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 June 6—complete with a Google map at the bottom. You can also find more options on our First Thursday calendar, including one-night affairs like the Live Queer Screen Printing Party or the 100 under $100 sale. 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.

bauhaus.photo
As part of the Goethe Institut's celebration Wunderbar Together—The Year of German-American Friendship, the bookstore/gallery hangs 100 selections from the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, which houses about 70,000 photos from the famed interwar German architecture and design school. This looks to be a fascinating glimpse into a turbulent yet artistically dazzling era in the past, with work by the well-known Lucia Moholy, László Moholy-Nagy, and T. Lux Feininger, plus less famous artists like Kattina Both, Irene Bayer, and Max Peiffer Watenphul.
Peter Miller Books

Bisco Smith
Though the work is rather straightforward, New York artist Bisco Smith makes black-and-white exciting. The marks on his canvas resemble writing, like it’s actually trying to communicate something through words to the viewer. That’s—in part—due to his process of creation. Selecting an instrumental song or beat to play as he paints, Smith then freestyles lyrics “that express the consciousness and energy of that moment.” Although these lyrics aren’t exactly legible (at least to my eye), the paintings pulse with life. Drawing on his background as a street artist, Smith often composes his works using materials like household paint, rollers, spray paint, and white paste. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Treason Gallery

Comix for All
Some of the area's best independent comics artists—Mita Mahato, Eroyn Franklin, Simon Hanselmann, Kelly Froh, and 10 others—show varied work in this Short Run show.

Ed Wicklander: Mostly Cats
Wicklander is a master of his materials. But he has left his mark most indelibly on his students, artists like Dan Webb. For me, his works are uneven in their interestingness. When I look at his balloons made of steel, I feel like I've seen them before. I glaze over. His kittens? There's nothing else like them. They're hilarious and heartwarming, an almost impossible combination in contemporary art. They know about kitsch and they zoom happily by it traveling on the same road, another near-impossibility. So smart and so dumb at the very same time. JEN GRAVES
Greg Kucera Gallery

Elyse Pignolet: You Should Smile More
Los Angeles–based artist Elyse Pignolet’s work is charming—a ceramicist, she often incorporates feminist messages and phrases into traditional-looking vases and plates. A gorgeous blue-and-white ceramic tulipiere, stuffed with flowery images, has the phrase “Will She Ever Shut Up?” and a plate finds snake-like branches swirling around the word “bitchy.” A bit kitschy, Pignolet’s work subverts the stuffy and persnickety assumptions we have toward ceramic artwork. And it’s a lot of fun. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Koplin Del Rio Gallery

Hiroshi Yamano: Byōbu
Fukuoka artist Yamano won the 2015 People’s Choice Award from the Museum of Glass, co-founded the Ezra Glass Studio in Fukui, and now chairs the glass program at Osaka University of Arts. His sculptures often depict native birds and wildlife of Japan.
Traver Gallery

Jane Rosen: Written In Stone
Jane Rosen manages to capture something about birds—hawks—that is at once regal and utterly terrifying; perhaps because they are lifelike without looking entirely real. Her birds have a presence—they are watchful, preying, observant, there. Rosen is inspired by Egyptian funerary art (it shows) and Asian calligraphy. Her exhibition at Traver Gallery is a mix of 2D and 3D work, as well as a mix of material (glass, stone, ink, paper, etc.). JASMYNE KEIMIG
Traver Gallery

John Buck: Woodcut Prints and Kinetic Sculpture
John Buck’s sculptures move. Composed of wood, they spin, rock, twirl, paddle, and come to life. Buck draws on current events, popular culture, humor, and classical iconography to create his sculptures—headless svelte bodies juxtaposed on elaborate moving wheels. They are marvelous not only because of their movement but also due to their intricacy, complexity, and attention to detail. In his show at Greg Kucera, Buck will not only be showing these kinetic sculptures but also his large, colorful, and slightly surreal woodblock prints. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Greg Kucera Gallery

Look How Far We've Come: A Queer Art Show 902 Feet in the Air
Look How Far We've Come: A Queer Art Show 902 Feet in the Air is literally that—a bunch of queer art really high off the ground. Curated by Factory director Timothy Rysdyke, the show is featured right off the elevators at the 360-degree Sky View Observatory in the Columbia Center, Seattle's tallest skyscraper. And while I'm usually not super thrilled at the idea of grouping work solely by marginalized identity, this show works in its straightforwardness and the talent of all involved. Sequoia Day O'Connell's use of sickly greens and blues and bright neon pinks and oranges is an unexpected color combination that really works. After a night performing as Femme Daddy, Jessica Marie Mercy presses her made-up face into a baby wipe, creating these distinct portraits of drag, gender, and labor. Julian Peña's Black John Doe has a beautiful cool palette. Its perspective is like looking at a body through a pane of dewy glass, a slowly uploaded picture of a friend, someone who you know, but can't quite place, an idea, a projection, etc. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Sky View Observatory

Mark D. Shelton: Passion for Our First Peoples
Mark D. Shelton (Seneca-Honorary Chinook Tribal Artist) responds to the famous portraits of Native Americans by Edward Curtis with his own mixed-media paintings. See sepia and copper prints of the historic photos alongside Shelton's collage paintings of their subject matter.
Flury & Company

Masks: The Art of Becoming
This iteration of the gallery's yearly show will once again examine masks and their specific cultural, social, and economic place in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, featuring modern and traditional works by a variety of artists in mediums including glass, wood, stone, hide, fiber, metal, and ceramics.
Stonington Gallery

Peter Rand: A to B: 6–10
Peter Rand works in a variety of forms: video, installation, interactive media, sculpture, socially engaged art, and performance. He is most interested in examining topics like identity, urban spaces, and the absurd. In his latest show, Rand uses time-lapse photography to depict him constructing objects as they move through space, shifting and reassembling these “toolsets” against various different backgrounds. These photos then become “a study in getting from here to there.” JASMYNE KEIMIG
4Culture

Robbie Riley
Gorgeous nostalgia reigns in Robbie Riley's large-scale paintings based on Kodak photos from the 1940s and '50s, drawn from his family's trove. See rich and cinematic images of the Northwest from more than a half-century ago.
Linda Hodges Gallery

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.