Articles

Last summer was a dark one for the Puget Sound ceramics community; it lost two important figures within a day of each other. Revered local potter and ceramics teacher Reid Ozaki died suddenly on July 25. One of Ozaki’s last public statements was to mourn the passing, the day before, of sculptor and ceramicist Ken Lundemo. Neither man played the part of the introverted-and-isolated-artist stereotype. Both men helped cultivate the creative community around them, passed along their knowledge of ancient traditions and techniques, and brought together local artists young and old to strengthen the craft. These are rare and much-needed capacities, and their losses are keenly felt.

Lundemo was born and raised in the southern Puget Sound area. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he enrolled in the Arts program at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, circa 1950. The program had just one art instructor at the time, and he did not teach sculpture. Lundemo made sculpture his focus anyway. Two years later, armed with his Associate of Arts degree, Lundemo became a lineman for Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone. Although art-making was a side gig, the artist scored some notable early successes: in 1975, the Washington State Art Collection made its first acquisition, Lundemo’s 19-foot tall longboat sculpture “Langskip Norseland Spirit.” It still stands proudly today in Poulsbo, Washington. Lundemo continued to expand his toolkit and skillset—he taught himself welding and metal casting, he sculpted stone, bronze, wood, and clay. He worked in miniature and monumental scale using a boom truck to install his more colossal work.

Lundemo hung up his lineman’s hardhat in 1984 to focus on art full-time. On his 20-acre property in Seabeck near the Hood Canal, he and two potter friends constructed Santatsugama, a 17-foot-long anagama, or Japanese-style wood-fired kiln. The three-chambered “Dragon kiln” became a gathering place and informal learning center for ceramic artists near and far. Lundemo hosted nearly a hundred firings. A firing involves five days of around-the-clock burning and stoking of the fire by a crew of 10-12 people. Working in shifts, they maintain a temperature of approximately 2300 °F in the bellies of the Dragon. A communal spirit is inherent in the ancient tradition.

Lundemo’s spirit and teachings live on in the work of the artists who fired at Santatsugama, such as Eva Funderburgh (former kiln manager), and Kitsap artists Jenny Anderson and Elena Wendelyn. His presence also continues to be felt at Collective Visions Gallery in Bremerton, Washington, which Lundemo co-founded in 1994—a place where his work is shown and celebrated.

Reid Ozaki, for his part, was raised in Hilo, Hawaii, but came to the University of Puget Sound to study biology. And though he did earn a Biology degree, an elective course in ceramics changed everything. He took courses toward an MFA degree at University of Puget Sound, and then joined the faculty at Tacoma Community College. Ozaki taught ceramics for the next 25 years. Being an educator didn’t seem to detract from his art making. He loved to show his innovative work and to tell about it: check out the YouTube video of Ozaki’s gallery talk at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts in 2021. What shines through is his boundless fascination with the practice of pottery-making (mistakes and mishaps included) from shaping to glazing to firing. 

Raised to respect his Japanese heritage, Ozaki let Ikebana (flower-arranging) and Chado (tea ceremony) and other Japanese aesthetic traditions influence his work at the potter’s wheel. One reason his pieces are in prominent collections (including the Smithsonian Museum) is that they embody Japanese, Hawaiian, and Pacific Northwest influences. A shallow bowl, an empty tea cup, can hold multiple worlds.

Ozaki may have retired from the teaching profession, but he remained a teacher until his death. In his own words: “Several years ago, I came across the Japanese word shokunin. It’s generally translated as ‘craftsman’ and is a title earned after years of practice and accomplishment; however, craftsman doesn’t quite capture the full meaning… It implies a responsibility to present one’s best work in a spirit of social consciousness, to honor the traditions of the craft, and to pass that knowledge on.”

Ozaki was all too aware of discouraging trends in the arts scene: the closure of galleries, museums, and craft centers that once featured serious ceramics work; the defunding of arts programs at all education levels; the list goes on. Ozaki and his colleague Kristina Batiste established the Tacoma Pottery Salon to counter these trends. They drew together potters young and old to share, to learn, to laugh, to teach, to support, and of course to eat. Batiste, an influential ceramic artist in Tacoma, stepped up to host the monthly gatherings at her home. The salon was casual, organic, free. Ozaki came up with an activity he called “Potle” (think “Wordle”), a way to get the community to recognize itself and the notable pottery work going on locally. Tacoma Pottery Salon has grown to become an important hub—much like Ken Lundemo’s Santatsugama. And yes, the salon continues, even without its dearly departed shokunin, Reid Ozaki.

Tom McDonald

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

For information about the Tacoma Pottery Salon, visit www.tacomapotterysalon.org.

Nestled in downtown Bellingham, Rebecca Meloy’s Meloy Gallery occupies a small space off Bay Street and E. Holly Street. Meloy describes her gallery as a “closet gallery” due to the fact that it is a small space packed full of art. She opened the gallery in 2022 and also managed Meloy & Company LLC from 1997 to 2004, where she focused on exhibiting work by local artists. Meloy Gallery is no different. In an interview with the gallerist, she noted that she often invites her friends to exhibit their work in her gallery. Meloy is also an art educator and artist, so her roster of artist friends is extensive. For January, she invited her good friend Joe Reno to exhibit his work alongside other artwork in his personal collection. In addition to Reno’s work, pieces by Jay Steensma, Patrick Burke, and Elizabeth Aurich are for sale at the gallery. In February, the gallery is welcoming Richard Longstreet, a local painter and printmaker, to exhibit his work. Since Meloy is friends with many of these artists, the exhibitions have a personal connection with the gallery and offer a more intimate view of an artist’s work. She also has posted many insightful photographs of artists working on her website and in the gallery. This insider perspective is a peek inside the mind of an artist and gives us an idea of the work required to create the objects on display.

The January exhibit, organized by Reno and Meloy,  titled “Chronology of Abstract to Realism” includes paintings, drawings, and prints by the artists listed above. Those who are knowledgeable about art in the Northwest will recognize Jay Steensma’s work. Steensma was a key member of the broader “Northwest School” in Western Washington, like Joe Reno. The other artists in the exhibition, Patrick Burke and Elizabeth Aurich, are close friends of Joe Reno and have a long exhibition history in Washington State. The work included in the show is expressive, both through color and the evidence of the artist’s hand, and incredibly figurative. Reno included many portraits and paintings that reference his societal observations. In “The View of a Scientist,” insects buzz around the paintings with a fervor as they are surrounded by layers of colorful swirls. The painting is filled with Reno’s energy and his unique sense of color. In his “Self Portrait” from 1991, the artist utilizes color contrasts to create depth and perspective for the viewer. The artist’s face is filled out through blocks of varying colors; periwinkle blue, orange, yellow, and pink shape the contours of his face while brushes of blues and greens make up his sweater.

In February, visitors to Meloy Gallery have the opportunity to see work by Richard Longstreet, who seeks to tap into the various aspects of consciousness and unconsciousness through his artistic process. The work appears intuitive; geometric shapes and colors are layered onto one another to create a complex web of imagery. The content is largely determined by the viewer. Much like the Surrealists and Impressionists before him, Longstreet seems to be equally, if not more, interested in the process in which an artwork is created as by the final product. Making art is a process of discovery for him and seeking out the origins of emotion and thought through mark making is of key importance. Longstreet’s woodblock prints are exceptionally beautiful, and the use of layered colors and patterns is very impressive. The resulting image has an atmospheric quality that can be challenging to attain in a woodblock print. Many of the prints on Meloy Gallery’s website are around 18 x 14 inches and quite affordable.

Artists are often in attendance at their openings at Meloy Gallery during the beloved First Friday events from 6 to 9 p.m. The gallery has a robust exhibition schedule in 2025 and Meloy plans to present a new exhibition every 4 weeks. January and February are traditionally slow months for all retail businesses, and this is true for art galleries as well. So if you have plans to visit Bellingham, a trip to Meloy Gallery can easily be combined with visits to Fourth Corner Frames & Gallery in the same building, Geheim Gallery across Bay Street, and Allied Arts of Whatcom County on Cornwall Avenue. Whatcom Museum, where guests can find art and history exhibits, is also located in downtown Bellingham. Many upcoming exhibits are already listed on the gallery websites, so please look if you are planning a visit to downtown Bellingham in the near future.

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

Chronology of Abstract to Realism: Joe Reno Collection is on view through January and Dream States: Richard Longstreet through February at Meloy Gallery, located at 301 West Holly in Bellingham, Washington. Hours are Thursday through Sunday from 12 to 6 p.m. First Friday Art Walks are from 6 to 9 p.m. For more information, visit www.meloygallery.com.

in a previous incarnation

we were an all-girl group

the styrofoam cupcakes

a one hit wonder

with the song, “love on saturn”

after that, the group just broke up

too many egos

and no more money

now we sit

soaking up rays

in the window of wig-o-rama

letting the day’s music

stream through our heads

Alan Chong Lau

Alan Chong Lau is a poet and visual artist based in Seattle, Washington. He serves as Arts Editor for the International Examiner, a community newspaper. As a visual artist, he is represented by ArtX Contemporary in Seattle, Washington. His upcoming art show opens October 2025.

John Levy is a poet and photographer. In 2023, Shearsman Books published 54 poems: new & selected, which includes works from 1972 to 2022. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Alan Chong Lau and John Levy have published three volumes of a poetry and photography collaboration that can be found by searching online for “eye2word.”

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.