Articles

Bainbridge Island Art Museum: Dreaming of the River Passage #3

You painted or rather futzed and finished this the year
we were married, 2003, but you began it, 1979 the year
after I finished college. I guess it took you 24 years
to finalize that wow of color or maybe that pink paint

dribble. A sailboat leaves a small white wake as the rush
of blue propels this little craft almost off your
nearly six foot canvas. In another corner, a funny
little animal, duck beaked with overweight torso

resembling a perfect small show dog stack, except
it has cat ears, like those of tabby Sophie; she must
have crept into the imagination of your studio mind.
A couple about my age, stops to study...

she giggles. I look up. She covers her mouth like
a schoolgirl — says hi with a slight blush. They
wander off to another painting holding hands
as fresh as if they were sophomores at a dance.

Your blue paint dances, especially at the bottom.
You left an undercoat uncovered, maybe while you
were dancing to Miles and maybe he just changed key.
I am with you here, today imagining your hand

on this canvas. Signs say do not touch the art work.
What if, the art work touches you?


Josie Emmons Turner

Josie Emmons Turner is a poet living in Gig Harbor, Washington and was Tacoma’s Poet Laureate 2011-2013. Her book, “More Blue” was published by Cave Moon Press earlier this year.

The painting, “Dreaming of the River Passage #3,” is by Northwest artist William Turner (1940-2021) and it is on view along with a few more of his paintings through February 15, 2026, in the “Reflecting on Collecting” exhibit highlighting artworks from Bainbridge Island Museum of Art’s Permanent Collection. 

In his fifth exhibition at Greg Kucera Gallery, Dan Webb decided to create something different. After completing several large-scale public projects, including an installation for Sound Transit, Webb wanted to retreat inward and focus on smaller-scale and more personal pieces. Each piece starts as a drawing, which the artist describes as very rough, but the outcome is an examination of material, depth, and juxtapositions. 

The exhibit shows the result of an artistic exercise that allowed Webb to follow multiple thought experiments. Those familiar and unfamiliar with Webb’s sculptures are sure to delight in this new body of work, which is literally bursting at the seams. The artwork contains Webb’s signature juxtaposition and contrasts, such as rough vs smooth, but this new work reflects his desire to take a step back and challenge his process. 

As Webb developed new pieces for this exhibition, he was also wrapping up a series of public art projects. These projects required a incredible amount of effort executed over several years. Artists like Webb dedicate hours and hours to a single vision that must be coordinated with engineers, fabricators, and installation crews. After finishing these projects, his interest turned to reversing this process and focusing on artwork that felt more free, more loose, compared to prior projects. If the process of creating public art involved a series of questions to be answered, Webb now wanted to create a series of pieces that leaves questions unanswered. The artwork still touches on the artist’s recurring themes—like the alphabet, humor, and the horrible—but Webb challenged himself to follow a thought to see where it leads.  

Webb describes his process for these works in his statement for the show. He started each artwork conceptually, and in his drawings, with a box or frame as a structural device to hold the carving. This concept is referenced in the title of the show, “Yespalier,” a word derived from the French “espalier,” or using a lattice to train trees to grow against a flat wall in a variety of shapes and patterns. One piece, “New Shoot,” is an excellent example to illustrate his thought process and method. In the work, a new plant shoot grows and curves inside a frame of carved fir. Most of the plant is contained within the frame, but it is starting to test the limits of the box. In the piece called “Yespalier” (carved madrone and Alaskan yellow cedar), the curly letters and forms are drooping over the carved lattice, similar to fruit trees grown with the espalier technique. 

When I first saw that Webb’s newest carvings start within a frame or border, I immediately thought of illustrated manuscripts. When creating an illustrated manuscript, a grid would first be drawn to organize the page and to separate the area for writing from the borders for the illustrations. We see fascinating examples of the illustrations and miniatures growing, becoming more elaborate, and taking attention away from the text itself. An additional connection is Webb’s “&,” composed of stained glass, LED lights, and fir artwork framing the ampersand character. It echoes the elaborate initials included in illuminated manuscripts. I discussed the connection that I saw in the work with the artist, and he shared his admiration for the Limbourg Brothers, the artists who created the beautiful decorations throughout “Les Très Riches Heures,” a defining masterpiece of early 15th-century manuscript illumination. 

The inclusion of stained glass in the show is intriguing since Webb is well-known for his wood carvings. Glass provides a stunning contrast with wood. The artist describes wood as making shadows, while glass reflects the light. Stained glass in particular has been used to magnify light and inspire spiritual experiences. For Webb, stained glass provides another reversal of his wood carving process. Just as returning to hand-held work after creating large-scale commissions creates renewal, incorporating stained glass allows Webb to play with light and themes in ways that wood carvings make challenging. 

When asked what people should know or take away from his exhibition, Webb responded that it is his job to invite the viewer to encounter the work and then let them accept or understand it on their own terms. He asks a series of questions in the show and then leaves it to the viewer to either answer those questions or explore the possibilities on their own. You can experience the work yourself from January 8 to February 21, 2026, at the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Washington.

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

“Yespalier” is on view from Tuesday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Greg Kucera Gallery, located at 212 Third Avenue South in Seattle, Washington. An Artist Talk is being held on Saturday, January 10 at noon. First Thursday Receptions are January 8 and February 5, from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information visit www.gregkucera.com.  

As we enter this captivating exhibition  by Aisha Harrison, we are first confronted by a large tree branch bending over us and spiraling to the floor. The bigleaf maple branch invites you under it to get to the rest of the exhibition. But as we look more closely we see the entire branch has been fabricated from natural materials. The artist calls the work “Love Letter and Splash Portal.” Fortunately, there is a step-by-step explanation of how the maple was created in the corner of the exhibition. Collaborating with her mother, Lucia Harrison, a noted Northwest artist, they began the maple by gathering dried leaves, cutting them into pieces, and boiling them to create a pulp. Other stages of the process included making the trunk with foam and covering it with tape, then sculpting it with pipe insulation and painting it. And that’s just the trunk. The tree’s six hundred leaves are made of paper, and each has veins of red wire. The very realistic moss is dyed wool. Harrison conceived of the tree four years ago, and has been working on it with her mother and volunteers for the past two years. 

The other works in the exhibition seem protected by the bigleaf maple. Facing the front door is “Rooted.” Harrison is mixed-race, so the face is her African-American father, ancestors, herself, and her grandmother. From the shoulders two trees rise up, while from those same shoulders two braids of hair hang down to join the trees’ long root systems which in turn raise the art off the floor.

 “take You apart to build something new” gives us a young woman with branches of hair rising up from her head, and roots hanging down. In between are a pelvis and neck vertebrae. As the artist describes it: “The pelvic bone is our center and is the structure in which we grew our first nine months of life. As a mother I greatly respect the pelvic bones and their mysteries. The spinal column holds us together and has so much importance for disseminating information to all our systems.” In other words, each part of this sculpture has deeper meaning. The branches/hair reach to the sky, and down to the dark and the unknown. The young woman is metamorphosing into the earth and sky right in front of us.

The “Pelvis” really spoke to me, with its large pelvis bone carefully made of clay so we can see all the parts. Rising up from the pelvis is a forest of red “veins” made of aluminum covered with red wool. The “veins” felt like blood rising up from the pelvis, a relief for the burden that these bones carry.
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Another intriguing work is the “Boat of Hands,” a vessel formed from hands that were cast from the artist’s own family members, with moss, lichen, and sticks. Here again we get a sense of reaching beyond the object as those hands stretch out.

Harrison calls her show “Porous Body,” an evocative name that feels appropriate for these artworks. We can feel the separate artworks, rather than take them in rationally. Although their material presence is strong, all of them are imaginary and take us to a place inside and outside our bodies to nature, to the planet. Calling the works porous bodies gives space for both the idea of decay and the idea of rebirth. Harrison feels joy, not despair, in the ever-changing cycle of life and death on earth.
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Susan Noyes Platt
Susan Noyes Platt writes for local, national, and international publications and her website, www.artandpoliticsnow.com.

“Porous Body” is on view through February 22 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way E. on Bainbridge Island, Washington, and open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.biartmuseum.org.

Ka-POW! BAM!!! Comic books in the 1950s and ’60s really did a number on young artists-to-be. They inspired important artists in all disciplines—Roy Lichtenstein and Takashi Murakami in visual arts, Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro in film, David Bowie in music, and Art Spiegelman in literary arts to name just the more obvious ones.

Comic books were printed on the cheapest newsprint, making them easy to produce and distribute. They were considered more like junk mail than valued cultural artifacts. By the ’60s they were reaching even the remote archipelago of Haida Gwaii, where a boy named Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas avidly consumed them.

Yahgulanaas came from a distinguished lineage of Haida artists, such as Delores Churchill, Isabella Edenshaw, and Charles Edenshaw. He was introduced to Haida iconography and traditional formline designs by his older cousin, carver Robert Davidson, a central figure in the modern revival of Haida art. In 1969, Davidson’s first totem pole was raised in a public ceremony that reasserted Haida cultural continuity after decades of suppression. Yahgulanaas apprenticed with his cousin before striking off on his own path.

Yahgulanaas first made his mark with activism rather than art. He helped to lead and organize protests against industrial logging operations in the southern part of Haida Gwaii. The famously successful blockade became a model in the larger struggle to protect old-growth forests throughout coastal British Columbia.

That ability to assert Haida sovereignty and stewardship over ancestral lands ties directly to his artistic practices. When he stepped back from political organizing, he turned to the art-form of comics, but comics that were in harmony with the traditional Haida visual vocabulary.

“I’m trying to take a complex, ancient iconic art form — which is totem poles, which is my cultural birthright, I guess — and translate that in a way that becomes accessible to regular people…” 
(Reddit AMA, 2014)

In exploring the fertile ground between contemporary comic book arts and traditional Haida storytelling, Yahgulanaas knew comics could register with a wider public beyond the rarified spaces in which Indigenous art is typically displayed. By this time comics were no longer classed as junk; they had become recognized as a culturally legitimate form. And he knew the Haida nation was resurgent. (In 2010, the Queen Charlotte Islands were officially renamed Haida Gwaii — the result of a long process of Indigenous political advocacy.)

Things clicked into higher gear when his Japanese students referred to his work as Manga, a traditional Japanese form that he had not yet encountered. This was in the ’90s when it was still niche, though that was about to change.

Yahgulanaas studied the roots of the Manga form — learning from the masters yet again. He eventually coined the term “Haida Manga” for the hybrid graphic novels he was forging. The most successful example of Haida Manga is Red: A Haida Manga, which has been widely exhibited, taught, and discussed internationally.

In works like Red, classic Haida formlines define the panels within which Yahgulanaas depicts discrete scenes in his narrative. In comics, the space between panels are known as “gutters,” and they are typically white (the color of the paper). In Haida Manga, the black formline gutters are lifted up, they are positive marks with a meaning, a history, and a presence of their own. In fact the formlines tell a story even as they define the negative spaces or panels in which the “main” narrative unfolds. They flow across each two-page spread and then continue on the following page or spread, another level of design. Even further: the pages can be assembled into one continuous mural, allowing the story to be read either sequentially in time or viewed spatially all at once.

The strategy is a sort of conceptual intervention: Western comics privilege linear reading, while Northwest Coast Indigenous art traditions often emphasize continuous form, non-linear narrative, and the integration of image, story, and space.

All this can seem complicated, and in recent works, Yahgulanaas delights in disorienting the reader/viewer even further. He doesn’t feel that this conflicts with his goal of making the work accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds.

“What I am trying to do is force the observer to become an active participant. I am trying to undermine my OWN authority and privilege as an artist. I am trying to say ‘You become engaged. Claim your own sovereign authority.’” 
(Reddit AMA, 2014)

Yahgulanaas’s work is on view through February 3 at Stonington Gallery. This provides a golden opportunity to get acquainted with a celebrated figure and a dynamic hybrid artform. The show’s emphasis is on work produced prior to Red, but Red and individual pages and sheets from Red and other works are available in 
different formats.

To see Yahgulanaas’s most recent work, consider a trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s group exhibition, “We who have known tides: Indigenous Art from the Collection.” Within this exhibit, the Gallery unveils a major multi-year commission from Yahgulanaas called “Clan Hat,” and it marks the beginning of an expansive story cycle and a new narrative world. 

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

“Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas: Drawing the World Anew” is on view Tuesday through Friday, from January 8 through February 3 at Stonington Gallery, located at 125 South Jackson Street in Seattle, Washington. For more information, visit www.stoningtongallery.com.

Port Angeles has created a state-of-the-art center called the Field Arts & Events Hall. It is the first of three buildings planned for the Port Angeles Waterfront Center campus that is to  include the Marine Discovery Center plus a building devoted to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

Besides showing local, regional, national, and international music and performance artists inside the 500-seat Donna M. Morris Theater, Field Hall also hosts  regular open mic nights, weddings, and school proms.

The facility also features a cutting–edge conference and event center, the Waterfront Coffee Bar, and the 1,000 square-foot Laura Cooksey Gallery.

Ms. Cooksey is one of many supporters of the construction of Field Hall, alongside generous local donors such as Donna M. Morris, Dorothy Field, and the Elizabeth B. McGraw Foundation, as well as corporate and individual donors who value a vibrant arts community on the northern Olympic Peninsula.

The gallery features rotating exhibits highlighting local and regional artists. On view through January 31, is a show titled, “Retrospective,” which showcases 21 local visual artists who have worked with Field Hall in some capacity over its first few years of operation. Artists include Jesse Joshua Watson, Jeff Merrill, Amber Bach, Terry Breen, Katie Harmon, Jodi Riverstone, Evette Allerdings, Shari Beals, Lisa Fagerlund, Erica Iseminger, Mahina Hawley, Ines Epperson, Cody Hagen, Keith Ross, Christopher Allen, Kaisa Lemley, Sarah Tucker, Raquel Stokes, Irene Peters, Tracy Grisman, and Timothy O’Connell III.

“We’re fortunate to have a really tight-knit community with people who want to work together to make incredible things happen,” explains Field Hall’s marketing and communications director Jess Grello, “We’re really blessed to be sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean, to be surrounded by so much natural beauty. A lot of people who come out here are inspired to come back and put their all into the community, so you end up with an exciting vibrancy among the population.”

Feeling envious of this amazing facility and community, I began to dream of exhibiting my own art there. I asked Ms. Grello if artists outside of the larger region may be considered to exhibit in the future. “It’s possible,” she said, “but leaving it local still leaves a lot of room for growth and change.”

All I can say is, “Bravo, Port Angeles.”

Edie Everette

Edie Evertte is a local artist and writer. To view her art, visit www.edieeverette.com.

The Laura Cooksey Gallery at Field Hall, located at 201 W. Front Street, Suite 102, is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For information and events, please go to www.fieldhallevents.org/gallery.

Swipes of blue paint meet the familiar brushstrokes of green grass. A rising peach-colored sun against purple reeds and maroon tree trunks coming out of the ground. Susanna Bluhm’s newest landscapes combine the visually familiar with abstracted internal experiences. How do we experience a landscape that we see or interact with every day? How does that landscape react to us or other natural forces at work? What marks do these interactions leave behind? 

Bluhm explores these questions in her newest body of work on display at J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle. The exhibit is Bluhm’s third at the gallery, but these paintings mark a change in the artist’s work. As she states in the gallery press release, “An individual painting can become a new place in itself, with sensations of things that might happen in a place, such as weather, touch, landscape, temperature, sex, or noise. Abstract marks interact with more recognizable shapes, a kind of narrative ensues.” Bluhm outlines a distinction in this body of work from her previous paintings; they are more personal, more intimate, and inherently tied to our lived experience with the landscape that surrounds us every day.

The paintings have a twofold purpose: they are a way for the artist to examine her own experience in a landscape that seems to be constantly shifting; and they are also a method to acknowledge that the landscape has its own events which leave their own marks. Bluhm describes this method of meaning-making as a “reciprocal co-creative relationship”; the paintings illustrate the artist’s observations of the landscape through her own lens and document the reactions or evolution of the landscape through time. The result is an environment that is active not passive, with a meaning not solely defined by a human response. For example, Bluhm painted “The Ground, which Opens Its Mouth (Greenbelt Three)” near a greenbelt by her home, and included symbols or badges throughout the picture to reference the past events that left their mark on the landscape. A wave motif appears repeatedly in these paintings, as in “The Ground, which Opens Its Mouth (Morning Greenbelt)”with its two prominent wave images in the foreground. The painting also includes a series of icons within an oval that the artist describes as a type of key for the painting. It is important to note how the waves and other water references appear throughout this series. Water appears to symbolize transformation, upheaval, and change. It is a powerful force that changes what is in its path, as we can see when looking at landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. We may not see obvious signs of this ecological history, but Bluhm documents them regardless.

But neither humans nor the landscape operates within a vacuum. When Bluhm examined the landscape in her recently-completed MA in Comparative Religion, her studies focused on the repeated story of the ground opening its mouth in ancient Jewish texts. The title of her show, “The Ground, which Opens Its Mouth,” references her research into this phenomenon, which bestows ownership and agency to the ground and landscape. In “The Ground, which Opens Its Mouth (Afternoon Neighborhood),” Bluhm paints this activity into the landscape. Red lips and teeth open wide at the bottom of the picture, appearing to swallow up what rests above. According to Bluhm and the ancient texts, this action is a response that sounds catastrophic, but it can also occur to protect what may be in danger due to human action. Regardless of the reasons for the ground opening its mouth, the action symbolizes the understanding or fear that the ground beneath us is not steady or immobile, and it could at any moment open in reaction to our own actions. All this study is the artist’s reflection on her personal experience and narrative. Her vulnerability is on display to help the viewer understand their own connection to the landscape around them. 

Visitors to “The Ground, which Opens Its Mouth” see the familiar components that unify Bluhm’s paintings. Colorful brushstrokes, natural elements, and a dynamic composition are all there in the work. However, the artist is clear that this series is personal and draws specifically from her life. She is painting familiar surroundings—the greenbelt by her home, and the University of Washington—and these works are the result of intense self-reflection. They are also a consideration of deep uncertainty about our social and environmental state, which seems to be constantly moving and shifting. In her works, the ground is literally moving.  

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

“The Ground, which Opens Its Mouth,” is on view at J. Rinehart Gallery, located at 319 Third Avenue S, Seattle, Washington, from November 1 to 26. An Exhibition Preview is to be held Saturday, November 1, from 2 to 4 p.m., with the opening reception on First Thursday, November 6, from 5-8 p.m. Bluhm joins the gallery for a discussion about her work on Saturday, November 15. For more information, visit www.jrinehartgallery.com.

A Decade of Rediscovery: Cascadia Art Museum’s Tenth Anniversary  exhibit — up through November 23 — honors the heart of this institution whose aim has been to rediscover forgotten Pacific Northwest artists. In the current exhibit, Blanche Morgan Losey’s “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,” is conceptual as heck. Aurthur Runquist’s  “Listening to Radio Moscow,”  from 1938, brings up a troika full of questions. And Julius “Land Elk” Twohy’s studies for his “The flight of the Thunderbird,” a 72-foot-wide mural in Tacoma that was — ironically—razed to make way for the Emerald Queen Casino parking lot, are magisterial.

Cascadia’s curator David Martin — also a published author and lecturer — has been a champion of such artists fordecades. He andhis partner ownedMartin-Zambito Fine Art and showed these artists’ works in their space onCapitol Hill’s East Pike Street in 1989. Backwhen I had an art studio on 13th & Pike, I would regularly stop and look at paintings in their windows. These landscapes and figure paintings in gilt frames, without my knowing their context, often appeared as works by people trying on the painting style of European artists.

This is why I love Cascadia Art Museum. It has created a place for context. Having visited this museum many times, I have acquired a taste for these forgotten artists who I now realize are my artistic predecessors. As curator Martin has said of them, “We want to tell their stories, which are often as compelling as their art.” 

Graphite Arts Center, another Edmonds gem, closes out the year with a solo retrospective of artworks by Edmonds artist d’Elaine Johnson. “d’Elaine Johnson:  Goddesses,” features 15 of her large-scale works of female figures, imagery inspired by her experiences as one of the world’s first female scuba divers. This artist, with nearly 2,000 paintings to her name, annotates all her works with a quote from a reference book. 

The text for her “Curative Powers” painting reads: “Triplism was expressed in the Celtic religion and iconography. This was expressed in three mother goddesses, who together form a unity representing strength, power, and fertility. They presided over springs, lakes, bogs, and watery places that had curative powers.” 

The opening reception for this exhibit is Saturday, December 6, 7-8:30 p.m. The reception is open to the public, and d’Elaine Johnson is to be in attendance.

For more information on these exhibits, visit www.cascadiaartmuseum.org and/or www.graphiteartscenter.org.

ArtX Contemporary (formerly ArtXchange Gallery) is celebrating 30 years on the scene! I spoke with Cora Edmonds, the founding director, about her main motivation in creating the gallery. It is a cultural bridge, a community-driven space. It was founded before the internet put international connections at our fingertips, but ArtX Contemporary is still unusual in its commitment to international engagement, both through artists based in Seattle and those living in other countries.

Edmonds was born in Hong Kong and moved to Seattle when she was twelve, so she grew up bilingual. The idea of immersion in another culture has expanded into world-wide interests, but with a particular emphasis on Southeast and rurl Asia. 

She and her husband have created Namaste Children’s Fund, that provides “quality education for girls in rural and under-served regions of Nepal.” Edmonds’s famous photo of a young child offering her a “namaste” many years ago was the starting point for this endeavor. Edmonds is also an excellent photographer.

A group show opening December 4 celebrates the 30th anniversary of the gallery with almost 50 artists contributing to the show. The show offers a cross-section of the artists that the gallery has shown and worked with since its founding, reflecting its deep commitment to diversity. Many of these artists are now well-known in Seattle and beyond, such as Pakistani-born Humaira Abid who was supported for many years by ArtXchange. Edmonds also spoke about her deep and on-going engagement with the indigenous artists of Australia, and an exhibition coming up to coincide with a major show of Australian Indigenous Art at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.

The artists in the anniversary exhibition have deep connections to other cultures. For example: Fulgencio Lazo divides his time between Seattle and Oaxaca; Lauren Iida lived in Cambodia for over a decade; June Sekiguchi has created works inspired by her travel in Southeast Asia; Tatiana Garmendia was born in Cuba, Juan Alonzo makes reference to his Cuban roots, and Michelle Kumata paints images of the Japanese internment and its aftermath. 

Alan Lau, who has the current exhibition at the gallery (on view until November 15), spends several months in Kyoto, Japan each year. His show titled “Walks Along the Kamogawa: The Kyoto Series Part I” gives us moody and lyrical paintings in sumi, watercolor, and pastel on rice paper. The Kamogawa is a river that runs through Kyoto. Along its banks the paved sidewalks form the “city’s playground.” People do calisthenics, jog and walk, as well as make impromptu solo music. 

Lau’s paintings are abstract: “in the clearing” suggests loosely-spaced trees that hang in space, leaving a resonant empty space at the bottom. Many birds (“tracing migration patterns of small birds”) live along the river, including ducks, herons, coots, and gulls—even hawks swoop in.

The paintings refer to different places as well, such as “arctic ledge” with its cool grays, and “that day by the sea” which suggests the movement of water. 

Two artworks, “in the peach orchard” and “trapped within my garden of longing (in memory of peach blossom spring),” are entirely different in stroke, texture, and color, although they both reference peach blossoms. Reciting only the titles of these works, all written in lower case by the artist, suggest a poetic enchantment in themselves.

We can imagine the artist in Kyoto, in his “makeshift studio in my in-laws’ house…the only room in the house where the sun filters in…adobe walls are covered with a white wash now crumbling away in flakes and splotched with smudges of sumi ink from my painting.” (The quotes are from Lau’s own artist statement.) 

In October, Lau invited three musicians to respond to his work. Esther Sugai played a dragon flute, Geoff Harper his bass, and the sound artist Suzie Kozawa carried a bowl through the audience using a rolling ball to make a soft sound. The music gave us, almost magically, another entry into the paintings.

Alan Lau’s new book This Single Road. Postcards and Notebooks From Kyoto includes drawings, text, and handwritten letters. A book launch takes place at the Gallery on Saturday, November 1, at 2 p.m. Alan is to read selected passages from the book, accompanied by a soundscape performance by Susie Kozawa. This event is free and open to the public.

Be sure to attend the 30th anniversary celebration on December 4, from 5-8 p.m.

Susan Noyes Platt

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

ArtX Contemporary, located at 512 First Avenue South in Seattle, Washington, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.artx-contemporary.com

Glowing with Potential: Asia Pacific Cultural Center in Tacoma, Washington

There’s something about the Asia Pacific Cultural Center that feels like it has always been there, tucked among the trees on the southwestern fringe of Tacoma’s South Park. While the building is new, freshly opened to the public at the end of August, the APPC has in fact been breathing with life, magnetizing and energizing Tacoma’s Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community for 30 years.

On the bright fall afternoon when I visited, it was very much pulsing with activity: a tour convened in the lobby as staff greeted each arrival, people chatted in the parking lot while others paused on the wood slat bench outside the front door. Even though I had come unannounced, I was warmly passed from person to person in the way of a shirttail relative or new neighbor until I was welcomed into the office of Faaluaina “Lua” Pritchard, Executive Director. She’s led the organization for 15 years, a time of tremendous change and growth.

When I asked what she wanted people to know about the Asia Pacific Cultural Center, Lua spoke of the 47 nations represented within the Asia Pacific region, programs that form the core of the organization and echo its vision to “transform our community to become a dynamic, inclusive hub for diverse communities, cultures, and generations.” Two popular public cultural programs include the annual Lunar New Year celebration—this year spotlighting Cambodia—coming to the Tacoma Dome on February 28, 2026, and the Taste of Asia, every first Saturday at the APCC, featuring the cuisine of a different nation each month. Other celebrations take place throughout the year, some at other locations in the South Sound, but most at the center.

But it is the less visible work that continues to keep the organization relevant and thriving. APCC offers an array of educational, environmental, social and economic programs that address people as complex wholes who are part of a generational community linked by geography. They guide at-risk students toward high school graduation and beyond, raise awareness and educate on environmental justice, lessen stigma and provide services for mental health and wellness, and strengthen businesses owned and operated by AANHPI community members.

Language instruction is also offered at APCC, through 10-week courses taught by experienced teachers in Korean, Thai, Filipino, Mandarin, Lao, Japanese, and Samoan. As the website states, “The  goal of the program is twofold. First, it provides an opportunity for students to increase their understanding of diverse cultures through learning another language. Secondly, it helps build bridges between communities and promotes cultural exchange within the region.” 

The non-profit strives to reach its constituents where they live, and where their need is greatest. Walking into the reception lobby at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center, this is immediately visible. Ceiling-high, glassed in shelves form a gridded window wall display of the artisanship and tangible culture from each of the 47 nations represented there, each one distinct from one another with unique culture, economies, history, and social practices. The range was staggering, with ceramics, baskets, stone and wood carvings, and metalwork, meriting another visit in the future to gaze and wonder.

When I come back, I’ll call ahead and arrange a visit to linger in the Jade Choe Art Gallery. Exhibits feature artwork by Asia Pacific artists who represent a rich mix of media, styles, and content. The upcoming show features young Cambodian artists Nak Bou and Ye Ranue.

Nak’s work melds graphic design, illustration, drawing, and painting in bold and textured works about people, food, music, and the vibrancy of life. Ye Ranue is the youngest member of Open Studio Cambodia, an artist collective in Siem Reap, Cambodia, founded by Washington state artist and his adopted mother, Lauren Iida. Ranue’s drawings and block prints feature wildlife, nature, and his family history. Ranue is a high school student who saves all the proceeds of his art sales for his future college tuition. Their exhibit runs from November 1 to December 31, 2025.

It’s a huge lift for an organization of this scale and scope to cultivate this garden of services and programs that reach and represent such a variety of people. The APCC is powered by over 300 volunteers, a busy staff of 45, and the trust that grows up from the commitment to show up and follow words with actions. Three decades in, their process of rooting with the community is well underway. Now, in a new building situated in a verdant park within a dynamic urban setting in the midst of a world where the present invites more dedicated connection, culture, and compassion, Tacoma’s Asia Pacific Cultural Center appears to glow with potential.

Kristin L. Tollefson

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

“Cambodia: Daily Life and Diaspora” is on view at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center’s Jade Choe Gallery, located at 4851 South Tacoma Way in Tacoma, Washington. The center hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The artist reception is on Saturday, November 22, from 3 to 6 p.m. For more information, please visit www.asiapacificculturalcenter.org.

Shadows

The edge is always there,

dangerously close to

wherever I am.

Or where anybody is.

I sleep lightly,

like a soldier before battle.

I wake quickly,

like a light being clicked on.

I lurk in the shadows

of the hot day,

waiting for night

to come to my rescue.

It’s a sudden chill,

an unexpected nuance.

It’s the universal truth

and the quintessential lie.

The perpetuation of the

Great Mystery sustains us all.

Do you know what’s

on the dark side of the moon?

Or the dark side of your closest friend?

Are the light and dark opposites?

Or two parts of the same?

Where do the shadows go

when the lights are turned off?

Is this all too thick?

When, after all, I know it isn’t

because you’ve been there too.

But it sure isn’t the letter I thought

I was going to write.

The words threw themselves

onto the paper and I got inky

when I got in the way.

And why am I so crazed?

Because you’re there

and I’m

           here…

Jeff Fraga

Jeff Fraga is a poet and playwright living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.