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.

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.