Articles

stormy weather

and we enter

another world

the dots of rain

between traveling umbrellas

the fractured patterns

of the crimson kimono

the twisted blue

of a strap

on a school girl’s backpack

the wet smack of feet

on a grey sidewalk

Alan Chong Lau

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

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

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

Linda Okazaki’s retrospective exhibit at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is an exploration of painting and life that requires us to look and look again. First we experience the subtle color relationships, the extraordinary handling of watercolor. Then we register on the imagery, and finally a pervasive anxiety and discomfort.

This major exhibition includes many themes, but they are not clustered together; rather curator Greg Robinson, in collaboration with the artist, conducts a symphony of phrases that build on one another, and repeat each with a new variation. Artist Jo Hockenhull, who knew the artist well in Pullman, commented “No one attacks watercolor with such surety and knowledge as Linda Okazaki.” The transparency of watercolor conveys many moods of water, the color relationships evoke emotions. Okazaki immersed herself in a study of Goethe’s color theory and then made her own color charts in order to exactly convey emotions that she wanted to express.

The theme of water is one example: at the outset of the exhibition, we see “Evening Departure” (1980). The sea (Puget Sound) swirls around the boat, as the artist, accompanied by her dog, is held in the arms of a large wolf. The embrace is tender, but the image suggests anxiety. This represents on one level her departure from many years in eastern Washington to live in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.

But on another level, we can sense her fear of starting over in an entirely new environment through the imaginary—but gentle—embrace of a wolf.

In “River Story Return” (1989), the artist now depicts herself nude in the water, carrying a raven reaching for the shore as a glass vessel seems to fall toward her, and a person in a large red and black striped robe fails to connect to her. Desperation is palpable, expressed through the color, textures, and images. “Crypt Swimmers” (2012) heightens the sense of danger as several figures swim among heavy columns and arches.

Okazaki received two degrees from Washington State University and taught there in the 1970s. She became part of an edgy group of artists who cohered, not into a single style, but into a concentrated group of supportive friends, who, because of the isolation of Pullman, partied together, but had plenty of time for concentrated work. Artist Gaylen Hansen was one of her professors, and near the beginning of the exhibition is “Studio Conversation Vincent and Gaylen”(1985) of Gaylen Hansen and Vincent Van Gogh. We see Hansen’s presence in Okazaki’s benevolent animals and birds that fill her paintings. But her birds multiply and congregate and disperse as in the wonderful recent painting, “Birds Take Flight into Twilight” (2023). We see twenty different species of birds, each carefully observed, fly away in a landscape filled with a rainbow of colors. Another inspiration was the Bay Area artist Joan Brown, who also pursued a personal vocabulary of self portraits, dancing and swimming, in a fantasy world. Also important to her was the anguished imagery of Frida Kahlo, as we see in “Letter to Frida” (1985).

The formative event in Okazaki’s life occurred when she was six. Her mother was murdered by a stalker who then committed suicide. For the first time, the artist is showing several works that refer to this trauma, each more explicit than the last. The earliest is a pencil drawing made while in art school, but later large watercolors confront the subject with a courageous directness. This is the first time she has shown these works.

Not surprisingly then, the overall sensation of the exhibition is one of unease, everything is off kilter, filled with undecipherable metaphors, particularly in the still life paintings of tables set vertically against the picture plane and filled with odd objects. Much of the imagery is from dreams, dreams that suggest struggles to just find a firm footing, particularly in juxtaposition with water.

But I will end where I began, with the dazzling color: Okazaki deeply understands the subtle relationships that she creates to convey exactly the right emotion. So seeing these paintings through color first gives us a feeling of comfort and sometimes joy, even as the paintings themselves take us on a fantastic adventure.

Susan Noyes Platt

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

“Linda Okazaki: Into the Light” is on view through February 25, 2024 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, located at 550 Winslow Way East on Bainbridge Island, Washington, and open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For information, visit www.biartmuseum.org.

A salmon peers from the circular opening of a bark net, graceful, silver-eyed shapes of four more on the cedar disc beneath. Carved by a First Nations artist, the piece represents an ancient culture of conservation—an effort not to exhaust the vital resources of the land and sea. Temoseng Chazz Elliott’s carving forms a counterpoint in this cross-border art exhibition, much of which interrogates the contemporary culture of consumption.

“Archipelago—Contemporary Art of the Salish Sea: Southern Gulf Islands Artists,” is the second half of a project by the San Juan Islands Museum of Art (SJIMA) working with British Columbia’s ArtSpring and Salt Spring Arts galleries. SJIMA exhibited six San Juan Island artists this summer and now is showing six artists from Canada’s Southern Gulf Islands, questioning the influence of environment on the art of a region. The current show is beautiful, even profound, although whether a common environment evokes a common artistic response remains unanswered.

Elliott, a Tsawout artist, expresses intimacy with a territory inhabited by his ancestors for millenia. Made with traditional materials and techniques, his elegant, pristine carvings are deeply rooted in the environment. In contrast, Sam Montalbetti, born and raised on Salt Spring Island, creates work that has little to do with the Salish Sea. Concerned with the extinction of analog color photography, he turns his focus from the outside world to paint with light directly on sensitized paper, printing, cutting, layering, re-shooting to build brilliantly-colored abstractions: playful visual jazz. For another series, he tosses water into a night sky to capture motes of dust, tiny orbs suggesting galaxies infinitely larger and smaller than the visible world. This is the environment to which he responds, creating new possibilities from old technology.

John Macdonald’s large-scale paintings are drawn from personal interests and experience; though painterly and abstracted, they maintain an illustrative narrative. In front of a flame-colored truck, a hanging tire quotes Rauschenberg; road signs signal “Caution” and a choice of left or right: there is politics, and a world on fire. Tagged by numbers, deer in maple move through slanting shafts of color, their wildness belied by the artificial system in which they are caught. A figure lost in a snowy forest is painted on salvaged scrap wood, the far-left roof-tar black; high on the right, a single light bulb; on the left, an eagle shape of twigs mounted on scrap metal, the head a cast of white. This is Macdonald’s most personal painting, referencing a palpable loss.

The three women artists use sewing, stitching, weaving in their art. Perhaps a result of long meditative hours of handwork, here we find a complete response to environment of the Salish Sea in both overt and hidden manifestations.

Joanna Rogers stitches leaves, shells, plastic bread ties, small empty bottles, beach glass onto felt forms taken from the shape of Joan of Arc’s armor. Although given European sources, in this show, adorned with Salt Spring Island artifacts, her work seems to refer to First Nations culture: Haida warrior armor; button blankets; dance capes: native resources exploited by colonization; nature supplanted by plastic. Her most ambitious work is an elegant series of naturally-dyed scarfs into which a line from a poem is woven in Morse code. Entirely of texture, each coded message, she explains, is a last cry from a dying species—a lament for remembrance: subtlety decoded only with close attention.

Jane Kidd’s exquisite tapestries also require close attention, though her concern for the environment is overt. A shawl-like garment hangs folded-over: on top, a fish-kill below streaks of rain; obscured beneath, industrial smokestacks spew clouds of pollution. Four tapestries draped as garments maintain a human form, each worked in gorgeous color and pattern, each a site of environmental disaster: tar sand; pit mine; deforestation; desertification. Two small gowns, dyed with rust, represent our children’s inheritance: lichen-like patterns like the regeneration of organic life from barren rock or fallout from environmental apocalypse: hope or decay? These are tapestries as masterworks.

The highlight of the exhibition is an installation by Anna Gustafson: Three birch-bark dories filled with jugs of single-use plastic wrapped in white linen are suspended in the front glassed-in exhibition space. In a small alcove, a seine net suspends another catch of enshrouded plastic over a baby grand piano. What is our cultural legacy? Gustafson’s installation is a direct reply to Elliott’s concern: soulless empty vessels replace depleted salmon runs. On the walls, messages are written in salt-encrusted twine threaded with steel wire like white neon: “Salt. Whale. Oil.”

In the past, she says, salt and whale oil were key to our economy; may our dependence on oil become as obsolete. This is our hope.

Elizabeth Bryant

Elizabeth Bryant is an art writer and English/ESL tutor.

“Archipelago—Contemporary Art of the Salish Sea” is on view Friday through Monday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. until December 4 at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring Street in Friday Harbor, Washington. Visit www.sjima.org for more information.

A year ago, the Aurora Loop Gallery in Port Townsend was just an idea in the mind of artists Mary O’Shaughnessy and Charlie Van Gilder. The couple jumped in with confidence, having owned a successful gallery in Chicago before moving west in 2014. Their new gallery opened this past January, and now jumps into higher gear with its most ambitious show yet. It’s called “Process,” and is guest-curated by sculptor David Eisenhour. He has assembled an all-star line-up of artists, some with national and international reputations, all of whom call the Puget Sound region home. 

What stands out is the exhibit’s diversity. Its profusion of form leaps out at a glance: small, quiet monotypes; dramatic abstract acrylics; elegant constructions made with bits of bark; sprawling wire and fabric sculptures; architectural renderings; post-Pop hyperreal paintings; and pairs of ink-stained shoes (we’ll come back to those). 

The “Process” show achieves a thematic balance even with its mad-cap variety; intriguing correspondences between pieces and between artists emerge as you take in the work. (How each piece connects to the “Process” framework isn’t always evident—I’m still processing, I guess.)

Works by Aaron McKnight (sculptures) and Wendy Orville (monotype prints) have little in common physically, but a reverence for natural beauty unites them. McKnight meditates on the miniscule—seeds and leaf stems are sometimes the only construction materials he needs. For this show his design elements are birch tree lenticels (the “breathing holes” on a tree). Orville is drawn to the other end of the scale, capturing wide vistas in her monotypes, such as with her sweeping “Big Sky.” Though created by manually wiping ink from a plate and pressing the plate to paper, her monotypes seem to have a camera’s exactitude. Casual viewers assume they are photographs. McKnight and Orville transcend the human element in their work; their spacious and contemplative creations feel good to breathe in.

But now consider two artists mostly focused on the man-made: painter Karen Hackenberg and sculptor Karen Rudd. Their works address the precarity of the natural rather than its splendor. Hackenberg finds ironic ways to make sharp critiques of our throwaway culture. “Baby Squid” presents as a vintage specimen chart—so wholesome, such old-school charm—but its depictions are of spent shotgun shells. These non-biodegradable plastic “wads” get left behind by waterfowl hunters–and we are left to imagine their impact on a fragile habitat.   

Karen Rudd contributes “Footprint,” pairs of shoes from a larger project staged last year, “Anthropocene.” That show featured realistic life-sized cedar stumps Rudd made out of sheets of cardboard. (Process that.)

The lumber industry workers and laborers of all kinds fascinate Rudd, who thoroughly researches their histories. She recreates their work clothing and their shoes using kraft paper from the Port Townsend paper mill. She stitches her own research materials—historic texts and photographs—onto the shoes. “Walking in someone else’s shoes” is one association we can make here, and “Carbon footprint” is another. For Rudd as for Hackenberg, the larger purpose is to confront our own exploitative behaviors, and to facethe “demon of extinction” (to borrow a phrase from Eisenhour). 

The environment matters to Seattle-based sculptors Marita Dingus and June Sekiguchi, but people and communities are their primary focus. Both are public artists, both mothers, both involve ancestry, identity, and cross-cultural exchange ideas in their work. And yet in terms of process and output their creations differ. The found-object figure sculptures by Dingus delight in spontaneity and zany juxtaposition; by using repurposed materials she connects to African art traditions, where the practice has been embraced for centuries. Sekiguchi’s pieces are engineered and mathematical, celebrations of geometry and repetition. For this show Sekiguchi explores organic forms, perhaps a nod to the Olympic Peninsula setting. “Knothole, Reimagined 2” riffs on the wonder of nurse logs, with hand-carved fungal shapes sprouting to life on the edge of what remains of an ancient old-growth giant. 

One last pairing: two artists who work two-dimensionally, and who happen to be at opposite ends of their careers. Albert Fisher first made waves in the 1960s as a disciple of Leo Kenney, and he remains active to this day. He is showing two abstract acrylics from the early 2000s: “Process: Fusion” brings to mind scenes in the film Oppenheimer that visualize subatomic physics. “Process: Finding” shows a circle in the center of the picture, a callback to Kenney-style geometric abstraction, elemental and pure. These are powerful and mysterious canvases.

Compared to many of the artists on the roster, Tacoma-based Blake Carter is a relative new-comer. We are fortunate to have more chances to experience his work. The human figure is Carter’s obsession: he crowds hundreds of figures into a single small piece, thousands of them into larger works. For all the repetition, each figure is individuated, hand-drawn with a loose efficiency. From across the room, the figures don’t register as such but as patterns; the piece as a whole draws you in with its energetic rhythms and rewards close-up attention with its nuance. The overall effect is hypnotic.

Tom McDonald

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

“Process” is on view through October 1 at the Aurora Loop Gallery, located at 971 Aurora Loop in Port Townsend, Washington. The gallery is open Thursday to Sunday from 12-5 p.m. Visit www.auroraloopgallery.com for more information.

As summer draws to a close and the days get shorter, both the natural colors and art exhibitions change in the Skagit Valley. This seems an appropriate time to discuss a tour of the valley through its art galleries and venues, many of which feature artists local to the region. These stops include the perennial favorites in Edison (i.e., and Smith & Vallee Gallery) along with new friends in Mount Vernon at Leonard Brothers Fine Art, and a delightful stop at the Bitters Co. barn curated by owners/sisters Amy and Katie Carson. In the end, visitors see excellent art from regional artists while also taking in the bountiful beauty of the valley.

It makes sense to start our day in Edison with visits to i.e. and Smith & Vallee Gallery. In September, i.e. features a memorial exhibition for John Schaefer and sculptures by Michael Clough. In October, the gallery features a solo show of work by Marc Wenet. Schaefer’s color field paintings are intense; strokes of red, black, and gray fill the picture plane and light emanates from his circular forms. The works are meditative, just like Michael Clough’s carved rocks that accompany Schaefer’s paintings in the exhibition. The artist’s hand is evident in all these works. Viewers can see the movement of the oil in Schaefer’s work while Clough hand carves the rocks, which makes the work extremely personal. 

In October, i.e. highlights the work of Marc Wenet, a Seattle-based artist who creates assemblages from found materials and who recently began adding his mark on the materials by applying colored pencil and gouache. His sculptures often have humorous elements as the artist brings a humanistic quality to the combination of various found objects. Almost like figures standing in line, Wenet’s objects bring years of history together through the gathered materials.

While the exhibitions at i.e. explore materials and our intimate connection to those objects, the exhibitions at Smith & Vallee Gallery turn to representations of the natural world. Their September exhibition brings together Kim Obbink’s detailed colored pencil drawings of animals, flowers, and other gathered items, with Annie Burke’s ceramic sculptures. 

The gallery typically pairs two artists together in their shows, but October brings a solo exhibition of work by Andrew Vallee. Vallee began his career as a furniture and cabinet maker and has used those woodworking skills in his sculpture practice. Recent travels back and forth across the Pacific Ocean from Edison to Hawaii have inspired the artist to venture into two-dimensional work. The  resulting paintings and mixed media artworks are gestural and colorful interpretations of the artist’s travel experiences.

Skagit Valley is home to many historic barns, and a visit to Bitters Co. provides a unique opportunity to go inside one of these iconic red barns. Bitters Co. is a design and development company that specializes in houseware, including glassware, bakeware, and other furnishings created by craftspeople in various countries around the world. The barn is open for shopping by appointment, and the Carson sisters sell their wares as wholesale. They also host events and art exhibits in this idyllic location. 

From September 16 to October 14, the Bitters Co. barn welcomes the work of Joe Max Emminger to celebrate the harvest season. Emminger is a self-taught painter who paints the world around him constantly, nearly every day according to the artist. The works in the exhibition are acrylic on paper and painted objects that the artist gathers from around his home. Emminger’s paintings are colorful, and his characters are instantly recognizable to those familiar with his work. While his scenes are often quite whimsical and humorous, the viewer can’t help but think that a more sinister message is underneath. In this exhibition, the artist focuses on the theme of “harvest,” and the characters gather as they accumulate bounty from throughout the paintings.

Downtown Mount Vernon is home to a new gallery: Leonard Brothers Fine Art. Visitors to the picturesque downtown area can add this as a stop for their art-viewing pleasure, along with Perry and Carlson Gallery. The new gallery features a newly remodeled interior complete with crisp walls and optimal lighting for artwork. The gallery opened in May 2023, and curator/artist David Kane has taken the opportunity to highlight  artists in both solo and group exhibits. Sculpture and two-dimensional work by Peter Belknap occupy the gallery through September, and the gallery hosts the art of beloved Edison artist, chef, and shop owner David Blakesley in October. Art lovers rarely have this great opportunity to appreciate a gallery full of Blakesley’s art, so this is a unique treat.

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

Galleries in Edison, Washington:

i.e., located at 5800 Cains Court, is open Friday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.ieedison.com for information.

Smith & Vallee Gallery, located at 5742 Gilkey Avenue, is open Thursday through Monday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.smithandvalleegallery.com for information. 

Galleries in Mount Vernon, Washington:

Bitters Co., located at 14034 Calhoun Road, is open Thursday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visit www.bittersco.com for information. 

Leonard Brothers Fine Art, located at 511 South 1st Street, is open Friday through Sunday, from 12 to 6 p.m. Visit www.lbfa.us for information.

Perry and Carlson Gallery, located at 504 South 1st Street, is open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Visit www.perryandcarlson.com for information. 

For decades David Martin has been researching Northwest modern art, curating exhibit, and publishing various books. His focus is on mid-20th century Northwest photography and printmaking by artists marginalized because of gender, race, and sexual preference. 

But now, as director of the Cascadia Art Museum, Martin has a platform for showing some of the results of that research. The current exhibit “Native American Modern, Shared Expressions in Northwest Art” gives a subtle and fascinating view of intersections and shared ideas between Native and non-Native artists working mainly in the 1930s and 1940s. During this time, the government art projects were acknowledging Native artists and supporting them, an abrupt turnaround from decades of suppression and efforts to “civilize” Native Americans with brutal boarding schools and cultural bans. 

One of the leaders in this re-evaluation of Native cultures was Erna Gunther. Gunther studied with Franz Boas, and went on to lead the Anthropology department at the University of Washington. She also became the first director, in 1930, of the Washington State Museum, now the Burke. In the third room of the exhibition are some video clips from a television series she created in 1965-1966. It was called “Western Washington Indians Then and Now.” In it, she explains Native dancing, music, singing, clothing, all with great respect and knowledge. Professor Gunther was a major catalyst for many of the artists in the exhibition both Native and non-Native.

The star artist is Julius “Land Elk” Twohy (1902-1986). The first room of this three-part exhibition is devoted to his work. Julius Twohy created a 72-foot mural “The Flight of the Thunderbird,” as a WPA commission in the Cushman Hospital (Tacoma Indian Hospital). The exhibition includes photographs that document the artist painting the mural, a study, and a detailed explanation. Unfortunately the mural was first painted over and then destroyed when the building was torn down in 2003. Much of Twohy’s work was lost as a result of arson in his studio, but the exhibition brings together a group of WPA lithographs from the Henry Art Gallery and private collections, as well as a few paintings and studies. 

We see the exhibit thesis clearly in Twohy’s art. In works such as “Tom Toms and Drum,” his prints combine abstract forms and modernist fragmentation with Native subjects, the drums convey sound, rhythm, and movement.Each lithograph has a different interpretation of abstract form.

In the second room is the Klee Wyk Studio (1951-1961), comprised of Delbert McBride, his brother Albert with his life partner Richard Schneider, as well as painter Oliver Tiedemann. A type of Bloomsbury approach, they created decorative items such as tiles and bowls based on their study of Northwest Coast art and culture. Martin distinguishes their work as inspired by Native motifs, rather than appropriating them, as here again one sees the intermixing of modernism with, for example, Haida designs. 

Also in the second room are carpets by Bruce Inverarity (artist/leader of the WPA in Washington State), with abstracted motifs inspired by Native designs. Inverarity is also represented by a few eccentric paintings. 

The third room features a selection from Worth Griffin’s series of sixty portraits of Native leaders. Griffin paints in the traditional realist, academic style, but respectfully includes detailed observations and emotional insight into these proud people at a time when they were under enormous stress.

Also in this room is African American/ Indigenous artist Milt Simons who  creates abstracted Native related imagery in an expressionist style.

David Martin’s theme is that these artists knew one another through Erna Gunther and the government-funded art programs. As Indigenous artists absorbed modernism and White artists explored Native design, the exchange was respectful and complex. We can hope that the show leads to more research on this fascinating era, when the Northwest art world was small and artists of diverse backgrounds came together.

Susan Noyes Platt

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

“American Modern, Shared Expressions in Northwest Art,” is on view Wednesday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through October 29 at Cascadia Art Museum, located at 190 Sunset Avenue in Edmonds, Washington. Visit www.cascadiaartmuseum.org for information.

After 50 years as a defining presence in the Seattle arts community, Sam Davidson—owner/director of the Davidson Galleries—is retiring. We can’t let this milestone pass without raising a toast to Sam.

July has become a major month for artists, galleries, and art appreciators in Seattle these past few years. Many regional art galleries share the work of their artists at the Seattle Art Fair, which is returning for its seventh year from July 27-30, and take advantage of the event and general enthusiasm for the local art scene to bring more visitors to their physical gallery space. Through July 15, J. Rinehart Gallery exhibits the work of two artists at the gallery: Anne Hirondelle and Shaun Kardinal. Both artists utilize geometric abstraction in their work, but with different results and tactics.

In contrast, in August, the gallery exhibits Junko Yamamoto’s more organic and interconnected paintings. All three artists have a connection to the Northwest and interestingly play with form and space in truly unique ways. The work of each artist demonstrates the breadth of abstraction and illustrates the various ways that humans interact with each other, the natural world, and the physical structures that make up our daily lives.

Anne Hirondelle started her artistic career as a sculptor, and her mastery of the 3-dimensional form is ever present in her drawings and paper-folded artworks. Hirondelle grew up in Washington State and received her BFA from the University of Washington. Her work has been highlighted in many solo and group exhibitions during her long and celebrated career, including a recent solo exhibition at the Jefferson Museum of Art and History in Port Townsend, Washington in 2020.

The exhibition included artworks from various eras of the artist’s career and detailed the evolution of Hirondelle’s work to its current manifestation: folded tracing paper. The exhibition at J. Rinehart Gallery is the artist’s first at the gallery and features her recent work from 2023. Many of her early folded paper pieces previously had limited color, but the current exhibition is bursting with vibrant orange, red, and teal. The color adds another dimension to work that already feels 3-dimensional on a 2-dimensional plane. One remarkable aspect of Hirondelle’s folded paper constructions is that they are created by the hands and mind of a sculptor; what appears to be on a flat plane really is a deconstructed 3-dimensional object.

While Hirondelle dissects the 3-dimensional form, Shaun Kardinal gives depth to a 2-dimensional landscape using embroidery to bind the scenery elements together. In doing so, Kardinal provides a geometric, structural overlay which organizes the scene for the viewer and draws attention to the flat plane of the paper. They are instantly aware of two key elements: the landscape is an illusion or replica of the original and the paper is being reinforced due to its fragile state. What does it mean to “see” an object? How can we truly understand an object or scene with multiple parts and angles on a 2-dimensional plane? Both Hirondelle and Kardinal address these questions in their work. For both, abstracting the physical is a path toward the answer.

In keeping with the theme of abstraction, J. Rinehart Gallery features an exhibition of paintings by Junko Yamamoto in the month of August. Yamamoto’s artworks provide an in-depth view of the elements that make up our world. The artist articulates the individual buildings blocks of life and reality with layers of paint and shapes. Some forms bare a resemblance to known forms, while others provide energy through color and depth. Like Hirondelle and Kardinal, Yamamoto asks the fundamental questions about our reality. What can we know about our world and how do we connect with it?

Yamamoto’s vibrant and painterly artworks are sure to be a welcome experience during the month of August, and visitors can also visit Deborah Butterfield’s exhibition at Greg Kucera Gallery only a block away during the same trip. This summer is sure to be a busy one for the Seattle art community with many institutions and galleries welcoming excellent exhibitions.

Visitors can enjoy the work of two artists at J. Rinehart Gallery through July 15 and a solo exhibition of energetic paintings by Yamamoto from August 3-26. It is also worth noting that the gallery is also bringing the work of their artists to the Seattle Art Fair along with many other regional galleries. Visitors can delight in considering the various curatorial approaches to displaying art by their favorite local artists while also hopefully discovering new artists and work through the experience. For the exhibitions at J. Rinehart Gallery, summer brings an opportunity to compare and contrast the work of three artists asking big questions about our perception and experience in the world.

Chloé Dye Sherpe

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

Anne Hirondelle’s “In Layers” and Shaun Kardinal’s “This is How We Learn” exhibits are on view through July 17 and Junko Yamamoto’s “Cosmic Web” exhibition from August 3-26. J. Rinehart Gallery, located at 319 3rd Avenue South in Seattle, Washington, is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. For more information, visit www.jrinehartgallery.com.