Urban Migration

“Urban Migration” is an apt name for this joint show by Jason Sobottka and Sarah Dillon (yes, who runs the gallery). On view through tomorrow are critters that lurk just outside your door, often the same crows you see lifting French fries from Pioneer Square trash cans. Dillon’s birds forage amid cosmopolitan collages—chain link, old maps, bricks, and graffiti. They’re Audubon creatures adapting themselves to our built environment. And that latter construct, the urban grid, is what underlies Sobottka’s aerial perspectives on the city. He renders the city blocks as, literally, blocks—wooden lumber scraps and other detritus seemingly found on building sites. Yet even here there are traces of the natural world: a few skulls and animal outlines. Both artists employ a scavenger’s ethos, grabbing what they can use, like the downtown birds who nest amid concrete and steel. (Closed Sun., Mon., and Tues.) BRIAN MILLER

March 5-28, noon, 2009