Spring Hatchings

In preparation for a few months off with our new baby, who is expected in early April, I have turned over Cullom Gallery's curatorial work to three Seattle artists who I have had the pleasure of getting to know over the past few years.  In what we are calling the HATCHINGS series, I have invited these artists to each curate a show of works on or of paper, and in crafting their shows, lead with their own knowledge, interests, and connections.  Though at its heart, Cullom Gallery looks at the connection between Japan and the West through traditions of paper arts, there was no requirement that these curators connect to any part of that narrative.  I stressed that my only curation in the project was the selection of the three of them.  The rest would be whatever they came up with.

For me the process of "hatching" this series of exhibits has been another positive reminder of the 'letting go' refrain that is such a part of preparing for parenting.  I am deeply grateful for the commitment these talented artists and curators have given me.  They have embraced the concept of these exhibits and really run with it, allowing me time and space to hatch in other ways.  And as the exhibit release describes, these three diverse shows also "explore personal, artistic, and textural hatchings and cross hatchings."

Curator of the April HATCHINGS exhibit, Robert Hardgrave, designed the sumi ink design below to illustrate the series postcard and poster.  The shape of the image was intended to represent the intentions of the exhibit series: a texture of drawn hatching marks, and a five sided form representing the five of us involved - one gallerist, three curators, and one baby-to-be.  

All HATCHINGS shows will be up on Cullom Gallery's website.  Openings are on the first Thursday of each month from 6 to 8 pm.  More on each show to come in the following days and weeks.  

HATCHINGS March - May, 2012

Three Exhibits Curated by

Rumi Koshino - Open Interval, March

Three Seattle artists use visual form as part of their non-visual practice as writer (D.W. Burnam), mother (Gala Bent), and musician (Garek Druss) in works on paper. 

Robert Hardgrave - Refable, April

Twelve black and white works by notable Northwest artists based on Jacob Lawrence's classic renditions of Aesop's Fables.

Brian Lane - Texture of Being, May

Seattle's Print Zero Studios founder dips into his pool of local and national woodcut artists to explore facets of personal experience and the dream world.

Cloud Appreciation

A nice section of an interview with Cullom Gallery artist Binky Walker in Charles Mudede's article today in The Stranger, The Cloud Appreciation Society.  When I showed Binky's ethereal drawings of clouds in 2009, the gallery was still new as was this blog.  If you missed them then, here are a few images of the artist's beautiful meditations on the ephemeral nature of clouds. 

Binky Walker.  Triptych no. 1.  Graphite on paper.  Each panel: 8 x 8 inches.

Binky Walker.  detail, Triptych no. 1.  8 x 8 inches

Binky Walker.  Triptych no. 3. Graphite on paper.  Each panel: 8 x 8 inches.

Binky Walker.  detail, Triptych no. 3.  8 x 8 inches

The exhibit at Cullom Gallery was titled, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, in a reference to the original pictures of the floating, or fleeting, world that were Japanese woodblock prints of the 18th and 19th centuries.  You can read more about the exhibit here, here, and here. 

Recently, Binky is hard at work on a new suite of single drawings, which we hope will be ready for exhibit at Cullom Gallery in late 2012.  The artist's new body of work continues her close observation and meditation on natural phenomena, this time looking at the transcendent properties of light.  I have been watching her progress with great excitement; the suite is perhaps her best work to date!

Finally, on what is a windy and rainy day here in Seattle, I couldn't resist including this short study for one of Binky's video projects in progress.  Title is Seeing the Wind.  Please stop by the gallery to see more by this talented artist.



Seeing the Wind from binky walker on Vimeo.

Here is the third and final portion of my email conversation with Binky Walker, my thoughts in gray, hers in black. The exhibit of her drawings, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world continues at Cullom Gallery through October 31st.

The pun is literally your floating ukiyo - clouds - and the pictures (the 'e' in ukiyo-e) you have produced of them. But further, the ideas you have turned around in your mind are much the same as those originally attached to ukiyo: the beauty found in sadness. The coming awareness that we and all things are temporary. You are finding peace with this I think. And certainly you are finding beauty in these ideas and teasing it out for all of us to consider.

Seems you teased out not only the title for this show and its reasons, but something more subtle. That these drawings reflect a contemporary interpretation of ukiyo-e as a re-appropriation of the original intent of ukiyo: to remove the profanity and experience fully the profound beauty and underlying sorrow of our own transience.

The moments (days, months, years) drawing the clouds I rested in a state of intense awareness of that sorrowful beauty. Both the sorrow and the beauty were almost more than I could bear. Simply looking into the sky brings me to tears, knowing what I see will only happen this once in all of eternity. It felt a blessing and responsibility to have been chosen by the clouds to bear witness. This intensity is overwhelming and brings a desire for the profane . . . for "stylish pleasures." To escape what I cannot escape, to disregard that I am bound to the floating world.

The twisting of the ideas of ukiyo that occurred during the Edo period in many ways makes a mockery of its original ideas. By the 18th and 19th centuries it had come to mean a blend of hedonism and laissez-faire. And the contrast between its old & new meanings I think, only heightens the poignancy of the idea in its nascent form; in the heyday of ukiyo-e, the period saw incredible growth of urban centers, industry, politics, and a refinement of decoration and pleasure seeking. In the end these are just gaudy diversions from the true beauty of impermanence.

Your last sentence says it all so beautifully.

About the process

In lieu of an artist's statement for the exhibit, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, the artist, Binky Walker, and I prepared excerpts from our correspondence leading up to the show. We felt that it might be interesting for those not involved, to have a glimpse into the collaborative process engaged in between gallery and artist: me, toward an understanding of her artistic process; she, toward an awareness of her indirect connection to centuries-old Japanese ideas; and for both of us, through this back and forth, an intriguing acknowledgment of a convergence of ideas, across cultures and centuries. I will post segments of our conversation to this blog over the course of the next week.



Why do I muse on clouds, or attend to what is fleeting?

The impulse of my mind is to grasp onto what I believe will not change, transfixed by what I hope will never leave me. Impermanence is too frightening: I cannot fathom a self this precious and so determinate. Yet in comparison to the billions of light-years that are but a moment in the heavens, my human life is more fleeting than I experience the clouds.

what I believe will not ever change
what I hope will never leave me
determinate
interior resonance

determinate - what does this word really mean?

precisely determined or limited or defined;
not continuing to grow indefinitely at the apex;
being final or conclusive

All our human measures are determinate - years into seasons into days into hours into minutes into seconds - subdivided infinitely to make smaller and smaller measures of permanence. Clouds defy language, remain unfixed in their beauty. Despite these increments and measures, clouds cannot be pinned down in time. Perhaps it is a condition of humanness to be shocked by mortality.

Is this your struggle? It seems to me that you have found peace in your exploration, in the real self of the clouds, and your real self.

Are you still struggling?

When I understand muself as part of...as cloud...there is nothing to struggle against -- only peace. But my mind does not rest here. Even with all this evidence, even in peace.

ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world

Binky Walker. Triptych no. 3, 2008. Graphite on paper. Each panel: 8 x 8 inches on 15 x 15 inch paper

Cullom Gallery is pleased to present ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world by artist Binky Walker, a series of 15 graphite drawings in the form of triptychs, each of which chronicles a brief passage in the ephemeral life of a cloud. Walker’s contemplative process and resulting drawings conjure the 16^th century Buddhist idea of ukiyo, or floating world: the stark and sorrowful beauty experienced as we become aware of our transience in this temporal, or floating, reality.

Over the course of two years, Walker performed daily meditations through the act of drawing. Contemplating on paper the minute shifts of clouds, she bore witness to the infinite differences that occur within their slightest movement, allowing an instant to suspend itself across the long duration it took to complete each image. These quiet, exquisitely rendered drawings question Western notions of time - our absolute belief in divisions of past, present and future - and beckon viewers to deeply consider their place in the ukiyo of a perpetually changing present.

By the mid-17th century in Japan, the meaning of ukiyo strayed from its austere Buddhist origins and came to define the decadent urban vitalization of the Edo period, marked by a ubiquitous pursuit of fleeting pleasures such as the kabuki theater, or the company of celebrated courtesans. Ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world, became the common name, still in use today, for the popular woodcuts that recorded the myriad amusements of the nouveau riche merchant class.

With this exhibit, Walker offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the centuries-old Japanese tradition of ukiyo-e by re-appropriating the original intent of ukiyo from the trivial. Her reverent treatment of the ephemera of clouds makes palpable the beauty and underlying sorrow of our own transience, summoning the viewer to experience the profound intensity inherent in every moment of this temporary, floating existence.

The exhibit, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world is on view September 3rd through October 31, 2009. Cullom Gallery will also host an artist’s talk and discussion with Binky Walker on Saturday, September 19th at 3:00 pm.

Cullom Gallery, located in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, focuses on the tradition and influence of Japanese woodblock prints and works on paper. The gallery is open Tuesday through Thursday, and Saturday from 10 to 5, and every first Thursday until 8 pm.

Cullom Gallery
313 Occidental Ave S
Seattle, WA 98104
206.919.8278
info@cullomgallery.com
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Binky Walker. (detail) Triptych no. 3, 2008. Graphite on paper. 8 x 8 inches on 15 x 15 inch paper