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Office of Arts & Culture news and events

Weekly Art Hit: ‘Catch + Release’ by Kristin Tollefson

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Weekly Art Hit is back from vacation, and to celebrate the New Year we’re featuring Kristin Tollefson’s festive Catch + Release at the Magnolia Branch of The Seattle Public Library.

Catch + Release (2008) features a large woven, steel-wire branch bearing red “berries,” or beads, made of polyurethane resin. The branch hangs from the ceiling inside the library’s meeting room and gestures towards the large south-facing window and a stainless-steel basket outside in the library’s south garden.  The basket is constructed of stainless steel and contains additional resin beads in its vertical ribs. The branch and the basket connect the library’s interior with the exterior, and allude to the relationship between the library as information provider and its patrons as collectors.

Tollefson states, “The madrona tree around which the original building and landscape architecture was designed provides the conceptual framework for Catch + Release. The suspended branch and its resin beads mimic the mature fruiting arbutus and invite nature inside the building; outside, the basket captures additional berries. The title Catch + Release refers to these actions of fruiting and gathering, paired activities of nature and humans that work as a metaphor for the relationship between library as information-provider and patrons as collectors and disseminators.”

The artwork was part of the Magnolia library’s renovation in 2007 to 2008. The Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs manages the library’s public art program and the artwork is part of the city’s permanent art collection.

IMAGES: Kristin Tollefson; Catch + Release (detail); 2008; blackened annealed steel wire, stainless steel and polyurethane resin; branch:  24”x78”x 33”; basket: 31”x 27”x 27”. Photo by the artist.

 

Learn about low-power FM radio opportunities at workshop

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In November 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expanded the possibilities for hyper-local, community-based media outlets across the United States with new rules regarding low-power FM (LPFM) radio. This has the potential to vastly change the media landscape of Seattle by supporting new stations in your neighborhood focused on local arts and culture and issues relevant to your community.

We’re partnering with Brown Paper Tickets to host a free workshop on this new media opportunity at 1 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 24, at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. This is the first of several workshops designed to help nonprofits determine whether running an LPFM station is a good fit for their organization.

Representatives from Brown Paper Tickets, the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Seattle Department of Information Technology and 4Culture will discuss the process of founding a LPFM station, including organizational development, fundraising, navigating the application process, finding and shaping a place within your community, and designing a curriculum for volunteers.

Go here for more information on the workshop series and to register.

SmArt Ventures January 2013

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SmART ventures is a Seattle-based, flexible small awards program that aims to encourage innovative ideas, create community impact, and provide new access for individuals and groups not served by our other programs.  Planting small seeds can yield big outcomes. SmART ventures seek to widen arts and culture participation, particularly of diverse or underserved communities. Listed below are the SmArt Venture awardees for January 2013.

T(OUR) Magazine Winter Issue & Reading Party

Join T(OUR), a magazine dedicated to LGBT issues, for the release of its January 2013 issue featuring the theme, a fresh start. The reading party on January 17 will feature readings by Seattle’s own David Wheeler, Loraine Kanervisto, Andrew Turgeon, among many others. Stop by and bust a move to the tunes of DJ Res. Copies of the magazine will be available for purchase.

Over the next year T(OUR) hopes to extend its message into a community center space and offer writing classes, lectures, author readings, counseling services, a library of LGBTQ resources, and a podcast. Check out T(OUR)’s blog, Out and About, for more info.

Dates: January 17, 2012

Time: 7:30 PM

Location: Vermillion

Free Admission

The Phallusoidal Philtre-Ezra Homison

With laughter and a bit of risqué, Phallusoidal Philtre is a bawdy tale of love, lust, and the ludicrous lengths man will go in Vanity’s name. This tale features the lovely, overlooked wife of an unsuccessful Alchemist who happens to flirts shamelessly with two rakish Rogues of the town.  The Phallusoidal Philtre is truly original in writing and production. The cast purposely use masks to allow variety of characters with fewer actors. This requires a tight choreography and dramatic construction.

Written and produced in the style of the old masked Commedia of France and Italy, the play brings to life a flock of familiar characters Due to its adult humor and strong language, we recommend this show for ages 17 and up.

Tickets are now available online, and running from January 30th to February 9th.

Dates: January 30, 2013-February 9, 2013

Time: 7:30 PM

Location: The Theatre on 19th

Purchase Tickets

Seattle Asian American Film Festival

The Seattle Asian American Film Festival’s mission is to seek out, promote, produce, and develop Asian American artists with a commitment to original and innovative media works. New program directors Kevin Bang and Vanessa Au are leading the revival of SAAFF, continuing the work of the Northwest Asian American Film Festival (NWAAFF) directed by Wes Kim from 2003-2007. Hosted by the Wing Luke Museum, The festival will showcase films and videos created by Asian American artist from across North America, with a special emphasis on filmmakers from the Pacific Northwest.

Tickets for the Seattle Asian American Film Festival are now available. Head over to the program page to check out the schedule of films and click on any film to go to the purchase page on Brown Paper Tickets. Or check out the list of all events here.

Dates: January 25, 2013- January 27, 2013

Time: 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM

Location: Wing Luke Museum

Programming and Tickets

Musical Connections

Musical Connections presents Juliana & PAVA, one of the most authentic Russian folk ensembles outside of Russia. They perform ancient Russian songs collected from villages where they existed for centuries. These songs have been integrated into the fabric of rural life for centuries, carried on from generation to generation only by the oral tradition. Some of the songs are performed a cappella, while others are accompanied by authentic folk instruments, such as the Russian hurdy-gurdy, balalaika, various flutes or percussion instruments.

The singers wear eye-catching, colorful, authentic costumes that were actually worn in the villages. These costumes, some of which are over 200 years old, contribute to evoking an atmosphere and an image of a culture that all at once seems very exotic and yet not all that foreign to the Western world. Juliana & PAVA will be joined by the Flying Balalaika Brothers.

Date: January 19, 2013

Time: 1:00 PM

Location: Washington Hall and Youngstown Cultural Arts Center

Purchase Tickets

 

City exhibition features ‘Women’s Stories’

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Women’s Stories, on view through April 1 at Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery, features 20 artworks by 11 female artists in a variety of media, including watercolor, paper batik, oil on canvas, collograph, fabric appliqué and quilting, gouache on silk, acrylic on paper, photography and mixed media.

Shefrin’s Food Drops in Afghanistan depicts women collecting food parcels dropped by the Bush administration in 2001. Above the scene, she has stitched the contents of one of the humanitarian daily rations, or HDRs. “I stitched Food Drops in Afghanistan in compassion for the Afghani people who have done no wrong, and in distress about the bombing, and about the travesty of airline meals as food aid.”

Conversation, a series of watercolors by DeCaro, features a young girl in the foreground with silhouettes of adults in the background. DeCaro states, “My interest in creating the Conversation suite was to relate an idea in the form of a sequence, as if it were a video.”

Artist included in the exhibition are Marsha Burns, Claire Cowie, Pat DeCaro, Jody Isaacson, Fay Jones, Deborah Lawrence, Sherry Markovitz, Anne Mathern, Liza Von Rosenstiel, Sima Elizabeth Shefrin and Barbara Earl Thomas.

“The narrative artworks in this exhibition can be explicit or mysterious, suggestive or didactic, political or humorous,” explains Curatorial Assistant Blake Haygood, who selected the pieces for Women’s Stories from the city’s Portable Works Collection. “The show features only a few of the many women in the collection, but it shows the strength and variety of work and highlights some lesser known artists alongside more established names.”

IMAGES: Pat DeCaro, Conversation, 1999-2000, watercolor on paper; Sima Elizabeth Shefrin, Food Drops in Afghanistan, 2001, fabric appliqué and quilting; Fay Jones, Untitled, 1982, acrylic on paper.

 

Buster Simpson to create artwork for waterfront project

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Buster Simpson will collaborate with the designers for the Elliott Bay Seawall Project to develop a permanently-sited public artwork that will that contribute to the overall project goals of both habitat restoration and the development of public open space along the seawall. The project is the first of several artwork projects envisioned for the Central Waterfront.

Simpson is an internationally recognized public artist based in Seattle, with permanent projects in the U.S. and Canada. He has exhibited and participated in design teams around the world, often addressing environmental issues in his work. He received his BA and MFA from the University of Michigan.

The artwork is commissioned with Seattle Department of Transportation 1% for Art funds.

IMAGE: Buster Simpson; Parable; 2008; cast-iron pears, steel cable, iron trolley rail, traffic lights; 8′ x 15′ x 15′. Located at Sound Transit’s Mount Baker station in Seattle, Wash. Photo courtesy of the artist.


Message from the director: Ringing in 2013

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Randy Engstrom

As our office begins the new year, we are excited about our work plan for 2013. In October we launched a survey for all of our constituents. With more than 600 responses, our areas of focus were clearly defined. One of the top issues was a desire for an increased concentration on arts education. We have been working with Seattle Public Schools and dozens of community partners on an arts plan funded by the Wallace Foundation. Building on our partnership of more than five years with the district, the K-12 Arts Plan seeks to ensure two hours of arts education instruction for every student in every school—all 48,000 of them. We’ll begin implementing part of the plan in 2013, with our office acting as the connector between schools and community-based organizations, making partnerships more streamlined for both. We’re excited to be expanding our work in arts education, an area so crucial to the future of our industry.

Another area of focus that emerged was the issue of affordable cultural space. From the sale of the Oddfellows building in 2008 to loss of 619 Western last winter, Seattle’s cultural community has long sought a program that could help to preserve affordable spaces for artists and arts organizations. In 2013 we will be hiring a cultural space liaison, and working with the Seattle Arts Commission and 4Culture, will develop a cultural facilities program that can meet the needs of our community. Two specific areas of focus will be on match-making between available spaces and those who need it and technical assistance around land use, code, zoning and incentive polices. Stay tuned for the job opening coming this spring.

A third area of focus will be on professional development and capacity building for the arts and culture community. While our funding programs will continue (check out our 2013 funding deadlines here), we are also seeking new ways to support our community beyond grant-making. This could include supporting emerging leadership, finding ways to help mid-sized organizations, reaching out to rising public artists, and offering workshops on race and social justice, among other things. We will focus on technical assistance in 2013. Do you have ideas on what would be most useful? We’d love to hear it. Please drop me a line.

We are also excited to welcome a new branch of our office—the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute (LHPAI). This new name (formerly the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center) and new home are the beginning of a new movement. We look forward to supporting and amplifying LHPAI’s important programming, and also look forward to partnering with Langston Hughes staff, Seattle Arts Commissioners, and community stakeholders to develop an action plan that will ensure long-term sustainability. In the near-term, look for LHPAI’s new website to launch later this month.

It is sure to be a busy and exciting 2013, and we look forward to working with all of you! Thank you for your continued support and please stay in touch.

Best,

Randy Engstrom
Interim Director

Lead Pencil Studio and Ned Kahn selected for Denny Substation artwork project

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Seattle artists Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio and California artist Ned Kahn will be members of the design team for Seattle City Light‘s (SCL) proposed Denny Substation project in Seattle’s Cascade neighborhood, near Denny Way and Stewart Street. The artists will develop permanent artwork that connects the new substation to the surrounding neighborhood to create a strong presence and reinforce the public nature and essential function of the station.

SCL is designing its first new electrical power substation in 30 years to support and serve the future expansion and anticipated growth of the area. The new substation will serve businesses and residents in the South Lake Union, Cascade, Denny Triangle, Uptown, Belltown and First Hill areas, as well as address system-wide needs for power flow. The project is scheduled to be complete in late 2016.

Han and Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio have worked collaboratively since 2002. They create interdisciplinary works that explore architecture, scale and social aspects of the man-made environment. They have exhibited their work at the Boise Art Museum in Boise, Idaho; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scotsdale, Ariz.; and the Henry Art Gallery and Suyama Space in Seattle.

Kahn’s artworks frequently incorporate flowing water, fog, sand and light to create complex and continually changing systems. Many of these works can be seen as “observatories”  —  they frame and enhance our perception of natural phenomena. Kahn’s recent artwork commissions include the Brisbane Airport, Australia; NOAA Headquarters, Silver Springs, Md.; and Public Utility Commission Headquarters, San Francisco, Calif.

Lead Pencil Studio and Kahn were selected by a panel of artists, design professionals, Cascade community representatives, and SCL staff. The artwork is commissioned with SCL % for Art funds.

IMAGE: Lead Pencil Studio; Non-Sign II; 2010; welded, blackened, stainless rod; 34′ x 4′ x 26′. Located at the U.S./Canada border crossing in Blaine, Wash. Photo by Lead Pencil Studio.

City Hall features Ethiopian art

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Head over to City Hall and see 45 paintings by 10 Ethiopian artists through March 4. The artists, some professionally trained and some self-taught, hail from Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In Ethiopian Art: Tradition, Assimilation and Change, a wide range of painting styles, both traditional and contemporary, highlight Ethiopian art, artists and its visual culture. An artist reception will be 4 to 6 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 7 at City Hall.

The exhibition reflects the dynamics of current Ethiopian artistic movements both in the country and among the diaspora. The show also also presents current artistic philosophies among individual artists and groups. Unlike the traditionally known and religiously themed Ethiopian style, this body of work deals with personal, social, historical and psychological subject matters.

Artists included in the exhibition are: Admassu Addisu, Kerima Ahmed, Atakilt Assefa, Nebeyou Assefa, Seyoum Ayalew, Getachew Brihanu, Meseret Desta, Mekibib Gebretasadik, Fasika Moges, and Melaku Tesfaye.

Images: Untitled (Detail), Melaku Tesfaye, acrylic on canvas; Untitled, Seyoum Ayalew, acrylic on canvas.

Seeking curator for temporary artworks at new City Light facility

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We’re seeking a multi-disciplinary art curator or curator team with established curatorial experience to develop and manage temporary arts programming at the future site of Seattle City Light’s proposed Denny Substation in the Cascade neighborhood. The new Denny Substation will serve South Lake Union and north downtown and provide added capacity for serving the Denny Triangle and First Hill areas.

The curator will develop and manage a series of free and open public performances and artworks to begin at the site in November 2013, before construction of the facility, and last up to 18 months.  Programming should celebrate the new substation with artworks that evoke the vibrancy of the city, community values and the public-service mission of City Light. Artworks should be multidisciplinary and could include visual art installations, performances, video, film, dance, music and sound.

The call is open to established professional curators residing in Washington or Oregon. Total budget for the project is $200,000, inclusive of all taxes, fees, travel, permits, etc. The curator will receive a fee of $40,000 and will have a programming budget of $160,000. Applications are due 11 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19 (Pacific Standard Time).

Go to the Denny Substation Call for Curators for more information and to apply.

Weekly Art Hit: ‘Untitled Woodcut #10’ by Gary Groves

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Artist Gary Groves created a series of prints related to the glacial erratic rocks of Eastern Washington and how they impact the landscape. As we teeter on the brink of a new year, these images recall other cliffs that linger in our collective psyches.

In describing this particular artwork, Untitled Woodcut #10 (2001), the artist writes, “I find the strong graphic quality of this medium especially fitting for creating a feeling for the surfaces, mass, and character of these ancient glacial rocks of Eastern Washington. These are the oldest objects we have to remind us of the earth’s age and geological history.

This image has a certain aspect that I find intriguing.  It is as if the two opposing rocks are challenging each other, creating a tension that seems to energize the space separating them.  This is an example of what I am looking for, possibilities that reveal themselves in the process, taking the original subject to another level.”

 The artwork is included in Seattle City Light’s 1% for Art Portable Works Collection.

IMAGE: Gary Groves, Untitled Woodcut #10, 2001, woodcut print on paper 4/20.