Sense/Sensibility at the Vera Project

SHOW: Sense/Sensibility

WHERE: Ver(a)rt Gallery at the Vera Project | Seattle Center: Warren Ave N & Republican St

WHEN:  Opening Reception February 9th, 2010 6:30pm – 8:30pm | Show runs through February 28th, 2010

WHAT: History, personal and otherwise is brought forth through an eclectic mix media and mode.

WHO: Anna-Mária Vág strives to bring to light the “rampant obsoletism” that plagues today’s society and in turn promote adaptive re-use and sustainable building   practices.  For this show by manner of projection she “documents the aesthetic, historical, and utilitarian value of vernacular buildings [who are] devoid of advocates” in order to rekindle a vanishing era and communicate meaning that the built environment has on our every day lives.

With fiber and found objects Jamey Braden & Allison Manch feature themes of love and personal history which invite the viewer to imagine a narrative of transformation all while threading a sense of humor throughout.

The work of Sarah Teasdale is heavily influenced Victorian era life, society and literature.  Her paintings are much about color often limiting her palette to two or three colors, she believes in color psychology, creating a sense of atmosphere with each of her pieces.

WHY: Cause its Ver(a)rt, and its awesome.

Fun times with Reggie Watts @ the 2010 Henry Benefit

Liveblogging the Henry Benefit

I spy with my little eye something…NEW

Can you find the new piece in Opus II?

Vortexhibition Polyphonica- Opus I is coming to a close and the curatorial call from O.1 will be meet with a  response by Elizabeth Brown. Over the next week new works will be installed throughout the exhibition, and one is already up. Have you Seen it?

The first person to comment back with the Title of the Work and/or the Artist’s name will WIN a Catalog from one of the Henry’s past exhibitions…
Choose from one of the following;

Lee Bul: Live Forever: Act One & Two

Seventy-Five at 75: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection at the Henry Art Gallery

WOW: The Work of the Work

Have you seen Milton Rogovin’s photos yet?

Hi, Amy Chinn here.  I wanted to share how moved I am by one of the exhibitions upstairs.

Sugar from Lower West Side series, Buffalo, NY. 1973 Gelatin silver print Henry Art Gallery, extended loan as promised gift from Dr. Michael Kaplan, M.D."

The photos are beautiful. They really are. Right off the lobby, to get to the Skypace and galleries, you have to walk through the room where Happy 100th Birthday, Milton Rogovin! is showing. Visitors stop in their tracks to walk around this small room and study the powerful, quiet, amazing photographs of people who Rogovin has captured. This optometrist-turned-full-time-photographer, who turned 100 years old in December, has the ability to tell a story with a photograph, a story I wanted to know more about. The people in the photos are immigrants, factory workers, miners, single moms, elderly, families captured in their work place and in their home. People you might not look twice at if you would have passed them on the street in the 1970s (when the photos were taken) are presented here in a way that is so unique and respectful. Also in the room there is a video quietly playing of Rogovin and his wife Anne in his studio, talking about his work and the people he chose to photograph. He called them the “forgotten ones.”  These images stay with you. A great exhibit!

Object History Awareness

Sol Hashemi is back at the Tashiro Building this Thursday, this time at 4Culture.
After his 2008  performance-based exhibit at Punch Gallery, with former fellow Student Henry Advisory Group (S.H.A.G) member Jason Hirata, and a warmly welcomed exhibition in the the Henry’s Gift Shop this past December, 4Culture proudly presents the upcoming exhibition, Object History Awareness opening this Thursday at the 4Culture gallery.

In Object History Awareness, Hashemi organizes a multitude of images into carefully composed large-scale grids, 3 high, by 4 wide. The purpose of the grids is to juxtapose content in such a way as to convey connections between things. In the artist’s words, “I see everything as having the potential to become entangled through having a shared experience, such as an object being in the presence of another object.”

Although classification systems are usually rooted in science, Hashemi’s approach is more idiosyncratic. His pictures are an ambiguous mixture of straight documentation interspersed with others that he has surreptitiously altered. His interventions are not obvious; he is interested in keeping the viewer unaware of the relationship of the photographer to the construction of an image.

Department of Safety: Culturing Anacortes Since 2002

Department of Safety, in Anacortes Washington, first opened in 2002 as an arts and events space that focused on  Sustainability, Art/Creativity, Community, Phenomenology, and making real some ideas they believe in.

Fireman Phil and the The Department of Safety Manifesto. Mission.

The DoS will soon  be closing its doors after 8 years of noteworthy exhibitions, events,  site-specific installations, residencies, and extensive show calender. There will be a farewell celebration on January 30th, 2010 featuring The Microphones, LAKE, Karl Blau, and Arrington de Dionyso.

It was a very difficult decision for all of those involved, but the time is now. This project was never meant to last forever. The DoS has been a miracle in so many ways. We’d like to thank everyone for their support throughout the years and for the recent outpouring of kindness. We still need your help to give this place the proper send off. Come and celebrate the DoS!

-DoS Dispatch

A tiny Tiny Vipers playlist

This playlist is offered as a sweet concession to The Stranger’s 1/19 “Up and Coming” comment:

“The Henry curators really ought to be providing Fortino-stocked iPods for their patrons to serve as audio guides for the trance-inducing grandeur of Eirik Johnson’s massive (and massively devastating) photographs. I guess we’ll have to “settle” for this affordable live show featuring Fortino and able Seattle soundscaper Crystal Hell Pool, which is being offered as a one-time complement to Sawdust Mountain.”

Corsets: Handmade, Manmade, and Man-worn

In October, Val Mayse brought her University of Washington corset-making class to the Collections Study Center to look at and draw inspiration from a selection of the nearly 40 corsets (dating from 1800 to 1960)  in the Henry’s Costumes and Textiles Collection. (For more information about this collection, including a Google Earth tour of where the various gowns, wraps and coverings lived before they arrived at the Henry, go no further than here.)

To complete the class, Val’s  students, Anastasia Ames and Michael Bambauer, designed and made corsets of their own. Last week,  I went to the School of Drama’s costume shop to see their work.

Here’s a photo of the curiosity-inspiring costume shop. All the boxes are filled with wigs, hats, ties, you name it. This is just a portion of them.

And here is a selection of bones, the flat, sturdy inserts that make corsets (and other garments) rigid. Bones were at one point sometimes made of bone, whalebone specifically, but metal and plastic are the standard materials.

Val invited two graduate students from the costume design program, Linnaea Boone Wilson and Rachel Apatoff, to join Anastasia and Michael in demonstrating their craftsmanship. (Val’s responsible for the ace corsets Linnaea (pink) and Rachel (teal) are wearing.)

Some close-ups of the student work:

Corset by Anastasia Armes.

Corset by Michael Bambauer.

After we snapped photos, Anastasia demonstrated the fine art of sitting down in a corset – the garment requires that you sit on the very edge of your seat with your shoulders pulled back. This posture is the perfect bodily “S” characteristic of heroines in period films (well, heroines at tea). The students report that it is fairly comfortable to sit this way; the corset pretty much holds you up.

I also got a short history of the male corset, which was in vogue from around the time of King George IV (late 18th century) until the early part of the 20th century. Michael’s added a rhinestone-studded zipper to his corset (demonstrated above) to cover the metal hooks that close the garment in front. This corset is most definitely not an undergarment.

Sending my good vibes across the border

Lucy Clout Untitled (eyebrows). 2008 Undercoat, pulleys, sash-cord, cleat, brackets, eyelets, mdf cut to fit Phillips desk Dimensions variable

This show,  An Invitation to An Infiltration, opens tonight in Vancouver, BC. I am sending it all my good vibes.

From the CAG’s site:

An ideal context for an examination of the competitive nature of group exhibitions is during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Organized by guest curator Eric Fredericksen, An Invitation to An Infiltration is a group exhibition of local and international artists ranging from emerging to established. The exhibition takes stock of the current state of artistic interventions in the physical space or institutional workings of a gallery. Over the course of its run, An Invitation to An Infiltration will continually disrupt the CAG’s gallery space and change over time. The exhibition extends from the galleries to the windows to the street, and embraces its secondary materials, particularly curatorial and promotional texts and web information.