The Henry receives NEA grant

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Rocco Landesman announced today that the Henry is one of 832 non-profit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. The Henry was awarded a $20,000 grant to support the upcoming exhibition Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty to be presented March 2 – July 7, 2013. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Deborah Willis, Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Out [o] Fashion will present over 90 photographs that examine historic and contemporary representations of beauty. The exhibition will include works by renowned artists Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, E. J. Bellocq, Marsha Burns, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Curtis, Bruce Davidson, Fred Miller, Hope Sandrow, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Andy Warhol, Weegee, Carrie Mae Weems, and Garry Winogrand.

“I’m proud to announce these 832 grants to the American public including the Henry Art Gallery,” said Chairman Landesman. “These projects offer extraordinary examples of creativity in our country, including the creation of new work, innovative ways of engaging audiences, and exemplary education programs.”

In March 2012, the NEA received 1,509 eligible applications for Art Works requesting more than $74 million in funding. The 832 recommended NEA grants total $22.3 million, span 13 artistic disciplines and fields, and focus primarily on the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing works for the benefit of American audiences. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.

A complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support may be found at the NEA website at arts.gov.

The Rest is Just Noise: John Cage Programming at the Henry

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As many of you know, this year is the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth. Many arts and cultural institutions across the country are celebrating with John Cage programming, and the Henry is partaking in our own unique way. Within the past week we have staged a performance of Cage’s 33 1/3 Performed by the Audience on Friday. Read more about the performance HERE.

Earlier today we held a sold out workshop on mushroom cultivation at home, Fungus Among Us. You might be wondering “how this is a John Cage related program?” John Cage was an amateur mycologist during his 80 years. Don’t let the adjective “amateur” fool you though, Cage founded the New York Mycological Society with a small group of other mycologially-inclined people over 40 years ago. He also amassed a mycology collection during his lifetime which includes “correspondence, journals, newsletters, pamphlets, ephemera and realia related to mushrooms.” Cage gifted this collection to Special Collections at the University of Santa Cruz, where it can be researched and perused at the McHenry Library. Honoring the music John Cage composed during his lifetime is obviously necessary in a celebration of his life, but so is mycology. You can thank our Public Programs Coordinator, Whitney Ford-Terry, for such inspired programming honoring John Cage as the multidimensional man that he was.

Fungus Among Us was a workshop held at the Henry which was an introduction in cultivating your own edible mushrooms at home. We provided shiitake Grow-At-Home kits from Sno-Valley Mushrooms for the participants and helped them with their first step, rehousing the logs. Then Pacita Roberts with Hildegard Hendrickson from the Puget Sound Mycological Society gave a fantastic presentation on foraging for mushrooms. See pictures above.

If you are sad that you missed out on these two events, you have another chance to celebrate Cage’s multifaceted legacy in a unique way at the end of this month. On November 30th, the Henry is celebrating Cage’s vast and tremendously diverse output by hosting a performance by Stacey Mastrian and Stephen F. Lilly who will present selections that employ the voice in its many facets. These range from the simple, ethereal “Experiences No. 2” for solo voice with text by e e cummings, to readings from Cage’s prolific body of written work, such as Lecture on Nothing and Indeterminacy. Add the Henry to your calendar for November 30th, 7-9 pm, and buy your tickets here.

 

Open House TOMORROW

The Henry Open House is teeming with fun, excitement, and art! Not only are we opening two new exhibitions, Like a Valentine: The Art of Jeffry Mitchell and Now Here is also Nowhere: Part I, but we are also throwing a museum-wide party! Come dressed in your conceptual best for the Student Henry Advisory Group’s Conceptual Costume Contest. Enjoy the sweet music of the UW Mariachi Band, Fainting Goats, and FBDC ~ ФБДЦ; Check out the FAN CLUB in the Study Center; eat some delicious babycakes courtesy of Cupcake Royale and enjoy libations from Pyramid Breweries. All of that PLUS installations of Public Health Poems by Rachel Kessler!

Rachel Kessler will premier her new poem cycle on public health posters installed in The Henry’s restrooms by sinks and in bathroom stalls.  Kessler will lead groups in hand-washing poetry usage, demonstrate hand washing technique, recite bathroom stall limericks, and sing sea shantys.  Each poem lasts approximately 30 seconds, the amount of time the department of health recommends lathering hands for.

 

PUBLIC HEALTH POEMS
About the project:

Remember how your preschool teacher instructed you to rub your soapy hands together for the entirety of the Happy Birthday song?  Now there is a poem for that.  While scrubbing in like surgeons, our minds and mouths deserve something more than that same old dreary song.

Rachel Kessler, a poet of the everyday, has composed a new poem cycle that will appear on bathroom stall doors, above urinals, and next to sinks in public restrooms. Posing as Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work signs and stall door advertisements, these poster poems will provide entertainment while imparting a useful earworm of knowledge.

She began writing her first anonymous protest poems on the bathroom stall walls in seventh grade, and has long been fascinated by graffiti art. Inspired by a collaboration several years ago with poet Pete Miller and their collective LOCCAL: League of Citizens Concerned About Literature, her work with homeless adults, and as a preschool teacher and parent, began trying her hand at School House Rock style poems for her kids to recite while scrubbing their hands at the sink.

Determined to put poetry in unlikely and non-traditional venues, her work explores the function and origin of poetry, not only as a mnemonic device, but as a way to reflect on the mundane, daily activities that comprise the majority of our hours. After a short residency in Rome researching ancient public health works, she collaborated with graffiti, nursery rhyme, fairy tales, health department propaganda to compose poems for hand-washing, poems for toilet use, poems for dental hygiene, poems for bathroom stall decisions.  Like the “Talking Fountains” of Rome, defaced statues where poets post anonymous political commentary, bathroom stalls are the original online comments.  Public restrooms, like phone booths, are one of the few public-private spaces where a citizen can find respite in a public place.

This project was funded by a City Artists award from the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

 

About the Henry event:
Several Public Health Poems will be installed in the Henry restrooms by sinks and in bathroom stalls. Rachel Kessler will lead individuals and groups in handwashing-poetry usage in the restrooms via demonstrations, in impromptu bathroom stall limerick recitations, and in other public health poetic concerns.  Sea shantys will be sung in bathroom stalls.

 

BIO:

Rachel Kessler, co-founder of poetry-performance collaborations Typing Explosion and the Vis-à-Vis Society, is a writer and performer from Seattle.  Passionate about presenting poetry in non-traditional venues, she has performed interactive poetry in parks, on buses, in phonebooths, hair salons, and abandoned motels. She is visiting faculty and writer-in-residence at Centrum, a Whiteley Center Fellow with the University of Washington, a Jack Straw Writer, and senior writer-in-residence with Seattle Arts & Lectures.  She has performed at multiple times at the Seattle Art Museum, Bumbershoot, Night School at the Sorrento, Galapagos Art Space and Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.  Her poems have appeared in Tin House and the Monarch Review, and her text-based visual art is featured in The Open Daybook and Sea-Cat.

In summary, she’s a pretty rad lady. Make sure to spend some time in the loo at the Open House!

reminder: QUEERING THE ART MUSEUM SYMPOSIUM!!

 

Hello there, dear Hank Blog readers,

This is a friendly reminder (I know, I know, of course you didn’t forget!) about the amazing Queer events happening at the Henry, the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Space this weekend.

TONIGHT (may 11th, more details HERE)

Join us for a reception at Molly’s Cafe at the Henry Art Gallery, starting at 5:30, followed by an horizon broadening discussion (at 6:30) of current practices in queer engagement and exhibiting in art museums in the auditorium

TOMORROW (may 12th, more details HERE)

A mind blowing discussion of the future of queer in museums in the Henry Art Auditorium, starting at 10 am. There will also be a lunchtime performance by Ilvs Strauss, a Seattle performance artist. Then we will all collectively apparate (read: take the bus, carpool, bike) down to the Tacoma Art Museum for exhibition tours with Hide/Seek co-curator, Jonathan Katz and a community building workshop facilitated by Queering the Museum founders, Erin Bailey and Nicole Robert. Afterwards, come to the Space (at 8pm) for a public reception and celebration!

Not sure how to get to Tacoma? Here are some driving directions, here are biking directions and if all else fails, the #586 which picks up right outside the Henry takes you right to Tacoma!

All of the event (save the exhibition tour, which is $5) are free for UW Students!
Reserve / buy tickets: may 11th & may 12th 

Exhaustion (AND EXUBERANCE!)

To perform: (transitive verb)

1. To adhere to the terms of: Fulfill (perform a contract)

2. Carry out, Do

3. To do in a formal manner or according to prescribed ritual

(intransitive verb)

1. To carry out an action or pattern of behavior: Act, Function

2. To give a performance

I’ve been thinking about what it means to Perform lately- as in to PRODUCE. Or rather, to work hard for a specific outcome.  Surely, it is tied to my student status, and more specifically the fact that I will be graduating from college in approximately 36 days but man, oh man have I got some grade A performance anxiety these days.  I’m putting off what i should be doing (writing my final research paper) in order to do that which I need not do at the moment (Google image searching, see attached image) -in an attempt to move (trick?) myself in a direction or into a sense of accomplishment for producing something that is not exactly required of me.  We all do it: avoidance, distraction, frustration…

Coaching me through the highs and lows (there are many) is one of the most relevant and helpful pieces of writing that I have had the pleasure of being exposed to during my college years (big ups to Mr. Eric Fredericksen and his now no-longer, yet indispensable Art 361 course at the University of Washington) : Exhaustion and Exuberance, Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform by Jan Verwoert.  This essay, subtitled Yes/No and Other Options explores the pressures to produce and to perform in a high demand, high performance culture.  What does it mean to produce that which is asked of us in a creative environment and what happens when we renegotiate the terms of said demand, and further how do we talk about that outcome?

Whoa.

The long and short of it: I read and re-read this piece of writing every few months (sometimes as justification, sometimes as a positive channel for my own personal self-flagellation) and perhaps you should too.  For everyone in a creative field, heck for anyone in ANY field, you might find that this resonates with you too.

Share the knowledge and Happy reading.

Exhaustion and Exuberance can be found all over the internet. Like HERE.

In the meantime, go easy on yourself dear reader and remember, sometimes you just need TIME TO MULL THINGS OVER.  As my wonderful co-worker recently reminded me in an email: “Latency is of import.”

For more reading, do do do check out the old ART 361 site chock-full of gems, or this, or this.

AUTHOR AND SUBJECT: CONTEMPORARY QUEER PHOTOGRAPHY

Steven Miller / Adrain Chesser, Welcome Figure

Photo Center Northwest‘s new exhibition, Author and Subject: Contemporary Queer Photography, focuses on ten contemporary queer photographers who explore ideas of identity, gender, courage, relationships, sexuality and the human form.

The exhibition features artists Adrain Chesser, Kelli Connell, Katie Koti, Molly Landreth, Steven Miller, Rafael Soldi, Chad States, Lorenzo Triburgo, Amelia Tovey, and Sophia Wallace. Join PCNW this Thursday (April 12th, 6-8PM) in in celebrating queer art and culture in Seattle. Performances by Tenderfoot and Waxie Moon, who also performed at the Henry’s Symposium, Streaming in from the Moon. Also present, Queer Youth Space, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and #1 Must Have queer zine & installation. Read more about the exhibition HERE.

Want to learn more about engaging queer culture in an art context? The Henry is hosting a two part symposium: Queering the Art Museum: How did we get here? on Friday May 11th and Queering the Art Museum: Where do we go from here?  Saturday May 12th.  Tickets sold separately, get them HERE and HERE.

Watching Paint Dry, Cinematically: Gerhard Richter Painting

GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING

at Northwest Film Forum, Mar 23 – Mar 29.

Mar 23 – Mar 29

(Corinna Belz, 2011, Germany, 97 min)

 

Seattle Premiere!
With special guest introduction by the Henry’s own Sara Krajewski at the Friday 3/23 7pm show!

Gerhard Richter, one of the most significant contemporary artists of our times, granted filmmaker Corinna Belz access to his studio in the spring and summer of 2009 as he worked on a series of large abstract paintings. Gerhard Richter Painting offers rare insights into the artist’s process with a quiet, fly-on-the-wall perspective. The paintings themselves become the protagonists. Gerhard Richter Painting is the penetrating portrait of an artist at work—and a fascinating film about the art of seeing.

 

Buy Tickets Now >

“Like a whimsical astronaut, poised to leave for a less cynical plane of existence at any moment”

Tender Forever, Your Heart Breaks Tonight at Henry Art Gallery UW
posted on the Stranger’s Line Out by JACKSON HATHORN on THU, JAN 12, 2012 at 8:52 AM

As any liberal arts graduate will tell you, college is about exposing yourself to new ideas, broadening horizons, and generally saying ‘yes’ to things because your brain is still mush. You don’t have to be matriculated at UW to get cultured at theHenry Art Gallery on campus, and if you haven’t caught one of their infrequent shows before, here’s a chance to tap into that collegiate frame of mind with a night of music and multimedia performance. Tender Forever poses questions straight from Philosophy 101 on her latest release Where Are We From, all over effervescent electronic beats akin to fellow K Records’ artist the Blow, but with a few 8-Bit flourishes in the mix too. Opener Your Heart Breaks almost seems too fragile for this world, but not in a mopey way that the moniker might suggest. Instead, the capriciousness of YHB’s loop-pedal storytelling makes Clyde Peterson sound like a whimsical astronaut, poised to leave for a less cynical plane of existence at any moment, like the hero of his standout “God Bless John Glen.”

TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR!
Come early for

How to Make a One Minute Sculpture with Mike Pham

(Here’s the YHB and TF show  on the Henry website.) 

The Emancipated Spectator Rocks On!

THE FINAL EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR GROUP DISCUSSION HAS BEEN MOVED TO ROCK BOX KARAOKE!

This month’s Talent Show discussion group, The Emancipated Spectator: Broadcast yourself, part 2 (Art, Entertainment and Reality), will meet in the lobby of Rock Box Karaoke this Thursday, August 25, at 7pm. Come embrace Karaoke culture and talk about the Talent Show.

Join Henry Curator Sara Krajewski for a casual discussion focused around the themes of participation, exhibitionism, and voyeurism explored in the recently departed exhibition, The Talent Show. Using the exhibition as inspiration, the group will discuss the following readings and films:

Reading:
Neil Gabler – Life the Movie
Walter Kirn – Little Brother is Watching

Viewing:
David Holzman’s Diary and Benny’s Video

This final gathering will be a casual meet up at Rock Box Karaoke, which we felt was appropriate as an example of the quest for momentary fame…and we love Karaoke! Rock Box is located at 1603 Nagle Place in Capitol Hill.

The films selected for this program — including selections such as David Holzman’s Diary (Jim McBride), Benny’s Video (Michael Haneke), Network (Sidney Lumet), Calendar (Atom Egoyan), France/Tour/Detour/Deux Enfants (Jean-Luc Godard), and Martha Rosler Reads Vogue (Paper Tiger Television) — were chosen by exhibiting artist and filmmaker Amie Siegel to accompany The Talent Show. Each of these films—from a mock verité sixties film diary to an epic, uncannily Brechtian series for French Television, to the macabre sensibility of Viennese feature filmmaking— consider the individual broadcast of self from private spaces, the role of media technologies in documentation, and the seemingly elastic nature of privacy and subjectivity. These films also share a key television trope that also arises in the My Way videos on view in The Talent Show, the direct address. This discursive mode is played to the viewer via product pitches, news reports, and screen tests.

Only two days left to get your tickets for Surveillance Cinema!

Don’t miss out on the Henry’s special screening and artist lecture with James Coupe this Thursday, August 11! Tickets are still available on Stranger Tickets.

In conjunction with the exhibition The Talent Show , on view from May 7, 2011 through August 21, The Henry Art Gallery invites you to join artist James Coupe for a screening and discussion of the artist’s recent work with ‘surveillance cinema’ in (re)collector, Surveillance Suite, and the web-based work Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days. Read more about James Coupe and his work at the Henry’s event listing page…

You can see these video works and more at James Coupe’s website here.

Before you check out these works on the artist’s website and partake in his lecture Thursday night, check out this project overview video of Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days:

Have your interests peaked yet? If you want to participate in work like this and get some pre-insight into James Coupe’s lecture, add this Facebook app to your page. You might see something familiar on I hope to Understand‘s YouTube channel.

Finally, for all you The Talent Show fans, “like” it on Facebook for up-to-date news on its concurrent events. Please note that by “liking” this page, you consent to having your photos used in conjecture with the exhibition. We felt this was highly appropriate for the themes of our show.

See you all Thursday night!