Openings & Events

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Event Name Event yadda yadda. Locale for event yadda.

Event Name Event yadda yadda. Locale for event yadda.

Event Name Event yadda yadda. Locale for event yadda.

Event Name Event yadda yadda. Locale for event yadda.

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Chen Shaoxiong The contemporary Chinese artist shows new video works and their source drawings in the exhibit Ink. History. Media, which is inspired by historical photos of major events from 1909-2009. Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org. $5-$7. Opens Sat., July 19. Hours: Weds.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Through Oct. 19.

Fantasy in the City Mike Oncley, Doaly, Vikram Madan, and Steve Thomas are among some two dozen gallery artists exploring sci-fi and fantasy themes. Ltd. Art Gallery, 307 E. Pike St., ltdartgallery.com. Opening reception 7 p.m. Fri., July 18. Ends Aug. 24.

Healthcare: On the Edge of Change That’s the name of this small exhibit by painter Nancy Rothwell, who addresses the aging of baby boomers in her art. University Unitarian Church: 6556 35th Ave. N.E., 525-8400. Opening reception 4 p.m. Sun., July 20. Ends Sept. 5.

KAC Artists’ Exhibition Over two dozen locals will show their work in this annual juried exhibit, with many on hand for the reception. Kirkland Arts Center, 620 Market St., 425-822-7161, kirklandartscenter.org. Opening reception 6 p.m. Fri., July 18. Ends Sept. 13.

Elizabeth Lopez Now located in SAM’s gift shop, the sales gallery features her bright-colored abstract paintings. SAM Gallery, 1300 First Ave., seattleartmuseum.org. Free. Opens July 20. Ends Aug. 17.

Mughal Painting: Power and Piety Some 300 years of Indian art, from the 16th century to English colonial rule of the subcontinent, goes on display. Seattle Asian Art Museum, opens Sat., July 19. Ends Oct. 19.

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Stephen O’Donnell He tweaks 18th-century painting conventions in Told and Untold Stories, often by rendering himself in female costumes from the period. Winston Wachter Fine Art, 203 Dexter Ave. N. 652-5855, seattle.winstonwachter.com. Opening reception 6 p.m. Tues., July 22. Ends Aug. 30.

Summer Group Show Gallery artists Kathy Gore-Fuss, Kathy Liao, Henk Pander, Robert Schlegel, and Vannessa Tran share new work. Prographica, 3419 E. Denny Way, 322-3851, prographicadrawings.com. Opening reception 2 p.m. Sat., July 19. Ends Aug. 16

Kathy Yoshihara In her show Made in America, the California artist creates small ceramic figures to explore her heritage and Japanese-American history in general (including the internment camps of WWII). KOBO Gallery at Higo, 604 S. Jackson St., 381-3000. Opening reception 5 p.m. Fri., July 18. Ends Aug. 17.

Ongoing

The Art of Gaman The subtitle of this group show reveals its sad starting point: Arts & Crafts From the Japanese-American Internment Camps, 1942–1946. Over 120 objects will be on view, many of them humble wood carvings, furniture, even toys made from scrap items at Minidoka or Manzanar. The more polished drawings come from professional artists like Ruth Asawa, Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, Chiura Obata, and Henry Sugimoto. Some of the more touching items—like a samurai figurine made from wood scraps, shells, and bottle caps—come from family collections, not museums; they’re precious keepsakes from a shameful historical era. As for the show’s title, gaman roughly translates as “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.” BRIAN MILLER Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., 425-519-0770, bellevuearts.org, $8-$10, Tues.-Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Through Oct. 12.

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. Bellevue Arts Museum. Through Sept. 21.

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John Buck Wow. A carousel of history comes to Pioneer Square in Buck’s two massive, moving wooden machines (plus woodblock prints and bas relief carvings). The two central installations are Burrowed Time and Cat’s Cradle, both of them enormous, intricate meditations on colonialism, cartography, myth, and the golden age of discovery. This opening was the hit of last week’s First Thursday Art Walk. Bring the kids, take videos, but don’t touch. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., 624-0770, gregkucera.com. 10:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Aug. 23.

Romson Regarde Bustillo In his show Dugay na, the Filipino artist creates brightly colored works on paper, intricately cut and designed with patterns, some of them narrative. The title of the show translates as “no longer new” or “a long time now.” Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, 550 Winslow Way E., 842.4451, biartmuseum.org. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Daily through Sept. 24.

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Danish Modern: Design for Living A survey of modern style Danish furniture from 1950-60. Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 N.W. 67th St., 789-5707, nordicmuseum.org, $8, Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Through Aug. 31.

Barbara De Pirro & Katie Miller They show separate sculpture and video works harnassed by the German notion of Vorfreude, translating as “the joyful anticipation of future pleasures.” Method, 103 Third Ave. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), methodgallery.com. Through Aug. 23.

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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. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Asian Art Museum, ends Oct. 19.

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. Platform Gallery, 114 Third Ave. S (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 323-2808, platformgallery.com. Free. Through July 26.

Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami An exhibit that examines the evolution of origami as an art form around the globe from its origins all the way up to today. Bellevue Arts Museum, through Sept. 21.

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Heaven & Earth VI The Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) presents its annual outdoor art show, which will surely fall victim to vandals this summer, just like its predecessors. That means you should download the walking map and go early, before any destruction occurs. This year’s theme is “As Above, So Below.” Artists participating are Teresa Burrelsman-Stern, Mary Coss, Elisa Berry Fonseca, Joshua Harker, Michael Todd Harrison, Terra Holcomb, Tom Hughes, Fred Lisaius, Savina Mason, Lucy Mae Martin, Deanna Pindell, Kristin Schimik, Suzanne Tidwell, Megan Treasure, Ken Turner, and Allyce Wood. Carkeek Park, 950 Carkeek Park Rd., cocaseattle.org. Through Oct. 20.

Ellen heck, Shigeki Tomura, & Harold Keeler Woodblocks exploring female identity, Japanese watercolors of moments in nature, and lithographic odes to the city of Seattle. Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., 624-7684, davidsongalleries.com. Through Aug. 2.

Carolyn Hopkins

Smoke Signals compiles drawings, sculptures, and video made by the artist during time spent at Blue Lake in Oregon, where a recent forest fire ravaged the landscape. The work explores the artist’s deep seated connection with place. Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 621-1945, punchgallery.org. Through Aug. 2.

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Scott Kolbo At first you think Kolbo, in his first solo show (called Our Alley), is simply displaying dense pencil drawings mounted on glowing light boxes. Look more closely, and you detect movement behind the lines, like actors behind a stage scrim, creating depth to his tableaux. Watch a while, and you detect the source videos—slowed down, digitally altered, animation added—on a flat video screen. Kolbo recruited his own kids and their pals to play games in the alley while he videotaped the scenes. “I asked them, ‘If there were no adults around, what would you do?’ They made up their own characters. It was like herding cats.” Then, over the next few years, Kolbo gradually traced over the videos, creating a busy lattice of pencil outlines and gestures into which the videotaped characters settle. “I just pause and capture movements that I think are poignant,” he says. Each time the video slows or halts, you see a new composition in the same frame. BRIAN MILLER Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Place S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 296-7580, 4culture.org. Free. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Mon.–Fri. Ends July 31.

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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, for one thing, 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 new Seattle residents unfamiliar with the Northwest School. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $12–$19. Weds.-Sun. Ends. Sept. 7.

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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 mix 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. BRIAN MILLER M.I.A Gallery, 1203 Second Ave., 467-4927, m-i-a-gallery.com. Through July 26.

Mystic Modernism of the Pacific Northwest Coinciding with SAM’s show on the same topic, here’s a group show featuring other members and disciples of the movement, including Paul Horiuchi and George Tsutakawa. Seattle artREsource, 625 First Ave., Suite 200, 838-2695, seattleartresource.com. Through August 30.

Northwest Marine Art Exhibition Local painters celebrate the sea. Kristen Gallery, 5320 Roosevelt Way N.E., 522-2011. Ends Aug. 31.

Cheri O’Brien

Dog Stories is exactly what it sounds like–a multimedia series featuring reverent renderings of all sorts of canines. Jeffrey Moose Gallery, 1333 Fith Ave., 467-6951, jeffreymoosegallery.com. Through Aug. 16.

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Ken Price The recently deceased L.A. artist created colorful cityscapes of his home town, often to accompany the poetry collections of his pal Charles Bukowski. The show is called Inside/Outside. Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., 543-2280, henryart.org. $6-$10. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Thurs. & Fri. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed., Sat. & Sun.

Through Sept 7.

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. Protage takes pictures of the city at night, and then recreates them as oil paintings. Hawkins, who has ventured in urban ruins and decaying buildings across the world, documenting them on photographic film. SAM Gallery, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. Free. Through July 20.

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Skyspace James Turrell’ 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. DAVID STOESZ Henry Art Gallery

Carter Smith He offers new shibori banners and garments. Also on view, prints by Renee Jameson. Island Gallery, 400 Winslow Way E. (Bainbridge), 780-9500, theislandgallery.net. Through Aug. 31.

Under Pressure Traveling up from Portland and the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and family, this big survey of postwar prints includes work by Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, and Warhol. Bellevue Arts Museum, through Sept. 12.

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The Unicorn Incorporated/Your Feast Has Ended Local artist Curtis R. Barnes is represented by some five decades of work in The Unicorn Incorporated. An artist, illustrator, muralist, and community advocate, he co-created the Omowale Mural at Medgar Evers Pool in 1972, a very visible manifestation of the flowering of African-American artists during that era. Then, controversially the mural was destroyed in 1995, but some its design elements will be on view during this big career retrospective, his first. Three artists are represented in Your Feast Has Ended: Seattle’s Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes (son of Curtis R. Barnes), Sitka’s Nicholas Galanin, and Nep Sidhu, a Briton now based in Canada. According to the Frye’s manifesto, the three will “offer a visual cogitation exploring continuum, identity, ritual, and adornment and signal that natural, cultural and human resources have been appropriated, exploited, suppressed, depleted, or eradicated.” Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave., 622-9250, fryemuseum.org. Free. Tues.-Sun. Through mid-September.

User Profile This collection of 25 artists’ work marks the opening of a new gallery in the old Grover/Thurston space. The show is meant to act as a showcase for the new gallery’s aesthetic, hence the name “User Profile.” Hall Spassov Gallery, 319 Third Ave. S., 223-0816, hallspassov.com. Through July 31.

Ryan Weatherly He exhibits new paintings of distorted faces and figures. Blindfold Gallery, 1718 E. Olive Way, blindfoldgallery.com. Through Aug. 9.