Strait Art Installation Views

Jake Seniuk, Director of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center and Curator of Strait Art, just sent me these gorgeous installations views.

Wolf Like Me

Time for another musical interlude.

Erin Sherry Makes Awesome Clothes

I've brought you good food, great music and now (it's about time) for some hot clothes. Erin Sherry is one of my dearest friends, meticulous with needle and thread, and a brilliant clothing designer. Here's a sampling of her latest collection, shot on location in San Diego by photographer Kat Woronowicz.

Pinky red cotton, burgundy piping, front pockets, cream hand stitching, button back

Erin makes clothes for women with bods of all shapes and sizes. Everything is impeccably made, sexy-cute, and made with the premise that true gorgeousness is always comfortable.

You can see my particular attraction to her work is in the details. Lines of piping, shining dots of the snaps laid out in a unique 1, 2, 1, 2 . . . pattern. Wonderful!

JUMPSUIT! fine wale midnight blue corduroy, red piping, pears snaps, front fly

Organic cotton woven sweater, burgundy piping, front pockets, pearl snaps.
Skirt, purple cotton, cream hand stitching

And, now, drumroll please . . .
The Best Pants in The Universe:

Organic cotton woven sweater, burgundy piping, pearl snaps
Fine wale midnight blue corduroy pants, pockets, front fly

This sweetheart of a dress is one of a kind . . . go searchin' for rad vintage bed sheets . . . Miss Sherry will make you one!

Vintage wilderness scene bed sheet, fully lined, white piping, front pockets, vintage trim straps

Erin has a website in the works, I'll be sure to tell you all about it as soon as it is up and running.

For now you can reach her this way: erinsherry@yahoo.com

Uneasy Heavens Await Those Fleeing: A Celebration of Art and Armageddon

I am so excited about this event!

Uneasy Heavens Await Those Fleeing, 2009, acrylic, ink, glitter, 30 x 60"

Jennifer Borges Foster is bringing together writers, musicians, dancers, painters, photographers, performance artists and more to re-interpret the title of her first completed poetry manuscript, Uneasy Heavens Await Those Fleeing.

This project is made possible through the generous support of the Mayor's Office of Art & Cultural Affairs and 4Culture.

Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 7:00pm

Canoe Social Club at Theater Off Jackson

409 7th Ave S

Seattle, WA

Admission:

Free to Canoe Social Club Members

$5 for Non-Members

Note: Full Bar available.

This event is 21+

Contributing Artists:

Music

Sean Nelson

David Nixon

Jose Bold

John Ackermann

Rick Miller

Erin Jorgensen

Sunday Service

Dance

Amy O'Neal and Mark Haim

Zoe Scofield

Poets/Writers

Rebecca Brown

Matt Briggs

John Olson

Roberta Olson

Doug Nufer

Kary Wayson

Arne Pihl

Linden Ontjes

Brian McGugian

Kate Lebo

Elizabeth Colen

Carol Guess

Koushik Ghosh

Karen Finneyfrock

Peter Periera

Bob Redmond

Brangien Davis

Amy Schrader

Art/Installation

Elizabeth Bisegna Gaston

Counsel Langley

Kim Drake

Erin Shafkind

Jennifer Zwick

Jed Dunkerley

Paul Larned

Karen Rudd

Costume

Chrissy Wai-Ching

Stait Art

Strait Art 2009
March 22 - May 10

Two of my paintings will be at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, along with some great work from 35 other North Olympic Peninsula artists, for Strait Art 2009. Here's what PAFAC has to say about the show, from www.pafac.org:

35 North Peninsula artists exhibit diverse personal visions in the annual showcase drawn from the local scene.

Strait Art, the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center’s annual showcase of local talent, opens its 2009 installment on Sunday, March 22, with a reception for the artists from 2-4 pm. The exhibition presents the works of thirty-five artists from Clallam and Jefferson Counties and will continue through May 10.

“Each year this show provides a rich opportunity to sample what the artists of Juan de Fuca country are up to,” said PAFAC director and exhibition curator Jake Seniuk. “From the more than fifty applicants I chose a mix of newcomers and veterans of past Strait Art exhibitions.

“In order to provide a venue for the widest range of submittals we don’t search for any kind of overarching theme other than the artists’ residency on the North Olympic Peninsula. The existence of a bona fide regionalism has long been in decline as a serious consideration in art, and in our age of instant interconnectivity and information overload one is likely to find lots of overlap between local and international outlooks.”

Space is always at a premium in the relatively small footprint of the Webster House, but Seniuk feels it is important to show more than a single work from each artist. Except for a couple of installations, each artist is represented by a pair of works.

“In addition to showing the best work offered,” said Seniuk, “it is the curator’s challenge to make the most cohesive exhibition possible. That means finding both formal and conceptual relationships. By presenting at least a couple of works by each artist, not only does the viewer get a stronger inkling of any given artist’s personal style, but it also helps nurture the impression that all these diverse works somehow belong together.”

Apart from artists who are so awed by the intrinsic beauty of their home landscape — a predilection that is easy to cultivate amidst the Peninsula’s operatic grandeur of sea and sky, mountain and forest, river and meadow — Peninsula artists, like artists everywhere, struggle with form and content to make a broad range of observations, ideas and emotions visible. “It is the artist’s understanding and skilled handling of the interrelationships between form and content, which gives their works a depth of interest that sustains repeated viewings,” said Seniuk.

Redeye Over Vegas, 2007, acrylic, ink, glitter, 30 " x 30 "

On display are paintings that range from Lisa Gilley’s bucolic rural landscapes, to Counsel Langley’s architectonic designs that suggest systems part organic and part robotic, to Jack Galloway’s free-form Surrealist abstractions that give the impression of an interior space that could be in the bowels or in the mind, to Jennifer Lozada’s large Zen-inspired scrolls that revel in the gesture of the brush.

There is plenty of subject matter, too. Anna Nichols and Harold Nelson collage myriad magazine scraps into their paintings to provide an imbedded narrative. There are stories to decipher in the black-and-white documentary photographs of Harry von Stark, Ed Jaramillo, and Jeremy Johnson, while Brian Schroder, Arthur Grossman, Bob Kaune and Jessica Spisak push their color photos deeper and deeper into abstraction, and Rene Simons foregoes the camera altogether, relying on Photoshop’s liquefying and layering effects to conjure a warm agar in which microscopic and/or extraterrestrial life forms might spawn.

Color is of paramount interest in Renne Brock-Richmond’s weavings that rove across the spectrum in subtle gradations, in Barbara Houshmand’s bold geometric quilts, in Carolyn Cristina Manzoni’s fiery mohair vestment-like shawls and stoles, and in Kim Thomson’s yarn-wrapped vessels that resemble a species of hairy Venusian fruit.

The goddess imagery on Gayle Lutschg’s ceramic vessels draws from both Renaissance chapel frescoes and folk art, while Henner Schroders brilliant cast glass shields blend aboriginal pictographs with the luminosity of backlit cathedral windows.

Artists working in the round include Kathleen Meyer, who is equally adept at both figurative and abstract bronzes and Larry McCaffrey, whose fabricated stainless steel arcs are reduced to shiny vectors in a state of pure motion.

Gray Lucier and Margie McDonald both build up their abstract figures with scavenged materials cast-off by industry, while Anna Wiancko-Chasman draws from the natural world for found forms she molds into shamanistic figures and Pamela Hastings raids the knick-knack bin to create psychologically loaded dolls for grown girls.

One of the most curious pieces is Karen Hackenberg’s Swarm, a giant wasp’s hive constructed of hundreds of wooden match sticks, populated by dozens of tiny model train figurines that bustle about their business oblivious to the tinder box on which they dwell.

There’s much more with works by Denise Erickson, Tammy Hall, Kim Kopp, Sandra Offut, Deanna Pindell, Cynthia Thomas, Jeff Tocher, and Rolf Wald.

Sunset 02115, 2007, acrylic, ink, glitter, 30 " x 30 "

Seattle City Light

Just received word from a fellow calling from City of Seattle's Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs that Seattle City Light is going to purchase Bridge 7 for their portable art collection. Awesome!


Bridge 07
acrylic, ink, glitter
8 x 48"
2007

From Seattle.gov: The city's Portable Works Collection is a rotating collection of more than 2,600 artworks in all media, representing hundreds of artists collected by the city since 1973. The collection includes sculpture, painting, mixed media, prints, photography and textiles.

The artworks are exhibited primarily in public areas of municipal buildings. Using percent-for-art funds from city construction budgets, the portable collection includes the work of emerging and established artists.

The purpose of the Portable Works Collection is to increase public awareness of and support for the arts by displaying works in the working environment of public buildings. Here, the employees are able to experience a wide array of artistic and cultural expression.

When I Grow Up

When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.
Martin de Thurah has directed the new Fever Ray video “When I Grow Up”.

Canoe Social Club

The piece shown in the previous post is now in Seattle's International District at the Canoe Social Club. I have work there as part of a couple of Canoe events.

EVENT 1:

Canoe Social Club Grand Opening
Hosts Jennifer Zeyl and the Canoe Coxswains!
Sunday March 15th
4 pm - 11 pm

These pieces are also there:

Cityscape 17 (Start Over), 2007, acrylic, ink, glitter 36 x 36"
Bridge in Storm, 2006, acrylic, ink, glitter, 15 x 45"


EVENT 2:

Uneasy Heavens Await Those Fleeing*
Host Jennifer Borges Foster
Thursday April 2
7 pm

Drop in during the Grand Opening . . . find out what Canoe is all about!

Canoe Social Club
409 7th Ave South
Seattle, WA

* Hence the title of that piece. Months ago Jennifer Borges Foster asked a bunch of friends to participate in an event she planned around a reading of a piece entitled, you guessed it, Uneasy Heavens Await Those Fleeing. This piece is my response to that title.

New Work

Uneasy Heavens Await Those Fleeing
Diptych
Response to title by Jennifer Borges Foster
acrylic, ink, graphite, glitter on board
30 x 60"
2009

Details:

This piece is the first in a new series:

Two Sides to Every Story. I've been layering two opposing approaches for several years. One is messy; using turbulent techniques, such as, dripping, pours, splatters to create effective representations of natural elements. The other is controlled; lines, concentric circles, grids and repetitive dots drawn with pen and ink, architects' tools, templates and compasses reflecting structures and infrastructures that we build.

Now I will separate, distill and place these same approaches in juxtaposition. On one side, using limited palettes--desaturated, sometimes nearly monochromatic--will be a field of controlled forms; clean and precise, emphasizing differences in surface textures to pick out forms, lines and fields of dots. Evidence that tools were manipulated readiliy apparent. On the other, paint will be allowed to follow its most natural tendencies; evidence of my influence on the medium disappearing to a minimum.

Good Eats

Art rocks my world, but without good music and good food I'm lost. (Of course, ideally we are robustly devouring great art, music and eats simultaneously...ahhhhh....) .

With this in mind, I direct you to a CSA offering from some of my favorite farmers:

If you want fresh, flavorful and nutritious produce, nothing beats joining a farm CSA (except maybe growing your own garden)! As a CSA member you get a weekly assortment of seasonal produce picked the same day and a direct connection to your local farm and farmer. There’s nothing like fresh wholesome food with a story to deepen your appreciation of your meals !

As part of our farm community you’ll develop your sense of place, eating what the Quimper Peninsula can offer, while developing your palette and noticing flavors in vegetables that just don’t ship across the country, or wait for you on . . . OUR FARM:

Froghill Farm is truly a Port Townsend community farm! Located within city limits, the farm and its farmers have been dedicated to sharing its beautiful rural atmosphere and agricultural knowledge with the greater community through a variety of educational and work programs for both children and adults. Since 1998, Froghill has grown high-quality certified organic vegetables, berries and flowers on three fertile acres nourished with compost and cover crops. Our use of Biodynamic techniques and preparations helps bring life and vitality to our soils and crops. Our farm crew includes two farm families, apprentices, working CSA members and volunteers.

THE FARMERS
Sebastian Aguilar and Kelly Gelino have been farming full-time since 1997 and have three children (Emma 10, Ezra 8, and Noah 5).They are passionate about family, simple living, farming and community. A spirit of generosity and the study of biodynamics guides their farming practices. Kelley Janes and Alan Brisley have over 40 years combined organic gardening and farming experience and have farmed Frog Hill Farm since 1997 with their two children Linden (12) and Daisy (8). Kelley and Alan bring their community organizing backgrounds and their commitment to spiritual and social renewal to their farming activity and are developing a model for community involvement in the farm that they call “village style community agriculture.”

THE FOOD
Once a week from June through October, you’ll receive 7 - 9 vegetable crops that are harvested and washed that same morning. These vegetables are always harvested at the peak of ripeness and are a delight to eat. With a season cost of $450 (or less with a work-trade), you save 25% off the retail price. The crop list for this season includes:

carrots
arugula
strawberries
cabbage
garlic
chard basil
cauliflower
leeks
Oriental greens
cilantro
Pac-choi
onions
kale
parsley
spinach
potatoes
lettuce
fennel
green beans
radish
cucumbers
basil
winter squash
parsnip
summer squash
rutabega
brussel sprouts

(some crops will be u-pick)

MEMBERSHIPS!
There are several ways to become a CSA member. You may:
•Work off your share by participating in 22 work-shifts (of 4 hours each)
•Pay $250 and join 10 work-shifts
•Pay $450 and have no work commitments.
(Working members are asked to provide 1-2 meals for our work-day lunches.)

PICK-UP
Produce is picked-up either Tuesday or Friday afternoons at the Farm (located at the intersection of 35th and Howard)

EXTRAS
•Newsletters with farm news, recipes and inspiration.
•25% off any extra produce purchased (available at both the farm and the Port Townsend Farmer’s Market)
•From June 23 until September 1, we will have childcare available for our Tuesday work-shift members.
•Visit the farm and watch your food grow in a healthy soil!
•Optional Flower CSA Available! Receive 12 bouquets over the season for $100.

CONTACT US!
Sebastian Aguilar
Phone: 360-385-9452
E-mail: soillife@msn.com
3029 35th st, Port Townsend, WA, 98368

Washington Lawyers for the Arts will be in PT

I've been wanting to see these great folks make an appearance on the Olympic Peninsula and here they are! This is a great service.

NEW LEGAL CLINIC FOR ARTISTS IN PORT TOWNSEND – MARCH 25 2009

Arts Legal Clinic

What is it? The WLA Arts Legal Clinic offers low-cost, private legal consultations to artists and arts organizations in the state of Washington. In Seattle, the clinic takes place twice monthly, and appointments may be made for 30 minute, confidential consultations with an attorney who specializes in arts and entertainment law. Topics of concern include copyright, trademark, licensing, fair use and contract issues. The clinic is now starting in Port Townsend.

Who is it for? The clinic is open for artists and arts organizations to discuss art, entertainment, business and intellectual property law issues. All issues discussed must be related to your artistic discipline. Some business issues (like reviewing contracts and whether it is appropriate to incorporate) are fair game. Patent law, employment law and tax law issues are not appropriate for the clinic.

When is it? Wednesday, March 25, 2009 – Port Townsend, Pope Marine Building,
100 Madison Street, Port Townsend, WA, 98368– 6:30-8:30 pm

For more information please visit the WLA website: http://www.theWLA.org/.

How much does it cost? We ask for a $20 dollar donation to the organization for your 30 minute appointment to be paid during the clinic. The donation is not tax deductible.

What can I expect from the consultations? Each consultation with an attorney lasts for thirty minutes. While you are welcome to provide materials in advance (such as contracts), please do not expect that the attorney has reviewed these materials.

How do I schedule an appointment? Who can I contact with questions about Washington Lawyers for the Arts? Appointments are required. Cal Kinnear, Administrative Director, is the main contact for the clinic. Cal works Monday through Thursday and can be reached at: 206-328-7053 or info@theWLA.org (mailing address is on the website www.theWLA.org).
Please look for our website for the clinic coming soon: www.SeattleArtLawClinic.

Washington Lawyers for the Arts (“WLA”) makes legal resources accessible to artists and arts organizations of all disciplines. WLA is Washington’s only non-profit, arts legal service organization. For more than 30 years, WLA has helped thousands of musicians, filmmakers, writers, painters, designers and many others. Artists call on WLA when they need specialized legal expertise, and when the services of an attorney are cost-prohibitive. WLA’s invaluable offerings include the Arts Legal Clinic, Brown Bag Seminars, Speakers Bureau and Legal Referral Service.

Local Attorneys participating in the clinic include Paul Richmond and John Wood. Paul Richmond has degrees from California Institute of the Arts and the American Film Institute. He has worked as a lawyer for many artists and has had art work shown at museums and festivals around the world, and taught art on a college level and is organizing this clinic. John Wood's practice focuses on business, contracts, real estate and probate; he's done work for many non-profit organizations."

This event has been endorsed by the Port Townsend Arts Commission.