even person, can have its meaning or identity formed by its surroundings.” The intricate bits of drawings layered on top of each other in Sue Danielson’s recent works on paper look like they’re being held together in a loosely square shape by some kind of self-generated gravity. Danielson is interested in the dynamics of memory and the role it plays in altering our perceptions. She writes: “My process-based abstractions are a visual representation of this ongoing alteration.” Ken DeRoux’s paintings ambiguously reference geological phenomena. Hair-like streams of water pour out of grate-like shapes, half-moons hover in flocks, and layers of individual, many-colored paint strokes suggest the rich sedimentary layer of the earth. DeRoux writes about his early attraction to abstract painting as a kid: “I felt connected to something that expanded my experience of being alive, but it was on some emotional, non-verbal level. It was a feeling. This is something ...

Eric Carson, mark daughhetee, jenny fillius Reception and Artist Talks Thursday April 9th 6-9pm     With sculpture, drawing and painting, Eric Carson, Mark Daughhetee, and Jenny Fillius each work with found mythology to suggest themes of reclamation and devotion in our contemporary world. Eric Carson uses the format of the mandala [the Hindu/Buddhist ritualistic design that organizes a spiritual experience in visual terms] to symbolically connect the world’s religions to each other, and to comment on the intersection of those beliefs with political and cultural issues. The way these line-based drawings are made—as well as their content—suggests a hybrid of references, from Western cartoons to Hieronymus Bosch to Hindu devotional painting. Carson writes, “These pieces present insight traditions around the world as petals of the same flower, not creeds to divide by or kill for.” Mark Daughhetee’s Stations series of assemblage sculptures pay homage to old TV shows like Bonanza and The Lawrence Welk Show. Plastic cowboys stand stoically among clumps of hobby shop moss under a peaked roof. The format is reminiscent of compositions from the Renaissance and inspired by roadside memorials, as well as Thai spirit houses. Humor, child-like reverence for TV, and manhood (as defined by old Hollywood) are the main characters. Daughhetee writes, “Like one’s journey through life, each television program, in its turn, occupied center stage for a while and left when the curtain fell for the last time.” Describing her process, Jenny Fillius writes “Being observant, anything can trigger an idea—an overheard expression, something on the street, an experience, the metal, a broken tin toy; literally anything.” Fillius finds and repurposes decorative sheet metal in the form of broken toys and used tin food containers to make sculptures suggestive of the retablos of Mexican folk art. Since most of the metal Fillius uses appears to have come from one’s childhood, or one’s parent’s childhood, the narratives that ensue ...

Patty Haller, Ingrid Lahti, Edward Lee, Trung Pham Reception & Artist Talks: Thursday February 26th 6-9pm This first exhibition of the new year is comprised of four artists who set out to capture what cannot be captured and then humbly offer evidence of their attempts in the form of paintings and installation. Patty Haller’s landscape paintings seem to vibrate around the places they portray. Colors haven’t quite settled into themselves (in a good way), and the surface buzzes with layers of marks. Like the painting surface haunted by its markmaking history, the landscape she portrays has a rather haunted history as well: “The paintings are inspired by Ebey Beach on Whidbey Island. Isaac Ebey was a homesteader who was captured by Haida tribesmen and beheaded, his head sent back in a box to his homestead!” With a background of deep study in both Theology and Art, Trung Pham’s series of Crack paintings make visible references to both art history and philosophy. They look like abstract expressionist color field paintings cut open. The cracks could be wounds, or peepholes. His statement for the series reads like a poem: “a narrow break, an opening, a sharp cut… a split second, an eruption… a stunning transformation, a rupture… a vulnerable flaw…” Ingrid Lahti’s site-specific installation “M81, 2015” is based on images of Galaxy M81 (about 12 million light years away) gleaned from the Hubble Telescope via the freely accessible Hubblesite.org. At approximately five by eight feet, the installation’s scale is large enough to envelop the human body, while the materials used are themselves insignificant, everyday materials such as orange stickers or simple white pins. A 95 year old Seattle artist trained in traditional Chinese painting methods, Edward Lee’s painting process is a conversation between East and West. Lee experiments with new materials and processes with more abandon than many art students, while still maintaining his practice of revisiting ...

Tim Cross & Mugi Takei Reception & Artist Talk: Tuesday December 9th, 6:00-9:00pm “My little self can only make artworks to resolve the distance between my imagination and what I can never touch.” Tim Cross   “I longed for intimacy with and within everything and anything. I wanted to see each and every microscopic structure of being. I wanted to see through my lover's eyes into his soul. I wanted to see cells breathing in plants. Ultimately, I wanted to see something I couldn’t see. Slowly within me those kinds of urges disappeared and something lighter took over.” Mugi Takei   Tim Cross’s large scale (in the range of 5 – 8 feet) works are created by transferring Laser and Xerox prints to silk using matte medium. Imagery suggestive of 1970’s sci-fi rocket ship parts, water, the surface of the moon, and abstract shapes and patterns reverberate off each other in compositions that function more as paintings than collages. Mugi Takei’s watercolor paintings, too, seem to transcend their materials; the bodies of color read more like earth, blood, and water than they do pigments from a tube. Girls with swollen bellies lie submerged under oceans and commune with human-sized plant beings covered in thousands of quivering hairs. Both artists make work from a place of acknowledging and questioning the size and shape of their own selves in the face of what they perceive is possible. - Susanna Bluhm, Gallery Director

Aitana de la Jara & Cara Jaye Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday October 9th, 6:00-9:00pm A two-person exhibition with work by Aitana de la Jara and Cara Jaye, Humming explores layered experiences of gesture. Aitana de la Jara uses the skilled gestures of the game of pool as a metaphor and starting point for her paintings and drawings.​ Triangles, colored balls and visible remnants of swift movement all float in the ocean of the long, skinny pool cloth, functioning with dual meanings within the realm of abstract painting. The focused anticipation commanded by the pool table carries over to de la Jara’s paintings, as does the purposefulness of the marks and shapes. De la Jara writes: “The intensity of the practice and the gambling of the professional pool player can be a metaphor for the intensity and risk-taking of the artist, both working in obscurity and disregarded as engaging in a pointless activity, living a life at variance with mainstream social conventions, on the edge of economic subsistence.” In her paintings (as in her life as a single mother), Cara Jaye incorporates, studies and works around the gestures of her five-year-old daughter. Sometimes starting a drawing her daughter adds to, sometimes basing drawings off of her daughter’s motivational charts and diagrams, the work is collaborative, in a sense. The child is a force to be marveled at, given space and responded to; the artist navigates a world that make sense with her daughter in it. Jaye writes: “I am interested in my daughter’s approach to constructing an image, her attempt to master or control something, (person or skill) as well as to my own feelings of inundation, along with a general sense of being overwhelmed.” - Susanna Bluhm, Gallery Director  

Flynn Bickley, Serrah Russell, Joana Stillwell Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday August 28th, 6:00-9:00pm     This Is the Way brings together work by Seattle artists Flynn Bickley, Serrah Russell and Joana Stillwell. Flynn Bickley’s handmade dolls are perhaps what people would look like if their histories, secrets, dreams, and genders were plainly visible on their faces and bodies. Human forms (though possibly with antlers or hooves) are created with sculpey, painted with acrylic, and then dressed intricately in tiny handmade clothes. A female to male transsexual whose innocent childhood rebellions included chopping Barbie’s hair and putting her in Ken’s clothes, Bickley uses the dolls as a way to see himself in the world and empathize with others.  The dolls are not stock characters—there is no villain or princess; each doll is a unique embodiment of the subtleties of human conditions. Serrah Russell’s collages capture moments in time in the abstract parallel world where ocean might be taped to sky or hands might hold the longing of an airplane window. Her use of the medium of collage is fluent and expansive, and includes cut and pasted found imagery, instant film and digital photography. Reckoning absence as much as the tangible world, she seamlessly extends collage into three-dimensional sculptural space, time, and memory. Joana Stillwell’s videos are meditations on what she finds herself doing when she’s not doing anything; in turn, they become thoughtful examinations of the medium of video, of herself as a self-conscious subject, and of her activities as stand-ins for herself. In Trying to Find Joy in the Studio, light-refracting bubbles float through a textured white wall looking in on itself. In Diamond Dust, we are inside the night sky of a snow globe that is shaken by the artist. The videos sanction playful boredom and transform it into another place—one where we are reminded of the everything in nothing. What prompted the ...

Jean Burnett, Gina Coffman, Joseph Flood, Sean gallagher, Thorly James, ada mcallister, Stacey Neumiller, Brenda Scallon, Tim Suchsland Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday June 12th, 6:00-9:00pm   This exhibition came to be because the panel reviewing artists’ submissions last May (consisting of Matthew Offenbacher, Gail Gibson, Susie Lee and myself) was particularly taken with Night Lady by Jean Burnett, a Puyallup artist none of us had heard of before. Night Lady is a manipulated photograph of a majestic cheetah drawn in smoke or magic, emerging from dramatic fiery swirls. Matt suggested that I curate an “animals” show around this piece, which we all emphatically agreed was a great idea. With Night Lady at the helm, the Animals show took shape naturally, with artists from different backgrounds, unique reasons for making the work they do, and different audiences for their work. The nine artists in Animals explore our human relationships to animals in a variety of ways that make us consider how we use and portray our fellow creatures. Gina Coffman collected dried slugs when she was eleven in 1988 and then they sat in her parents’ Bellingham house for over twenty years until she photographed them in 2012. Joseph Flood’s dinosaur chariot is driven by an ancient Egyptian. Sean Gallagher works with materials and traditions passed down to him from his family--ancient inhabitants of the arctic--to create dance masks such as Walrus Dance Mask, in which “reverence for the animal is intrinsically understood, expressed through dance.” Thorly James’s otters peek out of the wall as though popping up to play. Ada McAllister uses light-handed watercolor brushwork to capture beloved pets in portraits. Stacey Neumiller paints iconic goats that preside over idyllic farmland. Brenda Scallon’s Always a Cockatoo in a Parakeet Cage was done in response to a story by Rosebud Ben Oni. Tim Suchsland’s panda bears, elephants, and tigers eating human limbs float via collage ...

Joey Veltkamp Reception & Artist Talk: Tuesday, May 6th, 6:00-9:00pm This is not a protest. It’s a celebration! is the debut show of quilts and flags by Joey Veltkamp. Themes of comfort, social/political affirmation, and Northwest mythologies that Veltkamp’s past projects have touched on are thoroughly realized in these quilts and flags that reference women’s suffrage, Twin Peaks, feminism, gender identity, quilt history, The Carpenters, and queer politics. With aphorisms like "A day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine", the quilts are meant to replace worry with comfort. The flags take social injustices and turn them into memorials. Veltkamp writes, “The idea of creation is important, but as I get older creation isn’t enough. It has to be loved as well. It has to comfort. It has to stand for something larger than my ego. And so I present This is not a protest! It’s a celebration!, which is, of course, a protest hidden (squirreled away) inside of a celebration.” Press The Stranger: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-protest-quilts-of-joey-veltkamp-and-negar-farajiani/Content?oid=19401614 City Arts: http://www.cityartsonline.com/articles/blanket-statement Seattle Magazine: http://www.seattlemag.com/article/nancy-guppy-interviews-visual-artist-joey-veltkamp Art Zone with Nancy Guppy: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3351413 Artsy Forager: http://artsyforager.com/2014/04/28/joey-veltkamp/   Exhibition Essay by Sharon Arnold This Is For Love Letters Joey Veltkamp is unfolding one of the largest quilts I’ve seen him make, one that is meant to envelope not just one body but two. Its largest patches are made from a friend’s red plaid lumberjack flannel; one pocket prominently, lovingly, placed near the top of the blanket. “…  this is for love letters,” Joey explains as he pats the pocket and flattens out the quilt. I nearly die with the sweetness, the sincerity of the remark, and the absolute romance of the thought that a quilt could be made to contain such a thing. It fits, to hear those words come from Veltkamp’s lips. After all, his entire body of work is a love letter. Even when the work is about mundane objects, Veltkamp ...

Ben Hirschkoff & Libby Gerber Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday April 10th, 6:00-9:00pm From February 27 – April 12, ArtsWest Gallery presents Chasing Trails, featuring work by Libby Gerber and Ben Hirschkoff. Please join us for the reception on Thursday April 10th from 6:00-9:00pm, which will include informal artist talks at 7:00pm. Each of Libby Gerber’s map-like accordion-fold books is an ornate drawing of a crack in something: a foundation, sidewalk, freeway or skyscraper. This series of work, called The Topography of Cracks, is one of the ways Gerber uses her art practice to explore the distinctions we perceive between the “natural” and man-made worlds. With his tape collages of cartoonish cloud-like shapes and his mad-scientist-in-the-basement moving sculptures of clouds and weather systems, Ben Hirschkoff borrows archetypal symbols of nature to create objects that bask in their own unnaturalness. Together, Hirschkoff and Gerber ask us to look at what happens in the space between things and what’s left over when the subject of the action is missing. We’re made to wonder about what caused this ambiguous imagery that doubles as evidence: What caused this plume of smoke, or video-game-like cumulous nimbus suspended in a sky-less plane? Are these cracks in cement any different from the geological fractures they reference?  Is there a consequence?  Are we the protagonists?--or are we stuck, like the remnant cracks and clouds, in these “absurd constructions between defined spaces”? (Hirschkoff) - Susanna Bluhm, Gallery Director      

Deborah Faye Lawrence Reception & Artist Talk: Saturday, January 18th, 6-9pm In the gallery from January 9 – February 22nd, ArtsWest presents Dee Dee Redux, a retrospective of work by Seattle-based artist Deborah Faye Lawrence, primarily featuring work made since her move to Seattle from Los Angeles in 1993. Lawrence manipulates images she finds in popular culture to create intricate collages that are at once political and vulnerable. In mythic scenes whose imagery is made up of hundreds of bits of cut paper interwoven with text that serves as a ransom-note-style history lesson, the artist offers for our consideration such issues as imperialism, gun-control, fracking, and women’s rights since biblical times.  Dee Lorenzo is Lawrence’s alter-ego who made her first appearance in 1999 as the subject of a series of works called Dee Dee Does the First Amendment. Dee Dee is young and old; she is an activist and witness. While she is specifically featured and named in some of the work, she pervades all of it. She oversees the works’ creation; she ordains the dissection of these issues relevant to our time—to all of human time. She is the beautiful, tattooed, red-haired girl stoic with her picket sign “Get your weapons out of my constitution” in Million Mom March and she is the gun-shot Mary in the same piece. The epic project Dee Dee Does Utopia was funded by a grant from Creative Capital Foundation in 2005. Lawrence began the project by sending an email query to 200 people: "What does Utopia look like to you?" The responses she got informed 26 versions of utopia, including Beachtopia (for the many people who included the beach in their utopia), Bibliotopia (for those who wrote of books and libraries) and Petopia (a utopia that includes our beloved animals). Quotes from participants float through or frame the artist’s illuminations of these collective visions.  The series culminated in ...

Artists: Laura Ahola-Young, Scott Mayberry, Nia Michaels, Elizabeth Reed Smith Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday December 12th, 6:00-7:30pm ABOUT THIS EXHIBITION In the gallery from November 19, 2013 – January 4, 2014, ArtsWest presents Regeneration, featuring artists Laura Ahola-Young, Scott Mayberry, Nia Michaels and Elizabeth Reed Smith. Please join us for the reception and artist talk on Thursday December 12th from 6:00-7:30pm!   Scott Mayberry describes wryly narrative scenes in richly textured paint using a color palette reminiscent of dark fairytales. Churches with rubber-like steeples double over themselves under moonlit stormy skies or steer ships on rocky seas. A figure in red jumps into an urban landscape of onion-domed, black and white striped buildings.   In her native England and present home in Indianola, WA, Elizabeth Reed Smith has found inspiration in natural forms, most often statuesque trees. Rendered with a crow quill, her drawings on paper are so devoted to their subject they seem to be breathing life forms in their own right. Smith writes, “I seek to blend the precision of the Victorian engraver with a contemporary appreciation of light, color and texture.”   Nia Michaels snips found decorative tins to create intimately small-scale assemblages that house Civil War-era tintype photos. Michaels writes, “I am fascinated with the seemingly endless possibilities and stories that I can coax from these small pieces of metal.” Her Patron Saints read as repurposed icons inviting a contemporary version of homage.   Laura Ahola-Young’s painting process is as much about scraping away and hiding as it is about uncovering and illuminating. Her subjects appear both macroscopic and microscopic, suggesting galaxies and cells. She writes, “My work reflects my desire for absolutes and claims none. For me, knowledge is always asking additional questions.”   The title for this show comes from the theme of interdependent creation and destruction that presents itself symbolically and/or materially in each of the four ...

Artists: Mira Kamada, Suzan Fant, Joseph Pentheroudakis, Bruce Savadow ABOUT THIS EXHIBITION Bruce Savadow finds the subject matter for his photographs while walking with open mind and eyes in such places as the Hoh Rainforest and the Leach Garden in Portland.  His focused attention to berries hanging from a branch, clover ground cover, and ferns elucidate inherent patterns and designs in nature. Joseph Pentheroudakis’s graphite and colored pencil grid-like drawings of lines within tiny squares read as exercises in both subtlety and structural integrity. He works to “bring out the order and beauty of lines—their inner lives and the complex, expressive webs they weave.” Mira Kamada’s grid-like paintings of circles that pulsate with color have their structural roots in music, and in her experiments in visualizing rhythm while playing the clarinet. She writes, “After a struggle with counting, clapping and foot tapping, it occurred to me that I might grasp these patterns if I visualized them… Would my brain create new connections between musical patterns and visual patterns?” As Suzan Fant builds her abstract collages and sculptures, “the focus is always on color and pattern, on light and movement… During my conjurings, a particular rightness presents itself.” These four artists share an appreciation for beauty, and even pleasure, in order—whether it is the natural “order” created by a pattern of leaves or the “rightness” that results when shapes and color fall together in rhythm. While describing her work, Suzan Fant shared a quote from Eudora Welty, which inspired the title of this show: That’s what I really love doing—putting things in their best and proper place, revealing things at the time they matter most.

Artists: Deborah Kirsner, Edward Lee, Kathy Liao, Roxanne Turner ABOUT THIS EXHIBITION This show gets its title from an ancient Chinese poem of the same name. Orchid and Orange 1 (Five character ancient verse, Zhang Jiuling, Tang Dynasty) Tender orchid-leaves in spring And cinnamon blossoms bright in autumn Are as self-contained as life is, Which conforms them to the seasons. Yet why will you think that a forest hermit, Allured by sweet winds and contented with beauty, Would no more ask to be transplanted Than would any other natural flower?

Artists: Dale DeGabriele, David Fishman, Janci Mannington, Chris Maynard, Patri O'Connor In the gallery from April 23rd – June 8th, ArtsWest presents Garden, which features artists David Fishman, Chris Maynard, Patri O’Connor, Janci Mannington, and Dale DeGabriele. The reception is in conjunction with the West Seattle ArtWalk on Thursday May 9th from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. The reception will include an artist talk, where each artist in the show will speak briefly about their work and visitors will have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in conversation. David Fishman creates hyper-detailed photographs of plants that reveal them as monumental, intricately populated worlds of their own. He uses digital photography processes to accentuate his subjects or sometimes to carry them into another world. Space Buds began with his observation that Mayapple buds emerging in Spring look alien-like. He writes: “I thought it would be appropriate to place them on an alien planet and space scene which I created digitally.” Chris Maynard’s shadowboxes are based, literally and conceptually, on feathers. Using surgical tools and magnifying glasses, he makes detailed cuts in naturally shed feathers to tell the story of the birds they came from as well as new narratives of light and shadows, negative and positive space. On view in the Alternative Media Platform, Patri O’Connor’s animated video was based on her paintings of local places, many in West Seattle. She writes: “I would love if people would look at my paintings and make up their own stories, and maybe they do, but for this time it’s my turn.” Janci Mannington’s paintings of flowers pay homage to Georgia O’Keefe with their grand scale, dramatic color, and compositions that are as much about the abstract space around the subject as the subject itself.  She writes: “I enjoy translating an image in my own language, finding shapes in form and shadow and then exaggerating them.” Pairing recycled manmade ...

Artists: Tamara Stephas, Stacey Neumiller, and Patty Haller. In the ArtsWest gallery from February 26th – April 20th, ArtsWest presents Supplemental Geology, which features artists Tamara Stephas, Stacey Neumiller, and Patty Haller. The reception is in conjunction with the West Seattle ArtWalk on Thursday March 14th from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. The reception will include an artist talk, where each artist in the show will speak briefly about their work and visitors will have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in conversation. Patty Haller carefully analyzes and renders paint scenes of nature in order to offer them to the viewer as visual experiences full of meaning. Haller writes: “Nature to me is a rich perceptual experience, where the whole seems ordered but the details are wild.  I want both in my art, and so I create visual structures to hold the intimate natural phenomena I find so powerful – cloud reflections, ice in the ground, or a sky seen through interwoven plant forms.” Tamara Stephas uses iconic text, architectural elements and landscape imagery in her paintings to investigate how we relate to our environment. Stephas writes: “In these works, spatial ambiguity and disruption refer to the intersection of disparate environmental spaces.” Inspired by her love of rural farm life, Stacey Neumiller paints the subjects that occupy it: animals, plants and barns, larger than life, in bright, celebratory colors. With her background in art, graphic design and illustration, Neumiller chooses bold compositions that highlight her subject and lift them up visually as though in homage to them and the place they represent. What these three artists have in common—and where the exhibition title gets its name—is their meaningful exploration of place. Work in Supplemental Geology proposes nostalgia, loss, and utopia in the places it investigates. Experiences of place are offered to the viewer, and all three artists do so in a way that includes not ...

Artists: Fab Rideti, Ryan Doran and Justin Behnken. In the Mind and on the Street features work by Fab Rideti, Ryan Doran and Justin Behnken. In her photographs of superheroes placed purposefully in everyday surroundings, Fab Rideti asks us to look carefully at our world and find affirmations of humor, fear, and irony in this temporary life.  Pulsing with urban imagery, Ryan Doran’s paintings draw organically from his background in stencil graffiti and music posters. Justin Behnken strives to create an experience for viewers of his abstract paintings wherein they forget they are beholding an object and submit their imaginations to a purely aesthetic reading of the deep colors before them.

Artists: Jere Smith, Kristen Reitz-Green, Christopher Boffoli A Feast for the Eyes: Food in Art features paintings and photographs by Pacific Northwest artists Christopher Boffoli, Kristen Reitz-Green and Jere Smith. The exhibition is an invitation to enter other worlds through beautiful food. West Seattle’s Christopher Boffoli’s photographs of tiny train layout figures enacting dramas set in landscapes of food are enticing an international audience in galleries in London, New York, Toronto and Monaco.  Boffoli writes “The sensual experience of eating accesses primal instincts that stretch back to the earliest days of our evolution.  Whether we are reflecting on the comfort food of childhood, celebrating food’s tremendous diversity, or obsessing over calories and nutrition, cuisine is one of those rare topics that most people can speak about with authority and yet largely without controversy.” Boffoli’s work is included in this exhibition courtesy of Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle. After devoting her professional life to playing the French horn in various orchestras across the US (including the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra) as well as Broadway show tours, Vashon Island resident Kristen Reitz-Green shifted her focus to painting. Her intricate portraits of bread, caramel apples and a dewy chocolate and almond-covered ice cream bar are truly feasts for the eyes. Grazing on these rich delights, the eye hungrily moves across a surface that is both painterly and photographic in visual representation. Seattle artist Jere Smith’s paintings of donuts glow with an almost mystical homage, with their singular subjects floating purposefully against ethereal skies. Lemon, chocolate-sprinkled, old fashioned, and jelly filled nuggets of perfection bask in soft brushwork as they suggest narratives of pleasure and mystery. - Susanna Bluhm, Gallery Director

Artists: Jason Sinclair Astorquia, Lydia Bassis, RobRoy Chalmers, Maxwell Humphres, Diana Sanford Abstract Observations features paintings and installations by Pacific Northwest artists Lydia Bassis, Maxwell Humphres, Jason Sinclair Astorquia, Diana Sanford, and RobRoy Chalmers. While all work with imagery that could be categorized as “abstract,” each artist uniquely explores the roles of the artist and viewer in navigating these ambiguous spaces. Using small, repurposed intaglio prints and sculptural elements, Seattle artist RobRoy Chalmers’ site-specific installation spreads through the back of the gallery. Describing the installations as “Sporozoan Swarms,” Chalmers writes: “The Sporozoan is a word I use metaphorically to describe the serendipitous moment of seeing, which tempts us all to look just a little bit more closely. This moment is the spark that allows growth in humanity causing us all to become.” Seattle artist Lydia Bassis draws inspiration from her imagination and her surroundings to create harmonious, abstract vignettes. Rather than seeking to portray the tangible world, Bassis orients her private symbolism more in the realm of invisible, yet significant, forces such energy, time, and feeling. Fragile knitted forms and heavy blocks of color peacefully coexist in scenes the artist describes as “lighthearted and playful, bold, balanced, and sometimes funny.” Like Bassis, Diana Sanford of Wenatchee often works without a clear idea of what the painting will look like when it’s finished. The act of painting becomes an improvisation, much like a jazz performance, where each mark made is a response to the previous mark. Describing her process as one of looking and responding, Sanford creates ambiguous spaces where light diffuses boundaries in a densely varied surface. The artist writes: “I’m most fascinated recently by the discipline of maintaining a focus on the discovery aspect of the process; on perception rather than conception.” Portland artist Maxwell Humphres invites the viewer to participate in the reconstruction and alteration of his wall installations. Humphres creates three-dimensional wooden ...