Articles

A slim, pamphlet-bound booklet with a monochromatic cover stamped with minimal text, the average passport has a quiet and understated vibe. At first glance, it’s common: not asking for much visual consideration, generally understood as a utilitarian legal document, a form of identification that enables travel between (typically) international locations. Yet to open it up, literally and figuratively, suggests that the passport is another thing entirely, exposing a world in which notions of passage, permission, identity and borders are writ in intimate detail.

Crossing the Line: The Passport Re-Imagined, is an exhibit of artist books at the Bainbridge Island Museum
of Art that takes us to that place. Twelve artists from across the United States, commissioned by the Cynthia Sears  Artists’ Book Collection, are derivations and reactions to the passport. Northwest artists Shu-Ju Wang, Kitty Koppelman, and Carletta Carrington-Wilson, and offer artworks that expose stories having to do with movement, race, and identity.

Carletta Carrington-Wilson constructed Passport to a Past Port as an homage to an unknown, young female slave whose travel imposed on her. The horrors that these “unwilling travelers” were forced to endure are revealed in her sculptural accordion book’s surface painting. The accompanying Court$hip Gazette is print handout that narrates the ship’s circumstances and surroundings including the poem, “how far Calabar” written by Carrington-Wilson.

Shu-Ju Wang grapples with barriers to passage in her Passport, fabricated and stitched from weed suppressing landscape fabric and plant material. The contents narrate deep accounts of personal experiences with real obstacles to free movement that we encounter now and throughout history. The plant forms and garden references stand in as metaphors and offer structural support.

Kitty Koppelman also engages with ideas of permission. Gender Passport doubles as both proclamation and protection. Each spread of this passport-sized book is rendered with a balance of soft and bright colors, and reduction linocut and letterpress to convey a sense of stability and humanity, of safety, and acceptance.

Each work on display—the twelve commissioned works and passport-related works from additional artists in the book arts collection—occupies its own territory within the gallery cases, inviting investigation and interpretation on a personal level. This exhibit is worth a journey of your own to walk among what is possibly the largest publicly-accessible, privately-owned collection of artist books in the United States.

Kristin L. Tollefson
Kristin L. Tollefson is an artist and educator based in Tacoma, Washington.

The Passport Re-Imagined is on view through February 23 at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way on Bainbridge Island, Washington. The museum is free and open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.biartmuseum.org for more information.

Under the Inspiration Tree: Celebrating the Work of Thomas Wood is a major exhibition of work by beloved artist Thomas Wood at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington. The show allows the public several months to visit the museum for this extraordinary exhibition. Drawing from numerous collections, this survey brings dozens of works by Wood to provide the guest with a comprehensive view of his artistic practice and oeuvre. The show is divided into several sections to highlight various aspects of the artist’s work and life, but the theme remains constant: Wood was a precise yet playful artist whose work was as rooted in art history as it was in his daily life.

It is likely that most people who are familiar with Wood know about his mastery of printmaking, but the main entrance of the show opens with his paintings. Fittingly, the visitor is greeted by paintings of trees before approaching the artist studio transported into the gallery. The Pollinators, an oil on canvas work completed by Wood in 2004, is the work selected for the title wall. The painting has many hallmarks of Wood’s practice: a figure bringing a boat ashore, the central tree filled to the brim with creatures and plants, and a dark, foreboding background reminiscent of Thomas Cole. The text panels reveal that drawing was an essential part of Wood’s practice, and he often took a break from his process-driven printmaking practice to paint en plein air. Excursions to the San Juan Islands provided the perfect opportunity for him to draw and paint the trees above the water on the islands. This method seemed to span decades of his career, which is evident in the work selected for this portion of the exhibit.

While his process (drawing, en plein air, painting, intaglio, etc.) was diverse and wide-ranging, it is also impressive to note the many art historical references and inspirations for his work. Lummi Cove reminds this viewer of Fauvist painters like Henri Matisse and Georges Braque through the evident brushstrokes, hazy washes of color, and blending of foreground and background to create a dreamlike quality. Wood seemed to take a known subject matter like the bouquet or landscape and explore the topic through a blend of art historical references and his own perspective. The sources are referenced repeatedly in the exhibit, perhaps most interestingly the artist’s interest in Dutch landscape painting inspired by a stay in the Netherlands in the early 1990s. The paintings bear the signatures of this historical movement in combination with recognizable figures from his other work. In Creatures of the Sky, flying figures and other creatures whirl around the sky above a landscape scene with the Dutch hallmark of a low horizon line.

Creatures, both fantastical and rooted in reality, are a throughline in his work. Viewers can spot them in his paintings and prints. While in the exhibit, many visitors were playing a game to try to find mermaids in as many works are possible. The text for the show ties these characters to the time Wood spent in Italy, since many of the early flying or playful figures have a connection to Italian folklore, stories, or art. For example, the putti shows up repeatedly in Wood’s paintings and prints. The playful and jovial flying child transforms through the years and later art include all kinds of flying creatures.

Wood’s paintings are truly beautiful, but his technical skills really shine in his prints. The exhibit groups prints
together as if to highlight the connection between the works and to reinforce the narratives that are often present in his work. It is extraordinary to see Wood weave together personal experiences with common messages found in Renaissance and Early Modern art history. Fools of Tumbo is an excellent example of Wood telling his own personal story of an unfortunate trip to Tumbo Island while using the visual vocabulary of the Ship of Fools.

In addition to Under the Inspiration Tree, viewers can also see the work of Thomas Wood in Edison, Washington at i.e. gallery and Harris/Harvey Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Thomas Wood: Bugs in a Bowl at i.e. gallery features prints, while Thomas Wood: Selected Works at Harris/Harvey Gallery exhibits prints from the last intaglio plates created by Wood as well as other prints and paintings. It is a truly unique opportunity to see such a wide range of work created by one artist that spans a career of over fifty years.

Chloé Dye Sherpe
Chloé Dye Sherpe is an art professional and curator based in Washington State.

Under the Inspiration Tree: Celebrating the Work of Thomas Wood is on view through March 2, 2025 at Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher Building, located at 250 Flora Street in Bellingham, Washington. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.whatcommuseum.org.

Whenever I come close to forgetting that the Frye Museum consistently hosts some of the most interesting exhibits in Seattle, they surprise me by doing it again. Their latest surprise is Look Me in the Eyes, a collection of work in several media by Hayv Kahraman, an Iraqi-born Kurdish refugee who grew up in Sweden after her family fled Baghdad after the Gulf War.

This is her largest solo museum exhibit, and it includes painting, sculpture, collage, and an audio installation. She possesses such an impressive technical mastery in every medium she works with, that if you didn’t know that a single person created it all, you might think this was the work of two or three artists working on the same theme.

Kharaman is interested in the human gaze. She never lets you forget what it means to be watched, and possibly othered. That reality shifts gradually as you walk through the exhibit. Since it’s possible to enter the exhibit from either end of the gallery’s horseshoe-shaped space, and I’m pretty sure if you walked through it from back to front, you would get a different sense of how her work is also looking at you. Because it is.

If you enter it as I did, the first thing you will see is a space filled with paintings of floating faces that are interacting—or possibly merging—with fantastical masks that are growing on long plant stalks that are held in front of the faces by disembodied hands at the edge of the canvas.

At first glance, the faces appear female. And the mask/plants seem to be male—at least they bring a masculine quality to the faces they are partially covering with long monobrows that double as moustaches. Exchangeable, swapped-out eyes that shift perspective and identity, are a recurring motif in Kahraman’s work.

She paints on lush and beautiful khaki-colored linen that looks like it came from the inside of a tent in the desert. She applies paint in delicate layers, that recall Persian miniatures. The edges of the paintings are embellished with bands patterned in blue over a rich, meaty sienna. Marbled coronas or clouds surround and frame the faces, like embodied thought or reflection.

Her work was inspired—but not in a positive way—by the botanist Carl Linnaeus, who created the system of classifying all living organisms on the planet, in every country and culture, using Eurocentric names that paid little or no attention to what they were called locally. It’s a startling reminder that we still use a system of scientific nomenclature that was born out of Western colonialism.

The wonderfully titled 3eoon carries a hint of this. It includes an arresting image of a botanical specimen of an exotic eye/plant that’s been taped to a marbled surface that resembles the cellular structure of the insides of bones. The trapped specimen stares back at you with a resigned but unrelenting gaze of accusation.

Some of the paintings here are small, delicate, and even charming, in spite of their sinister content. Others are large and somewhat terrifying, like the remarkable Love Me Love Me Not. Three women surround a sinister daisy that has eyes for petals, which they are pulling off and consuming, maybe to recover their power of sight, since their own eyes are blank and empty—like eggs embedded in eye-sockets—white, and devoid of irises. Something has been stolen from these women and they are getting it back.

Sometimes Kharaman’s work escapes the frame. She has painted an entire wall of the exhibit with the fermented beet juice that’s used to make torshi, a staple of Arabic cuisine. The reference to fermentation is a reference to the fact that we all contain multitudes, which goes to the very basis of what it means to exist and co-exist with other species and cultures, a word that seems to have a double meaning here for her.

At the end of the exhibit, or the beginning, depending on where you come in, are the Brick Palms. They’re made of bricks that are painted with eyes—you are never not watched in this show—and stacked to resemble the date palms that have been native to Iraq since Mesopotamian times. War, pollution, and climate change have been hard on them and they are now dying off. Somber, arresting, dignified and silent, these sculptures are like ancient watchers of the depredation of modern civilization.

Did you ever get the feeling that someone was watching you? And possibly judging or assessing you? And maybe even trying to erase you with their gaze? That possibility of surveillance, assessment, judgement, and othering is never far from Kharaman’s mind. Nor will it be from yours. Even after you leave, you will sense these eyes watching you.

Kathleen Cain
Kathleen Cain was a journalist and a creative director at the legendary Heckler Associates for many years before starting her own communications consulting firm. Find her writings at www.postalley.org.

Through February 2, Frye Art Museum, located at 704 Terry Avenue in Seattle, Washington, displays Hayv Kahraman: Look Me in the Eyes. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.fryeartmuseum.org.

The idea of the artist as solo creator of their singular vision emerged during the era of global political and cultural uncertainty at the start of the 20th century. Artists, reaching for new ways to make sense of their world, echoed the changes happening around them in their work. Audiences grew to expect the shock of the new. In both science and art, Einsteinian relativity became the new rule, that truths were dependent on perspective.

Western culture has held on tight to this image of the artist ever since, and has been equally slow to open to alternative ways of working. So what image materializes when you hear about individual artists who are also a creative couple? What do you see when I tell you that they are not only makers, but curators of ideas, challengers of convention, carriers of skills, and collectors of objects?

One richly plausible answer is held in the retrospective exhibition Dennis Evans and Nancy Mee: Fifty Years, on view at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. This complex show reveals both the multitudes and connecting threads of this Seattle-based pair’s story, unfurling in a way that honors many facets of their work.

On entering the exhibition, one is struck by the scale of Evans’ and Mee’s work. Evans’ wall pieces pulse with color both within and around the frames, while the detail of objects and text on their surfaces draw the viewer close. Mee’s standing sculptures, constructed primarily of combinations of worked metal and manipulated glass, occupy space in a way that is consistently human, both in size and references within.

Along the curved wall of the gallery is some of Evans’ early performance and installation work, contextualized by the Muybridge-style sequential black-and-white photographic proof sheets revealing Mee’s documentation of these events from the 1970s. This early work, such as Instrument Box for 100 Discrete Tune Sounding Stones for Puget Sound (1980) garnered praise by the art world at that time and still resonates today. Renderings on the walls reveal schemes and intentions for the activation of these pieces, the forms of which parallel artist books: you can’t see the whole work unless it is being engaged or performed. All of the parts are essential here: the drafted plans and directives on the walls, the objects themselves, and the visual residue. They honor the work’s challenging-to-capture element of time, and compensate for the viewer’s body not being there as it happened.

The presence and absence of the body also informs Mee’s early work. Particularly striking is Broken Body (1985), a sculptural assemblage of X-ray imagery of curved spines layered with slumped light aqua-tinted sheet glass and surrounded by stout steel. Mee reflected on the choice of glass, which positioned her a vanguard in the field of art glass at the time. “The potency of my material was that it is so beautiful, yet so dangerous. It’s transparent. It’s a barrier.” The juxtaposition with the industrial frame continues this tension, and speaks further about her engagement with material as a communicator: “the material was at obligation to my content.”

These early gestures of each artist shown in the context of subsequent works reveal connections. It is tempting to suggest that they operated like navigators, bodies moving in space with an understanding of the direction they are traveling. But looking deeper, you see that they are collectors of narratives. The exhibition expands beyond their beginnings into a space that feels like an encyclopedic museum nested within a museum of art. Find your way between shaped stone musical instruments, curio cabinets of books and letters, classical figures, vessels, and collected objects, and the forged and fabricated steel and glass. The pieces carry a palpable sense of the continuity of time and the variety of their imagery held together simultaneously.

Several of the works featured in Fifty Years, including Sedes Sapiente and The Calendar Keeper, from Imagine—After the Deluge (2008), are excerpted from sprawling narrative bodies of work that reveal the inner workings of their partnership. Evans reflects, “What confuses a lot of people when we talk about the collaboration is that we…collaborate on an idea and we both take, coming to that idea from different directions.” This parallel play let them lean in to their own way of working. Mee continues, “…vision or concept expressed through material [or] materials used to express concept.”

Being life- and work-partners has meant that these artists were never completely alone in their vision. Yet the space that Nancy Mee and Dennis Evans have built together—from sharing meals to the studio—shaped a narrative of their own. Fifty Years embraces the artifacts of such a creative life while simultaneously revealing larger human stories of mystery, discovery, humanity, and science.

Kristin L. Tollefson
Kristin L. Tollefson is an artist and educator based in Tacoma, Washington.

Dennis Evans & Nancy Mee: 50 Years is on view through February 3 at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way on Bainbridge Island, Washington. The museum is free and open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.biartmuseum.org for more information.

Chatwin Arts in Pioneer Square wraps up its first full year on the gallery scene with a group show called What’s the Story? The paintings, photographs, and sculptures on view have one quality in common: they strongly suggest a narrative, and leave the viewer to imagine what that story might be.

The curator for What’s the Story? is Dale Cotton. He’s no stranger to Pioneer Square or to the regional arts scene: he was the director at the Linda Hodges Gallery throughout the final decade of its run. If the 2023 closing of the much-loved Linda Hodges left a tear in the neighborhood’s fabric, the opening of Chatwin Arts later in the year began the mending process. (There’s a story behind Chatwin Arts, too, but first things first.)

One of the show’s signature images is Candace Doyal’s Maternal Aim. With its in-your-face attitude and provocative characters, the (mostly) black-and-white photograph is a natural focal point. Its two formidable figures sit and stand front and center in the image, and they very clearly have stories to tell. But their confrontational pose says their stories are none of your business. Pose is the operative word: this is a staged portrait after all, not street photography. You can take the portrait as a variation on American Gothic but with Second Amendment rights and lots of asphalt. The vintage vehicle in the background could tell some stories, but the central question here may be the relationship between the two bad-ass characters staring us down.

Compare Maternal Aim to Riley Doyle’s oil painting, Three Watchers. Here again the white wall of an outbuilding frames the foreground subjects, but this time the figures are unaware that they are subjects. A woman stands in full sun, but she has turned her back to the artist’s gaze; the men’s faces are in full or partial shadow, difficult to read. (The interplay of shadow and light is likely Doyle’s true subject.) The mower and the patio grill place us in a banal domestic setting—until you notice the cacti, and the fact that they are props. These are clues that the scene is less mundane than it first appears. Other clues: incongruous explosions of color in the clear blue sky. There has to be more to that story.

For a contrast to these first two pieces we have Wendolin Wohlgemuth’s Departure. The painting lacks any human figure that we might wonder about or identify with. The image is depersonalized, unfocused, abstracted. To this viewer its mood is ominous. (Post 9/11, dread readily attaches to almost any image of a jet in flight.) Destruction and disruption are central to Wohlgemuth’s image making process. In this way his work echoes that of Gerhard Richter, a clear influence on the Portland-based painter. His restless and multi-layered approach to painting gives rise to a surprising depth of expression.

Several artists have multiple pieces in the show, among them are the painters Abigail Drapkin and Conrad Brudi. Drapkin’s two contributions could be from two different artists; of those, A Still Life is the one that most suggests  a story. (By the way, the painting is not a still life.) Its high-angle viewpoint and unusual composition put forward a certain reading of the scene: the female figure is literally looked down upon and overshadowed; she is literally cornered. The still life elements surrounding her offer subtle commentary on the action (or inaction).

Conrad Brudi is less concerned with realist figure painting than with conjuring up a dream-like tableau with a curious rough texture. His titles—like Robbers at the Rancho Bravo—at least offer hints about the scenarios depicted. Then again, the title Cody’s Lullaby Aboard the Commerce seems to refer to an outside work (an old novel or film perhaps) that would contextualize the painting if not explain it. But if the title is a pointer, I don’t get the reference—neither does ChatGPT—and I suspect it’s a false lead. Oh well. It’s best to exercise one’s own imagination anyway, a lesson this group show happily reinforces.

• • •

Somewhere in a deeper recess of the Chatwin Arts space (past an “Employee’s only” sign), you’ll see a large letterpress printer. It belongs to a notable publisher of books, posters, prints, and more: namely Chatwin Books. (Like Chatwin Arts, it is named after the late great travel writer Bruce Chatwin.) To see some Chatwin titles, just cross First Avenue and visit Arundel Books.

It’s a beautiful old space stocked with the things book-lovers and art-lovers dream of. On their shelf of Chatwin Books, look for Candace Doyal’s Thin Coffee and Secondhand Smoke, a memoir that melds Doyal’s photography with her Bukowski-inspired prose. Or pick up Viral Murals, about the artists whose colorful murals brought positive messages to the boarded-up storefronts in Seattle during the pandemic lockdown.

The owner of Arundel Books is Phil Bevis, who is also—with illustrator Annie Brulé—a co-founder of Chatwin Books and Chatwin Arts. We are fortunate that Bevis, Brulé, and their creative partners (Dale Cotton included) have brought such vitality to their corner of Pioneer Square. “We are publishers, designers, artists, printers, gallerists, and bookmakers who specialize in bringing ideas to life,” says their website. Their story is worth following, and we hope for even more chapters to come.

Tom McDonald
Tom McDonald is a writer and musician living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

What’s the Story? is on view Wednesday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. through end of November, at the Chatwin Arts, located at 323 First Avenue South in Seattle, Washington. For further information, visit www.chatwinarts.com.

Located in the idyllic Skagit Valley, the Bitters Co.’s Barn is the site of both a selection of houseware goods and occasional events throughout the year. Founded by sisters Amy & Katie Carson, Bitters Co. highlights makers from around the world specializing in housewares, glassware, cork, and more. In addition to their wholesale business, the Carson sisters often welcome chefs, makers, and artists to their space. The upper level of the barn creates a beautiful venue for all types of objects, and from September 14 to October 13 visitors can enjoy drawings by a somewhat surprising artistic trio: Amy Carson, Susan Bennerstrom, and Whiting Tennis.

On Paper an exhibit of drawings by Susan Bennerstrom, Amy Carson, and Whiting Tennis is a delight because it brings together three artists who do not solely create drawings on paper. Though their styles range greatly, the show highlights their more abstract and non-representational work. Readers are likely familiar of drawings by Whiting Tennis with their fluid and wandering nature. Whiting once remarked that he attends life drawing classes but chooses to make automatic drawings even when his fellow classmates are observing and drawing the model. The resulting work creates a confluence of technology, nature, and art historical references. Has technology taken over and formed an alliance with nature? Perhaps. What forms and shapes emerge from the human mind as a part of automatic exercise? Many, it appears. Tennis’ drawings in the show vary in color, which is consistent with his drawings exhibited elsewhere.

“Untitled Stage Study”evokes a sketch of a structured physical environment with shading and texture, whereas “Fridge” references Tennis’ attraction to automatic drawing. The artist, is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and Derek Eller Gallery in New York, so eager viewers have another Northwest venue to see Tennis’ larger paintings and sculptures. However, a selection of the artist’s drawings is truly a treat, especially in this artistic pairing.

Drawing unifies this exhibition, but the process of each artist and resulting style makes each unique. It is also worth noting that both Tennis and Susan Bennerstrom create work at a larger scale and different medium besides drawing. Bennerstrom’s paintings are observations of the world retold by the artist. Bennerstrom clarifies that she does not define her style as that of a realist, but her precision does reference realism with an unexpected edge. The scene is familiar to the viewer but something about the composition and flat colors feel manufactured or imagined by the artist. In comparison, it is Bennerstrom’s drawings that are brought to the forefront in this exhibition. During the COVID-19 pandemic the artist poured time into her drawing practice and the result is multiple series of abstract works. “Lisbon” and “Nether Land” are included in this show, and both exhibit an extraordinary amount of tension. The shapes appear to push and pull each other within the picture plane, while the evidence of the artist’s hand give the drawings a sense of immediacy.

Bitters Co. co-founder Amy Carson also has drawings included in the show. Carson’s entire body of work brings attention to the artist’s interest in the physicality of materials and a study of color combinations. The essential shape of an object is considered and the artist brings that shape in to comparison to others through the use of color play. The black-and-white work in this show even more so heighten an interest in following the artist’s hand and gesture across the paper or board to guide the eye across the surface. The physical surface does not limit Carson, who often extends the image beyond the perimeters in the viewer’s imagination.

Drawings feel more immediate than almost any other medium. With a small leap of imagination, the viewer can visualist the artist creating a work on the surface in front of them. On Paper is no exception to this practice. Each artist is attracted to drawing to fulfill a particular need or interest, with the resulting work exhibiting a juxtaposition of control, tension, and action. It is also worth noting that the show is not on display in the white box of an art gallery. Gallery spaces are excellent venues for displaying artwork, but it is also important to consider work in locations that bring another context or perspective. Drawings installed on wooden barn walls certainly can change the context or interpretation of work, but it is up to each unique viewer to bring that aspect of the show.

Chloé Dye Sherpe

Chloé Dye Sherpe is an art professional and curator based in Washington State.

On Paper is on view from September 14 through October 13 at Bitters Co. Barn, located at 14034 Calhoun Road in Mount Vernon, Washington. Hours are Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for more information, visit www.bittersco.com.

New paintings by prolific artist Maxine Martell are included in the exhibit, Maxine Martell: Magical Beings, at the Aurora Loop Gallery in Port Townsend, Washington. Curator Kathleen Garrett has assembled an interesting mix of paintings, collages, and other works on paper, that spans fifteen years and includes several new pieces that were created this year. 

The title Magical Beings alludes to the shimmering mystery that inhabits all of Martell’s art, on the surface and sometimes just below it. The concept of collage has always been a central idea in her paintings, which is not surprising when you consider that her work is inspired by her interest in film, fashion, architecture, literature, and history. She blends those influences with her own memories, travels, and family history, sometimes incorporating personal narratives. At first glance, the paintings in this show are beautiful, decorative, and engaging, but as you spend more time with them and look more closely, an undertone of intrigue, intellect, and hidden powers emerges.

The centerpiece of the show is a selection of paintings pulled from her Hybrids series. Not all of the pieces in that series are included here, but there are enough to keep your eye and imagination occupied and your brain firing on all synapses. Their layering and collage effects echo the tromp l’oeil paintings of an earlier series called Torn Paintings, in which Martell created paintings that appear to have been pasted over paintings that have now been partially revealed by a mysterious someone who peeled away parts of the painted-over images so that they are no longer completely covering up the evidence. The longer you look at them, the more those partially exposed paintings begin to capture your attention, and you find yourself inexorably drawn to thinking about what might be happening in the concealed work, and wondering how the two layered stories connect. If you’re interested in looking at those before or after you visit this show, you will find them in the Archive pages on her website: https://maxinemartell.com. 

Nearly all the new works included in this show are portraits of magisterial, elegant, and strangely powerful women. Perhaps they are they are outsiders, witches and sorceresses, perhaps they are imperious empresses. Or maybe they’re merely very confident ladies of leisure. Some appear to be established, easy and assured of their power. Others are more enigmatic and difficult to pin down, like the ethereal seer who has hung her lamp on an outstretched tree branch and gazes thoughtfully at something or someone that’s just behind your left shoulder. Martell clothes all of these women in layered and multi-patterned headdresses, hats, collars, and elegantly patchworked garments made from recycled bits of her older paintings that she has cut up and pasted onto the canvas.

There is always as much to think about in Martell’s paintings as there is to see. She’s a storyteller, but not the kind who holds your hand. Those women in Japanese kimonos—are they portraits of different people or are they different angles and aspects of the same woman? The titles are not much help. They’re little nuggets of misdirection, leading you down several possible paths or into spirals of introspection. Some portraits are named for objects, qualities, or ideas: Swallows, Evening, Plum Petals, Spring Willow. Others are directly descriptive: Gilded Butterflies and Girl with Amaryllis. There are references to mythological beings, including Merlin, Graces, Artemis, and Kitsune, the fantastical shape-shifting, nine-tailed foxes of Japanese legend, who are guardians, protectors, and sometimes lovers of mortal humans. But others are ambiguous. Are April and Aries women’s names or references to seasons and the zodiac? And speaking of odd little mysteries, why is Zodiak spelled like that? What is she up to? Since Hybrids is a series, what is the secret connection that links them? 

I unearthed one possible key to this mystery buried in an interview the artist gave after an exhibit of some of her paintings at Museo Gallery on Whidbey Island. She said: “A series often begins with an individual painting, which suggests variations. Once begun, I work on several paintings at a time. They call back and forth to one another until I abandon them.” 

So, there’s your first clue; the rest is up to you. Go see this wonderful show of Martell’s newest work if you want to hunt down more revelations about the kind of conversations that might be quietly whispered in the background between these magical beings. I promise it will be time well spent.

Kathleen Cain

Kathleen Cain was a journalist and a creative director at the legendary Heckler Associates for many years before starting her own communications consulting firm. Find her writings at www.postalley.org.

Through September 29, Aurora Loop Gallery, located at 971 Aurora Loop in Port Townsend, Washington, displays Maxine Martell: Magical Beings. Hours are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.auroraloopgallery.com.

Two groundbreaking exhibits at Cascadia Art Museum are A Legacy Rediscovered: Northwest Women Artists, 1920-1970 and Building a Dream: Z. Vanessa Helder and Artists of the Inland Northwest. What a special pairing! 

David Martin, our treasured curator of mid-twentieth century modernism in the Northwest, curated both of these exhibits. The first introduces a group of artists each of whom demonstrate a knowledge of a main direction in twentieth century art: impressionism, realism, surrealism, abstraction. In the second, he assembled a group of Z. Vanessa Helder’s Grand Coulee Dam watercolors, as well as a selection of work by her students.

Several of the women in A Legacy Rediscovered are well-known, although not always for the type of work in the exhibit. Doris Chase became known for her large abstract sculptures, videos, and films, Myra Wiggins for her pictorialist photography, and Yvonne Twinning Humber for her realism and magic realism. Some of these women came from or were able to study on the East Coast, at major art schools, and with prominent teachers. The Women Painters of Washington, formed by Myra Wiggins in 1930, became a focal point for many women in Seattle.

The back stories of these artists can help with understanding how they chose their subjects. Peggy Strong for example, suffered a paralyzing car accident in 1933. This led to her identification with other people who were struggling, particularly African Americans. As with so many of these artists, the government art programs provided opportunities such as mural painting and printmaking that otherwise would not have been available.

In this exhibit, we see several mural studies by Lucia Wiley from a series called Youth Marches On. She worked in true fresco and later won a national award as an outstanding mural painter. As we look at these studies we see a range of approaches and a sophisticated organization of space. Later she converted to be a sister in the Community of the Holy Spirit in New York City and taught in their schools for many years.

Vivian Kidwell Griffin stands out as an early surrealist in the 1930s even as her entire education was in the Northwest. The paintings included by her are unusual and original—she does not follow other familiar surrealist approaches.

Among the abstract artists is Maria Frank whose blue green painting suggests, with its curving pastel greens and blues, quite a different understanding of abstraction than the aggressive forms of the New York based Abstract Expressionists.

Indeed, what emerges from this exhibit is a strong group of women who forged their own careers on their own terms. It is hard to believe they were so successful in the context of the Northwest culture in the mid-twentieth century.

Building a Dream: Z. Vanessa Helder and Artists of the Inland Northwest 

Z. Vanessa Helder studied at the Art Student’s League in New York City on a scholarship in 1934. On returning to Washington state she was hired by the WPA to run the Spokane Arts Center from 1939-41. The center was a hub of creativity featuring theater, writing workshops, and painting until it was closed during World War II.

On her own time, Helder spent two years painting the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, the only woman permitted on the site. She created sketches during the day and watercolor paintings at night. Her precisionist style of clean-cut buildings and industrial sites juxtapose details of the building of the dam with the specific landscape of Northeastern Washington. The compositions include complex diagonals of the industrial equipment set in the swelling hills of the region. She also painted worker housing, although in a precisionist way—no people, no cars, no stores. The small houses stand in for the life in the village of Grand Coulee. Read B Street by Lawney L. Reyes, University of Washington Press (2008), for the rest of the picture.

Widely praised for the Grand Coulee paintings, they are still her best known work. It was a fortuitous conjunction of her initiative in seeking out this subject, inspired by her precisionist perspective, and her sophisticated approach to both medium and composition.

In a second room of the exhibit are works by her students including the later well-known Alden Mason. Each work tells us that these artists learned from Helder, but went their own way.

Susan Noyes Platt 

Susan Noyes Platt writes for local, national, and international publications and her website is www.artandpoliticsnow.com.

Building a Dream: Z. Vanessa Helder and Artists of the Inland Northwest is on view through September 29 and A Legacy Rediscovered: Northwest Women Artists through January 5 at Cascadia Art Museum, located at 190 Sunset Avenue S., Edmonds, Washington. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information www.cascadiaartmuseum.org.

The sculptor Hib Sabin has been showing his art at Stonington Gallery for almost two decades now—a sizable chunk of time, but just a fraction of Sabin’s lengthy artistic career. Defying time itself, Sabin at age 87 is presenting new work that is as strong as ever, on the occasion of his solo show at Stonington Gallery. The exhibit is called The Four Seasons and it is inspired by Vivaldi’s famous violin concerti, “The Four Seasons.”

The Four Seasons consists of four tableaux, each ensemble composed of four wood carved figures respresenting a season. Birds and boats are the repeated elements that unify the four ensembles.

Birds have long featured in Sabin’s imagination. They have an added resonance in the Four Seasons context: Vivaldi famously incorporated birdsong into his composition. In “Spring Equinox Ensemble,” we see one bird taking flight, another bird fixed in a watchful pose, and a bird transmuted into a bowl. And there is a bird represented by a solitary feather–that is, unless the feather refers to something else entirely: the journey of the soul perhaps, or divination, or the ephemeral nature of existence. (These are all concepts that Sabin has explored in earlier works.) Sabin’s imagery resists easy readings, and remains enigmatic; it’s as if the images are lured in from mythic or spiritual realms well beyond the rational, and then captured in juniper wood carvings. The carvings, which are beautifully hand-painted, may be taken as hand-held spiritual implements meant for healing, or tools to re-invoke the dream-world from which they emerged.

While one could ponder the tableaux all day long, the art itself is not ponderous. In fact a whimsical spirit is present, shining through in unexpected color choices, or in the simplified and almost child-like design of the boats. Boats and canoes (like owls and ravens) are recurring images in Sabin’s world; these charming vessels in The Four Seasons, with their determined little oars, may call back the Odyssey, or the Ship of Fools. Or both, or neither.

Sabin’s imagery feels timeless, ancient, tied to myth, and that probably has to do with Sabin’s extensive world travels. He lived and studied with the Hadza people in Tanzania, and with aboriginal Australian communities; he immersed himself in shamanic practices in Mexico. He undertook cultural projects in India, Russia, and Uzbekistan. And somewhere along the line he encountered Pacific Northwest Coast Native mythologies and art-making traditions; they left the deepest mark on his own artistic vision.

Sabin’s days of international travel may be behind him, but The Four Seasons reveals that he still takes internal journeys, and still brings back valuable findings.

Tom McDonald

Tom McDonald is a writer and musician living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

The Four Seasons is on view Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. through September 28, at the Stonington Gallery, located at 125 S. Jackson Street in Seattle, Washington. For further information, visit www.stoningtongallery.com.