Red Current (sweet fruit0

Two of my paintings are en route to Seattle today to be included in Red Current (sweet fruit), a group show at Roq La Rue curated by Seattle artist and art provocateur Sharon Arnold.  This show features an array of work by 37 Northwest artists–I am humbled and super excited to be among this truly stellar group of artists.

Roq La Rue Gallery Presents RED CURRENT (sweet fruit)

Curated by Sharon Arnold

Roq la Rue Gallery scheduled a winter break in it’s programming, and found that it presented an ideal opportunity to fulfill a goal the gallery had for awhile, namely working more closely with local contemporary artists who work closely to but outside the gallery’s usual realm of Pop Surrealism and underground contemporary. Gallerist Kirsten Anderson enlisted Sharon Arnold who had been curating dynamic shows around town to come on board and create a group show for Roq la Rue.

Arnold was inspired to create this exhibition by contemplating the definition of a current, something present and electric, a dynamic force with great power. Citing the exponential blossoming of the local art scene, Arnold wanted to take the opportunity to feature a snapshot of what she feels is an important moment in the growth of the Seattle art scene. “ I believe this will be a very strong collection, and something that hasn’t really been put together to this extent in recent history ”.

Arnold chose artists on the strength of what she felt they brought to the table. “I want this exhibition to feature artists in Seattle who I’ve been watching work hard, inspire, create, build community, push themselves, and move forward.”

The show itself will feature 37 artists in a salon style setting and will feature an array of media including painting, drawing, installation, and video. Roq La Rue is thrilled to work with such an abundance of Northwest talent. Please join us for a very festive opening on March 23rd from 6-9pm!

Artist list:

Mandy Greer  Kimberly Trowbridge  Amanda Manitach  Izzie Klingels  Serrah Russell  Saskia Delores  Debra Baxter  Jess Rees  Anne Blackburn  Erin Frost  Lynda Sherman Laura Ward  Jennifer McNeely  Susanna Bluhm  Counsel Langley  Erin Shafkind  Claire Johnson  Klara Glosova  Andrea Wicklund  Gala Bent  Rumi Koshino  Naomi Faith Allyce Wood  Julie Alpert  Crystal Barbre  Deborah Scott  Kristen Ramirez  Allie Manch  Ellen Garvens  Cristin Ford  Gretchen Bennett Francesca Lohmann  Emily Pothast Bette Burgoyne  Jennifer Borges Foster  Jennifer Zwick  and Stacey Rozich

Some News

POSTS: There were a couple of great posts. One at Beautiful/Decay.  Thank you.  And, another by a fabulous collector/lady I like:  The highlight of my day.

SHOW: (so) Much (too) little, shared with Gala Bent and Sharon Arnold,  was at Northwind Arts Center.

About a year ago NAC invited me to have a show with them.  They asked that it be a two or three person show and I immediately began thinking about who I would like to invite.  Gala and Sharon came to mind quickly and I can’t say how delighted I am that the both agreed.  Our work is not immediately visually similar, which is exactly what I wanted for this show.  The places where we  overlap lies below and is rich territory:  repetition, pattern, and a reach for balance of geometry and control with fluid natural phenomenon is present in all of our work.  This is spiced with a serious crush on science and the approach of asking or why/how/what do we do and where do with do it, plus a healthy dose of storytelling.

Foreground left, painting by Langley, foreground right, drawing with ribbons by Gala Bent; background left, two peeks of Langley paintings and background right four from Sharon Arnold’s 1:1 series

from left to right: one feathered Langley, three works by Gala Bent

Sharon Arnold’s Gutted

Far back wall work by Gala Bent, with Langleys to either side.

Emerald discussing Sharon Arnold’s work 1:1
About which she says, “I like that so little material was just pretty much transformed into awesomeness.”

housekeeping

couple things:

A Good Line: Artist on Poems has opened at Richard Hugo House in Seattle.   You are all officially invited to join us for the big reception on April 12th from 6 to 9pm!  Promises to be a great time.  Nancy Guppy from Art Zone (Seattle Channel) stopped by Hugo House to chat about their plans for National Poetry Month, includes a glimpse (don’t blink!) of one-half of the work I’ve have in A Good line; all begins around the 9 minute mark.

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/player5.swf?config=http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/videoConfig.asp%3FID%3D3351112

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up

Already in progress is this year’s Strait Art exhibition at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center; excerpted from the show text:

Counsel Langley’s precisely textured mixed media paintings hinge on dynamic tension between an underlying architectonic structure and organic bleeds that ebb and flow.  In AM Radio a matrix grid of perfectly aligned pulses blink weakly in the nocturnal landscape, while a sparkly wave of bright plastic crystals encrusts the landscape below like the lights of farms and cities seen from a jetliner flying through the night by instruments.

Strait Art runs through May 15th.

I am honored and excited to be a part of the visual arts team for PT Public Library’s first ever Teen Community Read.   There are many incredible events happening around this book.   I look forward to holding visual art workshops along with two fantastic artists, Jesse Watsonand Margie McDonald!!  All the info can be found in this week’s Leader.

I am nearing the one month mark in my role as fill-in on the daily photo blog A Year of Days.   Am pretty sure that last time a one month anniversary felt significant I was in junior high.  AYOD has been an excellent visual workout routine and has solidly become a habit.   If I were a big cheater there are some days I might be tempted to sub-out a day’s crummy shot for something from one of those great days when I have two or four to struggle to choose from, but no pain no gain.  And besides I’m wicked honest.  Here’s one of my favorites to date:

resonance

Tomorrow I’ll cross the bay to Whidbey Island for the third time in a week.  Day one, I went to La Conner to deliver paintings to the Museum of Northwest Art.  Two days later, I delivered my husband to a fishing boat in Anacortes that will take him to Alaska for weeks.  They asked me if he’s a good cook.  He is.  Tomorrow I put on boots, shark ring and lip gloss and return to MoNA for the pretty part.  The opening of this show:

installation view of work by Charles Stokes and Counsel Langley

RESONANCES: CONTEMPORARY ECHOES MODERN

March 13, 2010 – June 13, 2010
Curators’ Panel:  Saturday, March 13, 1-2pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 13, 2-5pm

From a MoNA brochure:  “Four Northwest curators compare the work of older and newer regional artists, in pairs that resonate.  The specific pairings combine artists from different generations and areas, using various mediums.  Resonances features these small two-person exhibitions sharing formal qualities or subject matter including architecture, color, landscape and abstraction.”

The concept–echoes over time, space, generation being picked up though some sort of regional osmosis–intrigues me deeply.

Participating curators: Sarah Clark-Langager, Director, Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham; Kathleen Moles, Curator, Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner; John Olbrantz, The Maribeth Collins Director, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon; and Jake Seniuk, Director, Port Angeles Fine Art Center, Port Angeles, Washington.

Sarah Clark-Langager chose Jacob Lawrence and Whiting Tennis for their renderings of construction and buildings.

Kathleen Moles paired Guy Anderson and Jan Hoy, with their shared affinity for iconic forms and strong pallette.

John Olbrantz selected Darius Kinsey and Michael Brophy for their sweeping portrayals of the Northwest landscape, timbered and logged.

Jake Seniuk selected Charles Stokes* and myself for the “highly abstract, structured and organic compositions” we have in common.

One Langley in the middle of two by Charles Stokes

Excerpt from Jake Seniuk's exhibition text:

“Stokes’ virtuosic gouache and aquarelle cosmos, sometime glibly characterized as Tobeyesque ‘white writing with added drop shadows,’ is an arena where modern physics and more primal metaphysical impulses vie for the viewer’s rapt attention. Repeatedly crisscrossing the border between the referential and the purely abstract, his paintings give visual basis to both scientific explanations and to more spiritual notions of the movements that comprise the dance between matter and energy.

In Stokes’s more casual works, biomorphic forms drift on soft washes that ooze like the pregnant fluids of a primal soup, awaiting the spark of life. In his more labored masterpieces, complex crystals of linear geometry rise and fall like prehistoric ghost cities or surge like nature’s formative forces, tattooing their routes through an elemental landscape.

The pathways of perception stay a little closer to the grid in Counsel Langley’s highly engineered ink, acrylic and mixed media paintings. Drawing on her formative metalsmithing internship, she creates precise architectonic designs of scribed lines and systemically arranged discs that might be of use as game boards, circuit diagrams, subway maps or any number of genres of codified information.  When layered with organic bleeds and washes that ebb around the edges, these rational structures are a picture of intellect rising from the unconscious mind. Here she’s wandered into the same territory as the heretofore unknown master before her, but has begun to draw her own maps.”

* As Seniuk puts it “A deep trawling of Google offers little more on the man or his paintings than his 2008 obituary. An impressive and surprising feat in the cyber age for anyone living ordead, but not wholly unexpected of this reclusive savant by those who knew him.”

Charles Stokes. I, for one, would have very much liked to have met this man.

In thinking about the implications of this show, It occurred to me to look up the definition of the word resonance.  At times the nuanced specifics of a word’s meaning can help to clarify it use.  Turns out resonance is owned by its scientific meanings.  Which, to my mind, is sexy, but went only a short distance to unwrap the reasons why this exhibition works.  These science-based definitions helped on some level; this is why I picked out the quote at the top of this post.  I can get into comparing the artists to particles, or thinking of them as part of a linear system through time, picking up specific vibrations and putting them into their work.  (By the way, I included the Galileo discovering resonance bit just because the guy is awesome.)  Wanting a little more I went to the word resonate.

According to Miriam-Webster the third meaning of resonate is:  

3 : to relate harmoniously : strike a chord.

“Strike a chord.”  That is really all there is too it.  These artists have been paired to draw out a common chord they have struck in their work.  With each pairing the chord is different; more or less subtle; more or less felt on an intuitive level.  The moment of richest resonance occurs in the viewer.   Here the same chord responds/resonates/vibrates.  It is very much like that magical thing that happens with pianos, guitars and other musical instruments; when more than one of these instruments are in the same space and a string is plucked or struck on one the corresponding string of another will vibrate.

The Stokes piece in the center (above) is titled Ultra Very.  Oh, yes yes!  I resonate.