A moment of respect for the immortals who departed: Yayoi, Dolly, and Tim. Last week was a doozy, but also a reminder of, like, what the hell would we even be doing without artists in the world? How could we function without their flagrant poetry in the face of all that’s mundane, without their universe-in-a-teacup infinities that provide a glimpse of the void beyond the veil.
Ars longa, vita brevis. Thank you for your work. We’ll see you on the other side.
Meanwhile, among the briefly living, it’s September once more. In New York, September marks the beginning of the art year: The heat and lassitude of the summer has lifted (or it used to; all bets are off in our brave new climate world) and galleries turn out their top-shelf artists. Since we peak in July here in Seattle (I’m talking about the art fair), September doesn’t exactly pack the same back-to-school punch. Nonetheless, we’ve got some crème de la crème coming at you this month—including the 2026 STRANGER GENIUS AWARDS on September 12. If you aren’t there, I will be personally offended, but more than that, I’ll just be really sad for you to miss what’s going to be the most devastatingly fun and chic art party of the year. (Tickets are quite affordable!)
Till then, here’s some other things you shouldn’t miss.
September 3: First Thursday
Colleen Louise Barry Safety Dance at Hologram
It’s not fair: Colleen Louise Barry is an artist who does it all, and does it very well. I have one of her books of poetry on my shelves—the aptly titled Colleen—and it’s filled with turns of phrase and snippets of aphoristic sentiment that leave me gasping. Her solo at Hologram Gallery, Safety Dance, showcases all that range, spanning mixed media sculpture, ceramics, photography, painting, installation, zine-making, and writing, and strives to “create a sense of imminent menace or enduring refuge, examining the tension present between these through the eyes of animals, children, and mothers.” I hear there are whistles that sound like trains.
Brush Brawl 4 at Europa
Every once in a while, the kids at Europa Gallery (i.e., Joe Nix) put on Brush Brawl, in which two teams of artists compete to create the “best” 6-by-6-foot painting, all done live, in the space of three hours, in front of a crowd. At the end of the night (around 10 pm), guest judges take the mic and unpack the virtues and pitfalls of the respective works—knda like art-school crits, but with a lot more alcohol and paint thinners involved (seriously, you’ll get a contact high from the solvents, if you stick around for too long). It’s always impressive to witness what painters can do on the spot, in such a short amount of time. The judges are sometimes just as entertaining, leading with heartfelt pathos or throwing down; the winners are determined by crowd vote. Call it performance art. Brush Brawl 4 is a sign-painting edition: Kevin Drake Vs. Mike Bartek painting to the sounds of Ichi the Killer.
Night Out at SAM Gallery
The urban landscape at night is coming out to play in Night Out at SAM Gallery. Among the highlights is the work of Joseph Steininger, who uses a method of layering many, many hand-cut stencils to apply many layers of spray paint. The resulting imagery is pure eye candy, and the way he paints Seattle, you can really feel the love. His and other works by urban painters Katie Metz and Jose Rodriguez III are taking over the gallery.
Becca Fuhrman at Hometeam Gallery
Hometeam is a must on Thursday. Becca Fuhrman’s vibrant, color-dense imagery often centers on female protagonists—a celebration of feminine strength, sensuality, and balls. There’s also a thread of the autobiographical peeking out from the nip slips and opulent patterns. In Eat it All at Hometeam Gallery, Fuhrman’s first solo Seattle show, the personal punches through as a “rebellious act of survival born from living in the pressure-cooker of beauty culture,” and a protest against the consumerist edict to do anything but grow old. This new body of work is about bodies, our relationship to mortality, and the intensity of being alive. Supple flesh, skulls, a roll of the dice, and fallen flowers are traditional vanitas motifs given a fresh spin as they weave throughout paintings and sculptures, like little defiant Easter eggs screaming fuck you to the patriarchy.
William Kentridge at Kucera Gallery
I regret all the William Kentridge prints I never bought at Greg Kucera Gallery—which have been all of them, unfortunately. Kentridge is a renowned South African contemporary artist whose sharp sociopolitical discourse is disguised as gorgeous, wry, punk-rock painterly drawings (and lots of other media). Kucera Gallery is once again bringing out works on paper—the sixth such show at the gallery. Media include linocut, pigment print, drypoint, etching, lithography, and charcoal drawing. Learn from my mistakes and take one home. (Extra credit: The gallery will be screening Kentridge’s feature documentary, Anything Is Possible, on September. 23 at 6 pm.)
And a few more…
You couldn’t possibly put together a hotter group than the KSRA & friends lineup at Gallery AXIS. In This Moment features KSRA, They Drift, Yale Wolf + Sanoe Stevenson-Egeland, with a DJ set by nightlife queen, La Mala Noche. At Foster/White, Ilana Zweschi’s Look Upon This Body as a Machine extends her interrogation of algorithms as linguistic scaffolding for visual imagery. Finally, Gallery 4Culture has mounted a group exhibit, Here & Now, that’s a showcase of artworks recently acquired by the King County Public Art Collection. Spoiler: They have great taste!
September 10: Capitol Hill Art Walk
Capitol Hill lost a legend earlier this year. Tom Barnes was one hell of an artist—read more about him here—who left behind over 800 works of art, many documenting the people and places of Capitol Hill. Vermillion Gallery is hosting a retrospective, aptly titled The road goes on forever and the party never ends. If you don’t want to wait till Capitol Hill Art Walk, there’s a soft opening Sept. 3, as well as a community memorial on September 5. Raise a glass to Tom.
Meghan Thréinfhir’s sculptural and conceptual work does a lot of heavy lifting, blending cosmic physics, computing, and witchcraft. For more than a decade, she’s been working with the bog—yes, actual, wet, earthy bog—to create sonic electrical installations and other mind-bending sculptures that allow us to enter a space where ancient planetary physics and contemporary technology coexist. For her solo exhibit at Steve Gilbert Studio, SPACETIME GOTHIC, Thréinfhir presents work about black holes and the accretion discs that form around their perimeter, imagining the orbiting material as a ghostly sort of library at the edge of the void—a place where matter may be lost but information is never destroyed.
Finally, the Factory is getting meta with It Bears Repeating, a group exhibition dedicated to the idea of multiples and obsessive reiterations of an idea. They’re throwing a whole new second iteration of the show, stacked with all-new artists.
September 11
Happy birthday, Gallery ERGO! The coolest gallery in Pike Place Market turns five this month, and they’re throwing a giant anniversary exhibit featuring over 40 of their favorite artists. The reception runs 5-8pm. No word about cake, but who cares when you’ve got work by Alex Garant, Casey Weldon, Rich M Stevens, Sarah Helen More, Skylar Fleming, Wiley Wallace, and literally too many more to list. Find them all here and here.
September 12
The Stranger Genius Awards! But also:
For Georgetown Art Attack, studio e is showing textile innovator Ko Kirk Yamahira, whose stunning Seattle Art Fair installation is being reimagined and reinstalled in a very different context at the gallery. Along with it, they’re showing a selection of smaller works, each made from canvases that have been meticulously unwoven into ethereal, fibrous sculptural objects that look nothing like a canvas.
Hank Reavis’s work give me a sort of hazy, dreamy feeling akin to Sehnsucht, the homesick ache for something that can’t quite be reached, or be named, and may not even exist. Reavis gets us there by painting images reduced to giant, fuzzy pixels depleted of detail and data—a commentary on the fragmentation of memory, the glut of digital information, and (for me at least) the way we grope to find meaning anyway. I Can See It From Here at Mini Mart City Park showcases recent paintings by Reavis that summon that je ne sais quoi feeling. Afterwards, head across the street to Georgetown Steam Plant for Campers, a group exhibit curated by Reavis and Bergen Hendrickson riffing on the PNW’s predilection for DIY underground art spaces, like our freeway raves, which means it will probably be very chic. But you’ll be at the Moore Theatre with me, and you’ll have to treat Campers like the after-after party. Also at the Steam Plant this weekend: Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival takes over for two days of screenings (Sept 11 & 12).
September 13
Have we tired of the term “salon,” or is it still chic in 2026? Either way, if you’re looking for a place to get fed art, community, and food all at once, the new ANTISOCIAL series at Actualize has got you covered. (And really, what can’t Actualize AiR do these days? Insert heart-eye emojis.) Poetry, dance, music, and actual food and bev are all on the menu for this week’s AntiSocial 2: A Soft Summer Sunday. The event builds on AntiSocial, a print publication created by artist, designer, and Actualize member, Gabriel-Bello Díaz in 2020. Then, it existed as a big glossy volume filled with portraits and stories of creatives from the Seattle community, but Díaz always imagined it to also function as a platform for exhibitions, performances, and events, and that’s exactly what’s happened. Presenters for the sophomore AntiSocial include DJ Cheri’ Amour, Ebo Barton, Stefan Richmond, Princess Wes & Charles Zaid, and bites by Mesa and Pan de La Selva. Event is free, with seating reserved for the first 40 to RSVP (stools and standing room available for folks on the waitlist).
