Farris closed down her decades-old, eponymous contemporary art gallery in 1995. Since then, she's traveled and begun a collection of new work dominated by the new bad girl crowd (Vanessa Beecroft and Kim Dingle are two of her faves). But collecting is a sport for the very wealthy, not merely the fiscally comfortable, so Farris is out to supplement her knowledge of contemporary art with a bigger fund. Hence the Contemporary Art Project: For a commitment of $15,000 a year for three years, a pool of 25 or so collectors will join the limited liability corporation, which will create and maintain a collection to be shared among the collectors. (The works will also be packaged for museum shows and lent out individually to institutions.) At the end of the project (no closing date has been set), the entire collection will be donated to museums or to a foundation.
Farris gets to work with a bigger bank account, collectors get an art advisor and a private lending library of good contemporary art, and more than likely, Seattle gets a rich resource for its museums and art centers--sounds like a good deal all around.
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The artists and gallery runners who make up Redheaded Stepchild probably won't see any of Linda Farris' bounty. Their monthly zine is devoted to the other end of the contemporary art scene, the burgeoning sphere of alternative spaces in Seattle. The July issue (their second) is a solid effort, featuring a long article by Leslie Clague on finding cheap living/work space in Seattle, and reviews of shows at Soil, the Pound, and Madrona Automatic. Watch for their August issue in alternative arts venues in town, and contact them at xredheadx@yahoo.com.
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On the Boards' 2000 season should be announced publicly within a week or so, but here's the roster put together by Mark Murphy as it stands now: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Belgian dance company Rosas, Kyoto theater troupe Dumbtype, the New York companies Elevator Repair Service and Builder's Association (love those industrial names, guys), and Seattle's Pat Graney Company, Amii LeGendre, and Gamelan Pacifica. Three of those seven company's leaders--Graney, LeGendre, and de Keersmaeker--were prominent names in the campaign to reinstate Murphy. But I won't call this logrolling--all of them have longtime associations with OTB.
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Sidewalk put fear into the hearts of weeklies across the nation when the Microsoft-owned events calendar site first went online in Seattle in 1997. Three years later, though it covers the nation, Sidewalk's wealth of cherry-picked editorial talent has largely dissipated, and the sites look more like Yellow Pages than urban weeklies. I welcomed the news of Sidewalk's recent sale to Ticketmaster/CitySearch Online. The combination of lame Sidewalk with evil Ticketmaster should result in one of the least-loved sites on the web.
Send gossip and complaints to eric@thestranger.com.
