Visual Arts

Alexander Kroll He paints large abstract works in Imaginary. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

Margie Livingston

Poured, Sliced, and Draped presents her large abstract paintings. Artist talk 11:30 a.m. Sat., May 24. Official opening during First Thursday Art Walk: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 5. Also on view: textile work by Marie Watt, called Receiver. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Monday, June 23, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Monday, June 23, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Monday, June 23, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 23, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 23, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Jenny Fillius Fillius’ affection for repurposing castoff tin is on display in Stay on the Sunny Side, in which the metalworker forges art pieces out of old toys, containers and more. First Thurs opening reception, 6-8 p.m.  Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Monday, June 23, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Monday, June 23, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 23, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Monday, June 23, 6pm – Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 6pm

Alexander Kroll He paints large abstract works in Imaginary. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Margie Livingston

Poured, Sliced, and Draped presents her large abstract paintings. Artist talk 11:30 a.m. Sat., May 24. Official opening during First Thursday Art Walk: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 5. Also on view: textile work by Marie Watt, called Receiver. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Tuesday, June 24, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Jenny Fillius Fillius’ affection for repurposing castoff tin is on display in Stay on the Sunny Side, in which the metalworker forges art pieces out of old toys, containers and more. First Thurs opening reception, 6-8 p.m.  Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Alexander Petrov and Kurt Kemp A collection of Russian painter Petrov’s surreal works alongside Kemp’s equally as bizarre paper collages.  Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Tuesday, June 24, 6pm – Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 6pm

Alexander Kroll He paints large abstract works in Imaginary. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Margie Livingston

Poured, Sliced, and Draped presents her large abstract paintings. Artist talk 11:30 a.m. Sat., May 24. Official opening during First Thursday Art Walk: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 5. Also on view: textile work by Marie Watt, called Receiver. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Andy Kehoe and Redd Walitzk Andy Kehoe’s beautiful paintings depict dark forest landscapes inhabited by a zoo of fantastical mystic creatures. Redd Walitzki’s work has a similar sylvan vibe, opting for brighter colors and a focus on woodland nymphs. First Thursday opening reception, 6-9 p.m.  Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 4 – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Jenny Fillius Fillius’ affection for repurposing castoff tin is on display in Stay on the Sunny Side, in which the metalworker forges art pieces out of old toys, containers and more. First Thurs opening reception, 6-8 p.m.  Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Steve Gawronski and Scott Mayberry Gawronksi’s scultpure series explores the word “dig,” while Mayberry’s acrylic paintings delve into the interplay of technology and nature. First Thurs opening reception, 6-9 p.m. Core Gallery, 117 Prefontaine Place S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Alexander Petrov and Kurt Kemp A collection of Russian painter Petrov’s surreal works alongside Kemp’s equally as bizarre paper collages.  Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Alli Curtis

The Decay of an American Dream captures photos of homes and businesses after foreclosure and bankruptcy in wake of the financial crisis. Opening reception June 13, 6-9 p.m.  A/NT Gallery, 2045 Westlake Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Wednesday, June 25, 6pm – Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6pm

Alexander Kroll He paints large abstract works in Imaginary. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, June 26, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

Margie Livingston

Poured, Sliced, and Draped presents her large abstract paintings. Artist talk 11:30 a.m. Sat., May 24. Official opening during First Thursday Art Walk: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 5. Also on view: textile work by Marie Watt, called Receiver. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Thursday, June 26, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, June 26, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Thursday, June 26, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Andy Kehoe and Redd Walitzk Andy Kehoe’s beautiful paintings depict dark forest landscapes inhabited by a zoo of fantastical mystic creatures. Redd Walitzki’s work has a similar sylvan vibe, opting for brighter colors and a focus on woodland nymphs. First Thursday opening reception, 6-9 p.m.  Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 4 – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Howard Barlow Barlow’s Bite presents an array of mutated looking sculptures with teeth and bone dangling in grotesque fashion. First Thursday opening reception, 5-8 p.m.  Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Jenny Fillius Fillius’ affection for repurposing castoff tin is on display in Stay on the Sunny Side, in which the metalworker forges art pieces out of old toys, containers and more. First Thurs opening reception, 6-8 p.m.  Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Steve Gawronski and Scott Mayberry Gawronksi’s scultpure series explores the word “dig,” while Mayberry’s acrylic paintings delve into the interplay of technology and nature. First Thurs opening reception, 6-9 p.m. Core Gallery, 117 Prefontaine Place S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Alexander Petrov and Kurt Kemp A collection of Russian painter Petrov’s surreal works alongside Kemp’s equally as bizarre paper collages.  Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Alli Curtis

The Decay of an American Dream captures photos of homes and businesses after foreclosure and bankruptcy in wake of the financial crisis. Opening reception June 13, 6-9 p.m.  A/NT Gallery, 2045 Westlake Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, June 26, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Thursday, June 26, 6pm – Friday, June 27, 2014, 6pm

Alexander Kroll He paints large abstract works in Imaginary. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Friday, June 27, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

Margie Livingston

Poured, Sliced, and Draped presents her large abstract paintings. Artist talk 11:30 a.m. Sat., May 24. Official opening during First Thursday Art Walk: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 5. Also on view: textile work by Marie Watt, called Receiver. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Friday, June 27, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Friday, June 27, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Friday, June 27, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Friday, June 27, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Andy Kehoe and Redd Walitzk Andy Kehoe’s beautiful paintings depict dark forest landscapes inhabited by a zoo of fantastical mystic creatures. Redd Walitzki’s work has a similar sylvan vibe, opting for brighter colors and a focus on woodland nymphs. First Thursday opening reception, 6-9 p.m.  Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 4 – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Howard Barlow Barlow’s Bite presents an array of mutated looking sculptures with teeth and bone dangling in grotesque fashion. First Thursday opening reception, 5-8 p.m.  Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Steve Gawronski and Scott Mayberry Gawronksi’s scultpure series explores the word “dig,” while Mayberry’s acrylic paintings delve into the interplay of technology and nature. First Thurs opening reception, 6-9 p.m. Core Gallery, 117 Prefontaine Place S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Alexander Petrov and Kurt Kemp A collection of Russian painter Petrov’s surreal works alongside Kemp’s equally as bizarre paper collages.  Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Alli Curtis

The Decay of an American Dream captures photos of homes and businesses after foreclosure and bankruptcy in wake of the financial crisis. Opening reception June 13, 6-9 p.m.  A/NT Gallery, 2045 Westlake Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, June 27, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Friday, June 27, 6pm – Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6pm

Alexander Kroll He paints large abstract works in Imaginary. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Saturday, June 28, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

Margie Livingston

Poured, Sliced, and Draped presents her large abstract paintings. Artist talk 11:30 a.m. Sat., May 24. Official opening during First Thursday Art Walk: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 5. Also on view: textile work by Marie Watt, called Receiver. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Saturday, June 28, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Saturday, June 28, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Saturday, June 28, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Saturday, June 28, 2014

Andy Kehoe and Redd Walitzk Andy Kehoe’s beautiful paintings depict dark forest landscapes inhabited by a zoo of fantastical mystic creatures. Redd Walitzki’s work has a similar sylvan vibe, opting for brighter colors and a focus on woodland nymphs. First Thursday opening reception, 6-9 p.m.  Roq La Rue Gallery, 532 First Ave. S., Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 4 – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Howard Barlow Barlow’s Bite presents an array of mutated looking sculptures with teeth and bone dangling in grotesque fashion. First Thursday opening reception, 5-8 p.m.  Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA, 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Steve Gawronski and Scott Mayberry Gawronksi’s scultpure series explores the word “dig,” while Mayberry’s acrylic paintings delve into the interplay of technology and nature. First Thurs opening reception, 6-9 p.m. Core Gallery, 117 Prefontaine Place S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Alexander Petrov and Kurt Kemp A collection of Russian painter Petrov’s surreal works alongside Kemp’s equally as bizarre paper collages.  Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Alli Curtis

The Decay of an American Dream captures photos of homes and businesses after foreclosure and bankruptcy in wake of the financial crisis. Opening reception June 13, 6-9 p.m.  A/NT Gallery, 2045 Westlake Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, June 28, 6pm – Sunday, June 29, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Sunday, June 29, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Sunday, June 29, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Sunday, June 29, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)??appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Sunday, June 29, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Sunday, June 29, 2014

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Alli Curtis

The Decay of an American Dream captures photos of homes and businesses after foreclosure and bankruptcy in wake of the financial crisis. Opening reception June 13, 6-9 p.m.  A/NT Gallery, 2045 Westlake Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Sunday, June 29, 2014, 6 – 7pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Monday, June 30, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Monday, June 30, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Monday, June 30, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 30, 2014, 5 – 6pm

I Heart Comic Art An art show of local independent comic artists, with art on sale and live music from Lucas Morais of Astral Twins. Opening reception June 12, 5-8 p.m.  Caffe Vita: Capitol Hill, 1005 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 30, 2014, 5 – 8pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Monday, June 30, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, June 30, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Monday, June 30, 6pm – Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Tuesday, July 1, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, July 1, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Tuesday, July 1, 6pm – Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Wednesday, July 2, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Wednesday, July 2, 6pm – Thursday, July 3, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, July 3, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Thursday, July 3, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, July 3, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Thursday, July 3, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, July 3, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Thursday, July 3, 6pm – Friday, July 4, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It??s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Friday, July 4, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Friday, July 4, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Friday, July 4, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Friday, July 4, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Friday, July 4, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Friday, July 4, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Friday, July 4, 6pm – Saturday, July 5, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Saturday, July 5, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Saturday, July 5, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Saturday, July 5, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Saturday, July 5, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Saturday, July 5, 2014

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Saturday, July 5, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Robert Marchessault Robert Marchessault’s Forest For the Trees is a series of realistic oil paintings of trees against stark skylines.  Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Saturday, July 5, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Saturday, July 5, 6pm – Sunday, July 6, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Sunday, July 6, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Sunday, July 6, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Sunday, July 6, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Sunday, July 6, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Sunday, July 6, 2014

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Sunday, July 6, 2014, 5 – 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Monday, July 7, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Monday, July 7, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Monday, July 7, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cait Willis The “glitch” paintings in Catastrophe Museum are based on the writings of JG Ballard, resulting in messy “white noise” paintings. Opening reception June 12, 5-9 p.m. Ghost Gallery, 504 E. Denny Way, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, July 7, 2014, 5 – 6pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Monday, July 7, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Portraits of Pride 2014 Self portraits from LGBTQ and allied artists inclduing Amy C. Abadilla, Cody Blomberg, Andrew Caldwell, Dale Davis, McCade Dolan, Scott Dunn, Stephen Eaker, Juan Franco, Elise Koncsek, Nan Leiter, Mario Lemafa, Lector Morales, Grego Rachko, Brian Reindel, Matt Wencl and more. Opening reception June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Gay City Health Project, 517 E. Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98122 Free Monday, July 7, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Monday, July 7, 6pm – Tuesday, July 8, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Tuesday, July 8, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Tuesday, July 8, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Tuesday, July 8, 6pm – Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Wednesday, July 9, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Wednesday, July 9, 6pm – Thursday, July 10, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern-style Danish furniture from the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., Seattle, WA 98117 $8 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Deco Japan This is a somewhat unusual traveling show in that it comes from a single private collection: that of Florida’s Robert and Mary Levenson. The specificity and period (1920-1945) are also unusual. Among the roughly 200 items on view-prints, furniture, jewelry, etc.-we won’t be seeing the usual quaint cherry-blossom references to Japan’s hermetic past. The country opened itself late, at gunpoint, to the West, and industrialized quite rapidly. By the ‘20s, there was in the big cities a full awareness of Hollywood movies, European fashions, and streamlined design trends. Even if women didn’t vote, they knew about Louise Brooks and her fellow flappers. We may think that, particularly during the ‘30s, the country was concerned with militarism and colonial expansion, but these objects reveal the leisure time and sometime frivolity of the period. For an urbane class of pleasure-seekers, necessarily moneyed, these were boom times. The luxe life meant imitating the West to a degree, yet there are also many traces of Japan’s ancient culture within these modern accessories. Think of the sybarites during the Edo period, for instance, and the women depicted here look more familiar-even if they wear cocktail dresses instead of kimonos. (Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Open to 8 p.m. Thurs.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), Seattle, WA 98112 $5-$7 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Deep Pulls In Seattle, we often take for granted how many amazing posters there are around us. Light and telephone poles throughout the city serve as far more than convenient perches for birds to poop on you. Rather, they act as miniature galleries for the everyman walking by. The group show Deep Pulls celebrates seven top local screen printers, who make rich and varied street art-with no clip art allowed! On view are works incorporating obscure pop references that define the millennial generation, with cheeky reimaginings of Thomas the Tank or nods to the almighty Atari 2600. This isn’t highbrow conceptual art, but the careful attention to the craft of screen printing is impressive. Frida Clements’ fine, almost scientific detail, Trevor Basset’s wide-ranging styles, and Mike Klay’s clever use of space elevate what might seem like cultural detritus to gallery-quality collectables. In addition, those looking to dive into screen printing can watch an artist demo at tonight’s reception. (Opening reception: 7-11 p.m. Fri., June 20.) KELTON SEARS Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., Seattle, WA 98122 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

DuPen Fountain Seattle Center is in transition, yet again. Memorial Stadium is crumbling. The Fun Forest has closed. The Sonics may come back (briefly) to KeyArena, but then what? But in certain quiet corners of the civic campus, things are working just fine. Though briefly endangered by a skateboard park last summer, located northwest of the Key in a concrete box canyon, one such enduring element from the original 1962 World’s Fair design is DuPen Fountain. A UW professor and sculptor, Everett DuPen (1912-2005) worked in concert with prominent modernist architect Paul Thiry, who designed the old Seattle Center Coliseum and other Center sites, to establish the water garden (sometimes also called the Fountain of Creation). Local tots and moms use it as a wading pool in summer. When the splashing subsides in autumn, it’s a place for calm contemplation. The bronze forms within do suggest creation; poised over the waters and boulders, there’s a sense of nature struggling to take shape, emerging as if from tide pools. Unlike the Garden of Eden, life isn’t raised by a single divine touch. The inchoate organic and the human form are here linked together. In the fountain’s comparatively short history, two generations of mothers and children have waded in these waters. Those life cycles echo the longer path of evolution, perhaps giving hope for the grounds outside the fountain. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Fabrice Monteiro You can’t get more summery than this photo exhibit by the Belgium-born, Senegal-based photographer, called Gorean Summer. It’s named for the pleasure island of Goree, located two miles from the bustling city of Dakar. Today a UN World Heritage Site, the tiny island was for 400 years a notorious slave-trading hub. For that reason, in Monteiro’s black-and-white images, there are both somber, history-minded tourists and joyous day-trippers out for sun and fun. The past and the present mingle like lovers on the strand, and you can’t really separate the two. Surf and sand are likewise intermingled, echoing Monteiro’s own background: A former model, he’s from a mixed-race marriage, and he’s explored the legacy of slavery in prior photo series. But this show is nothing but cheerful, with youngsters, dancing, preening, swimming, and surfing on the beach. Maybe it’ll inspire you to visit Alki or Golden Gardens-where the water, unfortunately, won’t be nearly so warm. (Opening reception: 6-8 p.m. Thurs., June 26. Hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Noon-5 p.m. Sat.) BRIAN MILLER M.I.A. Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami This touring show features over 140 works by 45 artists from Japan, the U.S., and beyond. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $5-$10 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

George Tsutakawa: Fountain of Wisdom Years have passed, and the downtown library designed by Rem Koolhaas has agreeably woven itself into the urban fabric. You may not like the ramps or shelving or noise inside, but tourists love to photograph the glassy, faceted exterior, and most architectural critics agree on its modernist merit. Still, walking past, I sometimes miss the small, rather cheap, but more intimate old International Style stack of boxes. Built in 1960, demolished in 2001, the prior library had a reader-friendly scale-nooks and crannies, and a courtyard containing Fountain of Wisdom by sculptor George Tsutakawa. The late local artist (1910-1997) didn’t live long enough to see his work-the city’s first public art commission of note-relocated to the corner of Fourth and Madison, where it now sits next to the new library entrance. But where is the plaque? The abstract bronze flanged structure developed from a series Tsutakawa modeled on the obo-in Japanese, a pile or cairn of rounded stones left by travelers-a shape you’ll find echoed in his many other subsequent fountains designed around the Northwest. But Fountain of Wisdom also rests in the postwar visual vocabulary of Brancusi and Jim Flora. It’s not just traditional; there’s something a little Jetsons about it-like a metal flower on a distant planet. It’s all wrong for the aesthetic of Koolhaas, who probably hates flowers or anything curved and organic that defies his rigid geometry. For that reason, I like the plucky little footnote to the big new building looming over it. Now about that plaque… BRIAN MILLER Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

Ink This!: Contemporary Print Arts in the Northwest Over 80 Northwest print-making artists are represented in this contemporary survey show. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Weds.-Sun. Open to 8 p.m. every third Thurs. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, July 10, 2014

Kate Protage and Dan Hawkins

Urban Explorers showcases the work of two adventurous artists who thrive on journey’s through the wilds of the city. Kate Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings, and Dan Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on film. NOTE: Exhibit is in SAM Rental Sales Gallery, located within the museum store. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical Summer is usually the season for tourist-friendly blockbuster shows at SAM, like Japanese fashion last year, traveling from other institutions. This one is entirely local, celebrating the native quartet of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson. How did the Northwest become a school? Isolation, on the one hand, since prewar Seattle was remote and provincial when the four got their start. Institutions also played a part: Cornish, the UW, and especially the brand-new SAM helped form a community of artists and collectors. (SAM founder Richard Fuller was particularly instrumental, employing and buying from the Big Four.) Seattle had a little bit of money then, but it was dowdy old money, two generations removed from the Denny party-derived mostly from the land, the port, and timber. What Tobey and company brought to national attention during the war years and after was a fresh regional awareness and reverence for place. This meant not simple landscapes, but a deeper appreciation for the spiritual aspect of nature, traces of Native American culture, and currents from across the Pacific-including Eastern religion and Asian art. Many of the paintings here, publicly exhibited for the first time, come from the 2009 bequest of Marshall and Helen Hatch. They, like Fuller and the Wrights, were important collectors and patrons of the Big Four during the postwar years. What they preserved can now be a fresh discovery to all of Seattle’s new residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. (Thurs: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Weds. & Fri.-Sun: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 $12.50-$19.50 Thursday, July 10, 2014

Northwest in the West: Exploring Our Roots On view are some 70 works by regional artists including Guy Anderson, Justin Colt Beckman, Fay Chong, Gaylen Hansen, Eirik Johnson, and Paul Horiuchi. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, July 10, 2014

Photographic Presence and Contemporary Indians: Matika Wilbur’s Project 562 The young Seattle photographer, a member of the member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes tribe, is traveling to Indian reservations around the photograph all the 562 officially recognized tribes. There she makes dignified portraits and conducts audio interviews. This is a selection of about 50 images made during the last two years. (Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.) Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402 $8-$10 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Skyspace James Turrell’s Skyspace stands on two concrete pillars in the Henry’s erstwhile sculpture courtyard. On the exterior, thousands of LED fixtures under the structure’s frosted glass skin create slowly shifting colors, making the pavilion a spectacular piece of public art every night. Inside, the ellipse of sky seen through the chamber’s ceiling suddenly appears to be very, very close, a thin membrane bulging into the room. Wispy bits of cirrus clouds passing by appear to be features on the slowly rotating surface of a luminous, egg-shaped blue planet suspended just overhead. Emerging from the Skyspace, I find the night wind and the light in the clouds come to me through freshly awakened senses. A dreamy, happy feeling follows me home like the moon outside my car window. (Weds., Sat., Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.) DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98195 $6-$10 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Stronghold The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Street toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is at first glance nothing more than a stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting) and you’ll see it’s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter-with a seating area within, possibly for picnics-Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region’s economy, that helped establish the city and our state’s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle’s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumberyard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building (near 15th Avenue Northeast and Pacific)-appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates local history before it met the crosscut saw. BRIAN MILLER University of Washington Campus, 15th Ave. N.E. and N.E. 41st St., Seattle,WA 98105 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014

Water Mover Unbuilt lots, even sloped blackberry patches sitting on unstable soil, are fast disappearing in Seattle. Particularly in Fremont, where townhouses sprout like mushrooms, any real-estate resistance is appreciated. Sitting next to the Fremont Branch Library, A.B. Ernst Park was completed four years ago with a spiral ramp and stair maze leading down to the alley behind the old P.C.C. Designed by Bend, Oregon landscape architect J.T. Atkins, it seemed a perfect place to sit and read in the south-facing light, but-D’oh!-a guard rail was deemed necessary to keep kids and other visitors from toppling off the textured concrete seats and into the sage. Thus, Seattle sculptor Jenny Heishman was commissioned by the city and Fremont Neighborhood Council to build a fence that didn’t look like a fence. Water Mover is anything but. Its scalloped orange half-pipes are like an aquaduct to nowhere. The broken ring of solid yet irregularly situated water chutes playfully suggests some irrigation scheme where none is needed (the plants are all indigenous). Here the runoff is simply directed into a bucket, or onto the porous concrete and into the ground. Summer may be the best time to enjoy the park, but to better appreciate Heishman’s contribution, take your umbrella during a November downpour and see how the contraption works. BRIAN MILLER Ernst Park, 723 N. 35th St., Seattle, WA 98103 FREE Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

Wawona At the center of the atrium at MOHAI, newly relocated to the Naval Reserve Armory in South Lake Union, is a permanent new sculptural installation that helps anchor the museum to our maritime past. From 1897 into the ‘40s, the schooner Wawona carried cargo on Puget Sound. Then it was moored for decades, rotting, near the Center for Wooden Boats (now MOHAI’s neighbor). The upkeep wasn’t worth it, and the hull was dry-docked for salvage four years ago. That’s where artist John Grade comes in. As part of MOHAI’s $60 million renovation, Grade was commissioned to create something from the old Douglas fir timbers that had been preserved below the waterline. They’ve been dried and sanded, carefully drilled with little round fissures (suggesting both ship’s portals and worm holes), then bolted and hung from the ceiling in a hollow, tapered tower that recalls both a ship’s mast and a tree. The five-and-a-half-ton Wawona is intended to be kinetic, Grade told me at its unveiling: “I want kids to bang on it.” Enter the enclosure at its base, and you can push and sway the whole structure, the loose metal fittings creaking like a ship rocking in its berth. Look up through the 65-foot tower, and it pierces the roof. Below (viewed through a Plexiglas window), it almost touches the water. Both ends are intended to decay over time, says Grade: “I’m interested in how things change. Nothing’s permanent.” The fate of the old Wawona bears him out, yet this recycled new Wawona is a prime example of regionally sourced art. “It’s about as local as you can do it,” Grade adds. “It’s definitely my most ambitious piece.” BRIAN MILLER Museum of History and Industry, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle WA 98109 $12-$14 Thursday, July 10, 2014

• 

CASCADE One of the reasons Suyama Space is my favorite gallery for large one-off installations are the skylights facing east and west above the creaky wooden floors of what used to be a garage. Yet for his new CASCADE, New York artist Ian McMahon has mostly blocked those clerestories with drapery that’s actually solid plaster. There are portals held open like stage curtains on the east-west axis; once you’re inside the rectangular enclosure, it’s much darker. At the opening reception last month, people seemed eager-on a late spring evening-to herd along the gallery walls, where the sun still crept through. There, too, as if backstage, is the wooden scaffolding McMahon used to install the thing. The dimming effect inside is familiar from theater: When the lights go down, it’s time to hush, turn off cell phones, and unwrap cough drops. The scene was more festive and noisy at CASCADE ‘s unveiling, but there was the same sense of a threshold, of a boundary between realms. In this case, there will be no swelling orchestra or actors striding onstage. McMahon’s curtains announce nothing but themselves. Divvying up the space is the spectacle; the set, if you will, constitutes the entire show. Every night is opening night in a production that will run longer than any of Seattle’s summer theatricals. Hold your applause; there’s no one there to hear it but you. BRIAN MILLER Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014, 9am – 5pm

Cherri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like-a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Opening reception June 12, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fifth Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Marc Dombrosky

Who throws their sister to the wolves under the bus? takes a collection of unrelated items, and attempts to forge momentary, fragmentary narratives by placing them all in the gallery in new, unexpected contexts. Opening reception June 12, 6-8 p.m.  Platform Gallery, 114 Third Avenue South Free Thursday, July 10, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Rachid Bouhamidi

Fanfare for the Area Man collects the Los Angeles artist’s colorful paintings, united by their visual business. Opening reception, June 12, 6-9 p.m.  Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98102 Free Thursday, July 10, 2014, 6 – 7pm

Zaria Forman and Rena Bass Forman A mother and daughter show two separate series centered around the effects of climate change-one through pastel drawings, and one through photography. Opening reception Tues, June 10, 6-8 p.m.  Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98109 Free Thursday, July 10, 6pm – Friday, July 11, 2014, 6pm

At Your Service Ariel Brice, Gesine Hackenberg, Molly Hatch, Giselle Hicks, Garth Johnson, Niki Johnson, Sue Johnson, Emily Loehle, Caroline Slotte, and Amelia Toelke mess with crockery and other tokens of the domestic table. Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sun.  Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, WA 98004 $8-$10 Friday, July 11, 2014

• 

Changing Form The most popular viewpoint in the city is often a bore for kids. Whenever I walk up to Kerry Park, on the south prow of Queen Anne Hill, shutterbugs, wedding parties, and sightseers are intent on the panoramic view. Watch what the children do, however, when they squirm free of parental grasp or out of the camera’s frame. Installed in 1971 as a bequest from the same family that gave us the priceless strip park, Changing Form is one of those large Henry Moore-influenced abstract steel sculptures that don’t always wear their age so well. There’s nothing fun or frivolous about the two stacked cutout forms, pure geometry, yet kids flock to the 15-foot-high structure. It’s shaped a bit like building blocks from childhood, and the lower portion forms an eminently climbable cradle. Not many visitors bother to read the brass plaque identifying the artist. Would you be surprised to learn it’s a woman? Very little public art in Seattle-or at least that from the pure commission, pre-public-funding era-comes from female hands. Born here, Doris Totten Chase (1923-2008) studied architecture at the UW, then turned to painting in the late ‘40s. By that time she was a wife and mother of two kids-not some kind of beatnik, not an outrageous headline-grabber like the celebrated (male) artists of the day. An early-’70s divorce freed her to move to Manhattan, where she worked in film and video and lived a thoroughly avant-garde life at the Chelsea Hotel. Sometimes you gotta leave Seattle to find bohemia. Just don’t tell that to your kids while they’re playing. BRIAN MILLER Kerry Park, 211 W. Highland Drive, Seattle, WA 98119 Free Friday, July 11, 2014