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.

Cutting Edge: Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka & Qiao Xiaoguang

This month and through October 15th Cullom Gallery is showcasing the work of two contemporary paper cut artists: gallery favorite and Tokyo native, Ryohei Tanaka; and Beijing-based Chinese artist Qiao Xiaoguang. The exhibit, Cutting Edge: Contemporary Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka and Qiao Xiaoguang, offers two decidedly different takes on contemporary paper cutting from two cultures with deep roots in paper cutting traditions.  Below are a few installation shots.  You can also see the complete online exhibit here.  Tomorrow, October 1st, Qiao Xiaoguang's Beijng gallerist, Jan Leaming, will give a talk at Cullom Gallery at 2 pm.  Jan will offer insights into the rich history of paper cutting in China, the role of mythology and folk art in Professor Qiao's paper arts, and the future of contemporary Chinese folk art.  More on Jan's talk and other US events for Professor Qiao coming soon.

Qiao Xiaoguang (b. 1957)  (left) Food Recipe (right) Humans and Animals. 

Qiao Xiaoguang (b. 1957) several paper cuts from Qiao's Urban Landscape series

Ryohei Tanaka (b. 1977) Cutting Edge... Installation view

Ryohei Tanaka (b. 1977)  (left) Iroha (right) The Myth. 

The Washington Project - Days 6 & 7

(A series of posts from Cullom Gallery booster, and avid Northwest outdoors man, Joe Kaftan, who is escorting Eva Pietzcker on the next leg of her sketching trip for the Washington Project.)

Day 6

After a ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, we had lunch in Anacortes, then drove the few miles to the coast to Salt Creek Park at Crescent Beach. The tide was at a two-month low and the creek was barely wet. The beach was expansive, and stretched beyond the small island in the bay. I had never seen that before. We walked over jagged rocks that are usually under water to the line where sand and gravel begin.  I pointed out geoduck and horse clam holes.  On the sand we inspected the manila clam siphons. Eva walked back and forth in front of the stranded island, pausing and looking. She said she would like to work here.  She sat down on the clear sand, and got right to work.  I nodded off then woke up to Eva exclaiming that the tide was taking our beach back. We jumped up, I grabbed the gear while Eva stood in the rising surf, and finished her composition.  She looked over at me holding the blanket and bag, and said, "This is exciting, we almost got caught!"

In the late afternoon we drove around Crescent Lake.  Cars passed as Eva looked over the road edge and through the trees, waiting to feel the right spot. She spoke about the importance of finding beauty in a scene, but the need to not grab at the most obvious compositions. "That's the job of a postcard" she said. About a mile before The Lake Crescent Lodge, on Hwy. 10 1 west, Eva said, here. The spot was on a hairpin turn with no shoulder or guardrail to keep us from driving into the lake. So we went to the next pullout, turned around.  I stopped and Eva jumped out and flung herself over the guard rail, with gear, onto the wooded lake edge. She worked for some time, and I drove by every 10 minutes to check.  When Eva jumped back in the car, she was delighted. She said she had found a classic composition, but one that was subtlety compelling.

Salt Creek, Olympic Peninsula, WA

Day 7
Woke up at a lodge in the mountains then quickly headed for the northwest corner of the state - Cape Flattery.  On the way, we talked about why I am excited for Eva to experience this part of the country.  I told her that I am drawn in particular to places where land meets water, and this state has so much of that, and it comes in such surprising and stunning forms.  For me, Eva's work gets to the essence of the beauty of an outdoor scene.  When I look at her work, I realize I may not have ever seen the place she is representing, but I have felt it many times. 

We arrived at Cape Flattery and scouted out the 5 or 6 view decks.  Eva stood at each looking, moved around, sat down at different parts of each deck.  At the farthest point, she declared that this was a stunning view: a large island and several small cliffy islands in close, and dramatic bonsai-like trees growing from the rocks in front of us.  But after a long look she could not make a composition that included all these elements, so we kept looking.

She moved to the only deck that faced north, and started painting a series of branches in front of rocks in the water that were surrounded by swirling bull kelp. Curved cliff faces rose behind the rocks, looking like so many ship bows in a line. Eva worked quietly as one group of hikers after another stopped to take in the view, and to peek at what she was working on. As time passed, it became colder and windier. At one point Eva said, "this is too big, too much to look at, I need a second sheet."  She asked me to hold her pad, as it fluttered in the wind, and she placed a fencing sheet above it and made markings to show were each element of the composition crossed from the original page to the new one. Then she secured to old sheet in her canister, and the new one to her black board. She worked in the chill a good time more, and then wrapped up her work, saying, "maybe it was too much, you could work all week on such a view."
 

We paused for a break on our walk out and I noticed Eva was sitting in the sun on the edge of a cliff, facing the slender rock islands just to the south of the point.  I realized she had already begun another sketch.  When she finished she sat next to me on a log and said, "You see, I need to come to a place, walk around it, maybe nap a little in it, breath it in, be with it, then I start to know if there is a composition there for me."

Back in the car we drove through Neah Bay passing Hobuck Beach to stop at Shi Shi Beach.  This would be a new place for both of us.  An hour-long walk through gnarled woods, over miles of muddy puddles, a few hundred yards down switch backs, and we slipped out of the thick woods onto a bright sandy beach. Immediately we noticed several house-sized sea stacks just to the north, but what caught our eye was a skyline-like set of sea stacks a mile or two away on the south end of the beach. The waves were crashing, the sun was sparkling on the water, and we both lay in the sand and relaxed, enjoying our arrival at this gorgeous place. We discussed how low the sun could get before we would need to turn back into the woods. We wanted to walk to the southern stacks, but that wasn't possible. Instead Eva zig zagged the beach we were on and settled in front of a huge weathered log and worked until the sun hit its mark.  Eva wrapped up her work, and we ascended to the jungle, lumbering through the puddles back to the car. It was fine ending to a full and exhausting day.

Eva Pietzcker at Cape Flattery, WA

Shi Shi Beach, WA

Eva Pietzcker, Shi Shi Beach, WA at sunset

The Washington Project - Days 4 & 5

Day 4

Tuesday was spent getting back to Seattle for an evening event at the gallery -a show and tell of Eva's sketches from Eastern Washington, completed prints from her 2010 summer trip to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, and a chance to share ideas forming around this project.  Eva and I received a lot of good feedback from our audience, specifically that revealing the process of making this series of prints is in fact, interesting.  So that was good, a hunch confirmed.  Some questioned whether the political boundaries of Washington State were too come-lately and arbitrary when dealing with landscapes that were shaped over vast geologic time and by natural cataclysmic events, like the Missoula Floods.  Maybe it's about the Northwest in broader terms, and about commonalities and differences shaped by these natural events.  Others suggested that we expand the project: more artists, and more documentation, maybe a documentary?  All this makes my head spin.  It's exciting to imagine a much bigger scope, but how to grow the project and get the work done that this would require?  A huge thank you to everyone who has participated, in person and in blog comments, in this first stage of The Washington Project.  Everyone of you is part of the process.  Your comments and feedback have been so valuable.

Watching some video clips

Eva shows sketches of Eastern Washington

Day 5
Eva was scheduled to leave for the Olympic Peninsula, but gallery friend, Joe Kaftan called late on Day 4 to say that he was in bed, sick with a recurring bout of strep throat! We regrouped and #1 Gallery Volunteer, Mark Minerich offered to escort Eva to Paradise, at the foot of Mt. Rainer for the day. Another huge thank you to Mark, who kept the project going (and provided Eva with wool and rubber to keep the deep chill away as she sat sketching on 19 feet of snow. Based on the sketch I saw this morning, there is no question that Eva's handling of an iconic location is in no danger of looking cliche. I can not wait for this print. It is going to be really something.

Eva Pietzcker at Paradise, Mt. Rainier, WA

Sketching Mt. Rainer in clouds - a quintessential view

The Washington Project - Day Three

Day Three
12:04 pm, Soda Spring, just east of Rimrock Lake and at the southern foot of Goose Egg Mountain. There is a throng of sound from the frogs’ chorus; of course not one is visible. The winter cattails are silver beige in the middle of the spring, amazing clear water reflecting everything. This is the B-side of the view from Reflection Lake, a view we will probably not see. This makes me think about one of the main questions of this series: if and when to look at iconic views. Our sense of the landscape of Washington is replete with our pride of these views. What to do with them? They are really undeniably commanding of our attention. It seems stupid to ignore them, the way a teenager’s affected disregard is for something that is so clearly amazing. Do we go to Paradise, to Chinook Pass, to the Columbia Gorge? (I already know we will do this today.) [P.S. 7:15 pm and no, we will not make it to the Gorge; keep reading.] and where on the Gorge? Do we look for the ‘most Washington’ Washington? Yes, we will do some of this probably, though it's a walk on a tight rope of potential clichés. So far though, we are going to places like Little Soap Lake and Soda Spring. There is an essential Washington in these places too. And interestingly, Eva is not always aware of what in the landscape is the essential Washington, rather it all seems essential to her. How much of my native sense of the State do I divulge? Is that helpful information?

Before Eva decided that we would stop and sketch here, we talked about lodgepole and Ponderosa pines vs. Douglas fir trees. Why one grows largely on one side of the state, the other on the other side - and the dividing line you could almost walk at the top of the passes. As a kid of the West Side, I know the Doug firs too well. The pines seemed like Martian trees on the rare visits we made to the tinder-dry side of the state. After two days of wide spaces and big rock, today, I was looking to show Eva the transitional places between the basalt and shrub-steepe and the forest. I didn’t think we’d find it at a marshy spring.

It is now 1:10 pm. Soda Spring looks like a sheet of mica you peel with your fingernail. The clouds are quintessential cotton puffs against a cornflower blue sky. The breeze that has not stopped since we arrived is blowing the 5-inch pine needles on this stand then this one. This feels like an iconic view. I don’t think it's the wrong thing to train a gaze upon. Reminds me of a conversation I listened in on last month between Deborah Paine (Curator, Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs) and Seattle art critic, Suzanne Beal, as they traded opinions about the existence of a Northwest aesthetic. Suzanne said undeniably there is one. Deborah wasn’t so sure. Suzanne sited instances of artists who had focused on various subjects prior to relocating to the Northwest, and who after a few years here, began to all incorporate the land somehow into their work. Is this self-important talk? Do all artists who live in a particular location train their eyes on the land around them? How does the location affect the art? What is Eva – German born, living in Berlin – seeing here? Will she, as I hope she will, show us a new vision of our state, or is that too much to ask of someone only beginning to look. Or do the first impressions give us something that cuts to the essence?

2:08, still Soda Spring. Sun changed to cold and clouds and it just snowed briefly. Eva is still sketching. Now the sun is back full. I am listening to Glen Gould in the car, clearly not made of the same metal as Eva. It is so cold outside that the pavement, which has absorbed some small amount of energy from the bright sun, is sending up head ripples, when it meets the 30 -something degree air. Never have seen this.

6:50 pm, Hause Creek Campground. The Japanese phrase, “it was all Yaji and Kita” was true for Eva and me this afternoon, again. We busted it up to this spot, late in the day after naps for both of us at Tieton, got turned around leaving Tieton (I know. How do you get turned around in Tieton?) then after not quite remembering the place we’d scouted out this morning, finally found our way here. The late afternoon/early evening light looked so different that we spent 45 minutes stumbling around with our heads pointed up, looking for The Pine Tree from this morning. Eva is now lying on her back, her sketching board raised over her chest. The sun is going down and she has many, many pine needles to figure out. The creek is saying its never-ending prayer. Otherwise it is very still. Reminds me of childhood days camping. The end of the day, the smell of dinner cooking and the promise of its warmth, and the promise of more warmth when we crawled into sleeping bags in the dark, to listen to the murmur of our parents voices barely audible over the texture of the creek, and then to fall asleep to inner visions of the majesty of the land we had witnessed.

7:15 pm. Eva just got up, thinks it won’t work. I ask if she can still try. This will be the last sketch of this leg of the Project. Maybe it will bomb and she will have spent some serious energy, mental and muscular on a failure. But maybe it will be a new design, an unusual iconic tree. I hope she can go for it and not be steamed at me for asking her to keep going. This will be touch and go. Another hour I’d say at least. She may be really mad and exhausted at the end.

Six minutes later, 7:21. Eva says, “I stop.” No more video clips, no questions from me. I think we are going. Yes, we’re going.

Soda Spring, WA

Eva Pietzcker at Soda Spring, WA

Eva preparing  to sketch The Pine Tree

The Pine Tree (that was not to be), Hause Creek, WA

The Washington Project - Day Two

Day Two

There is no theme today, at least not yet and it's already 4:20 p.m.. We are on a slope up from the east shore of Little Soap Lake.  Eva and I had our mornings alone after staying up late again talking all-things-art. I walked around Tieton in the early morning and stopped to talk with Ed Marquand, who was already at his shop and office, Marquand Books, on the main square of town. We talked about the state of galleries in Seattle and the missing piece in the ‘art ecosystem’ as he called it, which these days is the buyer. Also traded some good ideas about messaging and marketing, or more to the point of what Ed and I require with our micro-niche arts enterprises: finding the specific audience for our special fields.

When I explained what Eva and I are doing based on my still-forming ideas and hunches, Ed cut past the fat to wonder aloud something like, “I don’t know how much people are into knowing about the process, especially if they don’t yet know what the end result is.’ Yes, and ouch. Something to think about (as I type about thinking about it.) I don’t know yet. Like I said, this is a hunch. So, are you interested in the process? If the buyer knows more about the process is he or she more likely to buy a work of art? Do buyers feel like they are a part of the art process? I hope so. I want them to feel that they are.

We passed through some of the Channeled Scablands today. Saw fields strewn with rocks that look like dinosaur eggs left there by the cataclysmic Missoula Floods that raced across parts of Eastern Washington during the last ice age, 15,000 to 13,000 years ago. I am realizing that Washington has a truly weird geologic history and tattoo. This strikes Eva too, though those aren’t always the things that encourage her toward a sketch. I watch and wait and drive the car.

We were on the way to Steamboat Rock (turns out its only 3, not 6 hours, away. But passing by Soap Lake, here are these massive carved cliffs that descend to the edge of the shallow and much smaller Little Soap Lake, just north of its larger namesake. The western sun was hitting the skim of water intensely, sending up silver ripples in shards, pushed along by a breeze from the north. Brown basalt scree topped by rugged horizontal striated cliffs across the water. New scrub brush is blooming in a spring green that looks like the moss Eva will see next week in the Hoh. We really aim to get to Steamboat. I feel pressure to keep us on task, but that’s not how this trip will go.

Left Little Soap Lake and went around the corner, up the canyon past amazing basalt columns cantilevered over the road in humps. Past Lenore Lake and boom, there was Alikai Lake and three craggy geode-like aggregate rock humps, each one bumped above the surface of the small lake. White pancake hardened silt holding rocks and sage bits all along the shore. Symmetrically high bluffs on either side, making a reverse fisheye effect on the eye. It’s 6:01 p.m. now. I don’t know if we will make it to Steamboat, the Shangri-La of our trip so far. But what we are seeing is amazing and truly weird stuff. I grew up in Washington and know for sure that I have never made it up this road before today.

7:05 pm. We made it. Steamboat Rock. A vaguely formed thunderhead threatens to eat the last clear rays of the sun, but Eva is out of the car, sitting on the narrow side of the road with the full mountain of Steamboat in silhouette across the eastern stretch of the north end of Grand Coulee. It is another dramatic, monolith. How will it look as a print? Will it make it to print stage or be rejected by her for any number of reasons. I won’t know until Eva goes home, reads the notes she has added to all the sketches tonight, and considers what to spend the time on to hand-carve and hand-print and what to set aside as only a memory of these days. I can say that the process is tenuous and ruled by weather and light conditions that are out of our control. I for one am finding it very interesting to be let in on part of the process.

(Eva said some very interesting things in the car today. Things I can’t organize well enough to write about so I will need to train the video camera on her tomorrow.) 

Sketching Little Soap Lake, WA

Eva Pietzcker at Little Soap Lake, WA

Basalt Scree at Little Soap Lake, WA

Little Soap Lake, WA

Spring foliage at Little Soap Lake, WA

The Washington Project - Day One

After completing a residency in Ucross, Wyoming earlier this month, Cullom Gallery artist, Eva Pietzcker is in Washington State this week to begin sketching on location in places across Eastern and Western Washington in preparation for a new series of views of Washington State. The Washington Project, which began with a summer 2010 trip to the San Juan Islands, this month will take Eva to the canyons of the Tieton River, the Channeled Scablands, the Columbia River, the Hoh Rain Forest and Olympic Peninsula.  The April leg of the Project will be chronicled in a series of blog posts by myself (Beth Cullom, owner and director of Cullom Gallery) and Seattle graphic designer and gallery booster, Joe Kaftan (who will accompany Eva on the Western leg of the Project.)
 
Day One

We were caught in a bizarre karmic eddy this morning getting out of Seattle.  A maze of detours in the Sodo neighborhood as we tried to get to Daniel Smith Art Supplies for more paper and paints, led to my own detour over Beacon Hill and finally to Dan Smith.  Then a mundane trip to an AT&T store for a new SIM card for Eva and a phone car charger for me.  All so we could head into the silent spaces of Eastern Washington. Do we really need the technology? (as I sit in the car, 7:10 pm along the Tieton River, and watch blue clouds blot out the last orange rays of sun, notice that the breeze is noticeably colder, listen to the natural white noise of the river.)

After settling in at Ali Fujino’s condo in the apple warehouse in Tieton, WA (huge thank you to Ali and Matthew for being our housing angels for this leg of the Washington Project – couldn’t have do this without you), we’ve been scouting out spots, several, and all but this one striking out.  Eva has been talking about fore, mid, and background.  And how she likes light against the composition to allow carving of “the white spaces.”  Lots of the sweeping, monochromatic stuff of this landscape may not fit the bill.  Eva is a woodblock print artist, not a photographer, or an oil painter.  And the medium she works in may effect the subjects she chooses, I’m realizing.  (Gray basalt is turning to purple in places, nicely set off by the sage green of scrub covering the cliffs.)

The plan and the actual, that’s part of art making, I’m thinking.  I’ve been planning the places we'd go, albeit with some (my) geographic disabilities always there.  So today my husband called to ask if I knew that Steamboat Rock was over 6 hours away from Tieton  - someplace I’d hoped to take Eva.  Did I know this?  No I didn’t.  Did I also know that Eva and I would talk till 1 am last night, looking at her new sketches and prints from her 2 weeks at Ucross Foundation?  Nope.  Which also meant that I didn't know that our actual leave time would be 12 noon -  far from the plan of 9 am.  So here we are, only  a few miles from downtown Tieton, but the clouds are now that gray blue and peach pink.  The river looks like celadon milk glass.  Black and dead Garry Oaks are blending with the scars of dark basalt on the other side of the river.  7:50 now; also thought we’d have dinner with Ed Marquand and friends, but nope, we’re here instead.  We are here.

April 16, 2011, Eva Pietzcker sketching on the Tieton River, WA.

Eva PIetzcker sketching along the Tieton River, WA.

This Thursday - Mugi Takei & Seattle's Small Press Festival

As I posted last week on Cullom Gallery's Facebook, one of my arts dreams is poised to come true this week - a poetry reading at the Gallery!  Cullom Gallery is pleased to host this evening event this Thursday night, 3/24 at 7 pm.  Natural Verges: Poets on Visual Art, will feature poetry and prose by Mugi Takei whose drawings are on view at the gallery through April 30, along with several poets connected to Capitol Hill's Pilot Books.  This event is one of several that make up the month-long, 2nd Annual Small Press Festival, organized by Pilot Books and its great owner, Summer Robinson.  Readings are hosted by nine Seattle venues including Elliott Bay Book Company and Richard Hugo House.

I hope that each of you can make it, meet Mugi and see her exhibit that includes over 120 gouache and pencil drawings and several drawn stop-motion short films.  I think that her writing, considered in the context of her drawings and films, is going to be dynamite.  The other featured poets - Meredith Clark (of Ballard Farmer's Market Poem Store fame), Debra di Blasi (Publisher-in-Chief at Seattle's Jaded Ibis), and Lisa Radon (regular reviews and writings on the nexus of visual art and writing at lisaradon.com) will bring some serious literary chops to the event.

This is  a free event.  The public is welcome.  Please contact Cullom Gallery (info@cullomgallery, 206-340-8000) or Pilot Books (pilot@pilotbooks.com, 206-229-7181) for more information.

Tyler's Talk

A big thanks to everyone who made it to Cullom Gallery to hear Tyler Starr last Saturday.  Here are some photos of the event.  Tyler walked us though some interesting passages in his creative process.  We saw jet engine diagrams from his father's career as an engineer, unintentionally comical pictures from a Japanese illustrated children's Bible, snap shots of cultural events in his Tokyo neighborhood, Japanese naval bases, and bigger public works projects across Japan, particularly dam construction and resulting protests. The later has become the source material for many of Starr's newest works, including a small illustrated pamphlet, which I have available through the gallery.  I found his description of these dam projects to be the most interesting and blackly comical portion of his talk.  As he described it, the building of new dams in Japan is largely conceived as a way to support jobs projects.  Their consequences both unavoidable (the flooding of centuries-old towns and villages and resulting displacement of some of Japan's oldest citizens) and unintentional (like the reservoir made largely useless as a result of Tokyo's massive effort to install low-flow toilets), have sparked wide spread protest across the country.  All the parts of the dam stories are the stuff that fascinates Starr.  As he says in his statement for this show, There is a gap in manmade things between the idea and the actual realization of the idea.  This gap is a result of many things including unintended consequences and contradictory intentions.

But whether it was his telling of the facts surrounding these dams, or the machinations of neighborhood festivals and protests, or the national conflict around U.S. bases in Japan, I was struck by Starr's thoughtful and respectful, even distant, approach to his subjects.  Though the circumstances he lays out are often the stuff that makes you smack your forehead in disbelief, still he takes a look at all angles, the history, cultural aspects that affect these projects for better and for worse, and the how often the solution is not seen as a failure by the recipients.  Like that dam full of water.  It's now a tourist stop to watch the artificial waterfall released from the sluice gates twice a day, and a light show projected against the dam's massive concrete wall on summer evenings.

Miyagase Dam.  Photo courtesy of Tyler Starr.

Tyler Starr at Cullom Gallery, January 29, 2011

Tyler Starr at Cullom Gallery with (left) Structural Props (right) Infrastructure.

Illustration from a Japanese children's Bible.  Photo courtesy of Tyler Starr

Artist Talk with Tyler Starr

I spent a good day with Tokyo artist Tyler Starr today, showing him some of the architecture and history of Seattle's neighborhoods.  I also had a chance to preview some of the images he will use to illustrate his talk at the gallery tomorrow afternoon.  Looks to be a very interesting presentation.  Please join us at Cullom Gallery tomorrow, 1/29, at 1 pm for this rare chance to meet Tyler and hear more about his observations of historic and contemporary events in Tokyo that shape his work.  

Artist Talk with Tyler Starr

Saturday, January 29, 2011, 1 pm

Cullom Gallery
603 S Main Street
Seattle, WA  98104
map
This is a free event and open to the public.

Tyler Starr at Fishermen's Terminal, Seattle

Tyler Starr at Kerry Park, Seattle

Opening with Richard Heisler

Some photos of Opening night of Richard Heisler | Tyler Starr: Tokyo Paintings & Mixed Media Works.  We had a great turn out, though by the time I thought to grab the camera, things had mellowed to a nice hum.  Thanks to everyone who came out to make it a special night! 

Mark your calendars for this Saturday, January 29th, at 1 pm, when Cullom Gallery will also host an artist talk with Tokyo-based artist, Tyler Starr.  Starr will be in Seattle to talk about his work hanging in the current show from the series, Attempted Fixes and the Wallowing Series, as well as recent work from his doctoral program final exhibition at Tokyo University of Fine Arts. This is a free event and open to the public.  I hope to see you at the gallery on Saturday!

Richard with Ginza # 5 from 100 Views of Tokyo

Richard and Mom

Cullom Gallery Opening Night

Ginza #3 (left) & Akihabara #2 (right)

 

Richard Heisler | Tyler Star Opens Tonight, 6 to 8 pm

Top: Tyler Starr.  Attempted Fix: Phantom Recovery.  Mixed media with ganpi paper, gouache, and pencil on paper.  Bottom: Richard Heisler.  Roppongi #1.  Mixed media on panel.

 If you are in Seattle tonight, stop by the gallery from 6 to 8 pm for the opening party and reception for the new exhibit: Richard Heisler | Tyler Starr: Tokyo Paintings & Mixed Media Works.  Below is the press release for the show.  I hope to see you tonight!


Richard Heisler | Tyler Starr: Tokyo Paintings & Mixed Media Works
January 21 - February 26, 2011
Opening Reception with Richard Heisler, Friday, January 21, 6 to 8 pm
Artist Talk with Tyler Starr, Saturday, January 29, 1 pmBoth events are free and open to the public.

Two American artists consider contemporary views and events within Tokyo's urban neighborhoods.  Seattle artist, Richard Heisler's photorealist paintings from his ongoing series, One Hundred Views of Tokyo, quietly reference the landmark 19th century woodblock prints, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858).  Selections from two of Tokyo artist, Tyler Starr's mixed media series, The Wallowing Series and Attempted Fixes, look at political, military, and municipal constructions and events in present-day Tokyo.

Heisler's dense paintings contrast with the vast empty spaces of Starr's mixed media works, yet the meticulous requirements of both artists' chosen technical approaches lead to a similar close focus on their subject. Heisler's precisely chosen layers of color and perfect lines are carefully laid in over many months; Starr applies intricatly cut layers of thin, decoupaged ganpi paper, gouache paint, and tight graphite details.  The artists' labor-intensive media draw the colors, angles, and real events of Tokyo into a sharper focus.

Richard Heisler was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1973.  He was a student at Seattle Central Community College and Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA.  Heisler is represented by Cullom Gallery as well as Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts, Binghamton, NY; MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa OK; and Galerie Persterer, Zurich, Switzerland.  His paintings have been shown in numerous solo and jurried group exhibits including the 2008 Biennial National Exhibiton, La Grange Museum of Art, LaGrange, GA; the 2008 Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Realism, Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, IN; the CPSA Explore This 5 Exhibition, where he received the Award for Excellence; and solo exhibits at Anthony Brunelli Gallery, Binghamton, NY.  Heisler's paintings have also been featured multiple times in Southwest Art Magazine.

Tyler Starr was born in 1974 and lived in Connetiticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota before moving to Tokyo several years ago.  In 1999, Starr was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, Poland.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.  He is currently a PHD candidate at the Tokyo National Univerisity of Fine Arts, Ueno, Japan.  His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibits and jurried biennials, most recently, the International Biennial of Contemporary Prints, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Liège, Belgium; the 2nd Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing Exhibition, Excellence Prize,PSG Art Gallery, Silpakorn University, Bangkok Thailand; and Tokyo Wonderwall 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Japan.  His work is in the permanant collections of the Corcoran Museum, Washington, DC; Univerisity of Connecticut; and Pozan Museum of Fine Arts, Poland.

For more information please contact Beth Cullom, Cullom Gallery, 206-340-8000, info@cullomgallery.com.

Annie Bissett at Cullom Gallery

I was so pleased to have Annie Bissett and her partner Lynn in Seattle for the opening of the show of her new series of woodblock prints, We Are Pilgrims.  Here are a few photos of the opening reception on October 15th, and Annie's talk and demonstration the next afternoon.  My thanks to everyone who came by.  I especially enjoyed listening to Annie's thoughts on Saturday and hearing about the historical discoveries she made over the course of the 2+ years it took to complete the suite of prints.  The complete show is up on line at cullomgallery.com along with Annie's commentary about the underlying facts behind each design.  We also have copies of Annie's very fine illustrated catalog, We Are Pilgrims.  Contact the gallery if you would like to order a copy. 

 

Getting Ready for Annie Bissett

We are putting the finishing touches on Cullom Gallery's next exhibit - a new suite of woodblock prints by Northampton, Massachusetts artist Annie Bissett.  Come meet the artist and celebrate the opening of this beautiful and insightful show on Friday night, October 15, from 6 to 8 pm.  (Cullom Gallery, 603 S Main Street, Seattle map).  The Gallery will also host a talk and printmaking demonstration with Annie Bissett on Saturday afternoon, October 16, at 1 pm.  Both events are open to the public.  Come and bring a friend!

Here is some information about Bissett's series, taken from our press release, and a sneak peek at a number of the prints.  We look forward to seeing many of you at the gallery next Friday night!

We Are Pilgrims is a suite of fifteen Japanese-style woodblock prints that centers on the lives of the earliest settlers of New England.  The suite is both a personal exploration of Bissett's legacy as a Mayflower descendant and a critical look at the contemporary impact of the pilgrims' arrival in America almost 400 years ago.

Annie Bissett employs the Japanese woodblock printmaking method known today as moku hanga, which is characterized by Japanese papers, water-based inks, self-carved blocks, and hand-printing, to complete the series. All prints were realized over a two year period in 2008 to 2010; the artist has also recently published a full-color 72-page catalog that illustrates all 15 prints and in an essay by Bissett, weaves historic facts that she uncovered with her thoughts on the  farther-reaching implications of the pilgrims' actions, beliefs, and institutions.

In her essay for the catalog, Bissett notes that the Mayflower was a small ship, estimated to be only 113 feet long.  Traveling at a rate of 2 miles per hour across 3000 miles of the Atlantic it reached the eastern shore of America in 66 days.  Several prints in the series consider both the hope and desperate anxiety felt by the pilgrims aboard the first ship, as recorded by Plymouth governor William Bradford.

Dorothy Bradford Comes to America.

With a Prosperous Wind.

In the catalog's cover image, "They Looked Behind", Bissett has carved a quotation from Bradford's ship diary in which he recalls, "If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world."  Just two months earlier on the morning of their departure, Bradford had noted that they left under "A Prosperous Wind," the title chosen by Bissett for her twin views of the Mayflower under a starlit sky.
In one of the most dramatic prints in the series, "Dorothy Bradford Comes to America", Bissett has imagined the  accidental or suicidal drowning of William Bradford's wife, Dorothy May, as the ship sat anchored in Provincetown Harbor and Bradford was ashore on a scouting mission.

Honey I'm Worried About the Kids. 

Themes of corruption also weigh heavily throughout Bissett's series.  In another pair of prints, the artist uses the same carved block for a group of pilgrim men, women and children, overlaying it across two different backdrops.  In "No Friends to Greet Them" the group walks cautiously though a moonlit night; in "Honey, I'm Worried About the Kids" bare branches and shadows are swapped for a concrete wall covered with the balloon letters of graffiti tags.  Moral corruption trades places with the physical ravishes of disease in "10 Little 9 Little Indians."  In a nod to the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a central Indian figure stands with an arrow pointed down in a symbol of peace as the words, "Come over and help us" float overhead.

Bissett's version however replaces the seal's circular outline with the rosette of a smallpox virus, a disease that had been spread by even earlier European immigrants, and by the time the pilgrims arrived in 1620, had killed an estimated 90% of the local Wampanoag tribe, as she notes in her catalog essay.

God Blesses John Alexander and Thomas Roberts.

Still other prints in We Are Pilgrims look at the impact of institutions - educational institutions, and the institution of Christian marriage and its presumed heterosexuality.  Bissett's print, "Caleb and Joel Went to Harvard, 1665", imagines a portrait of the first two native graduates of Harvard Indian College.  Their bare chests show through gossamer versions of the pilgrim black frock and white collar and cuffs, behind them, a naive rendering of the college's original buildings.  Another print considers the historic and contemporary legacy of sexual bigotry as revealed through court records of the trial of John Alexander and Thomas Roberts, lovers who in 1637 were found guilty of homosexual acts with each other and each variously sentenced.  As Bissett notes, Alexander was whipped, branded, and banished from the colony;


Roberts was whipped and, as an indentured servant, returned to his master, and barred from ever owning land.  Bissett's gentle and familiar portrait of the two men posed with hands touching and one's arm over the other's shoulder, as well as the title of the print, "God Blesses John Alexander and Thomas Roberts, 1637" defies the image's red hot S-for-sodomy iron that reaches from the sky and the bigoted comments carved like wall paper behind the men, text the artist gathered from letters and emails sent to the Episcopal Church Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003 when the openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, was elected bishop.

As the current national debate struggles with questions of what it means to be American and who gets to be American, We Are Pilgrims, explores the American creation story from many angles, imagining what the lives of these early immigrants might really have been like, and what their lives mean to us now, almost 400 years later. 

Born in Springfield Massachusettes, Annie Bissett spent two decades as a professional illustrator, working for the Washington Post, National Geographic Society, and TimeLife Publications, before turning her attention to Japanese woodblock printmaking in 2005.  She is an active member of Zea Mays Printmaking Studio in Florence, MA.  Her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions and biennials including the International Print Center of New York's New Prints 2009/Autumn, the 2009 Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Annual Exhibition, New York; the 2009 Los Angeles Printmaking Workshop Annual Exhibition; the Hunt's Prize at the Boston Printmakers 2009 N. American Print Biennial; the exhibition Violence at the Jundt Art Museum, Gongaza University, Spokane, WA; and Printed Matter at Giant Robot Gallery, San Francisco, CA.  Annie Bissett has been represented by the Seattle gallery, Cullom Gallery since 2007, where her first solo exhibition, Far Away Up Close, was mounted in 2008.  Annie Bissett is also a leading voice in the growing American moku hanga printmaking movement; Bissett's blog, Woodblock Dreams, which she began in 2005, counts over 9000 views and hundreds of regular readers.  Her prints are part of the permanent collections of the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS; and the Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga Univeristy, Spokane WA.