VISUAL ART
MUSEUMS AND ART CENTERS
BELLEVUE ART MUSEUM
301 Bellevue Square, Bellevue, 425-454-3322.
*GAME SHOW
BAM weighs in with another unexpected look at art. Brian Wallace’s latest exhibit features games designed by artists, writers, and musicians. There’s work that is fun to touch and see and play with, but the intent is serious: An exhibit about creativity, decision-making, and how one relates to a work of art. Artists-in-residence include Seattle artist Helen Lessick and English game theorist Beryl Graham. Through Jan 30.
CENTER ON CONTEMPORARY ART
65 Cedar St, 728-1980
NORTHWEST ANNUAL 2000
This year’s juror, New York artist Mike Bidlo, produced a healthy and not altogether unsurprising list of winners for CoCA’s yearly who’s who. There’s sure to be argument over this however, so don’t miss his talk about the selection process (see “Events”). This year’s show also features work from last year’s winners, Patrick Holderfield and Yvette Franz. Opening party with live music by Pleaseeasaur and IQU, Sat Jan 15, 8 pm, $7 admission.
FRYE ART MUSEUM
704 Terry Ave, 622-9250.
JON SWIHART
Twenty years of cryptic paintings by Swihart, who fuses highly realistic painting with mysterious rituals, everyday details, and unexplained imagery. As a result, they seem like works we should recognize and understand — but don’t. Through Feb 6.
HENRY ART GALLERY
15th Ave NE at NE 41st St, 543-2280.
*INSIDE OUT: NEW CHINESE ART
A group exhibit exploring the avant-garde in China from the mid ’80s to the present. Showing artists from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as Chinese artists living abroad, Inside Out is a study in the contrasts of cultural identity — traditional and modern, public and political, national and individual. Many of the Chinese artists featured here have an excellent sense of the absurd; photographs from various performance works include an artist who covered himself with honey and sat in a latrine attracting flies, and two artists firing a gun at their own work at Beijing’s National Gallery. The show is so extensive that it takes two galleries to hold it all; the other is at the Tacoma Art Museum (1123 Pacific Ave, Tacoma, 253-272-4258). Through March 5.
WHAT IT MEANT TO BE MODERN, SEATTLE ART
AT MID-CENTURY
Over 100 works — including sculpture, paintings, and works on paper — exploring the art and influence of a specific group of regional artists tagged by Life magazine in 1953 as the “Mystic Painters of the Northwest,” which included Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey. The exhibition follows the evolution of the “Northwest School” of artists from 1932 to 1962, and contextualizes their work with other national and international movements. Through Jan 23.
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
100 University St, 654-3100.
*HEREABOUTS: NORTHWEST PICTURES BY
SEVEN PHOTOGRAPHERS
A group of our finest local photographers show documentary images of less familiar parts of Washington: Erika Langley goes backstage and onstage with the strippers of the Lusty Lady; Robert Lyons visits rodeos; Glenn Rudolph visits hoboes, farmers, naturalists, and golfers in rural Washington; Alice Wheeler offers portraits of her family and rock-scene friends; Kristen Capp explores an Amish-ish community; Andrew Miksys befriends Bingo players; and Alan Berner shows the debased contemporary remnants of the Western myth. It’s all very, very good. Through March 12.
SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM
1400 E Prospect St, Volunteer Park, 654-3100.
MODERN MASTERS OF KYOTO
Works by late 19th- and early 20th-century artists from Kyoto round out the programming for SAAM’s “Year of Japan.” This collection is owned by Northwest residents Griffith and Patricia Way, and contains more than 80 examples of Kyoto-school nihonga — modern Japanese paintings executed in traditional media formats. Through Feb 13.
WORLDS OF FANTASY: CHINESE SHADOW PUPPETS
Volunteer Park hosts more than 70 puppets from the 19th century. The majority of the exhibited works come from the collection of Theodore Bodde, who purchased the extraordinary objects while in Beijing in the 1930s. Chinese textiles with related themes will accompany. Through April 2.
TACOMA ART MUSEUM
1123 Pacific Ave, 253-272-4258
INSIDE/OUT
The celebrated touring show of contemporary Chinese art from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese artists living elsewhere in the world, is too big for any one venue, which is why TAM shared it with the Henry. See the other half of the local show, just down the road off I-5. Through March 5.
WRIGHT EXHIBITION SPACE
407 Dexter Ave N, 264-8200.
*THE WRIGHT COLLECTION
Virginia and Bagley Wright have rehung their foundation’s exhibit space, devoting one gallery entirely to their great collection of ’60s and ’70s color field paintings, and introducing a large David Salle oil and the John Baldessari piece Two Onlookers and Tragedy to the mix. Other highlights of their collection include a Robert Longo, Eric Fischl, a huge Warhol Rorschach, and Jules Olitski’s Thigh Smoke. Open-ended run.
GALLERY OPENINGS
GROUP LANDSCAPE EXHIBITION
Exactly what it sounds like, showing a wide range of styles and influences. Refreshingly un-millennial. Winston Wächter, 403 Dexter Ave N, 652-5855. Opens Tues Jan 18, 6-8 pm. Through Feb 12.
VESTIGIAL TALES
Painters Damon Maxwell and Warren Dykeman combine their demonic forces for this show. Both artists use the fantastic and the grotesque to moody, compelling, sometimes violent effect — nothing sentimental here. Roq la Rue, 2224 Second Ave, 374-8977. Opens Fri Jan 14. Through Feb 11.
CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS
LARRY BEMM
Abstract paintings which layer oval forms in light, near- pastel colors. Ballard/Fetherston Gallery, 818 E Pike St, 322-9440. Through Feb 5.
*LEO SAUL BERK
Berk takes plywood and exploits its weaknesses — its knots and uneven surfaces — to beautiful effect. In some cases the knots are drilled out and filled with translucent resin; Berk has the wood specially milled so that the knot patterns repeat across the surface of the work. Don’t miss the ceiling-high panel near the bathroom: It’s an extra-long sheet of plywood sawed into thin fingers, reassembled with the edges facing out, and glossed with two gallons of epoxy resin. The result is miraculous — wood, but not quite. The Little Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, 329-2629. Through Jan 16.
CAROL BOLT
Bolt’s site-specific installation is entitled Willing, and in a weird, obsessive way, it’s about hope. The work is within view of the public in the First Avenue window of the Rental/Sales Gallery, where it’ll sit through mid-February. Inside the gallery, a show by artists who work in encaustic. Seattle Art Museum Rental/Sales Gallery, 1334 First Ave, 748-9282.
LISA BUCHANAN
These large new paintings are beautifully patterned but nothing like simple decoration. They recall the backgrounds of a Klimt painting, but the shapes are more uneasy and neurotic. Bryan Ohno Gallery, 155 S Main St, 667-9572. Through Jan 29.
DISTANT ECHOES
At the beginning of the year, a show of artists looking backward. Tracy Moffatt’s Laudanum photographs re-cast 20th-century decadents as 19th-century ones, and show them blurred and faded — by nostalgia, perhaps? Ross Palmer-Beecher’s junk-metal wall pieces draw from traditional American quilt forms, while Darren Waterston’s swampy landscapes draw from Old Master painting techniques. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave S, 624-0770. Through Jan 29.
TOM FEHER/SCOTT BICKELL
A pair of photographers exploring new possibilities of traditional photographic printing techniques. Feher shows moody shots from here and far away, while Bickell ruminates on Vashon Island and Washington coast landscapes and flowers. Photographic Center Northwest, 900 12th Ave, 720-7222. Through Jan 30.
ROLON BERT GARNER
Longtime Seattle arts fixture Garner, currently associated with Two Bells Tavern’s excellent art program, shows recent paintings at Two Bells and the Virginia Inn — the other downtown Seattle bar with great taste in art. Two Bells Tavern, 2313 Fourth Ave, 441-3050; Virginia Inn, 1937 First Ave, 728-1937. Through Feb 1.
CHRIS GRANT
The final show at Soil’s Pioneer Square digs — they’re moving to Capitol Hill next month — is an installation entitled Technological Isolation Tank #.618A. It’s a single disembodied television screen showing an inscrutable, but somehow hypnotic video. That’s all. SOIL Artist Cooper-ative, 310 First Ave S, 329-4271. Through Jan 30.
BOB HAOZOUS
Installations and portraits by the Native American artist. One installation, Separation, was first shown at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Sacred Circle Gallery of American Indian Art, Discovery Park, 285-4425. Through March 26.
RANDY HAYES
Hayes layers paint over photographic images on canvas, and the result is a cool-mooded mixture of painterly effect and specific image and suggests the conflict (not always unpleasant) between memory and fact. Grover/Thurston Gallery, 309 Occidental S, 223-0816. Through Feb 12.
BARBARA JAKSA
Jaksa takes found boxes and creates little psyches out of them with egg tempera, objects, and mixed materials. You’re encouraged to pick the boxes up and examine them; they don’t give up their meanings easily, however, these contemplative, mysterious objects. Oculus Gallery, 163 S Jackson, Second Floor, 366-2108. Through Jan 31.
CAROLYN KRIEG/PERIPHERAL VISIONARIES
Using the hues and patterns of Indian textiles, Krieg assembles and reassembles her work using a combination of computer coloring, Polaroids, and paint. In Peripheral Visionaries, three local artists — Doug Keyes, Eva Sköld Westerlind, and John Jenkins — explore the idea of seeing through shadows, light, and tableaux. Keyes photographs and re-photographs books page by page; the layered effect is a kind of Shroud of Turin-like image of the tome, and its oddness lies in seeing all at once what is usually absorbed over time. Jenkins favors images of things we might not look at twice (a ceiling, a windowsill), but his versions, blurry and saturated with color, are hardly ordinary. G. Gibson Gallery, 122 S Jackson St, Suite 200, 587-4033. Through Jan 15.
*DEBORAH LAWRENCE/ERIC STOTIK
Lawrence creates intricate, obsessive collages out of traditional imagery (from the Virgin Mary to the Land O’ Lakes girl) combined with text and painting. Her slant is contemporary, social issue-driven subject matter and images; the result is layered, gorgeous propaganda. It looks familiar, but utterly isn’t. Betty Bowen Award-winner Stotik shows small, narrative paintings and drawings in back. Both artists draw on visual references from the history of art and make them quite new. Esther Claypool Gallery, 617 Western Ave, 264-1586. Through Jan 29.
THE LION IN THE ARENA
A photographic installation of images from the WTO protests, with work by Joseph Barboza, Akiko Sato, Junko Yamamoto, Scott Chin, and Hisao Iehara. RAW Gallery, NW Asian American Theatre, 409 Seventh Ave S, 340-1445. Through Jan 23.
JESSE PAUL MILLER/SEAN MILLER
The unrelated Millers join forces for Miller’s Crossing, a show which creates an interesting profile of each artist. Jesse Paul Miller is very good at the imaginative re-combining of everyday elements (polka records, Polaroids, recording tape) with traditional artistic methods (painting, silk-screening), to make objects that make you look, and then look again. Sean Miller re-combines disparate elements as well, but all within the surface of his very creepy paintings; the big-eyed, naive-looking subjects are anything but, and Jesus is as likely to have chicken feet as he is to save the world. Howard House, 2017 Second Ave, 256-6399. Through Jan 29.
*CARLOS MOLLURA/MARGARET KILGALLEN
Los Angeles artist Mollura, a standout at CoCA’s Love at the End of the Tunnel exhibition, shows a huge inflated sculpture filling half of Harris’ front gallery. In back, Kilgallen, whose recent installation at Deitch Projects in New York got her lots of fawning press, shows prints. James Harris Gallery, 309A Third Ave S, 903-6220. Through Jan 30.
NOW WHAT? REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST 1000 YEARS
A passel of gallery artists and invitees ruminate on the millennium. The result is a very idea-driven show, with a focus on the difficulty of documenting any moment in time. T. Ellen Solod’s Mitts reference life’s ephemera, Bridget Young’s sculpture is a prickly combination of nails and wax (viewers find themselves giving it a wide berth), and Squire Broel’s ready-made icon — a Starbucks cup covered with rune-like doodles — is simply impenetrable, but not in a bad way. Other participating artists include Jena Scott and David DeVillier. Eyre/Moore Gallery, 913 Western Ave, 624-5596. Through Jan 29.
PATRICIA RIDENOUR/ERIN SPENCER/
CHRISTINE BURGOYNE
Sexuality, self-portraiture, and masks — a dark, introspective show of photographs by three local artists. Benham Photography, 1216 First Ave, 622-2480. Through Jan 15.
*SUSAN ROBB
Best known as a photographer (not to mention a pizza place owner and an indie rocker), Robb has ventured into sculpture and installation work. Her show Weatherradio, 3200: Handmade Genetics and Homestyle Plastic, includes cast polymer plaques, fur and latex sculptures, and inkjet prints, all with biological themes. The Pound Gallery, 1216 10th Ave, 323-0557. Through Jan 30.
ANNA SKIBSKA
Here’s an artist worth lifting your self-imposed glass moratorium for (if you’re sensible enough to have one). Skibska’s pod-like sculptures seem to be spun of glass threads, and are hung in a dark room with a few spotlights to heighten their delicate effect. Traver Gallery, 110 Union St, Second Floor, 587-6501. Through Jan 30.
GEORGE TSUTAKAWA
The creator of the mossy Opera House fountains shows paintings and sculpture. Foster/White Gallery, 123 S Jackson St, 622-7606. Through Jan 30.
SCOTT WILSON
Wilson’s large-scale photographs are disturbing and hard to escape. He wrings a goodly amount of horror out of real and digitally enhanced images of fetal animals combined with all sorts of memento mori-type imagery — a mad scientist obsessed also with beauty. Strong stuff. FotoCircle Gallery, 163 S Jackson, Second Floor, 624-2645. Through Jan 29.
EVENTS
MEET THE ARTIST
Join artist Patrick Huse for a preview of his exhibition (surreal landscapes, bleak in that Scandinavian way) at the Frye Art Museum at 6 pm. Earlier at 2 pm, Huse and Norwegian curator Oyvind Storm Bjerke will discuss “Landscape as Metaphor.” Frye Auditorium, 704 Terry Ave. Sun Jan 16.
SOIL ART AUCTION 2000
SOIL celebrates its move to fancy new digs on Capitol Hill with a fund-raising silent auction and party. The list of contributing artists is impressive — future collectors take note. The auction runs from Jan 15-30, and the opening party is Sat Jan 15, 7 pm-midnight. At the new SOIL gallery, 1412 12th Ave. Call 329-4271 or 297-9414 with any questions.
MIKE BIDLO LECTURE
The juror for this year’s Northwest Annual at CoCA talks about the jury process, and about his own work. The New York-based Bidlo engages in hardcore appropriation (by re-creating masterpieces by Picasso and Duchamps, for example) and then claiming authorship. All right, he challenges the idea of authenticity and creativity, but do emerging artists feel safe letting him pick over their work? Find out. Speakeasy Cafe back room, 2304 Second Ave, 728-9770. Wed Jan 12, 7:30 pm.