Geniuses: Where Are They Now?

A year and five months after his 2010 Genius Award for literature, cartoonist Jim Woodring was standing in the Husky Deli in West Seattle fondling tinned foods, including canned haggis… Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of the Genius Award–winning sculpture/art duo Lead Pencil Studio were spotted not long ago pushing a desktop computer and two hard-boiled eggs through the X-ray machine in a security line at Boston’s Logan Airport… Genius Award–winning theater-maker Sarah Rudinoff was on a highway in Hawaii at one point over the winter, driving for three hours as fast as she could in what turned out to be the wrong direction… Genius Award–winning filmmaker Lynn Shelton, whose film Your Sister’s Sister will premiere at the opening of the Seattle International Film Festival in May, traveled to Dublin this past February and spent one gray day eating macadamia nuts in bed… Novelist Sherman Alexie, the Stranger Genius Award–winner for literature in 2008, was recently vacuuming his car while trying to hiding his asscrack beneath a long T-shirt at Sea Suds Car Wash on 23rd and Union… Genius Award–winning artist Jeffry Mitchell was wearing jeans when he got snubbed with “a cold stare-down” from film actor and sartorial snob Chloë Sevigny (in black-framed “nerd” glasses, a black leather jacket, a see-through black knit skirt, short-heeled boots) at Soho House in Los Angeles… At 3:34 on a recent afternoon, Genius Award–winning writer and “accidental theologian” Lesley Hazleton noticed that it was raining after looking up from her desk in a houseboat on Lake Union… The building that houses the Genius Award–winning dance company Pacific Northwest Ballet—where this spring you can see performances of Coppélia and the blockbuster double-bill Apollo & Carmina—continues to be where it’s always been: across the street from a parking garage on Mercer Street… Actor, writer, and director Marya Sea Kaminski—who set the record for most appearances on the Genius Awards shortlist before winning the theater award in 2010, and who presents a new theater piece based on Bonnie and Clyde this spring—ventures frequently to the 24-hour QFC on Broadway, where she wanders the aisles and often leaves with bizarre grocery combinations such as strawberries, organic lemons, and kale.