At Cascadia Art Museum, the artists who pushed photography further

What is it you plan to do with your wild and precious summer? With August knocking at the door in cutoffs and flip flops, the question (paraphrasing Mary Oliver) feels all the more urgent. Here in the Northwest, we are especially aware that our sunny days are numbered.

You’re reading Art x NW, a weekly arts and culture newsletter from Cascade PBS. Read past issues and subscribe for more.

You might take inspiration for a little summer abandon in a couple of 1920s artists. W. Corwin Chase and his brother Waldo S. Chase were known for making gorgeous color woodblock prints of the Northwest landscape (see: “Summerland”). For a few years, the siblings chose to live in tepees on Mount Rainier, and in the summer months Corwin did his printmaking outdoors in the buff. 

In 1929, esteemed Tacoma photographer Virna Haffer (who grew up in “Home,” a utopian anarchist society on the Key Peninsula), visited the brothers in the wilderness. Corwin was allegedly one of her many lovers; Haffer celebrated her nonmonogamy in a photo book called Abundant Wild Oats, which no publisher would touch. While visiting, she employed some of Corwin’s blue paint to draw circular patterns all over his body and photographed him in nature, au naturale. 

I witnessed the photos during a slightly less risque but nonetheless delightful summer outing: a drive up to Edmonds to see an art exhibit midweek. Haffer’s photos are part of the terrific show Shadows of a Fleeting World: Pictorial Photography and the Seattle Camera Club at Cascadia Art Museum (through Sept. 13), timed with the new edition of a University of Washington book by the same name. 

Fleeting World includes some 70 rare and original photos taken by members of the Seattle Camera Club, founded in 1924. What sounds like a quaint little group of hobbyists was actually an interracial collection of innovative artists who were pushing to advance pictorial photography as fine art. In many ways they succeeded: SCC was the first group of Washington state artists to gain international recognition. 

The 39 charter members were all first-generation Japanese immigrants (Issei), who took many of the beautiful black-and-white photos on view: Frank Asakichi Kunishige’s steam train chugging past the Smith Tower; Yukio Morinaga’s bicycle messenger pedaling through Pioneer Square; Dr. Kyo Koike’s scenes of mountainous grandeur; Soichi Sunami’s iconic shot of Martha Graham in a strange tubular garment.

Disregarding the city’s standard segregation, Japanese members invited Caucasians and women into the club, including Haffer and another prominent female photographer, Ella McBride. The Seattle Camera Club grew and thrived until the Great Depression.

I had a surface knowledge of the SCC, but hadn’t delved into the fascinating backgrounds of its members — which are shared in the exhibit and absolutely worth reading, whether for their subjects’ radical ways of life (such as Haffer’s) or their sometimes heartbreaking endings (after being unjustly incarcerated during WWII, many of the Japanese American members lost their livelihoods, or physical and mental health). 

Their stories filled my head afterward, as I walked along the Edmonds Boardwalk. So very much has changed but it struck me that in their heyday, 100 years ago, these artists would’ve experienced many of the same sights, scents and sounds as I did: the Olympic Mountains across the sparkling Salish Sea, a harbor full of boats, seagulls and salty air, even a train clack-clacking along the waterside tracks. It was a summer reverie, courtesy of art history.

Summer escapes in the form of local performance… 

< The Bellingham-based acrobats known as the Shoestring Circus are back to their summer antics, taking their high-flying, funny shows across the region — and bringing their own big-top tent too. The Seattle engagement (July 31 – Aug. 2) has already sold out (get on the waitlist and cross your fingers, toes and nose), but if city slickers are up for a summer road trip you can still get tix for the Port Townsend event (Aug. 7-9).

< At Seattle Rep, you can experience a rare theatrical preview: a world premiere musical that’s trying to make it to Broadway. (Wait, that sounds like fodder for a new musical in itself…) This one comes from the same folks who produced Come From Away, and shares a similar vein of friendship in the face of adversity. Freak the Mighty (July 30 – Sept. 6) is based on Rodman Philbrick’s young adult novel and features two outsiders who find kinship and empowerment as a duo. But is it good enough to make it in Times Square? You be the judge. 

< For summertime fun that’s decidedly sexy, head to the Can Can Cabaret at Pike Place Market for the restaging of the theater’s popular show Lola (through Sept. 13). Set at the Copacabana in 1970, the show is based loosely on the plot of Barry Manilow’s megahit by the same name. Expect tropical scenery, daring burlesque and big drama between Tony and Rico.

< Finally, at the Summer at SAM Festival (at Olympic Sculpture Park, Aug. 2, from 10 a.m. – 9 p.m.), you can indulge in all kinds of musical performances in the amphitheater, including a Latin American mix from Correo Aereo, classical guitar from Reyes Gonzales and Puerto Rican bomba from Hijos de Agüeybaná. All day long you can pop in to the pop-up art market and check out the immersive domino lounge designed by Native Boricua multimedia artist Jo Cosme. And at this summer’s ongoing Mini Golf installation (through Sept. 7), you become the performer as you try to make par at the inventively wacky holes designed by local artists including Anthony White, Elizabeth Gahan, Zack Bent, Julie Alpert and others. Fore!