Picks from Seattle Art and Performance
by Julia Raban
Find a complete list of art shows in Seattle this summer on our Things To Do calendar.
Museums
Asian Art Museum
Mood Indigo: Textiles From Around the World (Through Oct 9): This show is 89 pieces of cloth in every possible shade of blue from every time and every place. Given our excessively connected and visually saturated global existence, who wouldn't want Mood Indigo's calming, transhistorical promise of blue immersion and also the possibility of infinite information that it makes available? Mood Indigo is both a diversion from the world and an invitation to lunge back into it. JG
Journey to Dunhuang: Buddhist Art of the Silk Road Caves (Through June 12): For 10 centuries, Silk Road travelers flowed through the western Chinese city of Dunhuang, bringing their art, their culture, and their religion—and building an entirely magical, living, and ever-changing cross-cultural museum inside caves they carved into cliffsides in the desert outside the city. The caves are still full of ancient paintings and sculptures. Tourists flock there today. But, in the middle of the 20th century, two young photojournalists traveled there to document and explore the place for months without the benefit of running water or electricity. They returned with photographs, fragments of ancient texts, and memories that later became full-color paintings of what they saw. Their expedition is the subject of Foong Ping's thrilling exhibition in Seattle this summer; a sister show at the Getty in LA, organized by a team including former Seattle Art Museum director Mimi Gates, includes actual full-scale replicas of the miraculous caves. Every glimpse has the quality of a dream. JG
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
Barbara Earl Thomas: Heaven is on Fire (June 25—Oct 2): Barbara Earl Thomas is a Seattle legend worth the title. (She's a 2016 Stranger Genius nominee, and she also recently won the Yvonne Twining Humber Award from Artist Trust.) You might know her as the charismatic founding director of the Northwest African American Museum, but she's finally getting her due as the lifelong artist who channels deep wit, material mastery, and the presence of primordial forces even in ordinary lives to weave stories. They're told in layered prints, paintings, cut-paper installations, sculptures, and writings that hush and captivate. JG
Marita Dingus: Hanging from the Rafters/Big Girl (June 25—Oct 2): Marita Dingus, known for creating sculptures out of recycled or reused material, will show a large-scale sculpture ("a two-story doll figure") that explores non-recyclable plastics and the environment.
Bellevue Arts Museum
Atoms + Bytes: Redefining Craft in the Digital Age (Through June 26): Atoms + Bytes: Redefining Craft in the Digital Age, featuring work by 30 local and international artists, juxtaposes "analog" craft traditions with digital and technological innovation.
Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair (Through Aug 14): Celebrate the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling fashion show inspiring trends and raising millions for charity since 1958. In addition to archival photographs, videos, and memorabilia, this exhibit promises lots of ensembles and accessories (gowns, feathered coats, dramatic hats) by designers including Stephen Burrows, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Christian Lacroix, Yves Saint Laurent, Missoni, Nina Ricci, Sarli, Emanuel Ungaro, and Vivienne Westwood.
Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker's Tales of Slavery and Power (July 8—Nov 27): Large-scale print works, cut-steel sculptures, a mural, and a video installation by famously controversial artist Kara Walker, known for her often horrifying and cartoonish depictions of vintage racism.
Frye Art Museum
Young Blood (Through June 19): My god, I haven't seen a show this good—this vital, appealing, meaningful—in Seattle in a long time. The Frye's exhibition of films and paintings by Kahlil Joseph and his brother Noah Davis is a display of strong connections between two brilliant artists accomplished in very different worlds and mediums. It's also a tale of famous, sought-after artists who've held their own in the big time, consistently making original, relevant, and powerful art. Young Blood is also a story of one Seattle family embedded in a rich heritage of Black art in Seattle and beyond. Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, member of another artist family, curated Young Blood with great care, at the invitation of departing Frye director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. Alley-Barnes's installation has threads running through it. The way he chose and arranged the art, you'll see colors recur as well as thematic connections, and the brothers' subtle use of the ancient shape of a pyramid. The show expands the more you look, and it makes you look. If you focus too long on one figure or scar of lightning, you feel the pang of missing another one, and move to another angle to see more. These works are epic but specific, personal and familial but universal. JG
Henry Art Gallery
The Brink: Jason Hirata (Through June 26): Jason Hirata's sculptures and drawings are about food, about specials in particular. One of his "specials," handwritten on a piece of paper as on a restaurant board, is "Plumpy'Nut," and you wonder, what is that? It is a peanut-butterish food made for the victims of malnutrition, and a single French company has a patent that makes it the only company that can produce it, only to be imported from the developed world, never to be produced where it is consumed. Hirata won the 2015 Brink Award, and his funny, sad, wonky, scruffy Brink Award show takes as its inspiration an early-19th-century print by Francisco de Goya and a 1981 speech by General Electric CEO Jack Welch. There is a great dissonant distance between Hirata's conceptualist style and the smells, tastes, and corpulences that his works conjure. JG
James Turrell's Light Reign (Every Wed–Sun): James Turrell's "skyspace" is on always-and-forever display at the Henry, but it's always and forever changing. It's an outdoor room with an opening in the ceiling so you can sit and watch the sky go by.
Paul McCarthy: White Snow, Wood Sculptures (Through Sept 11): This exhibit by provocative American artist Paul McCarthy (who once performed a piece called Class Fool in which he violently bumbled around a classroom smeared in ketchup, then stuck a Barbie up his ass) features a series of sculptures from four up to 15 feet tall, inspired by the 19th-century German folktale Schneewittchen (Snow White) and Walt Disney's animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Museum of Northwest Art
Beyond Aztlán: Mexican and Chicana/o Artists in the Pacific Northwest (Through June 12): MoNA presents this group exhibit dealing with themes of shared experience and ancestry, featuring 15 Chicano/Mexican artists who have lived in the Pacific Northwest.
Northwest African American Museum
100% Kanekalon: The Untold Story of the Marginalized Matriarch (Through Oct 16): Learn more about a powerful woman, sidelined, through this exhibit by Tariqa Waters, a Seattle artist who excels at satire, humor, and spectacle.
Posing Beauty in African American Culture (Through Sept 4): This is a series of photographs from the last century exploring portrayals of beauty and the way African American people are perceived in portraits, featuring work by artists including Anthony Barboza, Sheila Pree Bright, Leonard Freed, Charles "Teenie" Harris, Russell Lee, Jamel Shabazz, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and Ernest C. Withers.
Olympic Sculpture Park
Victoria Haven: Blue Sun (Through Mar 5): A dramatically large wall drawing, inspired by artist Victoria Haven's video project about the transformation of South Lake Union, in which she saw the sun appear as a blue dot reflected through the lens.
Seattle Art Museum
African Renaissances (Through July 16): This exhibit highlights the power of the African continent and imagining a futuristic renaissance, featuring regalia and furnishings that were originally seen in the courts of the Benin, Asante, Kom, and Kuba kingdoms, alongside art created by Maasai, Fulani, and Ndebele women, as well as contributions from a contemporary musical leader living in Seattle.
The Duchamp Effect (Through Aug 14): A great little show from SAM's collection, of work inspired by and peripherally related to the legendary readymade creator—the man who put the urinal in the art gallery. Whatever object he plucked out of the world to call art, he "created a new thought" for it, and that thought was the art as much as the object itself. His influence was immense. Artists here include Robert Morris, Robert Gober, and Sherrie Levine. The handformed Gober urinal is the most beautiful urinal the world has ever known. JG
Emblems of Encounter: Europe and Africa Over 500 Years (Every Wed–Sun): This exhibit features 10 works of European and African art from SAM's collection, including a fascinating artistic and cultural object: 10-year-old Charlotte Turner's needlepoint sampler, which Jen Graves investigated in a series of articles (part one, part two, and part three). Turner probably came from present-day Nigeria, became a so-called "Liberated African" as she was taken off a slave ship by the British navy, was relocated to a missionary school in Sierra Leone, and there created this fascinatingly complicated piece of art. At the time Jen Graves wrote about Turner's sampler, SAM had no plans to display the work—and if it was to be displayed, the question of where to put it (in the European or African collection) was unanswered. Emblems of Encounter now offers a space for artwork that is a product of this centuries-long (mostly exploitative) intercontinental exchange, art that can't be neatly categorized by region.
Go Tell It: Civil Rights Photography (Through Jan 8): Work by prominent artists including Dan Budnik, Danny Lyon, Roy deCarava, Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, and Marion Post Wolcott, documenting the '60s Civil Rights Movement and racial injustice in the Jim Crow era.
Martha Rosler: Below the Surface (Through July 4): During the Vietnam War, the young artist Martha Rosler took to the streets with the rest of the horrified protesters watching what the United States was perpetrating. She noticed people ignoring the flyers that were being handed out, because they were walls of text, impenetrable. She decided to make flyers that were nothing but images, just using a Xerox machine and pictures from magazines and other media. Much later, those became "fine art" objects displayed in museums and titled House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, as they are here at SAM. Just don't forget where they come from. JG
Graphic Masters (June 9—Aug 28): In this sweeping exhibition of printmaking and graphic arts, you're going to see R. Crumb's version of the Book of Genesis—yep—and also Goya's entire Los caprichos series of devastating downers that nobody for centuries has been able to stop looking at. Other big names: Rembrandt, Hogarth (yay!), Picasso, Dürer. If this doesn't pull you inside for at least a few hours during the glorious Seattle summer, then nothing will. JG
Tacoma Art Museum
Edvard Munch and the Sea (Through July 17): Tacoma Art Museum presents an exhibition of work by Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch (The Scream) featuring depictions of oceans, fjords, and coastal water.
NW Art Now (Through Sept 4): Artists in NW Art Now, the new survey of Northwest art at TAM, are invading the museum as best they can, and succeeding. On the concrete wall of the museum's parking lot, there's a huge sign that looks like an official municipal posting. "NO DOGS," it says. It's by Portland artist Brad Adkins, who mounts authoritative-looking signs actually attached to no authority at all. The signs represent a libertarian streak in Northwestern identity, says curator Rock Hushka, while his other chosen themes for this survey are the progressive standbys of environmentalism, social justice, and race/class/gender identity. His argument is that the Northwest incubates libertarian and liberal tendencies that often conflict, and so its art reflects desires and realities locked in contention. This year, the works are refreshingly varied, but Hushka's installation is frustratingly overcrowded (yet again for a Hushka show). JG
Galleries
The Alice
Cover Reveals (Through July 2): Curated by Julia Freeman, Cover Reveals is an exhibit featuring 12 garments/statements made by 14 artists from around the world: Ellen Lesperance, Dr. micha cárdenas, Ari Fish, Dorothy Cheng, Natalie Martínez and Lindsay Miller, Joey Veltkamp, Kate Daudy, Jono Vaughan, Michael Cepress, Sarah Norsworthy and Krista Schoening, Shenequa Alexandria Brooks, and Man Fung-yi.
ArtXchange
Patterned Lineage: Cultural Storytelling (July 7—Aug 27): A show about "how pattern can help narrate personal cultural histories," with work by Australian aboriginal artists and local Seattle artist June Sekiguchi.
Humaira Abid (Aug 4—Sept 24): Abid's carved wood sculptures and miniature paintings go directly at the themes that are hard to approach directly: children killed in her homeland of Pakistan by US bombs, say, or the way a menstruating woman always risks leaving a stain on fine furniture. JG
BONFIRE
GIANT APPETITES (Through July 29): A collaborative exhibition "engaged in the temporal everydayness of the physical world, connected through its materiality, its electricity and its imaginative space," with work by artists Francesca Lohmann, Marisa Manso and Ana Mikolavich.
Bridge Productions
Krista Svalbonas (June 8—July 2): Krista Svalbonas is a Chicago-based mixed media artist showing a new segment of work from her Migrants series in an exhibition she calls Topophilia. Using photography and collage, she's built twisted architectures that jut out slightly from the wall, inching into the actual world but only just. Are they dismantled or re-forming? Both, maybe. JG
C. Davida Ingram (July 6—July 30): What will C. Davida Ingram create for this solo at Bridge Productions? The winner of the 2014 Stranger Genius Award in Art is a powerful performer, organizer, writer, and filmmaker. Her press release says, "C. Davida Ingram wants to be the Shonda Rhimes of the black women's imaginarium in the visual art world." Go and see what Shonda would do. JG
Tim Cross (Aug 13—Aug 27): It's the liquid quality of Tim Cross's pigment transfers onto silk that gets me. The imagery doesn't sit still but kind of flows. I can't tell what I'm looking at, mostly. It's just shapes and colors. But I get the sense they're connected to something I've seen before, something in my actual landscape of buildings, cars, trees, glaring lights. This is Cross's first show being represented by Bridge Productions. JG
Dave Kennedy (Sept 7—Oct 1): New photography, collage, and installation by Seattle-based artist Dave Kennedy, who returns to Seattle after a long residency.
CORE
Ruthie V: Neither Will This Stay (June 29—July 30): This exhibit is a collaboration between painter Ruthie V (who specializes in figures in oil) and butoh dancer Kaoru Okumura, exploring Buddhist philosophies of emptiness and the self.
Davidson Galleries
Francisco Goya and Juan Genovés (Aug 4—Aug 27): An exhibition about revolution and the gory realities of war, featuring selections from Francisco Goya's Disasters of War and portfolios of Spanish artist Juan Genovés.
Ethnic Heritage Gallery
Ramon Murillo: Petroglyphs in a Modern World (Through July 8): For their annual Asian Pacific Heritage Exhibit, the Ethnic Heritage Gallery presents Petroglyphs in a Modern World: a solo show by Ramon Murillo, who's known for his etchings, serigraphs, and painted drums.
Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery
Final Intruder Exhibition (July 9—Aug 10): See the final issue and gallery exhibition of Intruder, a free quarterly comic based in Seattle, at Fantagraphics.
G. Gibson Gallery
Gala Bent (Through June 11): New work (drawing, painting, sculpture) by Seattle artist Gala Bent, known for her intricate sketches intertwined with geometric abstractions.
Gallery 110
Sonya Stockton: Drawing the Head and Figure (July 7—July 30): Paint, fabric, pillows, and other unconventional material make up these depictions of women's heads and bodies, created by Sonya Stockton.
Gallery4Culture
Pat De Caro: Foreign Shores (Through June 30): Memory and time are the themes in Pat De Caro's Foreign Shores, featuring a large-scale wall drawing and a vast collection of charcoal drawings.
Glass Box Gallery
Rafael Soldi: Life Stand Still Here (Through June 30): "Five years ago," Rafael Soldi writes, "my partner disappeared." He does not elaborate. Or his elaboration, rather, is a series of quiet, searching altered photographs, digital creations, and sculptures in response to the immediate aftermath of the disappearance, when he himself withdrew. JG
Hollow Earth: Documents (July 7—July 30): Sculpture, drawings, prints and pamphlets by John O'Donnell that explore the idea that our globe is empty, and inside the earth's crust lie a variety of subterranean ecosystems and societies.
FLOATERS (Aug 4—Aug 27): Summer group shows are good ways to see who and what is coming. This one is a raft of young artists worth watching, who work mostly in nontraditional media: Brandon Aleson, David Nelson, Jueqian Fang, Brit Ruggirello, William Shields, Hongzhe Liang, Abby Dougherty, and Coley Mixan. Thank you once again, Glass Box. JG
Greg Kucera Gallery
Sherry Markovitz: Time to Take a Walk (Through July 2): For years, Sherry Markovitz has made paintings and sculptures that contain a certain stillness. Heads of animals covered in beads. Piles of dolls fixed in paint on silk and cotton sheets, their clothing roaring but their eyes blank. After Markovitz's beloved dog died two years ago, the artist continued taking their daily walk to the dog park, alone. She began to find watching the dogs relaxing. Then she began to find that they were teaching her how to draw and paint movement, for the first time. Somehow death made motion possible. The dogs, meanwhile, neither know nor care that we are here, or that we are watching. They just do dog, together, without us. JG
Margie Livingston: Too Soon for Hindsight (July 7—Aug 20): Sculptural paintings with poured, folded, and woven acrylic, by artist Margie Livingston, who continually tests the theory that paint can do and be anything.
The Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve
Matika Wilbur: Project 562 (Through June 11): Natural Wanderment: Stewardship. Sovereignty. Sacredness. is a series by Matika Wilbur, based on her Project 562, which explores and documents the lives of Native Americans today. In portrait photos that are direct and clearly show the relationship between photographer and photographed, Wilbur has attempted to depict a kind of unity between the disparate groups of Native people that are spread over thousands of miles. She writes, "Where there is displacement from a homeland, there has come to be irrepressible yearning and struggle on all fronts for cultural wholeness and identity, as well as for communication and action about such crises." Melding these political/ideological goals with elements of photographic design, Wilbur's work somehow feels both provocative and natural, and will be worth the trip to Tulalip.
Interstitial
Sam Vernon (Sept 10—Oct 23): A solo show featuring drawing, photography and printmaking by artist Sam Vernon, whose work aims to "pay homage to the past and revise the traditional ghost story, addressing questions of postcoloniality, racialization, sexuality and historical memory."
Jack Straw New Media Gallery
E.T. Russian: Casting Shadows (Sept 9—Oct 28): E.T. Russian's new work is a multi-sensory video comic installation, and as far as I know, the first major solo exhibition by this artist, who's already pretty much a queer and comics hero. Do you love Clyde Petersen the way I do? Then you love E.T. Russian, even if you don't know it yet. JG
James Harris Gallery
James Hayward (Through July 2): New textured, monochromatic paintings by artist James Hayward.
Gary Hill (July 7—Aug 19): A solo show by Gary Hill, a Seattle artist with nationally respected work in a wide variety of disciplines, including metal sculpture, video art, installations, and performance art.
Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington
Unsettled~Resettled: Seattle's Hunt Hotel (Every Mon–Fri): The first permanent exhibit at the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington will explore the post-World War II history of the Hunt Hotel, a Seattle Japanese school turned makeshift hostel. They promise an artistic and cultural exploration of this tumultuous period in American and Japanese American history.
Joe Bar
TURN (Through June 28): You've heard of an exquisite corpse drawing, probably, or if you haven't, you've probably still been part of making one in an art class at some point—it's a drawing where one person puts down a part, then the next person, without looking at the first, adds her own part, and on and on until the paper is filled with a segmented beast of a thing. Turn, this year-long collaborative series, is something like a sculptural exquisite corpse. It was artist Shaun Kardinal's idea, and he selected the participants. How it works is that a different artist takes a turn transforming a single piece each month. Stop by this month to see the final result of the last year of rebirths. JG
Linda Hodges Gallery
Alfredo Arreguin (Through July 2): New works by pattern painter Alfredo Arreguin that blend Pacific Northwest scenery and imagery with elements of Latin American magic realism.
Joe Max Emminger and Zac Culler (July 7—July 30): Colorful scenes by painter Joe Max Emminger alongside portraits of Seattleites and contemporary mandala drawings by Zac Culler.
MadArt
Portfolio of Possibilities (July 25—Aug 27): 3D4M faculty Amie McNeel and Mark Zirpel present an art exhibit in the form of a laboratory, "investigating the dynamic relationship between oceanic and celestial themes."
METHOD
Casey Curran (Aug 5—Aug 27): Works by sculptor, multimedia and installation artist Casey Curran.
Photographic Center Northwest
Riffs (Through June 15): In the exhibit Riffs, Photo Center Northwest aims to highlight noteworthy Seattle photographers, demonstrating the talent and vision this region has to offer photography as a discipline. The exhibit will feature work by Megumi Shauna Arai, Daniel Carrillo, Catherine Harris-White (aka Sassy Black), Victoria Haven, Eirik Johnson, Ginny Ruffner, Jeffry Mitchell, and Peggy Washburn.
Pivot Art + Culture
Imagined Futures: Science Fiction, Art, and Artifacts from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection (Through July 10): The surprise second show at Paul Allen's Pivot Arts and Culture will feature works by a vast array of big name artists, including "modern masters of the speculative and fantastic," pieces by "contemporary and modern artists who have dreamed of space and the future for mankind," and even large-scale models created by infamous/renowned scientist Wernher Von Braun.
Platform Gallery
Patte Loper: From There to Here (Through June 18): A retrospective sampling of work from the four solo shows Loper has had at Platform Gallery since 2004.
Scott Fife (June 23—Aug 6): This is the final show at Platform Gallery after 12 years (sniff), and it's the first in a little while by the magical Seattle sculptor who creates everything—anything—out of glued-together, screwed-together cardboard. Really. If he'd been born before the invention of cardboard, well, tragedy. And who will show him regularly, locally, after Platform closes its physical space and goes online? Someone must. JG
Punch Gallery
Nate Steigenga: The Underwater Hooha Show (Through July 2): Mixed media sculptures and black velvet paintings by Nate Steigenga will take you on a potentially unnerving, all-conceptual "underwater adventure."
Push/Pull
Between Two Worlds (Aug 6—Aug 11): The fourth annual Twin Peaks art show highlights returning favorites alongside newcomers.
Roq La Rue
Amanda Manitach: Nothing Left To Say (July 7—July 30): The West Seattle high school student who would become the movie star Frances Farmer wrote an essay in which she declared God dead. It was just one of the moments in which she opened her mouth, said what she thought, and ended up ostracized for it. Farmer, who eventually was hospitalized for mental illness and alcoholism and died young, is the subject of Amanda Manitach's new, large, pencil drawings. Her words appear in the drawings, against a backdrop based on an 1885 French wallpaper sample that swirls beautifully and a little frightfully, the way that Manitach's older drawings of syphilitic labia did. (Yes.) What do Farmer's words sound like in the voice of Manitach's hands? JG
Schack Art Center
Chuck Close: Prints, Process and Collaboration (Through Sept 5): Prints, Process and Collaboration is a comprehensive survey of Chuck Close's printmaking techniques and approaches.
SEASON
Now It's Time to Lose It Now (Through June 26): Fabric-based works by artist Allison Manch, available for viewing by appointment only. She writes: " ...with every breath you can smell the sandalwood and suntan lotion and the waves as they crash right as you are about to whisper 'I love you.' You hold back, afraid to let go of that moment, afraid it may not continue. Release. A charge of wild horses kicks up dust and bones and memories from when you lived in the North. The North was where things happened and things moved. You're not there anymore and you see a slower speed to your life. A rock band is playing on the neighbor's radio and you know the song but can't remember it. The one guy singing had a cute face but you always thought he was just a little too skinny. What was his name? Does it matter anymore? Did it ever? The song used to be comfort, it spoke in riddles that teenage you understood at the time. Now it speaks in different riddles and you quit being a teenager long ago."
Seattle City Hall
Path with Art: We Are All Here (Through July 5): Path with Art presents a group show of collages, self-portraits, and photography by student artists, curated by Yonnas Getahun.
Seattle Presents Gallery
Mark Mitchell: Casket Pall Residency (Through July 15): Watch Mark Mitchell create a hand-sewn casket pall (that "subverts the flag placed on the caskets of American heroes, and honors the lives lost because of our shared history of slavery and racism") live, in the gallery, every Thursday and Friday.
SOIL
Simple Means (Through July 2): A group show featuring work by Randi Ganulin, Ellen Garvens, and Mike Rogers; curated by Randi Ganulin. The backspace gallery will feature work by Jana Brevick.
Does Live Art Have To Be Experienced Live? (Aug 4—Aug 27): An exploration of the way in which "live art" is documented, featuring many kinds of artistic presentation including a performance series, art exhibition, conversations, one-on-one interactions, durational and interactive works, and more.
Suyama Space
Patte Loper: Seeking Higher Ground (Through Aug 19): Patte Loper takes on the ever-pressing issue of rising sea levels, while also engaging with Lebbeus Woods, known for his architectural drawings that can't be translated to buildings. In this exhibit, Loper creates structures that can't be sketched.
Twilight Gallery
Satpreet Kahlon: Stories Told, Remembered (Through July 16): Stories decolonizing the body, "told by, about, and for women of color," depicted through an exhibit featuring works in fiber, garments and paper.
Vermillion
Ellen Ziegler: Vermillion/Vermilion (June 9—July 9): Vermillion celebrates its 8th anniversary with a show of new work by Ellen Ziegler—entirely in vermilion (one "L"), the red-orange color she has worked exclusively with for the past three years.
Winston Wachter Fine Art
Water (Through July 12): Photographs of impressive oceans and little ripples by Richard Misrach, Harry Callahan, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Art Events
Capitol Cider
Drink & Draw (Every Second, Fourth Thurs, 7–8:30 pm): Come in, sip on delicious cider, and sketch live models using free art supplies from Gage Academy of Art. On second Thursdays, this event is part of the Capitol Hill Art Walk, a traveling night of free art.
CenturyLink Field Event Center
Seattle Art Fair (Aug 4—Aug 7): Last summer, Paul Allen said, "Let there be Seattle Art Fair," and it was good. This summer its second incarnation has more galleries—83—including New York titans David Zwirner and Pace, plus LA heavy hitter Roberts & Tilton, plus New York stalwart Marlborough, and many, many more coming from Asia, Europe, and the East Coast as well as a still-healthy continent from Seattle and Portland (Greg Kucera, Mariane Ibrahim, G. Gibson, SEASON, Upfor, James Harris, Winston Wächter, Abmeyer + Wood, Foster/White, Bridge Productions). Bring comfortable shoes. JG
El Corazón
The Pancakes and Booze Art Show (Aug 13): Check out painting, mixed media, photography, sculpture, drawing, and graffiti by over 60 artists at the Pancakes & Booze Art Show, which yes, will have both pancakes and booze on offer, as well as draws including audio and visual performances and live body painting.
The Factory
Adrien Leavitt: Queer Feelings (June 9): New, unreleased work photographs by Adrien Leavitt, exploring "queerness and our intimate, complex relationship with our bodies, both physically and emotionally."
Frye Art Museum
Young Blood: Gallery Talk (June 18): Young Blood's guest curator Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes will speak about the exhibit. If you haven't seen it yet, do so—Jen Graves wrote: "It is very important, very good, and won't be here forever. Don't waste your chance to see these paintings and videos."
The Hillman City Collaboratory
Backstreet Bazaar (Every First Sun, 7–10 pm): On the first Sunday of every month, Hillman City Collaboratory throws a little street festival, featuring live music, food, and local artists. HCC is an energetic new place worth visiting.
King Street Station
Out of Sight (Aug 4—Aug 7): While the Seattle Art Fair fills CenturyLink Field's events center with more paintings, sculptures, photographs, and drawings than you thought possible, Out of Sight will occupy the nearby third floor of the historic King Street Station clocktower with more than 21,000 square feet of art by local artists. If you go to the fair, you must also go to Out of Sight. If you have to choose one, for heaven's sake, go to Out of Sight and buy art magazines to see pictures of what was over at the Big Fair. JG
Pacific Galleries Auction House
Flea Market (June 25): Pacific Galleries Auction House hosts their annual flea market, where a variety of vendors will sell their artistic wares.
Seattle Center Exhibition Hall
Urban Craft Uprising Summer Show (June 25—June 26): Urban Craft Uprising's curated lineup of more than 150 makers, designers, and artisans will display and sell their work at the summer edition of this twice annual event.
V2
The Punk Rock Flea Market (June 25—June 26): The beloved Punk Rock Flea Market survives, with vendors selling a wide variety of "stuff they made, stuff they purchased, stuff they stole."