Mugi Takei "I Waited A Long Time For You" Opens Tonight

We have been busy, busy installing over 120 drawings by Seattle artist, Mugi Takei, and re-purposing the closet as a screening room for her stop motion animations, which together make up the new exhibit, "I Waited A Long Time For You": Drawings by Mugi Takei, running March 3 - April 16, 2011.  The opening reception tonight, March 3rd, is from 6 to 8 pm. 

Richard Heisler, another Cullom Gallery artist, so very kindly came in yesterday and filmed some of the installation and put Mugi and me in front of the camera, then distilled it all into this short film, which gets nicely at the content and tone of the show, I think.  I am Richard's beta lab gallery as he considers making a side enterprise out of shooting films like this for gallery marketing.  More on that to come.

The web exhibit for this show will launch in stages as I do not have enough room on my current website to show all 120+ drawings at once.  The first installment will launch tonight at 6 pm at cullomgallery.com.  I hope many of you will be able to see this amazing group of drawings in person this spring.  I am very pleased and proud to be representing this talented artist!

Mugi Takei - "I Waited A Long Time For You" at Cullom Gallery March 2011 from Gallery Videos on Vimeo.

Yoshitoshi Tonight

If you are in Seattle tonight, Cullom Gallery is open late for the First Thursday Gallery Walk.  The exhibit Yoshitoshi Monogatari: Tales of a Grand Past & Uncertain Future is up through January 15th. 

The word and concept of monogatari in Japanese literature is fairly commonplace, though it's not a word tossed around much in the West.  Some may be familiar with it as part of the title of the famous and original novel, Genji Monogatari, or The Tales of Genji, written by the great Heian Period poet and novelist, Lady Murasaki (c. 973–c. 1014 or 1025).  A monogatari is basically a literary form for fictionalized versions of epic Japanese stories.  My use in the title for this show, I hope, serves to frame the historical and mythical woodblock prints of Japan's last great ukiyo-e artist, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), as the artist's own artistic spin on the legends and tales of Japan's grand past, which as a body of work produced at it's particular time, also served as a cultural tether for a nation embroiled in the upheaval of the rapidly changing and culturally unsettling Meiji Period (1868-1912).



Lunacy, from One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1889

Yoshitoshi's short life of fifty-three years coincided with five decades of the most dramatic and raid cultural change theretofore experienced by Japan and its people.  A young man in the waning years of the Edo Period (1615-1868) Yoshitoshi witnessed the fall of his government's self-enforced period of isolation, and by all accounts, anxiously considered the flood of Western invention, ideas, and institutions that made quick inroads into Japanese society with the transfer of power from the dynastic Tokugawa Shogunate to the pro-west Emperor Meiji.  For Yoshitoshi this official drive to modernize and westernize threatened the very fiber of his nation's identity.  He responded with ukiyo-e designs that on the surface recount ancient folktales, heroic legends, and epic battles, but on a deeper level, are a cultural touchstone for a nation, he felt, in danger of forgetting its past. 

Ushiwaka (Yoshitsune) and Benkei duelling on Gojo Bridge, 1881

Okubo Tadanori rescuing Tokugawa Ieyasu on the battlefield, from Twenty-four accomplishments in Imperial Japan, 1881

Chang Fei on Chohan Bridge glares back at the multitude of soldiers, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1885

I also wonder, though I have not teased out proof it it, if the  historic themes in the prints of the later part of his life also contain Yoshitoshi's own veiled commentary on the political events of the Meiji Period, rife with its own power struggles and insurrections.  For me, considered en masse, Yoshitoshi's historic ukiyo-e read like a visual monogatari, telling a Meiji-era rendition of Japan's ancient beginnings.  This exhibit includes 19 single sheet prints, diptychs, and triptychs from some of the artist's best-known series, including Yoshitoshi's Courageous Warriors, New Selections of Eastern Brocade Pictures, Mirror of Famous Commanders of Great Japan, Twenty-Four Accomplishments in Imperial Japan, New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts.  I hope to see many of you here.

Exhibit Wrap Up - Eva Pietzcker

A big thank you to everyone who helped make Eva Pietzcker's show - Revealing the Root such a success!  Your response was tremendous.  We will certainly have Eva back to Seattle for future shows.  She enjoyed her visit to Seattle and even managed to tag on several days sketching views on Orcas Island in the San Juans before leaving for Maine to work on a collaborative project with the artist and recent Guggenheim Fellow, Daniel Heyman.  That project is scheduled for exhibit sometime next summer.  So between her time in Seattle, coastal time on Orcas and northern Maine, and a residency in Bozeman, Montana earlier this year, I anticipate a beautiful show of U.S. views a year or so from now.

If you haven't made it to the gallery yet to see Eva's prints, you have 2 more chances.  We are open late tonight, 10/7, until 9 pm for Seattle's monthly First Thursday Gallery Walk.  Otherwise stop by Saturday, 10/9 for the last day of the show.

Eva Pietzcker  River 1 (Rhein), 2009. Edition: 30, 9-1/2 x 26-3/8 inches

Eva Pietzcker River 2 (Rhein), 2009. Edition: 20, 9-1/2 x 26-3/8 inches

Eva Pietzcker Baltic Sea - Moving Trees, 2009. 9-1/2 x 9-7/8 inches

Eva Pietzcker kayaking Lake Union, Seattle

Eva Pietzcker with Beverly Pepper's Perre's Vantaglio, Olympic Sculputure Park

Opening night, Revealing the Root - Moku Hanga by Eva Pietzcker

Eva on opening night, Revealing the Root - Moku Hanga by Eva Pietzcker

Praise for Ryohei Tanaka

Lots to report today.  I was psyched that The Stranger's Jen Graves highlighted Ryohei Tanka's paper cuts on The Slog this week.  If you haven't seen the show in person yet, swing by the gallery next Thursday for the monthly First Thursday Gallery Walk, from 6 to 9 pm.  I am also putting up a good selection of matchbox labels, vintage postcards, black & white photos of Japan in the 1920s, old commercial goods and hotel luggage labels, and one cool Pro Wrestling poster, all part of Cullom Gallery's Third Annual Summer Ephemera Show, which will run only through Saturday, August 14.  The International District is also hosting JamFest this summer on every first Thursday of the month through September.  The music lineup and ticket info can be found here.

First Thursday Gallery Walk

August 5th, 6 - 9 pm

Cullom Gallery

603 S Main Street

Seattle, WA  98104

Map

On View:

Cuttin' It Up: Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanka

Third Annual Summer Ephemera Show

Both through Saturday, August 14, 2010

 

Cullom Gallery at firstthursdayseattle.com

If you live in, or are passing through Seattle, and need a quick look at current and upcoming gallery shows in the downtown area, check out firstthursdayseattle.com. As many of you know, the first Thursday of every month marks the opening of new exhibits for many of Seattle's retail galleries and studios. I just updated the site with my lineup of summer exhibits, which includes new work by Ryohei Tanaka, Eva Pietzcker, and a slew of recently found Japanese paper ephemera. Stop by and see the new Gallery!

First Thursday & Eva Pietzcker

Eva Pietzcker's show of 18 color and black-and-white Japanese woodblock prints continues through March 30th at Cullom Gallery, and we're kicking off it's second month with a reception tonight at the Gallery, from 6 - 8 pm during the Pioneer Square Gallery Walk.

In addition to Pietzcker's great prints, there's a lot to see this month in Pioneer Square. Downstairs at Davidson Galleries is an encyclopedic collection of posters and many woodcuts by America icon, Antonio Frasconi. Greg Kucera Gallery continues with quilts and etchings by the quilters of Gee's Bend. And G. Gibson Gallery opens a group show focused on birds and habitat including the Narnia-like photographs of Nealy Blau.

Grab an umbrella and come on down. (and after, go sip and nibble something at my new favorite aprés-Walk spot, Elisian Fields - just down the street at 1st and King.)




Untitled (Glade big), 2005 38 x 21 inches

Annie Bissett in Seattle

For those of you in Seattle this week, there are two chances to meet Massachusetts printmaker, Annie Bissett, whose exhibit is on the walls at Cullom Gallery through November 1st.

Gallery Walk Reception with Annie Bissett, 10/2, 6-8 pm.
Thursday is the night of Seattle's monthly Gallery Walk. Come down and see the show, Annie Bissett: moku hanga, far away, up close, and meet Annie!

Artist's Talk with Annie Bissett, 10/4, 2 pm
Then on Saturday, I'll be hosting a talk with Annie Bissett at Cullom Gallery at 2 pm. Annie will talk about her contemporary approach to the ages-old art of Japanese woodblock printmaking, and her thoughts about her commercial illustration work versus printmaking. Come with your own questions for Annie, bring a friend, and stay for a glass of wine; everyone is welcome!