On the first Thursday of every month, Seattleites flock to the streets of Pioneer Square for the city's central and oldest art walk, which offers opportunities to stroll, sip on wine, and attend as many gallery openings as possible. But, in most cases, the shows are up for longer than just one night, and the historic neighborhood is a great place to check out art any day of the year. So, below, we've compiled the most promising exhibits that are having opening receptions on March 7—complete with a Google map at the bottom. You can also find more options on our First Thursday calendar, like the closing reception for Desperately Seeking Shavasana or Love Life. For art in other neighborhoods, check out our complete visual art calendar.

Found something you like and don't want to forget about it later? Click "Save Event" on any of the linked events below to add it to your own private list.

Bette Burgoyne: Drawings
Bette Burgoyne’s drawings are delightfully fungal—they look like the underside of a mushroom, the living organisms you encounter on dewy hikes through the forest, what grows on chicken pad thai that you’ve accidentally left in the fridge for two months. But there’s also something a bit brain-like about them, like you’re looking at the folds of your own cerebrum. Perhaps that’s what makes her soft-hued creations so compelling—it’s the basest, most biological self recognizing self. Give your brain what it deserves: a reflection. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Zeitgeist Coffee

Cameron Anne Mason: Field
Seattle artist Mason's heavily textured, dyed textile/print sculpture mimics natural Pacific Northwest landscapes. Mason is a member of Dusty Nation, a collective that creates interactive pieces at Burning Man.
Foster/White Gallery

Chelsea Ryoko Wong: Maximalist in Motion
San Francisco–based artist Chelsea Ryoko Wong is interested in urban culture. Streets, crowds, sidewalks outside of yoga studios, supermarkets, parks. Using vibrant hues and mediums like gouache, watercolor, and colored pencil, Wong brings these diverse scenes to life. There’s a text element to her work as well, with her figures wearing clothing that say things like “WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE SEXY,” “DRIVIN’ A JAGUAR SEDAN,” or “LOST FLAMENCO DANCER.” In a time when humanity seems to be more at odds with itself than ever (though, if I’m being real, humanity has always been at odds with itself), Wong’s work is like a cloud break on a warm day. Reminding you that we are all part of a community and that we really should look out for one another. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Zinc Contemporary

Dion Zwirner: The Edge of Seeing
Looking at Dion Zwirner’s paintings is like looking at a breathtaking landscape through a looking glass covered in rainwater—beautiful, emotional, and wet. Zwirner’s abstract approach to documenting the natural world is refreshing and deeply dewy. The colors she uses drip and bleed into one another, marrying horizons, seas, trees, clouds, and earth in a way that almost reminds you of a place you’ve been to in a dream. Completely, plausibly real—and wet. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Davidson Galleries

Drie Chapek: In the Quiet
If there are gods, I think they may be hiding inside Drie Chapek’s paintings. There's an energy at the center of them. Corners of the works are recognizable—maybe a pomegranate or some bones—but then they open up to an epiphany. They summon the unknown. If you've ever been turned off by abstract paintings, visit these. They'll make you feel things. CHASE BURNS
Greg Kucera Gallery

Mary Coss: Groundswell
METHOD collective artist Coss will return with more politically observant art. This time, she's collaborated with scientist Roger Fuller to make a visual reflection on climate change and rising salinity levels using salt-encrusted grass.
METHOD

Motherland: 2019 CoCA Members Show
Artist and former City Arts section editor Amanda Manitach curates this "salon-style" exhibition by CoCA members, which continues the gallery's focus on women artists and women's issues.
CoCA

Mya Kerner
Artist and landscape designer Kerner makes art about ecology and landforms, particularly inspired by her family's history as Eastern European foresters.
Linda Hodges Gallery

Peggy Murphy: Uprising
Peggy Murphy’s lush and scrawling works on paper, based on “observations on an unruly garden," are helpful things to meditate on as we straddle the line between winter’s darkness and spring’s grayness. A garden, like a painting, is more than just something to be looked at. It communicates and gives. Murphy's paintings are of a similar nature. View them and think of the sun. CHASE BURNS
Shift Gallery

Patti Bowman
See Patti Bowman's encaustic depictions of bodies of water and urban life, encountered through a haze of rain.
Linda Hodges Gallery

Ryna Frankel: Hold Me, Touch Me
The title of this show sounds like a dare. Ryna Frankel's soft, emotional sculptures seem to reach out to you, begging you to hold them, touch them. They're very cute. Maybe it’s winter getting me down, but all I want to do when I look at these pieces is become similarly limp, drown myself in fabric, and get in a corner and cuddle. It's a collection of work that understands how you feel—or at least is here to talk it out. CHASE BURNS
Gallery 4Culture

Shay Bredimus and Sarah Abramson: Dark Room
Tattoo artist, scholar of Japanese tattoo art, and figurative painter Shay Bredimus shows a striking series of nudes and exterior scenes composed with drippy tattoo ink and wax crayon on drafting film. Their deep blacks and blown-out whites imitate overcontrasted photography. Alongside these images, which somehow give the impression of flickering, Sarah Abramson hangs unsettling photos of nudes and clothed subjects outdoors.
Prographica/KDR

Shigeki Tomura: Retrospective
It’s almost hard to believe that Shigeki Tomura’s prints aren’t photographs. Or some sort of physical representation of a feeling of being in a place. But they’re neither photos nor feelings. The drawings, watercolors, and engravings of nature by the Japanese artist really capture the essence of what it’s like to bear witness to a ripple of water across a lake, the shade provided by a dense crop of trees, snow on a field. Davidson Galleries will be showing a retrospective looking back at Tomura’s career, including work from the late 1980s all the way to present.  JASMYNE KEIMIG
Davidson Galleries

Susan Bennerstrom: Compass
Bennerstrom paints eerie, empty scenes that emphasize artificial environments without their human makers.
Woodside/Braseth Gallery

sweet, rotten, sweet
The press video for dancer/artist Peggy Piacenza's sweet, rotten, sweet features a bearded Wade Madsen in clown makeup slowly eating cotton candy while apocalyptic doom music blares in the background. So I guess I buy it when Piacenza calls the piece an exploration of "the human struggle to find meaning within an absurd world." This wild video installation will serve as the backdrop for a suite of performances by some of the area's most compelling contemporary dancers, including Madsen, Ezra Dickinson, Kim Lusk, and Amelia Reeber. RICH SMITH
Bonfire

Found something you like and don't want to forget about it later? Click "Save Event" on any of the linked events below to add it to your own private list.