SONIC NOON August 5th: Free concert!

Download a printable flier here.

Our Sonic Noon series continues with Ivan Arteaga (sax) and Jared Borkowski (guitar), who will perform next Thursday, August 5th, from 1-2 pm in the Henry’s Sculpture Court. This event is FREE. If you missed July’s performance by Ethel’s Effel, see photos and a recap here.

Now in its third year, this casual concert series is co-presented by the Henry and the University of Washington School of Music. Come experience live music performed by  School of Music students in the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Sculpture Court. Grab some food at Molly’s, head outdoors, and join us for a sonically satisfying lunch break.

Mark your calendars: the following Sonic Noon concert is Thursday, September 2nd, 1-2 pm and will feature a performance by Andrea Roberts (keyboard) and Steven Bell (vibraphone).

New on the webs: AIGA Seattle

Design Community!
Check it out! AIGA Seattle launched a brand new website. We’ve added them to the blogroll, and we’re excited about all the new features. Looks like a great resource for designers, students, and design-curious types.

MYSTIC SONS OF MORRIS GRAVES

Morris Graves Centenary Invitational Art Exhibition & Séance @ Rock/DeMent, the Corridor, and Angle Galleries, 306.S. Washington St., Seattle. Opening reception First Thursday, August 5 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM – Exhibition continues through August 28, 2010

July 15, 2010 – Seattle, WA. The Mystic Sons of Morris Graves, a chivalric order dedicated to furbelows and folderol, is commemorating the centenary of Graves’ birth with an invitational art exhibition and séance in August at the Tashiro Kaplan artists cooperative in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.

The art exhibition will feature dozens of homages to Northwest master painter Morris Graves by accomplished members and friends of Seattle Lodge No. 93. The show features work in all media from established and emerging artists including Chris Crites, Charles Krafft, Stephen Rock, Tony Bennet, Ries Niemi, George Condo, Kelly Lyles, Peter Santino, Matthew Barney, Stan Lee, David C, Kane, Susan Rothenberg, Eric Nelson, Mya Lin, Don Ed Hardy, John Ohanessian, Grace Slick, Matthew Kangas, Charlie Manson, Larry Reid, and countless others. Also included in the exhibition will be seldom-seen artworks and artifacts created by Morris Graves specifically for the Seattle Lodge.

The Morris Graves Centenary exhibition opens with a festive reception on First Thursday, August 5 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM at 3 galleries in the Tashiro Kaplan compound: Rock/DeMent, the Corridor, and Angle Galleries at 306 S. Washington St.

Complete your mystic journey with visit The Henry Art Gallery to view some of Graves work in Vortexhibition Polyphonica Opus III and check out even more information on the exhibition website.

Graves, Morris U.S. (1910 - 2001) Unfinished C. 1937 - 1938 Oil on canvas 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm) stretcher bar size Works Projects Administration Art Program FA 38.1

Summer Shuffle in Photos

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Thanks for swapping, swappers! Thanks for shopping, shoppers — but most of all, thanks for enjoying a lovely summer day with us at the Henry. Let’s do it again soon!

Musings

Students partaking in the UW Middle School Young Writers Workshop paid a visit to the Henry this past month to search for literary inspiration. They took an exploratory look through our dynamic exhibition Vortexhibition Polyphonica. Their instructor Storme Webber, an accomplished spoken word, vocal and visual artist with an extensive experience in writing, teaching and performance guided her students to find poetry within the Henry’s collection. Here is a poem created from a student’s experience with Gary Hill’s Wall Piece. To read more of the students’ brilliant work visit the class’s blog at stormesraindrops.wordpress.com.

Dark Picture by Piggy Zombie

Pung! Pung! Pung!

Lights!

Surprising!

Jumping!

Picturing one person

Can surprise

Other!

Lights!

One person Jump!

Everybody Jump!

One, more, One, more,

Keep closing eyes!

Jump!  Surprise!  Lights!

Shiny!

It makes bright

For one second!

Surprise!

Jumping!

Crashing to the wall!

31 Years, 4 to 5 Hours A Week, for the Henry

Susan Lenz. Volunteer, Decision Portrait Series. Detail.

The magic of Google Alerts led me to artist Susan Lenz’s embroidery and fiber arts blog. For this project, Susan wanted to illustrate  important and everyday decisions by creating portraits. For Volunteer, (other portraits listed here) she created a portrait of Henry Art Gallery volunteer Pat Albiston. Pat was one of the tireless volunteers who worked to create the Embroidery Stitch Identification Guide, a new resource available online.

From Pat (Henry Volunteer) via Art in Stitches:

I gave my time to the University of Washington Henry Art Gallery for 31 years (4 to 5 hours once a week during the academic year) to work with a committee to identify the stitches in the Henry Gallery’s Textile Collection and to standardize the stitch names. The index includes all the stitch names we found cross referenced to the most commonly used name which leads to additional information.  The committee membership varied over the years but I was there for the entire 31 years.   It was a fabulous experience and friendships developed until we were also a support group for each other.  We were allowed to handle all but the most fragile pieces in the collection.  What an opportunity!

Read Susan’s whole post, here.

Volunteer, Decision Portrait Series. Stitched words: Stitch identification; 4 to 5 hours a week for 31 years at the Henry Art Gallery. Xylene photo transfer on tea-stained muslin. 25" x 19" unframed; 31" x 25" framed. Stitches used: straight, running, couching!

See It For Yourself

TeenTix our city’s radical, revolutionary arts-access program for teens sent Lucy H, one of their teen critics, to review I Myself Have Seen It: Photography & Kiki Smith. Check out her review, here on the TeenTix blog: See It For Yourself.

Join Us for a Guided Tour this Saturday, July 24th, at 2pm

This Saturday in addition to the Arnold Palmer of Book Sales/Book Swaps there will be a guided tour starting at 2 pm featuring I Myself Have Seen It: Photography & Kiki Smith and Vortexhibition Polyphonica Opus III.

The tour will last 50 minutes and will be led by a trained guide. It’s another opportunity to see the Kiki Smith show in its last month (!!!) at the Henry as well as get an introduction to the latest iteration of the collections show, Vortexhibition Polyphonica Opus III.

To reserve a spot on the tour please email tours@henryart.org or call 206.221.4980.

Tours are free with museum admission or Henry membership.

Upcoming tours:
• Friday, August 5th, 7pm: Guided tour featuring I Myself Have Seen It: Photography & Kiki Smith.
• Friday, August 12th, 6 pm: Guided tour in conjunction with the film screening of Kiki Smith: Squatting the Palace at 7 pm.

The art comes and it goes…

Supervising Preparator Dan Gurney documented the de-installation of E.V. Day’s Cherry Bomb Vortex from Vortexhibtion Polyphonica back in May.

Come check out the latest round of Vortexhibtion with new additions from Victoria Haven, Roy McMakin, Polly Apfelbaum, Charles LeDray, Christian Marclay and many other artists.

Summer Shuffle

Download a printable 8.5×11 flier here: SummerShuffle-FLIER to share with your friends!

Arnold Palmer = Half Iced Tea & Half Lemonade
Summer Shuffle = Half Sale & Half Swap (plus readings in the Skyspace)

Come join us as we host our first summer book sale! We’ve gone through our storage and collected the greatest books we have so that they might find a new owner- YOU!
On Saturday July 24th the Henry will host a summer book sale and swap featuring a variety of exhibition catalogues and publications from our secret stash.

In addition to the books on sale, visitors are encouraged to bring their own art books and swap them for other art books that have been donated by a variety of organizations and individuals.

Visitors may swap as many books as they like- one for one. Remaining books will be donated to the Friends of the Seattle Public Library and Books To Prisoners.
This event will also feature readings from Nico Vassilakis and Crystal Curry at 12pm, and Joel Felix and Jeanne Heuving at 2pm in the James Turrell Skyspace.

Any fine art book in good condition is eligible for swapping at this event. Books like these are welcome:

-monographs
-artist books
-solo or group exhibition catalogues
-art history texts
-art theory texts
-editions periodicals
-quarterly reviews on art/literature
-zines
-artist biographies