Articles

Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest at Seattle Art Museum

Back when I was a Young Artist, I had a job as a ceramics tech at a school, which meant that I made all of the clay, prepped the studio and fired the kilns. I was to absorb knowledge from the professors as I circled about them. For the final crit on wheel-thrown work of the ceramics class, the prof told the students to bring forth ten of their best cups. These were still unfired clay, quite delicate in many cases. There was much discussion and posturing, and eventually each student had one cup chosen as The Best. The prof brought over a large, water-filled bucket and deposited the remaining nine of the students’ cups within, back to mud. There were audible gasps, among other phrases, heard as this action progressed. “Remember,” said the prof, “art is process and not all art is so precious that it should remain.” In other words, be your own best editor. That lesson stayed with me.

As a connoisseur of all Northwest things grey and brown, I was breathless with anticipation to see Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest at the Seattle Art Museum. When I completed the trek through the show, I was out of breath and dizzy. The exhibition is roughly contained within four themes – Industrialization, Ecocriticism, Surrealism and AbEx, but the organization is tenuous. It seems that more concise editing could have resulted in more coherent connections between these ideas, each of which could have been a standalone show. And here is where I began to lose my way.

The first group of artworks is an exemplary selection of Modernist artists painting the effect of industrialization and urbanization upon the land. The strong regional representational paintings of the 1930s are represented by the Japanese American artists, Kenjiro Nomura, Takuichi Fujii and Kamekichi Tokita, with his so good, Billboard, 1932, with very painterly images of the streets and buildings of Seattle’s Nihonmachi, or Japan Town. The noted Russian American muralist Jacob Elshin depicts the enormous Fisher Flour Mills storage buildings alongside Spoiled Carnival, 1946, by Yvonne Twining Humber. Here she shows not the sunny Puyallup Fair but a dreary scene that reflects the incarceration of Japanese Americans at the fairgrounds during World War II. Fujii’s Rock Island Dam, 1935, is a prelude to The Vanessa Helder Room, a space created for a masterclass in watercolor and the built environment. I have long been a fan of this work, painted between 1939 and 1941, but it is rarely seen this side of the mountains. She crisply captures the color and light of the Grand Coulee Dam during its construction. I question, however, the observation in the text panel that these paintings show “the intrusion of the dam’s infrastructure into the landscape” as being a conscious criticism by the artist.

The next section of the exhibition is essentially Social Realism: strong men doing heroic work in the rugged Northwest. The sometimes-grim text panels, such as the one for Logging Railroad Construction, 1937, by Kenneth Callhan, suggest that the artists were critically documenting the workers as they “annihilated” the ancient forests in the “destructive drama” of falling timber. I think that calling this Eco-Criticism may be a modern-day distortion of the era. In many of Callahan’s paintings of the loggers and miners (and the tools and methods of extraction), he romanticized the logging process and the men more than anything, such as in the large Weyerhaeuser Mill murals, also in this exhibition. Yes, we can, in hindsight, know that this was a period of over harvesting, but look to paintings like Morris Graves’ Mountain Forest Seedlings, 1957, not in this show, or his great bird painting, Each Time You Carry Me This Way, 1953, to find that regrowth was also on their minds. And who can deny the joy found in Mark Tobey’s Dancing Miners, c. 1922-27?

I was thrilled to see the many small studies Tobey made at Pike Place Market. I love the vitality and spontaneity in these works. I guess I was supposed to compare and contrast them with the delightful Albert Smith’s black and white photos of Seattle’s early jazz scene, located in the same passageway, but that seemed like a stretch.

From here, I wandered farther down the Dark Hall past the strangely illuminated Freight Elevator, past some very nice larger-scale Graves still lifes until, at the end, I encountered an ungainly trio of paintings by Nomura, Callahan and Georgia O’Keeffe. What is going on here? Red barns, a cluster of mailboxes and a cloud composition? Is it about the clouds in each? The Nomura and Callahan were made in the Northwest about the same time, but the O’Keeffe was most likely painted in upstate New York ten years prior. This discrete group could have been the central thesis for a whole other show.

My head was spinning as I moved into the next room, but was I on the right path? The navigation was unclear. I bounced from the very odd nude in the landscape, Erosion No. 2 – Mother Earth Laid Bare, 1936, by Alexander Hogue, which was about the Dust Bowl in the Midwest but strangely sexual, to a New Mexico snag, Dead Tree Bear Lake Taos, 1929, by O’Keeffe, to a robust Maine logjam by Marsden Hartley, past a few James Washington Jr. rock carvings to the monumental Callahan Weyerhaeuser logging murals. And then there was the swirling illuminated video projection proscenium portal into the next room of Surrealism. Who made this lightwork? Or is it décor?

The delirious images of the budding Surrealists crowded together in these rooms were difficult to unpack. There is but a tenuous thread of the surreal holding these works together. I do agree that Surrealism madness affected some of the region’s artists, but I find it hard to call them such. I might categorize them during this time period as Surrealism Adjacent, as they were trying it on for size. Margaret Tomkins, Louis Bunce and Graves wandered through it and out the other side, but Leo Kenney was more deeply affected. I am sure that the mediocre Dali paintings are crowd favorites, but they are not his best. The inclusion of George Tsutakawa within the Surrealists, notably The Ascent, 1950, was a nicely placed hint to his better-known sculptural work. The shapes in the early paintings filtered through traditional Japanese forms are evidenced in the striking Obos pieces.

Another thread through the show that I would like to see unraveled a bit more is the influence of the Asian cultures, from the early Nihonmachi landscapes through Tobey and Tsutakawa and the collages of Paul Horiuchi. Noting that the famous 1961 LIFE Magazine article did surface treatment to it, with “perceived alignment with Asian and Northwest Coast Native cultures,” let’s see that teased out again. And bring Zoe Dusanne back into the mix.

I was quite moved by the powerful, large multi-panel pieces by Horiuchi, especially Abstract Screen, 1961, and how his collages make the inclusion of the Gottlieb and Kline paintings both secondary and unnecessary.

I would be remiss not to note that the last section on your way out of the gallery is devoted to Indigenous art and artists. The derivative Tobey Esquimaux Idiom, 1946, pales in comparison to the elegant lithographs from 1936-37 by Julius “Land Elk” Twohy. I am certain that SAM has other artworks by local Indigenous artists that could have been included as well, as the argillite totems are minor.

The writer Sam Shepard once said, reflecting upon history, “The past doesn’t come as a whole. It always comes in parts.  In fact, it comes apart. It presents itself as though it was experienced in fragments.” This is an exhibition of many disparate parts, bound by a common region in a time of great change. I found it confusing and unnecessarily long, with odd interjections of national and international artists for context.

For the reader’s reference, other notable exhibitions have examined this small wedge of art numerous times. Most recently, we have seen Side By Side: Nihonmachi Scenes by Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii, at Wing Luke Museum, Jet Dreams: Art of the Fifties in the Northwest at Tacoma Art Museum; Northwest Traditions at SAM, What It Meant to be Modern: Seattle Art at Mid-Century, at the Henry and Northwest Mythologies: The Interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Anderson, also at TAM. Each of these shows looked at more finite pieces of the art of the Northwest. I am not sure what Beyond Mysticism adds to the canon. I wanted less; I wanted more. More about Oregonians C. S. Price, Charles Heaney, Arthur and Albert C. Runquist, less about the New York connections.

For me, it just makes it less clear, more brown and grey, and more muddy.

Milton Freewater

Milton Freewater is an arts writer living in Seattle, Washington.

All Out for “Craft Art”

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Is craft considered art? But what is the real difference between the two? Materials, intent, usefulness? Bainbridge Island Museum of Art joins Craft in America’s nationwide initiative to celebrate craft throughout 2026. (Craft in America is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit arts organization formed in 2024.) Currently there are four separate exhibitions with contrasting themes and feelings. If you go to the museum you will not find answers, but you will see exhibitions that provoke you to think about those questions.

The largest exhibit on view is “Crafting Futures: Emerging Artists Invitational.” The invitational includes only nine artists each with multiple pieces that created dramatic contrasts. The concept of “emerging” does not necessarily mean youthful; it can mean willingness to explore. And explore they do.

Jacki Moseley innovates in every work and changes medium as well. Her wet-felted merino wool pieces were filled with an array of patterns and different textures. Another work is a boat made of Joomchi (a traditional Korean paper-making technique), with layers of wet mulberry paper woven with yarn. Moseley then shifted to basketry, making a fish trap and a bell form.

Another artist who clearly qualifies as emerging is Peter Jacobsen. He works with furnace (hot) glass. His smaller works are single fish, but he expanded to create a shoal of squid each one hanging from the ceiling. Largest of all is his  life-size porpoise skeleton, each bone a separate piece of hot-sculpted glass. 

Jacob Foran has evolved from vessels to bizarre helmets of ceramic, to heads, most recently a glazed head using “terra sigillata,” a studio pottery technique to create a silky surface. Furniture designer and woodworker James Nelson, meanwhile, contributes a series of sleek furnishings he calls “Nareau” (a spider deity in the mythology of the Gilbert Islands.) The legs on his furnishings, carved from white ash, are slightly bowed and look like they could walk away. The polished white ash contrasts with the reddish granadillo wood Nelson uses for the body of these furnishings—a striking and elegant combination of wood species.

Two stained-glass works by Anna Nardelli boldly rise out of their flat surface. Also fascinating is Stephanie Tayengco. Each of her works are completely different. My favorite is “Regeneration,” small glass-legged vessels with plants inside. Another highlight are the three paddles created by Ian Lawrence (Suquamish) and decorated by Brenda Smith (S’Klallam). This work hints at what BIMA has in store this summer—an entire exhibition called “Indigenous Craft,” guest curated by Robin Little Wing Sigo (Suquamish Tribe) which is to focus on Native American and First Nations craft artists, working in traditional and contemporary forms in the Salish Sea region.

In the other half of the main gallery space are over twenty works from the permanent collection of the museum, including familiar names such as Claudia Fitch, Kathy Ross, and Patti Warashina. On the space beyond the doors is “Chris Maynard: Featherfolio Encore.” Maynard collects a wide variety of feathers from which he creates small birds that seem to swirl around. Maynard’s first exhibition at BIMA was wildly popular, so don’t miss this reprise.

On the ground floor of the museum is the exhibit by George and David Lewis, “Deeply Rooted.” These two artists combine their interests in archeology, gardens, and water, creating wildly original pieces that blend and embody those passions. My favorite pieces were the giant pomegranates made of painted concrete. I wish I still had a garden to put them in! 

And finally, “Aimee Lee: Tethered” is on view in the wood-paneled artists’ book room on the museum’s second floor. (BIMA’s collection of artists’ books is one of the most significant collections of its kind.) Lee has thoroughly studied ancient techniques of Korean paper making known as “hanji.” She creates books and other objects from hanji, but the real impetus of her work is conveyed in the word “tethered.” She sees herself connecting ancient techniques to the present by transforming them. Her texts are models of brevity, yet they are deeply moving. In “For those left behind,” we come to a short sentence that unfolds across three pages—“Life is both” on one page, followed by “fragile” and then “and tenacious” on successive pages. She reaches out to us with these words even as she honors her ancestors. It is important to spend time with the books. Lee explores depths of emotion, and her books take so many hours to create, it is difficult in our rushed age to fully absorb what they have to offer.

All of these artists are working innovatively with materials and ideas. It seems to me that the issue of whether craft is art is settled by these exhibitions full of creative expressions.

Susan Noyes Platt

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

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way East on Bainbride Island, Washington, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Crafting Futures: Emerging Artists Invitational” is on view through June 13. “George and David Lewis: Deeply Rooted” is on display through June 11. “Aimee Lee: Tethered” is showing through June 14. “Chris Maynard: Featherfolio Encore” is on view through June 11.For more information, visit biartmuseum.org. 

Three Solo Exhibitions

This spring, the San Juan Islands Museum of Art features solo exhibitions of artists Lauren Boilini, Janis Miltenberger, and Dan Brown. The exhibitions differ greatly in their media (painting, glass, sculptures of iron and wood), but the thread of human and nature interconnectivityruns throughout each show. Each artist’s mastery of their craft isimmediately apparent, and guests have been delighted and astounded by the technical skills and artistic vision on display at the museum. Each showreferences art historical movementsbut they bring the past to bear on the present day. When hearing about visitor reactions to the shows, it seems that the awesomeness of nature is experienced outside the museum in the beautiful San Juan Islands and in the museum itself. 

Lauren Boilini’s exhibition is titled, “Celestial Navigation” and the artist articulates the thesis for the show in a statement available on the museum website. It reads: “This work examines excess, when it becomes meaningless and falls into pattern. This gluttony is reflected back to us: we are a hedonistic society, always looking for more until the more we are looking for loses its meaning.” Boilini’s subjects, often birds like peasants or peacocks, fill the picture plane with their colorful feathers and luscious textures. The statement by the artist connects the work in this show with the age-old conventions of the still life genre in Northern Europe. Readers may be familiar with the Dutch still life paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries which depict plates overflowing with food, partially eaten fruit, and tipped goblets scattered across messy tables. A subcategory of this genre are the vanitas paintings, in which the artist includes a skull and other reminders that life is fleeting. In Boilini’s work, the impressive scale and dynamic—perhaps even chaotic—swirl of feathers, scales, and beaks overwhelm the viewer. As mentioned in the artist’s statement, the opulence of this subject matter is a warning that too much at our grasp can lead to an unappreciative attitude toward nature and what it offers. 

Scale continues to be an important aspect in the shows at San Juan Islands Museum of Art, as seen in glass artist Janis Miltenberger’s “Productive Uncertainty” exhibition. Like Boilini, Miltenberger uses scale to create a connection between the viewer and her work. To reinforce these connections, the museum’s website features interviews with the artists, and they are worth a listen. In her artist statement on the website, Miltenberger states that “My latest work is a result of my interest in our ancient methods of understanding the natural world. How we have relied on symbology and the unique appearances of plants, animals, and other life form’s signatures, to guide us and our well-being.” The show centers around Miltenberger’s exploration of “The Doctrine of Signatures,” an historic belief related to the connection between plants and their medicinal potential. The scale of Miltenberger’s lampworking is incredibly impressive, highlighting the fragile relationship between the natural world and human experience. Her life-size figures and large cages (“The Coronation,” for example is 45 x 18 x 18 inches) draw attention to her technical expertise in lampworking, and the detail in the series inspired by “The Doctrine of Signatures” capture the beauty and fragility of both plants and the human organs that are integrated into them. 

The museum continues the exploration of scale and nature in the beautiful Sterner Atrium Gallery by exhibiting the iron and wood sculptures of artist Dan Brown. Using many found objects and materials, Brown brings movement and a touch of humor into the gallery space. The focal point of Brown’s show is certainly “Roaming the Sea,” a sculpture of a whale created with steel and a wagon wheel rim; the piece measures 56 x 112 x 68 inches. Brown’s touch of whimsy and humor creates a welcome balance with the more solemn tone of the other exhibits on view.

The three exhibitions are on display at the museum through June 1. As mentioned, there are interviews of all three artists on the website, as well as information about planning your visit to the island. It is worth noting that the museum is open Friday to Monday through June 10, and then its summer schedule begins. If you want to visit the museum and beautiful Friday Harbor with its many artist studios, galleries, and shops, always plan ahead and review the ferry schedule well in advance of your trip. The museum is a short walk from the ferry. 

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

The San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring Street in Friday Harbor, Washington, is open Friday to Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.sjima.org.

A Long-Overdue Evening at Heyday Farm   

My friend Elaine and I ate dinner together at Heyday Farm over a year ago, but I remember the evening clearly. The smell of butter wafted through the room, as well as a hint of basil.

Like writing, good food is best when it simplifies the complex and mine was rich with memories. We sat at the bar where the prep happens right in front of you, so it’s like everyone is part of the stir, and that’s the kind of evening I was ready for. When I invited Elaine, I was overextended, which means more time alone at my desk. I like being alone. I need to be alone to work. But I also know when I’m ready for good company, good conversation, good food and wine.

It’s amazing the effect this combination has.

I don’t even know what to call the feeling I have after a long-overdue evening like this, but I know that it’s the best medicine even without the extra eggplant the chef gave me because I kept complimenting its taste. Watching him sauté made me think of someone else who liked cooking this way. She lived next door when I was a kid. Her name was Mary.

Mary would make me something wonderful to eat before I babysat her two boys. I’d watch her chop and stir and steam. She always told me I could be whatever I wanted. Which meant everything. If Mary could believe my future could be my choice, I could believe it.

By the time I was in high school, I started to think more about the fact that there was always a bottle of vodka on the counter when Mary cooked. Between stirrings, she’d pour splashes over ice, rattle the glass for a sec, and this started to explain a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me at the time. Like the way her words would start to sound sloshy, as if they had to find their way through a smoothie before they could free themselves, which is probably the best image I can think of for her life at the time.

By nature, I have always been inquisitive. I want to know the why of things. For instance, I wanted to know, but was afraid to ask, why Mary’s husband would talk to her the way he did, and why she, the smartest woman I knew, let him, all but cowering in his presence. It was naïve of me to think that she could have stood up to such a bully simply because I wanted her to.

But I wanted her to.

I grew more and more weary of bullies.

I still had no idea how many of them would grow up to feel entitled to run everything from households to countries. Not that I want to bring up one such bully—one that I’ve imagined falling ill or off a cliff or out of an emergency exit door of a Boeing airplane—but he does remind me why Mary may have needed all that vodka.     

Elaine and I talked about a lot that night, no small talk for us.

There was something whimsical in the air as I walked back to my car. The restaurant is housed inside of a beautiful farm house. Even the arbor over the patio is inspired. When the moonlight hits it, it glows.

Some years ago, I met Elaine. That we’d shared our first meal together that night, just the two of us, felt like part of the magic. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see an owl fly by for good measure.

Which might have been too much magic for one night, but I’d never dream of not wanting it.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli’s newest title, In So Many Words, was nominated for a 2025 Washington State Book Award. Her newest book, An Island Called Bainbridge: People, Places, Conversations, is due to be published in the fall of 2026. She also works as a speaker and a master dance teacher. She lives on Bainbridge Island. For more information about her work, visit www.marylousanelli.com.

Heyday Farm is located on Bainbridge Island, Washington. 

For more information, visit https://www.heydayfarm.com.

“The White Horse” of Constable

In “The White Horse” of Constable

the sky is threatening us,

dark waters of the Stour.

A white horse waits to be

ferried, commands its own boat

like Napolean in red and white.

The colors of a house nearby

its chimney, the scallops of clouds

Constable loved –

Outdoors, a pastoral scene

old planks and boards, and muck,

a thatched hut to protect

the hay rick perhaps, his crooked

painter’s hat tips its etiquette

a feather, where he sets his easel.

To the outward look of trees

and their muddy shore

where a man could leave his imprint.

Paint in honest work, the sky

the sky its ceiling, the earth, a little

of the Skagit Valley floor.

Michael Magee

Michael Magee is a poet and playwright whose poems and plays have been published and produced here and in England. His most recent book is Crowed (MoonPath Press 2026). Previous books include Shiny Things and Budapest After Dark. His work appears in Verse Daily, Cirque, and Open Book. He lives in Tacoma. 

For information, visit https://moonpathpress.com/MichaelMagee.htm or email mmpoetry@gmail.com.

Three New Exhibitions at Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington

Recently, the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington opened three new exhibitions: “Murmuration,” “Hard Edge/Soft Ground,” and “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press.” These three exhibitions are distinct in content, style, and material, but they are unified in the focus on each artist’s unique vision. What is so striking to this writer is the emphasis on process and collaboration in these three exhibits. For example, “Murmuration” features the work of woodcarver Andrew Vallee who transforms his carvings into bronze and glass, while “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press” similarly celebrates the collaborative nature of printmaking. In all, these three exhibits offer a wide range of styles that are sure to delight curious viewers.

“Hard Edge/Soft Ground” is the first of a series of exhibitions titled “From the Vault” that features artwork from the museum’s permanent collection. The premise of the exhibition is simple: it is a survey of abstract art from the 1950s to 2017. But providing an overview of modern and contemporary abstraction is no easy task. The exhibition includes many forms of abstraction and non-representational art, from Kenneth Callahan to Mary Henry. Exhibiting Northwest School artists alongside Hard-edge abstraction may initially feel jarring, but this is precisely where thoughtful curation and exhibit design matter most. Not everyone experiences the exhibition in the exact same way, but my journey through the exhibition began with the soft edge of Mark Tobey’s monotype and ended with Mary Henry’s precise painting, “Linear Series #5,” an excellent example of the Op Art movement. In between these two experiences were the familiar sights of an Alden Mason Burpee series painting titled “Yellow Bingo,” two screenprints by Doris Totten Chase, and a large painting by Michael Dailey. In summary, the exhibition offers a concise survey of abstract art from the museum’s collection. It pairs nicely with the neighboring exhibit, “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press.”

If you are unfamiliar with the process of a press or print studio, here is a very concise summary. Print studios consist of a team of expert printmakers who work with invited artists, who often focus on other art mediums, to create a series of limited-edition prints at the studio. The resulting works are then printed in limited quantities for purchase. Paulson Fontaine Press produces intaglio prints and has worked with over fifty artists since their first collaboration and publication in 1997. I visited Paulson Fontaine Press in 2022 and was able to observe their process in person. It was technical, precise, and encourages the artist to express their artistic vision through the medium. The results of facilitating this process successfully are on display in “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press.”

Working with underrepresented artists is central to the work of Pam Paulson and Rhea Fontaine. The incredible work of this focus can be seen in this national traveling exhibition. At the Whatcom Museum, the curatorial team decided to include original works by the artists to illustrate how the prints fit in with the artist’s large body of work. One beautiful example is a quilt by the Gee’s Bend quilters alongside prints created at Paulson Fontaine Press. The detail accomplished in these prints is incredible and hard to describe in words. I was drawn to “Passing By” by Mary Lee Bendolph, a red and white color soft-ground etching with aquatint, spit bite aquatint, and chine collé. The print looks like a translucent quilt laid on a white background, almost as if the quilt has become thin through years of use. The exhibition is filled with highlights, but I was also drawn to Lonnie Holley’s unique artwork example on loan from the artist and prints created at Paulson Fontaine Press. “Steppin Through the Night” by Woody De Othello was also exceptional with the raking light shining across the scene of household objects.

On your way to and from these exhibitions, viewers also encounter work by local woodcarver Andrew Vallee installed in the foyer outside the gallery. The exhibition includes a wall installation of a murmuration of birds and two large sculptures of birds on the floor. These works act as a guide to lead visitors into the gallery spaces and encourage you to pause for longer observations. It was particularly delightful to watch children encounter these creatures with their combination of smooth and wood-grain textures. 

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

Whatcom Museum, located at 121 Prospect Street in Bellingham, Washington is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. “Murmuration” is on view through January 27, 2027; “Hard Edge/Soft Ground” is up through September 26; and “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press” is on display through June 28. For more information, visit www.whatcommuseum.org. 

The Spaces We Inhabit: 11 Years of Activating Memory

Alfredo Romero was born in Barcelona, Spain. His father owned a construction company and Romero worked there during his youth, learning about materials and building techniques first-hand. He also studied Art History, Fine Arts, and Architecture at various schools in Barcelona, including the School of Arts Applications and Offices of Rubi, the School of Design EDRA, and the Technical School of Architecture. These intersecting studies formed his understanding of relationships between space, memory, and aesthetics. Moreover, Barcelona is the city of Antoni Gaudí. Mosaics by Gaudí are everywhere. How could an artist like Romero not have been affected by them?

After Romero moved to Mérida on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, he began going to small towns in the region, finding empty shops and wall after wall covered with dated graffiti, political slogans, and advertisements. He found history and memory on those walls. The humble marks, layered with many fading messages, are the raw material of his art. 

In the current exhibition, the painting “Instantes Pasados: Iconos de Una Era Reciente” (Past Moments: Icons of a Recent Era), is an example of activating memory. Romero removes the surface from the wall through a process called strappo, which covers the painted wall with a white cloth coated in glue, and then attaches that captured surface to a canvas where he then adds to the composition. (The strappo technique was developed primarily by art conservators and restorers.)

“Instantes Pasados: Iconos de Una Era Reciente,” with its Coca Cola bottle fading into the background along with the familiar script used by Coca Cola, was sinking into oblivion. But it was recovered by Romero for us to nostalgically remember.

Romero frequently meets people in small towns and listens to their stories. Dona Petra in Aguilera single-handedly developed an active produce business and store. After Romero learned her story it became part of the emotional content of the layered graffiti on the wall near her store. As he removes the graffiti and displays it as an artwork, he brings together the small town and the art world.

He has three different approaches to this process. Selections from all three are on view at the Patricia Rovzar Gallery: 

Despiel (“to strip away, detach, reorganize”)

Romero sees the surfaces as layers of time that have histories and contain stories of the life of a given place. He merely observes these “skins,” then attaches them to a canvas and backs them with fiberglass. In addition to the “Instantes Pasados,” the exhibition also includes “Blue Rush” as an example of the graffiti left intact as it was transferred. The bright blue sloping rectangle dominates the image, as though someone had arranged it.

Strattos

“Strattos Love” has several layers apparent on the surface. It almost appears as an intact discovered composition, but the sections create a unified image with wide slashes of yellow and more dispersed pinkish areas. We can see that the artist has added his own “interventions” as he calls them.

Topographic Memories

Romero’s “maps” are filled with emotion, and in them we see forgotten moments rearranged. His idea is that if we move beyond the loss in the present, we can move forward, but the future also contains the past.

“Memorias Topográficas: Belleza Robada” (Topographic Memories: Stolen Beauties) is a striking example of this technique.

The original has been cut into small squares and reassembled, with a few remaining graffiti strokes at the center. The artist enjoys disrupting the original with new ideas. Indeed, as we look at this “topography,” we can construct our own story. It is open to interpretation. Romero embraces constant change even when it comes to looking at his compositions.

Each of the artworks have a powerful physical presence, but I found the Topographic Memories series especially intense. The work ripples on the wall, it is physically present with its combination of graffiti and the artist’s arrangements of small cut-up pieces; its hard surface, mounted on plexiglass, is contradicted by the sense of movement in the whole work. I could feel it as an offering to me to embrace both the source and the artist, as well as my own activated emotions. While these works might be seen as abstract, their emotional generosity suggests a deep investment in the past, in the present, and in a future that we cannot know.

.

Susan Noyes Platt

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

Alfredo Romero’s exhibit, “The Spaces We Inhabit: 11 Years of Activating Memory,” is on view from April 2-25, Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Patricia Rovzar Gallery, located at 1111 First Avenue in Seattle, Washington. A reception with artist is to be held on Saturday, April 4, from 3 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.rovzargallery.com.

Alibaba Awrang: Didar

Language is at the core of a universal human desire for shared understanding, and the handwritten word can create a profound connection. Beautiful script carries additional weight in Islam, where carefully rendered transcriptions form a tangible connection between the visual and spiritual worlds. 

Calligraphy means “beautiful writing,” and for over 1,400 years has been central to both Arabic religious and secular texts. Unique variations emerged out of different periods and regions; in mid-14th-century Iran, a style specific to Persian verse evolved. Nasta'līq calligraphy is distinguished by its sweeping, gestural curves paired with short, staccato vertical elements—visual forms that pair well with the rhythms of the spoken language.

Alibaba Awrang’s exhibition at Gallery Mack, March 28 to May 9, reveals entanglements with and expansions beyond these formal and functional foundations. Born in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan in 1972, Awrang studied and taught classical Islamic calligraphy for many years. In 2021, he and his family were evacuated by the U.S. State Department from Taliban-occupied Afghanistan. The works emerging after this relocation to Connecticut are physical manifestations of these complex existential layers.

In “Glory” and “Didar,” we see evidence of Awrang’s method, a collaged layering of gold and silver leaf, acrylic paint, and Japanese ink on canvas. The distinction between script and form is blurred, and lines that reveal characters (both Persian and Roman) simultaneously dissolve into pattern. Contemporary artist and calligrapher Pam Galvani observes that some of these letters appear embossed or applied to the surface, and come into the space. She notes that this kind of curiosity and exploration beyond the conventions of traditional calligraphy is also partly due to the rigorous training Awrang underwent: he knows what he is doing.

“Fall” further communicates Awrang’s intuitive fusion of the underpinnings of calligraphy with strong elements of color and form. The central gold circular focus conveys a concentrated energy that unfurls via the ribbon-like curves of the text that spin outward, suggesting a space beyond the edges of the canvas. Roman letters and numbers coexist in this plane, inviting additional interpretations, and possible conflicts. How does an artist who is freeing themselves from the literal constraints of text communicate through abstraction of letters when there’s a literal meaning embedded in these forms?

This question of sense-making is not a new one. What were the artists who left their marks in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave in France some 32,000 years ago communicating through their gestural lines? The way that some images seem to have been layered on top of each other has sparked wonder: were these seen as animated forms in the flickering light of the fat lamps illuminating these underground galleries? Awrang’s intersecting lines and forms conjure a similar illusion of movement and unresolved wonderings.

Awrang’s works also invite comparisonto Western artists who are exploring works that outside the limitations of text, such as Massimo Polello. Polello says of his own work, “…Letters become a means to exist outside myself…going beyond the letters, captured by the sole need to see. They become signs, images, evocations, urgent needs, emotions.” The connection to a world verging on the spiritual is apparent here too, in a redirection of the work from thinking to feeling.

As I am typing, a law has just been enacted that mandates cursive writing instruction for all elementary school students in Pennsylvania; this legislation acknowledges the cognitive benefits of writing by hand, cursive’s connection to cultural history, and its potential to develop critical thinking. It’s a contemporary example of the meaning and impact of handwritten script evolving over time. In a similar vein to linguist John McWhorter’s description of language as a parade, beautiful writing is another kind of moving, changing pageant that celebrates creativity. 

In spite of this expansive perspective, it’s a very human condition to want to reach for clarity of meaning when we are challenged by the gray area of questions and conflicts. There seems to be an urgency these days to be certain, one way or another, and to act quickly. But there are skills to be developed that can help navigate unknowns, to make the parade enjoyable rather than rigid. 

Looking slowly is one approach, and Awrang’s works are intriguing subjects for this exercise. Mimicking his process of layering and incising, observe the many elements at play: let your eyes encounter the color, the line, and the forms. His shifting poetry of words and visual culture both arise from and exceed the limits of human understanding.

Kristin L. Tollefson

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

Alibaba Awrang’s exhibit, “Didar,” is on view March 28-May 9 at Gallery Mack, located at 2100 Western Avenue in Seattle, Washington, from Tuesday through Saturday,11 a.m. to 5 p.m. An Opening Reception is held on Saturday, March 28, at 1 p.m. For more information, visit www.GalleryMack.com.