Results tagged “art”

Long gone are the days of showing up to an empty SAM After Hours event and damning yourself for thinking it might have been cool this time. On the contrary, if you felt the bar scene was a little empty last Friday night, SAM might owe you an apology (and a reason to go ahead and mark your calendars for February 26th).

It’s easy to miss the entrance for graypants, inc. design studio while walking past the crowded Pike/Pine Corridor storefronts on 11th Ave. But with the addition of local artist Mark VonRosenstiel's new painted mural on the wallways of the studio entrance stairway, the character and personality permeating throughout the space can be a little more accessible to those on the street. Or, in a reverse philosophy, the mural has “pulled the vitality and color of our Capitol Hill neighborhood right from the street and into our studio.”

Handmade Nation - a documentary about the flourishing do-it-yourself art, craft and design community - has been a labor of love for first-time filmmaker and director Faythe Levine. The idea for the film was conceived in 2003 during Levine’s trip to Chicago's Renegade Craft Fair and production began in 2006 when Levine and her director of photography, Micaela O’Herlihy, spent a year and a half traveling around the country, interviewing over eighty independent DIY-ers. We first heard about the project last year when Levine and her team were screening clips of the film while trying to raise money to offset the remaining production costs.

Local artist Soule has been peddling her dishware on Etsy for several years now - each one-of-a-kind design is hand painted, heat-sealed and dishwasher safe. For her line, Soule paints on plates, mugs, tumblers, tea and cream-and-sugar sets, and so forth; entirely with original and/or custom-ordered artwork. The seasonal Zombieware is new, and fun, and unique, and 20% off if you sign up for the monthly newsletter.

IS THAT FUNK I SMELL?: George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, objectively speaking the best funk band in the world, play the Showbox SoDo tonight. We can’t think of anything to say about this that hasn’t been said, except that you owe it to yourself to see Clinton perform--after 50 years in the industry, he still brings it.

       

The success of Travis Louie's work rests on his uncanny ability to juggle two completely contradictory tendencies at once. On the one hand, the aesthetic of his work is a brilliant pastiche; with photorealistic precision, he carefully crafts works that nail the particular qualities of Victorian photographs that makes them look incredibly "real." On the other, he's creating a dream world of monsters that never existed in reality. And beyond the simple derangement of the creatures he portrays with life-like faithfulness, he adds yet another layer of complexity by crafting them with these inscrutable facial expressions. It's verisimilitude meets fantasy meets something deeper, and the magic of how all those layers collapse is what gives his work its oddly compelling quality and charm.

            

A new show of work by Nicoletta Ceccoli and Eric Fortune opens tonight at Roq la Rue. Ceccoli, an Italian artist, is showing works from her series "Beauties and Beasts," that twist childhood imagery borrowed from fairy tales, religion, and legends, into metamorphosing images of growing up and losing innocence. American Eric Fortune's mini-show, "Daughters of Our Nature," features sexy nymphets and whatnot.

       

At last week's First Thursday in Pioneer Square, we happened upon Molly Norris' exhibit at the Marni Muir Gallery and were all the better for it. Culture Complex: Editoons is described in the promotional literature as "illustrated satire and thoughts in both 2- and 3-D by this local writer, artist, and filmmaker," but we'd call it "New Yorker cartoons if they were actually funny."

Trinidad Martínez is co-founder of the Magpai Production Group--straight outta Hamburg--and is in the U.S. on a Fullbright. She collaborated with each of the solo performers of Tres Tristes Tigres: Emma Klein, Dayton Allemann, and Jonas Radvik. She's also likely to be the one taking your tickets and offering you a glass of water. But the fringe-theater, many-hats staffing aside, the work you see rivals OtB in its commitment--and shows off Dani Prados' lighting and technical design chops.

Someone doesn't want you to know about Seattle's water supply--they yanked an interpretative display off the wall of the Volunteer Park Water Tower. But someone else does want you to know: his name is Stokely Towles, which we half-consider to be made-up. He describes his Waterlines installation (also at Volunteer Park, in a trailer on the road between SAAM and the Conservatory) like so:

• Starting Monday, Susan Enfield will take on her role as Seattle Public Schools' new chief academic officer. Now if only we knew her stance on high school math.
• This Saturday, you won't find a cheeseburger on the grill at Hillside Quickie's. But you will find tofu at their 4th Annual Vegan BBQ Buffet. We will add this to the "Only in Seattle" column.

    

Michael Darling, the Seattle Art Museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, has assembled a surprisingly cool show with , which opened last weekend at SAM and runs through Sept. 7. The post-WWII period saw the apex of high Modernism in painting with the abstract expressionists, led by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. They took the Modernists' radical approach to painting to the utmost extreme, by actually separating the brush from the canvas and completely rejecting representational art. At the same time, though, a new group of painters were laying the groundwork of Postmodernism, and were searching for new ways to break free of the canvas.

Here's one that should have made it into Can't Miss It this morning but didn't: Tonight at Vermillion (1508 11th Ave), from 6 to 10 p.m., is the official opening of the new art show, "Des Madre: Fresh Latino Perspectives in America." Organized by Des Madre Arte blog, the show features sixteen mostly West Coast Latino artists, many working on variations of or inspired by contemporary urban street art. The show explores the complex relationship of the Latino community to mainstream American culture, a culture they're increasingly a part of. The work uses a variety of pop and classic imagery to speak to the cultural divide many contemporary Latinos feel from their parents and the cultures they come from, while at the same time remaining a distinct cultural entity in the U.S.

Wynne Greenwood's solo electro-pop trio Tracy + the Plastics was one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed performance art projects to come out of the Northwest that we know of, ever. Really--just think of how contorted that last sentence is. Greenwood played all three characters of her band: onstage, she performed as Tracy, interacting with herself (via pre-recorded video) as both of her own backup singers, Nikki Romanos and Cola ("the Plastics"). Her Stranger Genius Award last year was well-deserved, but Greenwood's always been more than Tracy + the Plastics: her performance art and video installations have been seen around the world, from the Tate Modern to the Moscow Biennale. And now she's returning to the stage with , next week at On the Boards. A work exploring the rather painful-sounding question--"What must we give up in order to survive?"--Greenwood has apparently transformed OtB's entire studio theatre into a mixed-media sculpture gallery/video installation/performance space. The work promises to be a brilliant piece of interactive art.

THE NATIVE MASK: Of Myth & Mask, at the Steinbrueck Native Art Gallery, explores Northwest Coast mythology and the regalia used in its storytelling. The exhibit features masks by David Boxley, Corey Bulpitt, Al Charles, George David, Erich Glendale, Eugene Isaacs, Norman Jackson, James Madison, and John Wilson. We were just reading Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau, in which he talks about how bowdlerized Pacific Northwest myth was in its retelling by Europeans. So throw away the books and try this "art" thing out.

       

Roq la Rue has a new show opening tonight by recent Seattle transplant Christian Van Minnen. Van Minnen's new "Keyhole" series feels a bit like Magritte meets Giger--like Magritte, Van Minnen enjoys playing with structural contrasts, but he shares with Giger a love of the grotesque. Also showing is Japanese artist Yoko d'Holbachie, who mixes cutesy Japanese-style characters with American psychedelia.

HIPHOP EXTRAVAGANZA: My, oh my, Seattle hiphop fans are in luck this weekend: the Blue Scholars are doing a stripped-down version of last year's The Program, with three nights at Neumos. This time, Common Market will join them every night; Truckasaurus and very special guests are playing on Saturday, Macklemore and Dyme Def will play on Monday night. Saturday's already sold out, but the second two nights are equally as awesome. Don't miss it. Really.

Monday night, South African artist William Kentridge sold out a performance/lecture at Kane Hall. By the time we arrived forty minutes early for the 7:30 event, a line of almost two hundred people were already snaked from the doors to the lecture hall, up the stairs and around the second floor.

       

Chalk it up to bad luck. It's totally lame and we're sad to admit it, but last week on Friday the thirteenth, a new show opened at Roq la Rue (2312 Second Ave.) and we totally dropped the ball. Please accept our sincerest apologies and see the above gallery for some awesome, sexy work work by Andrew Hem and Stella Hultberg, on display through March 7, which means it closes just in time for the show to open on Friday, March 13. Brilliant!

SERENA RYDER: Who doesn't love a Canadian singer/songwriter? Only the very, very small of heart. Our sister site Torontoist called Serena Ryder "up and coming" back in 2005, and she just won the Juno Award (it's Canadian!) for New Artist of the Year in 2008. Plus, Wikipedia says, "Ranging musically between folk, roots, country, and adult contemporary, Ryder possesses a three-octave range." Here she is on the YouTube, here she is on the MySpace. Matt Duke opens, but you're on your own there.

• CHS datamined the scoop on the newest new restaurant to hit Odd Fellows Hall, Tin Table: "We believe that food and wine should be an experience for the senses and a festival to spirit."
• Seattle Metblogs realized the hard, concrete fact that we all probably have been trying to avoid stubbing our emotional toe on: a decision on what to do about the Viaduct will never arrive. (In the meantime, Ballard is still holding out for a tunnel.)
• TechFlash reported on Amazon's economy-defying holiday traffic surge--their traffic was up 7 percent compared to December 2007. Though we wonder how much of that was Seattleites checking to see where their snowbound packages were.

BLOG-GAZING: We're going to The Pitch tonight, and as of this second, there's room for one more person on the guest list. The pitch this time is: "An established newspaper will never be able to provide better hyperlocal coverage than a well-managed neighborhood blog," and panel participants include West Seattle Blog's Tracy Record, the P-I's Big Blog's Curt Milton (we see Monica Guzman's on the guest list, too), and last but certainly not least if you ask him, CHS's lovely and talented Justin Carder.

BLVD is—make that was—the urban contemporary younger sibling conjoined (they share a wall) with Roq La Rue, Seattle's pop surrealist institution. (Which is, thankfully, staying put.)

Recently, the good things in life have seemed 'blink and you miss it,' while the trying times have been 24/7. Here's a reminder to blink and see the good things around us more often. If you happen to catch that 'blink moment' with the click of a shutter, please do share it with the Seattlest Flickr Pool.

The Fremont Bridge, gateway to the Center of the Universe, could be your future art studio. Some lucky Seattle-area creative type is going to get a workshop in one of the bridge towers, in which to create a diverse, in-depth exploration of what it means to be the city’s busiest bridge 'n' stuff. All that and a $20,000 grant from SDOT. Apply by Jan. 5. Or don’t--we don’t need the competition!

• Burien is busy branding--and the city is using très fancy technology to do so. B-Town Blog posted the latest video and offered a bullet-point summary of the very nice branding elements you will see, should you choose to spend minutes of your life watching a YouTube about all the wonders Burien has to offer.
• PhinneyWood would like you to donate your watches to charity via Jody Laine of the Tiempo Watch and Clock Shop. Why not? You probably use your cell phone for time-keeping already, anyway.
• Care for some Irish Knockers? Why, yes, thank you for asking! Magnolia Voice had the skinny on the new menu at Mulleady's, including photos of the restaurant's interior (they have a very inviting fireplace!).

SWEDISH SUGAR POP: Swedish songstress Lykke Li returns to Seattle to vamp and stamp and otherwise sex up her blend of hook-tastic bubblegum and Euro-artsong. Here's her video for her single "Little Bit," but we warn you that after listening to it, you will fall deeply in love with the very next person you see. That only lasts about 15 minutes, but trust us, it can get awkward. High-energy Britpop/electronica group Friendly Fires opens. This is definitely a dance-friendly evening.

A CONSCIOUSNESS OF LIMITLESS INQUIRY: The ferocious Naomi Wolf will be at Town Hall on Friday to do a reading and sign copies of her latest manifesto, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. The introduction alone is worth reading, and it's available online in full at Huffington Post. Ignore the Palin photo montage to the right of the text--or don't, because it adds a chilling sense of urgency to Wolf's words.

      

Nothing says "Happy anniversary" like a group show, so that's how Kirsten Anderson and Roq La Rue are celebrating the gallery turning 10. Anderson didn't have any experience running a gallery when she started Roq La Rue, but she loved lowbrow (we don't think she'd coined "pop surrealism" yet) and thought it deserved an awesome venue.