It’s all very disorienting, enjoyably and intentionally so

A very thoughtful review of Gary Hill’s glossodelic attractors at the Henry by Brian Miller in the Seattle Weekly.

“A bad museum experience can be like a death march, trudging for what seems miles among the antiquities at the Met or the Louvre, trying to see the whole collection in a day. And yet a good museum show should involve plenty of walking, too. You feel the difference in your feet—whether they’re tired and you just want to sit in the cafeteria, or you want to keep going, eager to reach the next gallery. You feel the latter, invigorating sensation atglossodelic attractors, if you can get past the show’s title.”

Read the rest HERE.

Glossodelic Updates!

Hey Henry enthusiasts, just an update that the date for our upcoming program, Multi-Media Talk: Anastasia Yumeko Hill When Image Fondles the Tongue (and other experiments), has changed and will now talk place on Thursday, August 23 at 7pm. We apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to seeing you in August! You can still reserved tickets for this performance online here.

Also, if you haven’t already seen this great write up by Brian Miller from the Seattle Weekly take a peak.

“One of the two big works that’ll remain up for the show’s duration, The Psychedelic Gedankenexperiment immediately teases your brain into up/down, left/right confusion. Some kind of nutty professor (actually Hill) is giving a lecture on a pair of video screens, but his words register as gibberish or Esperanto. His movements are herky-jerky and unnatural. It’s like a nightmare flashback to freshman-year Physics 101—and you don’t understand a word he’s saying! But wait, maybe you’re not dreaming. Maybe you’re not high. Sit on the weird foam stools, put on the 3-D glasses, and you may recall the backward-talking dwarf dream in Twin Peaks. The phonetic companion text on the wall (LSD is “the most powerful and in time the most influential work of art throughout all of history”) helps translate the 22-minute videos—only one, actually, synchronized on the two screens.”

Trimpin: The Sound of Invention

Join us tonight at 7:30 for a special screening of Trimpin: The Sound of Invention, a sonic journey through an eccentric world.This documentary follows the artist as he designs a 60-foot tower of more than 500 electric guitars; builds an ensemble of marimbas that convert real-time earthquake data into music; and collaborates with the Kronos Quartet on an array of toy instruments. This film will delight anyone interested in the mysteries, pitfalls, and sheer joy of creative experiment. Introduction to the film by Beth Sellars, Curator of Suyama Space.

UW Students: Call for Artwork

The UW Hall Health Center has released a call for artwork from UW students to be displayed in in the building during the 2012-2013 school year. The exhibition’s intent is to promote the theme of physical and mental wellbeing.

Any size and media of work will be considered. Please provide the composition and dimensions of the work when submitting it. Each artist is limited to 2 digital submissions. The top 3 juried works will receive a $100 prize!

All work is due Friday, June 9^th, 5pm. Submit work to:  hhpccweb@u.washington.edu.

Gold, Flowers, Shrines, Celebrations, Dead Animals, Glitter and Vibrators: Tony Sonnenberg

Have I ever told you how much I LOVE the Ceramic and Metal Arts building?  Well, I really do.  I biked down there on a beautiful afternoon last week to drop in on Tony in his studio.  The CMA is a magical place where all the best parts of it seem to always stay the same: a volleyball net and thirty bikes locked up out front, all the doors wide open, thick dust and clay residue EVERY WHERE, and some guy walking around without his shirt on.  It’s sort of like being at your best friend’s house where people are always coming and going, there are always snacks and music and someone’s always super stoned.  Let the good times roll.  Whatever, it’s a beautiful place and I immediately remembered that special place in my heart for the CMA.

 I’ve been trying to track Tony down now for about three weeks.  This guy is a super lovebug who you can’t help but feel at ease with whenever you’re around him.  “I had a piece blow up in the kiln the other day…” That was the first thing he said to me once in his studio.  He seemed pretty bummed out, or maybe just exhausted.  But in true Tony fashion, he followed it up with a beautiful up-beat aside: “But maybe it was just god editing my work for me!” HA/DUH.  Whatta guy!

Tony’s Studio. GOLD!

As with all of the MFAs, Tony is preparing for his departmental thesis show (Tuesday at the CMA, 6pm) as well as the Henry show that opens Friday, so it makes sense that it’s taken so long to get some face time.  His work is great because his sculptural pieces are always perfectly finished and over the top decadent (he cites baroque and rococo as huge influences) and come out of layers and layers of stories and jokes, source materials, and imagined scenarios (as my #1 top favorite professor always says: “IT’S ALLEGORICAL!”).  Of his own work Tony has this to say: “My work is about facades and what’s behind facades, superficial narratives over more mysterious ones…I have a lot of interest in surfaces and modes of pulling the viewer in.  There is always a top layer of humor and beauty and materialism and decadence…you’re never quite sure what you’re looking at- you’re always second guessing what you’re seeing.  On the one hand, I employ all these tactics and then underneath all that there’s this darkness and kind of emptiness and isolation. It’s like you set up an expectation and then you thwart the expectation.”

Installation shot, Tony Sonnenberg. 2012, CMA.

I Give You: Steve Sewell.

Steve is a weird dude who makes great work.  This guy has a killer collection of found mix-tapes and old art history slides, plays a mean accordion, rules at karaoke and once when he was my TA, nearly failed me.  He is one of those people who is an infuriating mix of smarts, vision, tireless self-motivation and hustle.  We met up over some bazooka bubblegum and talked about the show and what he’s been working on lately.  Walking into his studio I immediately noticed ten bottles of black face paint and knew this would be a good visit.

Steve’s studio.

Chewing Bubblegum, 2011

Hugo to the Henry: Writing with Visual Art

Interested in exercising your writing skills this summer? Want to explore the exhibitions at the Henry through a different medium? The Henry and Richard Hugo House have precisely the class for that.

Meeting at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, this class will use visual art as a springboard for writing. We’ll mine a range of media (photographs, paintings, sculpture, textiles, etc.) to unearth new prose projects or add depth and breadth to works in progress. To help with the creative percolation, we’ll read short published works that have been inspired by visual art. Exercises, readings and discussions will cover process, character, story, landscape (internal and external) and style. Students will be able to workshop one short-short story or essay. Optional text: “Looking Together: Writers on Art,” ed. Rebecca Brown and Mary Jane Knecht (Frye Art Museum & University of Washington Press).

Instructor: Anca Szilagyi

Anca Szilágyi grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Western Humanities Review, The Antigonish Review and on the Ploughshares blog. She holds anMFA from the University of Washington, where she has also taught fiction writing. Her first novel, which she is currently revising, is set in Brooklyn and Buenos Aires.

Meets: Thursdays, July 12 -August 16, 5-7 p.m. 
PLEASE NOTE: This class meets weekly at the Henry Art Gallery.
Hugo House and Henry Art Gallery Members: $207.00 
General Public: $230.00

Want to register or need more information? Click HERE.

ART BREAK for UW staff

University of Washington staff, faculty and affiliates are invited to join s for FREE 30-munite guided tours of the Henry’s exhibitions. Gather your colleagues and meet at the Henry for an engaging tour. New art will be explored each month. Make it a date! Stay for lunch in our café and keep the conversation going.

Wednesday, May30
12:00 – 12:30 PM
FREE

Interested? RSVP HERE.

SIFF!

Seattle International Film Festival opens this week (Thursday, May 17th)!  SIFF is the largest film festival in the country and it’s right in your backyard! SIFF kicks off with an Opening Night Gala on Thursday at 7:00 pm and runs through June 10th. There is also a great SIFFTER tool to help people sift through the more than 400 films and narrow down choices based on your preferences including genre, country, time of day, and other filters.

We at the Henry would like draw your attention to contemporary art and artists featured at the festival:

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
May 18th, 6:30 pm
May 19th, 6:30 pm
AMC Pacific Place 11

Maria Abramovic: The Artist is Present
June 6th, 6:30 pm
AMC Pacific Place 11
June 8th, 4:00 pm
SIFF Uptown Cinema

Last day to RSVP for Collection in Focus: Installation Art.

There are only a few spots left for this terrific event at the Henry on Friday, May 18, 2012, 7:00 – 8:30 PM in the Reed Collection Study Center

Join Henry Head Preparator and Exhibition Designer Jim Rittimann, Henry Lead Preparator Dan Gurney, and Eric Fredericksen, Director of Western Bridge, for a discussion about select works in the museum’s collection that have challenged museum staff to rethink how art is stored, cared for, and installed. Artworks highlighted in the discussion will include James Turell’’s Skyspace Light Reign and Wolfgang Laib’’s Pollen from Hazelnut.

RSVP by TODAY, May 15 to Rachael Faust, Assistant Curator of Collections and Academic Programs, at RachaelF@henryart.org