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In January 2019, Cascadia Art Museum opened “Portraits and Self-Portraits by Northwest Artists,” an exhibition that includes paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs by both modern and contemporary Northwest artists. Curated by David Martin, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate the variety of approaches to portraiture by Northwest artists over the past one hundred years. While many exhibitions at Cascadia Art Museum primarily contain artworks created in the first half of the twentieth century, Martin decided to include artwork by three contemporary artists in this exhibition: Gary Faigin, William Elston, and Aleah Chapin in order to facilitate a visual dialogue between the past and the present. 

Viewers are sure to be delighted to see well-known artists represented in the exhibition. Artists such as Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952), Thomas T. Wilson (1931-2015), Andrew Hofmeister (1913-2007), and Walter Isaacs (1886-1964) all have artworks in the exhibition. There is even a charcoal drawing of Mark Tobey by Dorothy Dolph Jensen (1895-1977) titled “Caricature of Mark Tobey” included in the show. Jensen was a student of Tobey at Cornish in the 1920s. Text by Jensen is posted next to her drawing in which she recounts some of her interactions with Tobey. According to Jensen, Tobey was hard on his female students and would often storm out of class after declaring, “There’s no such thing as perspective!” In one instance, after he left class Jensen quickly drew his face. Tobey returned quickly, looked at her drawing and declared: “I like it.” Her drawing is an intimate one of the famed Northwest artist. His hair is wildly sticking up in every direction, brow furrowed, and every piece of stubble on his chin is distinct. Jensen drew him quickly and emotionally, though it is difficult to determine which emotion won over in the end: anger or admiration. 

Perhaps one of the most nationally celebrated artists in the exhibition is Imogene Cunningham (1883-1976). She is represented in almost every major museum in the United States and is considered an important pioneer in the field of photography. She was a member of Group f/64, a California-based group of photographers interested in meticulously composed and focused images Cunningham worked with or knew every major photographer working during this time,including Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Edward S. Curtis, and Dorothea Lange. This exhibition includes two of her photographs and they are portraits of Curt Ducasse and John Butler. Interestingly, another portrait of John Butler is included in the exhibition by artist Roi Partridge (1888-1984), who was Cunningham’s husband from 1915 to 1934. This situation allows the visitor the unique opportunity to compare how Partridge and Cunningham differ in their representation of the sitter.

A delightful inclusion in this exhibition is Anne Kutka McCosh (1902-1994). The painting, “Rainy Evening, Bus Corner, Self-Portrait,” is an oil on canvas created in 1931. At the time, McCosh was living in New York. The painting depicts McCosh in the center of the picture plane dressed in a blue work suit with a cream shawl over her head to protect her from the rain. The scene is dark and muted, but McCosh stands out as the largest and brightest figure in the composition. She holds an umbrella but doesn’t use it. Two people are huddled under an awning to protect themselves from the rain and warm up on a damp evening. McCosh looks up at the sky, maybe to try to determine if the rain will continue. McCosh has painted herself as a confident and professional New Yorker who is unaccompanied on her way home from work. This surely gives the viewer insight into how McCosh viewed herself, and it is an inspiring point of view.

This exhibition is packed full of portraits and self-portraits in a variety of styles and media. The museum also offers several programs to accompany the exhibition, including Coffee with the Curator which allows visitors to hear a lecture from David Martin. Cascadia Art Museum also offers music in the Museum and participates in the Blue Star Museum Program. Another wonderful opportunity to view the exhibition is during the Edmonds Art Walk on the third Thursday of every month from 5-8 P.M. when the museum is free. You can always count on this museum to include artworks by well-known Northwest artists in addition to several you may not recognize. “Portraits and Self-Portraits by Northwest Artists” does just that, and hopefully the viewer enjoys seeing both old favorites and discovering new ones.

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

“Portraits and Self-Portraits by Northwest Artists; 1910-2018” is on view Wednesday through Sunday from 11 A.M. to 6P.M. through September 29 at the Cascadia Art Museum, located at 1990 Sunset Avenue South in Edmonds, Washington. For more information, visit www.cascadiaartmmuseum.org.

A dazzling exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art awaits you at the newest art space in town, ARTS at King Street Station. The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture launched their new 7500 square foot exhibition space with an exhibition of 200 indigenous artists from 100 tribes. This exhibition curated by Asia Tail (Cherokee), Tracy Rector (Choctaw/Seminole), and Sapreet Kahlon, accepted all indigenous submissions: children and elders, professional artists and beginners, all media from traditional cedar, bead work and dolls to digital and audio. We see sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, text, cartoons, games, performance, skateboard, drums, maps. There are iPads with music, poetry and stories recited from speakers, and both hilarious and serious videos.

Installing such a diverse show challenged the curators and staff of ARTS as they organized hundreds of art works succeeded in creating a spectacular result. To enjoy the exhibit simply embrace its mind-expanding diversity, then immerse yourself in one wall at a time, each a compact exhibit. Gaps between the walls allow a view through to another part of the exhibition. The entire space is activated by sculpture and installations, many encourage interaction.

At the opening Timothy White Eagle (White Mountain Apache) performed “Songs for the Standing Still People” within a space hung with jingles and chains. He called us to action against the “vast forces” that “will ravage us if we do not act” though a story of rocks that came together and changed the world. We can create our own music in the space and thus join his call to action.

A giant deck of cards by Roldy Aguero Ablao (CHamoru) greets us at the entrance, along with a seemingly random accumulation of objects hanging over the front desk by Catherine Cross Uehara (Uchinanchu/Hapa/Okinaway American), “between you & me & the Ancestors…” includes photographs of her ancestors, a wedding dress kimono, memorabilia, and much more. 

On the opposite wall is a film of the famous Vi Hilbert, (Upper Skagit) who singlehandedly saved the Lushootseed language from extinction, encourages a community audience to “lift the sky” together. In her telling: “The Creator has left the sky too low. We are going to have to do something about it, and how can we do that when we do not have a common language?…We can all learn one word, that is all we need. That word is yəhaw̓—that means to proceed, to go forward, to do it.”

We are invited to go forward into the exhibit in order to create community.  

We immediately encounter the compelling painting of Itzá by Nico Inzerella (Mexican American, Indigenous) in the complex mixed media of wheat paste on birch panel, gold leaf, copper leaf, oil, latex and acrylic. Pay attention to media in this exhibit, it is almost always unusual.  

At the same time, traditional photography includes striking results such as Selena Kearney’s (Chehalis) photograph of a young woman proudly dressed for a PowWow, Adam Sings in the Timber’s (Apsáalooke) photographs of women in regalia re-asserting indigenous presence in various locations in Seattle and the eerie images of scanned tintypes by Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena). 

Spend the time to explore the various subtle works hanging on walls, but don’t miss the entire corner devoted to stunning cedar hats, baskets, skirts, and capes. 

Not far away another type of weaving hovers over us. A twelve foot high “Big Foot” hovers over us as it “Lifts the Sky.” HollyAnna “CougarTracks” de Coteau Littlebull (Yakama/Nez Perce/Cayuse/Cree) upcycled 15,190 pieces of plastic to weave this giant. She explained that it represents the wasted past in its orange/red hued back and the future in its green/ blue front.

Be sure to look in the stairwell for a mixed media homage to weaving by Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos/Confederated Tribes of Coos/Lower Umpqua/Siuslaw) “Eagle Machine dancing<<<<<the beautiful” combines a cotton wood bark skirt with her photographs and mixed media references to indigenous history.  

Nearby is Priscilla Dobler’s (Mayan) “El renacimiento de la Sociedad: The rebirth of society,” a traditional Mayan embroidery unravels into a contemporary geometric enclosure; above it hangs Jacob Johns’s (Hopi) “Water is Life” banner that speaks of freeing the Snake River, a reference to our threatened salmon and orcas because of the many dams on the Snake.

Susan Noyes Platt

Susan Noyes Platt writes a blog www.artandpoliticsnow.com and for local, national, and international publications.

yəhaw̓is on view through August 4 at ARTS at King Street Station located at 303 S. Jackson Street, Top Floor, in Seattle, Washington from Tuesday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. and First Thursdays, 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. 

For information, visit www.seattle.gov/arts/experience/galleries/arts-at-king-street-station-gallery. Films and other exhibit all over town check https://yehawshow.com.

Once Evaleen feeding chickens

all around her in the yard tossed

the diamond out of her wedding ring

so quit wearing the eyeless thing

even to wash dishes weed the garden

stuff their Thanksgiving turkey

which had to bother Charlie

it wasn’t the money it was

what-all the shiny thing meant

as near eternal as they’d likely get

so for several years killing a hen

for dinner once or twice a week

out behind the barn he’d cut

the craw from the gizzard

dig the gravel there spread it out

on a piece of white paper he kept

folded around his reading specs

down the front of his overalls

till one night that sparkler bright as ever

turned up there it was inside a life

since the evening she’d lost it where

once the hens were in for the night

he’d looked hard with a flashlight

for hours on his hands and knees

knew if it was there he’d a found it but

said you know how quick a hen can be

once a thing catches her eye

Paul Hunter

These and twenty-some others grew out of a long poem about shy country people finding love, a piece called “Luminaries” that first appeared in his third farming book called “Come the Harvest” (Silverfish Review Press, 2008). 

In bed with her with curlers

the night before the big day

eighth grade graduation

for their oldest girl who also

slept in the pink foamy things

after fidgeting and sighing

stirring half the night

Charlie asked her to undo

all she was holding together

for later for the effect that

she wanted to be perfect

said who is the hairdo for

anyway Evaleen said okay

went to the bathroom and

left the door wide so he

could watch while she

unwound each lock of hair

shook and combed it out

for the shine bounce and flair

for him not some old PTA

Paul Hunter

These and twenty-some others grew out of a long poem about shy country people finding love, a piece called “Luminaries” that first appeared in his third farming book called “Come the Harvest” (Silverfish Review Press, 2008). 

On the porch new farmer and new wife

what with supper dishes done and dried

settle into silence both let be

to hear the twilit pond’s full chorus rise

and usher in the summer prodigal

with every living creature home at last

every thing that wintered in the muck

or trailed the southern flight now back

awake to sing however loud and long

its overture to interrupted life

now Charlie lays a finger to her wrist

and in the dark her blind hand catches his

like the final bird of daylight strong

but sure it has no business out this late

about to settle for a quiet place to rest

that both agree and in that subtle touch

without another gesture trundle off

to bed beyond the night still tuning up

its purple bruise just fading in the west

still breathless in the dark not cooling yet

Paul Hunter

These and twenty-some others grew out of a long poem about shy country people finding love, a piece called “Luminaries” that first appeared in his third farming book called “Come the Harvest” (Silverfish Review Press, 2008). 

I’m reminded that I was not born in Seattle by just about every conversation I have with someone who was. Almost immediately I feel “East Coast.” More to the point, East Coast Italian, different in tone and temperament in ways I didn’t fully understand when I was younger.  

After years of trying to clarify this feeling, I still find it difficult to explain why Italians communicate the way we do, especially to people unaccustomed to passionate debate as a way to, oh, I suppose the best word to use is, bond.  

The first time I had dinner at my in-law’s table, I was afraid to open my mouth. I had no idea how to speak so softly about things I read in the newspaper. Used to waves of personal opinion rippling through even deeper waves of expressive reaction, I was shocked to sit with people, intoxicated people, who seemed to be content in the shoals of current events. 

I long for conversations with more heat and hand waving. The dinner table in my childhood home was a competitive place. Everyone talked at once, interrupted each other, said things someone took offense to on purpose.  

What fun! 

The other day I walked to the aquarium because I just finished reading “The Soul of An Octopus.” I tell you this because it wasn’t the octopus I wound up studying. It was a group of Italians.

And yes, I heard them, before I saw them. If that is what you are thinking. 

But if there are intentional coincidences, and most days I trust there are, I believe this one occurred to remind me of a huge part of my personality I neglect now that I (try to) live by a more-Seattle code of ethics. Or what I jokingly call (but only to East Coast friends) BIDAN: Bring it down a notch.

If the desire to be in the company of your biological tribe is one of the most overwhelming of human connections, I was reminded of where my qualities originate. Watching the group talk and touch and embrace each other freely, I had never felt more distant from the city in which I reside. I felt an urge to run up to them and say, “I am Italian, too!” 

Thankfully I stopped myself. 

I followed them into the undersea dome. I wanted to hug them. I wanted to hold on to this family with such a strong intensity that, when I couldn’t, I walked past them feeling deprived, devastated, deflated. 

So I called my friend Vicki who was born in Seattle. She had no idea why I was calling, and I didn’t bother to say, but as soon as I heard her voice, I felt grounded.

And it strikes me that talking, talking—however fast, drawn-out, cool, or impassioned—is still the best way to deal with complicated emotions when basic longings fall flat.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli has published seven collections of poetry, three works of non-fiction, and her forthcoming novel, “The Star Struck Dance Studio (of Yucca Springs),” is to be published in September, 2019 (Chatwin Books). For more information about her and her work, visit www.marylousanelli.com.

In its third biennial “Bellingham National 2019 Juried Art Exhibition and Awards,” the Whatcom Museum utilized the skills of experienced art historian and curator Bruce Guenther. The theme for this year’s exhibition is “Water’s Edge: Landscapes for Today,” which includes 71 artworks by 57 artists from around the country. As you may expect, Guenther references Bellingham’s location as inspiration for the show’s theme and title, but he also writes in his introductory text that the exhibition “was an invitation for artists to share their observations and feelings about humanity’s ever-changing relationship to nature and life at water’s edge…” Through many different artistic mediums, these artists each grapple with our connection to nature using the landscape as their method of communication. 

The exhibit is not arranged chronologically or by sub theme, so it is fascinating to think about why Guenther placed artworks next to each other. A particularly striking arrangement includes Natalie Niblack’s “Watershed” (oil on canvas), which is flanked by Naomi Shigeta’s “Sky meets Sea” (oil on panel) and Amy Ferron’s “Over our Heads” (acrylic paint and paper on wood). Niblack’s visually imposing painting depicts a large explosion in the top two-thirds of the picture plane, with a trash-filled ocean below. The flames are painted in extraordinary detail and loom over the viewer. She has also drawn a grid in the white background behind the plume of fire and smoke. Is this her attempt to create an underlying structure beneath the swirling flames? Interestingly, Shigeta and Ferron also utilize straight lines to create structure in their paintings. Shigeta writes in her statement that the painting, especially the distinct vertical lines, “reflects the challenge in keeping balance.” Ferron creates her landscapes by first cutting paper with rotary cutters and X-acto knives and then pasting the pieces together. The result is a mosaic landscape reminiscent of the geometric structures of Nature: tectonic plates, molecules, and others. 

Connections between Nature, Art, and Science are abundant in the exhibition. There are many photographs, including two tintypes by Alexandra Opie, included in the show which have long been used by scientists to document the natural world. Lynn Skordol printed on a vintage map to create “Map 4” to illustrate how humans have changed the natural landscape over the years. Vanessa Mayoraz’s “Progressions of pernicious change” almost appears to have been taken straight from a science lab. She writes that her “work concerns itself with understanding and decoding our reality,” which beautifully demonstrates the “power of place” that Guenther writes about in his introductory text.  

Guenther awarded three cash prizes to artists in the exhibition. The Second Place winner was Natalie Niblack. First Place went to Philip Govedare’s vibrant, oil on canvas painting titled “Artifact.” Like other artists in the exhibition, Govedare also contemplates the impact of land use and his paintings are charged with doubt and anxiety about the condition of the landscape. His use of bright red signals alarm. In contrast, the Third Place winner, Patti Bowman connects her encaustic “Wave I” to the effect of gazing at the ocean. The painting purposefully lacks structure to orient the view, which gives the affect of an endless sea or enormous wave filling the picture plane with blue water and white foam.  

While all three award winners are based in Washington State, the exhibition drew many artists from all around the country. And even though all the artworks are 2-dimensional, the exhibition does not lack in variety of mediums or artistic styles. If you are interested in representational paintings of the landscape, you will find several. If you are looking for abstract paintings seeking to find the essence of nature, Guenther has included many with this exact aim, but they utilize different methods for seeking the “spirit of nature.” The exhibition consists of many paintings, but photographs and prints are also in abundance. There are even several fiber artworks, including Krista Kilvert’s “Altered Landscape” (dye sublimation on polyester) which moved with the air flow as I opened the door to the gallery. 

As I was leaving the gallery, I looked up at the second story to see a canoe through a cut out in the wall. The canoe is part of the “People of the Sea and Cedar” exhibition and seeing the object beautifully connected both exhibitions through the “power of the essential element Water to life,” as Guenther writes in his text. I suggest visiting both exhibitions while you are at the Whatcom Museum. 

Chloé Dye Sherpe

Chloé Dye Sherpe is a curator and art educator

based in Washington State.

“Bellingham National 2019” is on view Wednesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 P.M.  through May 19 at the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher Building, located at 250 Flora Street in Bellingham, Washington. For more information, visit www.whatcommuseum.org.

I was flipping through a magazine when a line jumped out at me: “We fall in love with objects not only for what they are, but for what they allow us to believe we can become.”

It was three summers ago when I spotted a set of six vintage long-stem aperitif glasses at the Bigelow Block Sale on Queen Anne. I picked one up. I blew on it, though it wasn’t dusty. I set it back down. “Ah,” I said, more of an exhale than a word. I didn’t want to seem too interested.

I continued to walk up and down Bigelow because, as any shopper knows, joy is in the pursuit, not in the prize.

Unless the prize is six vintage long-stem aperitif glasses that belong to a woman who wears a turquoise pendant, turquoise rings. Her love, her pride, for her home was obvious, but her car still had Arizona plates. All this meant to me was that maybe, just maybe, she was moving back to the desert and I’d be able to get a really sweet deal on the glasses.

The second time I passed the glasses, I knew I had to have them, a response I have never been able to talk myself out of when it hits, and near the corner of Boston and Bigelow it hit hard.

I told myself I’d gift one to each of my friends, but every December I convince myself my friends would probably not love the fragile stems as much as I do.

The oddest thing about seeing the glasses is that during all the years I was actually looking for vintage long-stem aperitif glasses, I could never find one. Not at a rummage sale. Not at Goodwill or Value Village.

I was remembering all this, when the glasses caught my eye for the third time. The way they gleamed felt like a sign—nothing smaller than a billboard.

But this is not what made me walk closer.

My own mother had aperitif glasses, but I can’t remember ever using them, and I have no idea what happened to them. The glasses brought back a whole stage of my girlhood. Suddenly I was no longer an adult writer with deadlines of her own, but thirteen again scribbling, “So, Diary, I met this boy today and he is sooo cute.”

When I finally decide to buy the glasses, the sale is slowing down, with some people folding up their tables already, but there were my vintage glasses, unsold, flashing me knowing smiles. I imagined that along with those smiles would be tête-à-têtes cozy and intimate, so many things to talk about.

Some of my friends keep telling me that it’s getting too expensive to live in the city, that they need to down-size and move to god-knows-where, so I’ve decided I don’t want to burden them with any more “stuff.”

And though I would never label a vintage long-stemmed aperitif glass as “stuff,” I know there is a personal fine line between treasure and tchotchke.

Besides I need the entire set now that I do believe I have developed into someone who will serve aperitif at her small, but stunning get-together.

Even if this is Belltown, circa 2019, basically an Amazon campus, which must hold the record for the fewest vintage long-stemmed aperitif glasses.

But I’m okay with that. I have become.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli, writer, speaker, and dance teacher, lives in Seattle. Her forthcoming novel, “The Star Struck Dance Studio (of Yucca Springs)” is to be published in September, 2019 (Chatwin Books). For more information about her and her work, visit www.marylousanelli.com.

Hats off to the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, one of our outstanding regional art museums. Its current feature exhibition of the work of Alfredo Arreguín glows on the walls in the midst of our dark winter days.

Alfredo Arreguín populates his wonderland of jungles and seascapes with animals, fish, insects, and birds. Then he embeds in this dense matrix of colors and shapes the faces of well known political activists, writers, poets, friends, and occasionally, himself. The faces deeply disguised within the vast details of the paintings, point to Arreguín’s belief in the harmony of nature, the balance of life, and the crucial place that we have within it, rather than outside it. His work has never been more timely or important. 

Arreguín’s several themes, nature, Madonnas, and portraiture overlap and intersect. In every detail of these intricate works, he contradicts the angry rhetoric of racists creating arbitrary divisions in our beautiful world.

Leaping salmon and whales remind us that the survival of the Southern Resident pod of orcas is hanging in the balance. As the whales dwindle in response to environmental degradation, and the salmon fail to complete their migration upstream because of dams, Arreguín’s paintings celebrate natural processes and inspire us to protect our Salish Sea. 

Arreguín’s life story is unusual. He was born in Morelia, Michoacán Mexico, as an illegitimate child, and passed from one relative to another. On a few occasions, he had the opportunity to be immersed in the jungle, experiences that made a deep and permanent impression on him. He also had enough educational opportunities to learn art as he moved from Morelia to Mexico City. But by extraordinary serendipity he was invited to live in Seattle by a family he met when they were lost as tourists in Chapultepec park. As a result, he came to the U.S. in January 1956, and gained citizenship with their sponsorship. After serving in the army in Korea (where he introduced himself to Asian art), he attended the University of Washington, earning two degrees, then found his way as an artist by the mid 1970s in the style that he still practices.  

He began to appear in major exhibitions almost immediately. The National Museum of American Art acquired his work in the early 1990s. “Life Patterns” includes works from Bainbridge Island Museum of Art’s permanent collection, promised gifts, and loans from private collections and the artist himself, for a total of almost fifty works for this 50 year retrospective.  

Arreguín began honoring Frida Kahlo many years before she became a pop icon. They share a love of folk art, peasant expressions, nature, music, and the sensuality of life. Arreguín transmits folk art patterns and their motifs in one layer of his dense jungle tapestries, but more than that Frida as well as Arreguín embraced the spiritual significance of ordinary people’s beliefs in Mexico, beliefs that survive transformed to this day. 

Likewise Arreguín’s love of literature and language pervades his paintings, sometimes literally in his homages to his Seattle friends Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher, other times more subtly as in his homage to Pablo Neruda. Also look for his portraits of indigenous environmentalists, well known activists, and revolutionaries.

In addition to this featured exhibition, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is also showing a traveling exhibition of 53 artists’ books titled “Borderland-Arkir Book Arts Group/Iceland which addresses the concept of land. It is supplemented by a selection of the Artists’ Books from the Collection of Cynthia Sears, the visionary founder of the Museum. Artists’ Books are a particular passion of Sears. She has also promised two paintings by Arreguín to the Museum from the Sears-Buxton collection, and already donated the signature Arreguín painting “Salish Sea” of 2017.

In addition, don’t miss Kait Rhodes multimedia glass sculpture of a red polyp titled “Bloom,” and the exhibition “Heikki Seppa: Master Metalsmith,” thirty metal works, both jewelry and sculpture by a giant in the field. Finally, to celebrate the Museum’s 5th anniversary, there are selections from the intriguingly diverse works donated to the Museum’s permanent collection (which includes another painting by Arreguín.)

So within this fairly small space, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art offers an experience for everyone, world class artists and an embrace of many media, both experimental and classical. Even in the bistro there is an exhibition—Pamela Wachtler’s paintings and monotypes “Impressions of Place.”

It is hard to believe that the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is only five years old. What a success it has become and what a gift to our art community. Only a short walk from the ferry, it is free of charge and open seven days a week.

Susan Noyes Platt

Susan Noyes Platt writes a blog www.artandpoliticsnow.com and for local, national, and international publications.

“Alfredo Arreguín: Life Patterns” is on view through February 3 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art located at 550 Winslow Way on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Open daily 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. For more information, visit www.biartmuseum.org.