Congratulations are in order for Georgetown, which just received official designation as one of the city’s five Arts and Cultural Districts, and to Pioneer Square, which received a similar (but different) designation at the state level, as the newest of Washington’s 25 Creative Districts. What does that mean, practically? Recognition opens the doors for more grants and funding, invites increased arts programming (and art tourists), and hopefully helps create and preserve a bunch of cultural spaces. Cheers to that!
Anyone with a pulse could have told you that Georgetown and Pioneer Square have been boisterous art hubs for a while. Since crawling out of the pandemic, Georgetown has increasingly come into its own as one of the city’s most art-rich neighborhoods. (Just wait till the Bend—Watershed’s neighborhood-defining live/work district—starts to really take off.) And, of course, Pioneer Square is famous for having the longest-running art walk in the nation.
Which brings me to a question: HAVE YOU BEEN TO A FIRST THURSDAY ART WALK LATELY?
I’ve been asking a lot of art people this, and I’m shocked by the number who have not. If this is you, get off your ass! Since last summer, First Thursdays have frequently been as packed as sporting events. It’s wild.
Someone recently summed it up perfectly: “Forever it’s always been going to the venues and bars to see the bands—going to your friend’s music show, your girlfriend’s boyfriend’s show. Now going to their show means going to their art show.” Art is only part of the reason for the renaissance. “Whether you’re an artist or not, it’s the coolest thing to do in Seattle right now,” she continued. “Everybody comes out in the cutest outfit, and they do the art walk.”
Thanks to young designers planting their wares at Lava Market, temporary shops in vacant retail spaces, and music and fashion events anchored at Hometeam Gallery, Occidental Square has become the city’s monthly pop-up fashion district, a place to see and to be seen. Which brings me to my other question: Does Seattle finally have a style scene?
Lastly, a “community of concerned artists” has issued a public service announcement “in response to the Coliseum of Art’s Open Call for their summer show, backed by the Conru Arts Foundation. In an effort to ensure our peers are aware of the Foundation’s history and its founder Andrew Conru. What you do with the information is entirely up to you.” Read the entire document here.
Now, for some art things to put on your calendar.
July 2 (First Thursday Art Walk)
Speaking of packed art walk nights, this one might be a little chaotic and different, thanks to an evening Mariners game and the fact that Seattle Art Fair is vying for galleries’ life force. However, there are some choice events, including Grand Gesture at Railspur Studios, taking over the expansive, yet-unfinished fifth floor. (The day Urban Villages develops that floor, a little piece of Seattle will die!) This exhibit, curated by Senior Project Manager at Port of Seattle Tommy Gregory and produced by ARCADE, brings together works by local and international art stars Jennifer Steinkamp, Sabine Marcelis, Soo Sunny Park, Holly Ballard Martz, and Barbara Earl Thomas. Each has work featured in the airport’s permanent collection; this exhibit aims to bring a taste of that collection to you—no TSA check required! I got a sneak peek last night and every object in the show plays with light in a discrete way—refracting, reflecting, projecting, casting. Steinkamp’s mesmerizing, liquescent fruit salad (titled Impeach) is alone worth the visit. (Exhibit is free, but RSVP required.) Tonight is also the opening reception for Hello My Name Is, a group exhibition on Level 3, curated by Seattle art royalty Al-Baseer Holly.
Fiber art is having a moment in Seattle—it’s the focus of this year’s Seattle Art Fair special programming. One textile-adjacent artist enjoying the spotlight is Cameron Anne Mason, whose works in Alchemy at Foster/White are made with gravity ice dyeing, a process that produces ethereal, striated designs when ice slowly melts on an inclined canvas, dragging dye with it. Mason worked in performance and installation before arriving at fiber art, and her current work reflects that—a process grounded in movement, objects in motion, and the traces left behind.
Seattle Art Museum (free on first Thursday) is hosting a satellite screening event for Cadence Video Poetry Festival, imagine a mountain running. It’s a 44-minute showcase of video poems in conversation with the “lucid dream depictions of landscapes and daily life” exhibited in SAM’s Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest. If you haven’t been to a Cadence showcase, go!
I think I was the only person in town who missed the grand soft opening of Nebula last month; thankfully, the show is still up. Nebula—the forthcoming “immersive dream experience” being built out in the historic Buttnick Building on First Avenue—promises to be a hot ticket, and filled with a lot of large-scale commissioned art. In the meantime, they have a group show, The Cabinet of Dreams, on view in the space till 8 p.m.
Finally, if you didn’t catch it last month, these are the final days (closing reception on July 7) to see And Her Children Sangat Actualize Space. The group exhibit is curated by one of my favorite painters, Molly Jae Vaughan, and it’s filled with one showstopper after another, from Tesla Kawakami’s chroma-soaked domestic surrealities to Ren Han’s Fuck, I’m Weary cyanotype text piece. The centerpiece is a huge mosaic by Hot Rat Summer. Titled Community Is the Water of Life, it’s made with glass, blue sapphire, 24k gold, electricity, and “magic and cement.”
July 4 & 5
Unsure what to do or how to feel on our nation’s semiquincentennial? You’re not alone! Fortunately, Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam—the Pacific Northwest’s premiere puppet cabaret—is offering an adult-friendly alternative to the usual menu of booze, barbecues, and burning things to the ground. Hosted at Theatre off Jackson, Slam Save America is an evening of anti/patriotic shorts circling the American drain, hosted by Tootsie Spangles and featuring an ensemble of Seattle, Brooklyn, and Portland-based puppeteers, like Seatown Proletarian Puppet Uprising and the Puppet Pervs. Pull up a hotdog and kick back for some catharsis.
July 5
Two new exhibits open at Henry Art Gallery today:Every Picture Somewhat of an Experiment: Helen Frankenthaler Prints and Day-to-Day: Rhythm, Routine, Resistance. The former is a showcase of works by Frankenthaler, the woman who stood out in a painfully dude-centric group as one of the most innovative of the Ab Ex painters. Turns out she was as prolific and experimental in print media as she was in paint, and now you can partake of this underappreciated facet of her practice. Day-to-Day is a group show that explores “the poetics and politics of everyday life” through ordinary things. I’m a sucker for art that turns the quotidian into something sacred (or else what are we doing?), and I’m most excited for the chance to get lost in one of Dawn Clements’s extremely large drawings of her everyday living space. This show will pair well with Eric-Paul Riege’s ojo|-|ólǫ́, also currently hanging (and tinkling and jostling and making its strange music).
July 9
Toys Not Included brands itself as Seattle’s largest street art show. This year marks its fourth iteration, returning to Slip Gallery in Belltown with work by over 200 artists, ranging from local to global. Check their events page for info on events, the exhibit (artists keep 100 percent of sales!), and free workshops that will get you up to speed on the arts of stickering, collage, and other street-art-adjacent mischief.
July 10
I wrote about Kelsey Fernkopf and his neon practice last year. He’s one of the region’s most brilliant artists, imho, doing crazy-technical and beautiful things that have never been attempted in the history of neon. His collaborator, photographer Steve Gilbert, takes the altered landscapes and turns them into another, completely new iteration of art object—masterful photographs drenched in glow. It’s no wonder they’re starting to rack up museum shows. Luminous Glow: The Neon Landscapes of Kelsey Fernkopf & Photography by Steve Gilbert debuts at Whatcom Museum this weekend.
July 11
Barry Johnson has a way of transforming feelings of loss and longing into something both bearable and beautiful. Over the past decade, his practice has expanded at a prolific pace, from modest-scale portraits and paintings of domestic interiors to massive public works, like his aluminum-relief sculpture, horizons, installed at Seattle Airport earlier this year. His latest body of work, silence is golden (at Winston Wächter), revisits motifs and memories from his Midwest upbringing, channeling the sacred solace of the plains (Kansas kids know). Also opening today in Georgetown, Mini Mart City Park’s Flotation Device, a group exhibition with works by Flora Wilds, Colleen Louise Barry, and Becca Fuhrman (artist talk at 5 p.m.). The reception coincides with MMCP’s annual block party (2–6 p.m.), loaded with art, music, vendors, free food, and more. Finally, Veronica—the small-but-mighty gallery tucked under the Mount Baker Light Rail Station—is holding a reception (4–6 p.m.) for a group exhibit featuring work by art baddies Dawn Cerny, Steve Kado, and Amanda Ross-Ho.
July 11–12
Love sketching? Or admire those who can really do it well? There’s a festival for that. Sketcher Fest, the International Festival of Travel Sketchbooks, was founded by Gabi Campanario, former staff sketcher at the Seattle Times. The fourth edition of this two-day event takes place in Edmonds, which has become something of an international hub for urban sketching. This weekend, they’re bringing artists from around the world to teach, exhibit, and (assumedly) sketch. This year’s lineup includes sketch luminaries such as London-based Louis Netter, whose work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Memphis-based sketcher Elizabeth Alley (who recently sketched in the Arctic Circle); James Richards, founder of Urban Sketchers Texas; and Barcelona-based Swasky, internationally celebrated for his reportage drawing and live sketching workshops across Europe.
