The larger than life Zodiac heads by Ai Weiwei that are coming to Volunteer Park this fall( too bad not there for the summer) represent the following animals in the usual order: Pig, Dog, Rooster, Monkey, Goat, Horse, Snake, Dragon, Rabbit, Tiger, Ox, Rat. Each of these Zodiac animals have specific traits which you have if you were born under their sign. My (1945) sign is the rooster : it says “Those born under the rooster are profound thinkers. Talented and capable they can also be eccentric and may have difficulties in their relationships with others. Highly observant and analytical they are strong decision makers who speak their minds freely.” How about that. You can look up your year online in 12 year cycles.
These heads, which I saw in London and can therefore offer a photograph of them, have a long story. In the exhibition of smaller heads inside the Seattle Art Museum they are displayed in a different order in two parts Dog Monkey Horse Dragon Tiger Rat/Ox Rabbit, Snake, Ram, Rooster, Boar. I asked the curator Foong Ping why and he said the answer would be revealed when the large heads arrive. He called it a “an easter egg.”
The story of the zodiac heads is worth telling. The original zodiac heads were attached to seated draped torsos that were part of an elaborate water clock fountain created by an Italian artist. They combine sculpture, hydraulics, and Chinese and European aesthetics.
The location was called the Garden of Perfect Brightness or Yuanming Yuan where originally there was a complex of European style palaces gardens and fountains. It began in the mid 17th century and was greatly expanded by the Quianlong Emperor (1736 – 1795).
In 1860 the Yuanming Yuan was looted and burned by, guess who, the British and French troops at the end of the Opium wars. “It was retaliation for kidnap and torture of a group of British diplomats and in part to force the Chinese to comply with the 1858 Treaty of Tiensin- one of a series of trade agreements imposed on China by more powerful nations and collectively referred to as the “Unequal treaties.” Sound familiar?
This was part of the Opium Wars that began in 1845 to 1945 “ the century of humiliation”
As the Chinese have become a world power they are reclaiming national treasures like the bronze heads of the zodiac fountain clock which are now looked on as “symbols of the cultural achievements of the Qing dynasty, the losses of 1860 and the humiliations that followed.” Seven heads turned up at an auction. Five have not reappeared.
Enter Ai Weiwei: Ai Weiwei thinks about China’s history and its relationship to history. He collects artifacts of which there are several collections in the Seattle Art Museum exhibition such as the feet of Buddha statues.
As young man he returned from exile in Xinjiang province where he had been with his family since 1958. When he returned to Beijing after the death of Mao in 1976 , he wandered the ruins of Yuanming Yuan. He also went to art school and founded several early avant garde groups.
Fast forward to 2010. He recreated all twelve Zodiac heads from the fountain! He sees it as playing with history and the idea that they are national treasures because of course they are fakes of a pastiche: the heads were made by Italian artists!
But the zodiac signs have long been significant in Chinese culture: Here is the information online
“These animals, along with their associated traits, are deeply intertwined with Chinese culture and influence beliefs about personality, relationships, and fortune. The Chinese zodiac is also known as Sheng Xiao, which literally translates to “birth resemblance: it is a part of a broader system called Four Pillars of Destiny, which is used in Chinese astrology to understand an individual’s life path and personality.”(Wikipedia)
But the literal representations at Yuanming Ying is more European than Chinese.
So when we get to see these larger than life zodiacs in our Olympic Park, keep all of this in mind. Ai Weiwei has placed them not as heads on a stone body as in the original fountain, but on a thin column of metal. To quote Ai Weiwei ”( The Circle) is pointing to all the people who would question whether the work is valuable or not valuable, real or not real, or better than real, or not as good as real.”
The quotes, except for Wikipedia, are from Ai Weiwei Circle of Animals, Zodiac Heads, Somerset House London 2011.
This entry was posted on May 18, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Suchitra Mattai: She walked in reverse and found their songs
Asian Art Museum to July 20
Suchiitra Mattai was born in Guyana (on the North Coast of South America, bordering on Venezuela and Brazil). Her family moved to Canada when she was four, but she has vivid memories of her life there. Her artwork is about recovering and healing the wrongs suffered by her ancestors and telling new stories. The title of her show “ She walked in reverse and found songs” refers to the process of being in the present while thinking about the past.
As we enter her exhibition at the Asian Art Museum we first see a small house structure with red pointed domes as decoration. Suchitra explained that she was invoking Indian Palace architecture. Called “Pappys House” she is creating a type of structure that she imagines her grandparents might have lived in, with her own interpretation added to the exterior. It is more than decorative, it elevates her ancestors to royalty.
In the early 19th century, when the African slave trade was declared illegal, many South Asians were brought to Guyana as “indentured servants” (in reality they were enslaved.) Massai imagines recovering their stories as she undercuts colonial realities.
All of her work is made from the torn up saris of laboring women, that are then woven. She also practices needlework and embroidery taught by her forbearers. All these media are an homage to her ancestors and all the indentured slaves who came from South Asia.
In the large installation “memory palace” she carefully placed five pieces of colonial furniture. Each one is covered with large balls made of braided and woven saris that render the furniture useless as well as amusing.
In one chair she has placed a Victorian antimacassar on the seat. Antimacassars were placed on the back of chairs to protect them from hair oil. Putting it on the seat is obviously a joke. This chair also has a large South Asian processional umbrella stuck in the back which can’t serve its purpose of providing shade.
The large woven balls seem as though we might want to pick them up, they pour out of one piece of furniture or balance between two chairs, but they are much bigger than the size of a beach ball and much heavier Fat snake like forms weave over and under another table ornamented with gold tassels. Woven pieces crawl around on the floor.
The larger theme of this room is memories of migration and colonialism: three video screens show the sea moving by as though from a ship.
Individual works, also made of woven saris such as “the sea wall,” tell other stories. Apparently Guyana had a sea wall that blocked all view of the sea for workers: Massai has broken it down and imagines workers escaping.
Another surprise is “a self portrait” with its dried grass cape hung across the middle and a colonial medal at its center. Perhaps she is speaking of her own relationship to colonialism.
“A Rich Life Lived” has a similar format but the central cape motif is constructed of clothespins. The artist honors domestic labor and rewrites the colonial narrative to honor workers.
Surprisingly, the title work of the exhibition “she walked in reverse and found their stories” is based on an entirely different starting point: a found 18th century tapestry on which the artist has highlighted a goddess wearing a sari tupe pattern. Many of the details of the tapestry are highlighted with beads and fake gems.
The theme of the exhibition thus takes it point of departure from the idea of a “goddess” wearing a sari pattern , her head sending out rays like a halo from a golden crown, being waited on by European-based putti: what a mixture of references!
Massai speaks of “creating a new mythology and a new way of thinking.” Her provocative works easily speak to us of disrupted narratives, opening the way to create new stories.
Ai Weiwei
While you are at the Asian Art Museum be sure to spend time viewing Ai Weiwei’s recreation of Monet’s “Water Lillies.” It is created with 650,000 Lego and spans fifty feet (Monet’s is built from six foot panels). Inserted into the waterlilies is the dark cave (square) that invokes Ai Weiwei’s childhood experience shut in a cave for many years because his father was expelled to the desert of Western China for “rightism.” We can sense Ai Weiwei’s claustrophobia. The stunning lego surface seduces us, although it is much more fiery than Monet’s calm blue greens.
Ai, Rebel runs until September 7 at Seattle Art Museum; Water Lilies Lego opens March 19 at Asian Art Museum; Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads opens May 17 at Olympic Sculpture Park.
Tree, Wood, 2009-2010, with FOONG Ping, exhibition curator and SAM’s Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art( in blue jacket) introducing the exhibition.
First we see a tree bolted together from different woods. A poem by Ai Weiwei’s poet father Ai Qing about trees: “One tree, another Tree, each standing alone and erect….”. Accused of “rightism” his father was exiled to Xinjiang province in 1958 when Ai Weiwei was a baby. After twenty years they were released in 1976 with the death of Mao and the end of the Cultural Revolution. In the 2022 Water Lilies, Ai Weiwei makes a direct reference to that traumatic experience, with a large black area referring to the underground dug out where he lived with his family. The gnarled tree in this gallery symbolizes longevity and perseverance in adversity.
Ai Weiwei joined an early avant garde group in Beijing, then moved to New York City in 1981 for 10 years. Amidst his black and white photos from the East Village is the artist with Allen Ginsberg, who lived near him. Ai WeiWei spent a lot of time listening to the poet.
In the next gallery are his last large paintings of Chairman Mao and not far away Safe Sex, 1988, a Chinese Army raincoat with a condom coming out of the pocket. In New York he was impressed by Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol which is clearly seen in these works.
Then we see Ai Weiwei destroying or modifying ancient artifacts and remaking them as contemporary art. One extreme example is pulverizing neolithic vases and showing the dust in square glass containers.
His most famous act is dropping a Han pot, but here he has painted them with brightly colored industrial paint. I feel discomfort with this act, as a lover of ancient pottery.
He also painted them with a coca cola logo.
But he reveres the ancient ciulture of China as we see in his collection of Buddhas feet and stone bricks from the destruction of traditional Chinese houses.
He was obviously horrified when he went back to China after being in New York City, to see the widespread destruction of historic China.
He rendered handcrafted wooden Qing dynasty stools nonfunctional by removing a leg for example. Other sculptures are transformations are bicycles and stools arranged in abstract forms or a sofa and chair made in marble.
But these are gestures compared to his work after the earthquake in China in 2008 when he discovered that hundreds of children had died because of the poor construction of their schools.
He traced them and honored them, with students’ backpacks formed into a huge snake and listing all their names on a huge sheet of white paper in the exhibition. Nearby is the rebar from the destroyed schools shaped into abstract sculpture.
His own detention in 2011 probably is a result of this project in which he recorded parents of children heartbroken with how they were ignored by the government. Or it may have been his huge presence on the internet, where elitism gives way to populism. We can walk into the re-creation of the spare room in which he was detained. But the scars of the 81 days stayed with him.
migration depicted on this “endless column”
Ai Weiwei moved to Europe in 2015, just as many hundreds of Middle Eastern migrants were trying to cross to Greece from Turkey. His long scroll depicts migrants walking or jammed on vehicles, negotiating ruins or crossing rivers. Called the Odyssey, the title does evoke the travel of Odysseus multiplied by many hundreds of people.
As we approach the room at the end of the exhibition we see a giant Lego portrait of Ai Weiwei in a flash image, a photo he took as he was being taken into detention, here recreated.
The exhibition has other Lego pieces, but the most important given our situation today is the Mueller Report, the cover page and the first page, heavily redacted. This report on Russian hacking during the 2016 election tells us what was happening, as we think about our cozy relationship developing today with Russia. A marble surveillance camera is positioned in front of the report.
There is so much to see and experience in this exhibition! Don’t miss the wallpaper loaded with symbols.
Even a US mail box comes into his show
Trump questioned the role of mail in voting claiming without evidence widespread fraud
The exhibition provokes us rather than allowing us to sink into admiration. Each phase of his work represents a challenge about the meaning of authenticity. Ai Weiwei defies us to think about that through his constantly changing media and subjects. After his traumatic childhood, it is not surprising that he is willing to strip away obvious meanings and challenging us to look deeper.
At the AsianArt Museum you can now see his lego Monet’s Water Lilies. We see a large black hole in the midst of the water lilies making reference to Ai Weiwei’s traumatic childhood.
detal of legos
The Zodiac circle will open in mid May at the Olympic Sculpture Park
Meanwhile you can see the small replicas in the exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum
Katy Deepwell has contributed more to feminist art criticism than any other critic I know.She published the journal n.paradoxa for 19 years. She has edited and published collections of feminist writing like De-/Anti-/Post-colonial Feminisms in Contemporary Art and Textile Crafts and 50 Feminist Art Manifestos. She has received many awards,organized conferances, online courses available on her website. She has a Ph.D, taught in universties. It is hard to overstate her importance.
And yet Katy has always stayed accessible. She has not sunk into deep theory. She has interpreted feminism in art according to the artists she writes about, not her own imposed ideas.
Her most recent collection Converstions on art, artworks and feminism demonstrates her deep knowledge of feminist artists. The book is drawn from her various interviews published in n.paradox.
It is organized with various approaches: major projects, individual artworks, feminist strategies for curating, and histories of feminism and feminist organizations.
It is clear that Katy has travelled and read extensively. The shows are in many far flung places ranging from Istanbul to Dak’Art in Senegal Poland, Denmark and more. She thoughtfully frames questions for the artists and curators clearly based on a lot of preparation, but she digs into the meanings and intents of the artist she is interviewing.
It is very rare for an art critic to stay with one focus – in her case faminism- and yet allow that focus to expand and change and reach in many different directions. She acknowleges the complexity of each artist. Even the title of her new book,Converstions on art, artworks and feminism acknowledges that. The cover is a series of questions that she posed to the differnt artists
In the first section ” major projects and exhibitions” she chooses a fascinating selection including Ida Applebroog, Karen Finley, Mary Kelly, Suzanne Lacy and Marina Abramovic among others. In the next section focusing on indivudual artists she asked artists such as Sue Williamson, Zineb Sedira, and Maureen Connor to make statements. There was also a “cyber knitting” event that she partipated in.
In the” feminist strategies for curating,” she asked short questsions that triggered long responses. In “histories of feminist organizations” her questions were sometimes much longer, demonstrating her own knowledge.
The varied approaches adapting to the artist themselves give us a clear voice directly from the artist.
In short, this book is a set of primary source essays, that Katy edited, rather than a book of her own opinons.
As such it is an invaluable resource for all of us.
We are all mourning the passing of our beloved mentor and teacher
I first connected with Tomur Atagök in 1997 through her collaborations with Katy Deepwell in n.paradoxa.
Tomur had just published in the first volume of Katy’s amazing magaine, an essay on “Contemporary Turkish Women Artists”. ( She went on to publish a second essay in n paradoxa in 2003, “Tomur Atagök in Conversation with Gulsun Karamustafa, Inci Eviner, and Nur Kocak Turkish women Artists and Feminism.”
When I told Katy I was going to Turkey for a trip in she gave me Tomur’s name and contact number. When we arrived at our hotel in Istanbul I called her and she immediately invited me over to her office!
Tomur suggested I apply for a Fulbright Fellowship and offered to be a sponsor. She had just been on a Fulbright in the US in 1996 so she knew the ropes. It had never occurred to me. So I went home and I did apply and I got it for 1999-2000 to teach American Art History at her university, Yildiz Technical University.
Right after we arrived there was a big earthquake! Since we had just arrived , we felt we couldn’t do much to help (although later I did teach a workshop with some children who had lost their homes)
We retreated to Lycia on the Southwest coast of Turkey for two weeks ( two fruitful weeks for my husband Henry Matthews who later wrote two books about the Greek ruins on that coast) Then we went back to Istanbul
Tomur settled us into a comfortable apartment in Tesvikye, an upscale neighborhood of Istanbul.
The big catch I discovered when I started was that her students did not understand English!. This was not the usual University that Fulbright sent scholars – Boğaziçi University- where English was the stamdard language of instruction
Well, I did have a translator at least.
I was mainly teaching twentieth century American art history, with an emphasis on post 1945. So Tomur began to take me to meet various contemporary artists in Istanbul. At that time in 1999-2000 there was no modern art museum although one of Tomur’s ongoing projects was promoting Turkish art both contemporary and historical.
That meant that I met the artists in their homes or studios if it was a different place ( rarely); almost all of the artists I met then were showing internationally in Europe. but were unknown in the US. Their work was completely different in media and topic than I had seen before, so it took me a while to write about them. I wrote a few short reviews and eventually a longer essay which was published in Frontiers magazine and is now included as the first chapter of my most recent book Around the World in 25 years, Provcative Art From Europe,thte Middle east, Asia and the Americas
All of these artists are now very well known, Gülsün Karamustafa, just was the artist in the Turkish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale
has been showing brilliant installations since the early 1990s
Her work in the 3rd Istanbul Biennial was censored
and Inci Eviner.who represented Turkey at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
During my year in Istanbul and after, Tomur and I collaborated on writing an essay for Third Text, “The Digestible Other” speaking about the history of the Istanbul Biennial and how artists “fit” into the international scene. Ironically Tomur herself was never included in a Biennial, she refused to be digestible. This,in spite of the fact that she created the seeds for the creation of the Istanbul Biennale
with earlier exhibitions, as we explained in the article.
We also wrote a review of a the 8th Istanbul Biennial “Poetic Justice ( these essays are also reprinted in my new book.) I also wrote short essays to introduce exhibtions she curated. My essay on the “Anatolian Goddess Series” appears in my last book, Setting Our Hearts on Fire
Tomur and I went to London to speak at an art historian’s conferance
and to Macedonia invited to participate in giving lectures by Suzana Milevska, curator.
Later, when I returned to Seattle, Wa, I also invited her to give a lecture at the University of Washington.
The last time I visited her was in 2015 when I stayed with her for several days after the Biennial. I wrote a blog post about the art in her home at that time. Here she is in 2015
Here is an overview that I wrote a few years ago with additions.
Tomur Atagök,a leading feminist artist from Turkey, was born in Istanbul. After graduating from Robert College in Istanbul, she trained in the United States from 1960-1973, first at Oklahoma State University where she immersed herself in abstract painting and earned a BFA. She then went on to the California College of Arts and Crafts and the University of California, Berkeley for an MA. During her years in Berkeley, she experienced the Free Speech movement, then the civil rights uprisings, and third, protests by feminist artists .
After returning to Turkey in 1973, she pioneered, first of all as a painter, then as a teacher, curator, and historian. In the 1980s her painting focused on contemporary women, often painting on a metallic surface. Above you see one of her paintings featuring Madonna . The three graces appear on the right.
I remember seeing it in the hall of our department where we passed it everyday
Her work follows several intersecting themes although feminism is a central focus throughout her career. In her works of the 1980s, we see her assertion of the figurative in the midst of dynamic abstract expressionist brushstrokes. these dynamic paintings exude incredible energy of the brushstrokes and the figures.
At this time she began to paint on metal.
She explains: “The pictorial reality and space on a metallic surface contains the hints the artist gets from the environment, the symbols and the descriptions she uses in making references to the outside world, the different realities of the materials and the techniques, the images reflected from the environment and the perceiver on the surface of the metallic work, and finally the interpretation of the perceiver each time create different subjective and materialistic realities of art.
On the other hand pictorial reality and real space, change physically with the reflections from the environment and the perceiver himself, and join with the physical environment and movement, creating a connection of life with art.”
In 1990 the critic William Zimmer asked about her frequent use of the color pink “It’s a color which she confided in me she cannot abide, but which also stands for humanity from a feminist perspective. Pink which traditionally connotes softness is applied to metal, meaning toughness.”
During these same years she was the Assistant Director of Mimar Sinan University Museum of Painting and Sculpture , where she also earned a Ph.D. in Museology. She then moved to Yildiz Technical University where she founded and chaired the first Museum Studies Program in Turkey in 1989. Atagok has trained many of the current museum professionals in Turkey.
At the same time she began collaborating on ground breaking exhibitions of contemporary Turkish artists and historical studies
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1993, she co organized the first exhibition of the history of women artists in Turkey and Anadolu’da Yasamakta Olan Ilkel Comlekcilik |(Ancient Pottery-making Still Practiced in Anatolia) by Gungor Guner as well as “Contemporary Turkish Women Artists, organized by the Ministry of Culture, Istanbul Archaelogical Museum
Tomur had a Fulbright Fellowship at the American University in DC. in 1996 where she met some powerful feminist artists who suggested she look a the Anatolian goddess tradition. When she got back to Turkey she did just that. She took those small statues amd blew them up to an enormous size. Here is an installation of the entire series
Dominating this series is the great Anatolian Mother Goddess from Çatalhöyük. That twenty centimeter statuette, excavated from the oldest city in the world, dates from around 5700 BC.
The small figure has enormous power: she is seated comfortably between subdued leopards as she gives birth. Her breasts, hips and buttocks swell to enormous proportions, further increasing her power. Far removed from the slender, even emaciated, ideal for a female body that is now common for some contemporary societies (notably the United States), this goddess proclaims her physical presence and her authority at the same time.
In the paintings the Goddess assumes much larger dimensions as she joins our world as a life size figure who stands as a guardian. Rather than a fertility symbol, she is now a symbol simply of the power of women. She is an affirmation of women’s energy and authority. On her head she wears a type of mechanical diadem/crown in one painting, and sits in front of a golden shower of sun in another. These two large goddesses frame a third panel that makes reference to the interior of woman, specifically here, the vertebrae and ovaries. The woman’s interior, so often altered today by contemporary medical science, is here protected by powerful traditional forces.
Another of these grand paintings is based on Artemis of Ephesus. Artemis, later changed to a slender virgin hunter by the Romans, is here seen in her guise as Cybele. Her many breasts carry the power of nurturing and life.
In place of the animals under her protection on the traditional statues, Tomur put guns tanks and other references to military warfare. Artemis also has black gloves and a contemporary face with bold red lipstick and blond hair. It was done in response to the violation of sacred lands by military weapons, particularly during the Gulf War. This powerful statement could be about any war and its destructive effect on life as a whole
The collective presence of these goddesses is a powerful commentary on contemporary women and their connection to historical traditions. Painted in a technique that has its roots in abstract expressionism, they are major examples of contemporary art in Turkey. She has created versions for hanging in shopping malls with a strong
statement against war written on the back
Say no to war
Games, Toys, Childrean, War, Love 1999- 2000
dedicated to Uğur Mumcu
One of her most famous seriers is an homage to Uğur Mumcu an investigative journalist researching terrorism in Turkey who was murdered in 1993. In her homage Tomur wrote on the painting in Turkish a quote from the journalist:
Translated into English it said:
There are those who have preferred a lifestyle of silence
pulling inward as a personal symbol.
Their freedom and weapons do not speak
Every injustice takes strength in a way from their passivity.
A complete heart in another offers a brighter tone.
The heart is only partially visible as a double or single curve in some works.
Against that motif emerge silhouettes of guns, toy soldiers, bones, paper doll cutouts, hands, dots, crosses, and crescents. In addition the artist uses stones, sticks, feathers, and glossy advertising images of beautiful people. Scattered throughout many of the works are poetic phrases, of various moods, hopeful, sad, cynical.
The theme is a belieft in humanity’s ability to survive though poetry and creativity in spite of the many ways leading to war. She saw the children’s toys coming from cereal boxes turned into violence and yet she aso saw love.
The series as a whole is an homage to Mumcu, but also a response to him. Atagök has decided not to remain passively silent in the face of her own distress at his death and her support for his ideas.
Doğanin çağrısı Nature’s Call
Another theme that intersects with both politics and women is nature. It takes many forms. Her home is filled with examples of recreating nature in the midst of her life–she even created a forest in her basement and had an exhibition in 2011 that featured an installation of branches, paintings, diaries and other pieces.
Her commitment to calling attention to the small details of branches or bones and repositioning them on the surface of her painting results in a subtle relationship between abstraction and realism. In other works she takes random trash found in the woods and creates constructions. When asked what is most important to her at this time in her life (she turned 82 in May), she answered her nature installations.
In addition to all of these major works, Tomur has made hundreds of small works, part of her ongoing Diaries. Each one is composed of a the detritus of everyday life, a candy wrapper, a ticket to an exhibition framed in a small format with her signature expressionist gestures added. These small diaries tell the story of her life in collage. They have been exhibited on their own and in connection with larger works (such as perched on top of the goddess series). They tell us as much about who this prolific artist is, as do the large scale works.
Here is one diary postcard:
A Miro exhibition we went to when she came to US in 2014
As the Elgiz Museum described the Diaries in 2006 :
“a collage of over 1000 post card sized mixed media works produced between 1990 and 2006. Journeys through France, Germany, Italy, USA, UK, Macedonia, Greece, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Yugoslavia and Turkey represent the subjects for the artist’s reflection; instead of following the conventional literary format of a diary where passages are added simultaneously with the event, Atagok chooses to reflect on each event after a period of time has passed; this allows her to effectively fuse the past with the present. She chooses not to focus on isolated moments but on a collection of memories illustrated through everyday items such as tickets, wrappings and photos.
‘The Diaries’ do not function as a commentary on life but is intended as an accumulation of recycled materials intercepted by art. These works are personal, informal and social
Tomur Atagok as an artist, a feminist, a pioneering writer and historian of art by women in Turkey, an educator of museum professionals, an activist. Yet all of these identities still do not fully encompass her accomplishments. She is above all a deeply feeling human being who when asked about her dream project stated: “ I would like to work more on human equality with man and woman . . . We are all equal!”
How much we will miss her!
At the time of my visit during 15th Istanbul Biennial. ( I still have that hat)
“I believe artists’ work often functions as the equivalent of a town crier, calling out concepts in public. Traditionally the crier’s message is of civic or community importance, here we add construct. The Town and Country Crier exhibition presents a range of environmental and social issues. These issues often inform actions creating artwork that connects indicator, mitigator and story teller.” Buster Simpson
Buster Simpson ” Woodman”
In the 1970s Buster Simpson picked up pieces of wood off the street and at sites of building demolition.
This photo is a recreation of that action.
When Buster first arrived in Seattle his first exhibition was simply cleaning up a filthy warehouse where he was staying with a fellow artist Chris Jonic. The exhibition was titled “Selective Disposal Project” Buster Simpson is idealistic and humourous but practical. He really wants to improve the environment and encourage us to do that also, but he has a good time doing it.
His recent exhibition at Slip Galllery in Belltown
“Town and Country Crier” is an appropriate place for Simpson to show his work. Belltown has been a focus of his work for many decades.We are greeted at the door by a photo of the word “purge” written in chalk and glass bells with bronze clappers.
His themes are embodied in these works, purge referring to cleaning toxins out of water, and the bell points to his ironic sense of humor. It suggests an announcement is coming ( as in Town Crier calling attention fo an emergency. But if you actually ring this bell it will shatter. That takes our imaginations to where we are today. Emergency bells that can’t be heard.
The first gallery is a mini retrospective of his Belltown work with a team of collaborators planting trees on First Avenue. He included a document from that project.The diagram at the bottom indicates where trees were to be planted ( many were); The project also included benches.
The handwritten document from the First Avenue Project identifies the larger issue at stake: working from and with community rather than top down through government mandates. The archival documents fill a wall.
He stayed in one tree to protest its cutting down : the photograph of the upside down tree on the right is another truncated tree.
One long term project was to use iron bedsteads from SROs that were being torn down to protect the trees that he and others planted in Belltown.Here is a sad statement in the exhibition of the bedstead protecting a burned tree root. When I went back to the exhibition a second time, it was covered with a glass tabletop, which diluted the emotioinal immediacy of the bare black tree. Now it is protecting a small tree outside the gallery
In this first gallery there are also references to two important ongoing projects,”When the Tide is Out the Table is Set”. This is a not at all amusing quote from Native Americans description of the Duwamish River before the white Man came. Now we have intense polution on that same river
This dinner plate picked up pollution from being placed in Elliott Bay
Another series of works are based on the bell shape made into a pan in which a community meal was cooked. The Belltown cafe was a community gathering place that traded food for art.
Purge is a major theme Buster Simpson’s work. Many of his actions over the years have focused on detoxifying rivers. Here you see on the floor the limestone frog, whom Simpson said was an indicator species. The limestone frog when placed in water detoxifies the water, to the extent possible,
an action repeated in many places recorded in the stack of boxes. ( He mentioned that it was a special limestone found only in Texas, which I found amusing). Here is the frog in the Great Salt Lake which is of course disappearing( both the lake and the frog)
Another reference to toxins, in this case deadly, is a rusted oil barrel with a reference to the smallpox ridden rags that were passed on to Indians.
In this room there is also a complex and amusing multimedia piece referring to changing coastlines and climate change with a giant depth measure as well as a crucified haloed “figure” made from branches holding dipsticks. Across the front is a large level with monopoly pieces inside. Simpson’s specialty is multiple overlaid references to what he cares deeply about laced with humor.
Simpson’s roots are in conceptual art, artists who didn’t believe in making objects for sale-instead they make gestures or draw plans. Simpson stands out because he continues to work with the real world and physical things, but always in a subversive and amusing way.
Brightwater watermolecule and pipe
molecule
Brightwater Bio Boulevard
Simpson also works often with large committees and successfully completes projects such as the Brightwater Treatment Plan (with many other artists)
photograph by Joe Freeman
and the waterfront “Anthropocene Migration Stage” on the beach near Yesler. Simpson conceived it as a place to sit temporarily until the sea level requires it to migrate away from the water. He frequently uses these concrete dolos . Dolos are also a metaphor:
“a wave-dissipating concrete block used in coastal management (dolosse), a personified spirit of trickery and guile in Greek mythology, and a source code plagiarism detection tool”
No wonder Simpson likes them!
As we leave the gallery three bags filled with sand say “Searise Trumps Denial.”
A large sack of chalks invite us to take one and make our own protests in the street
As we enter June Sekiguchi’s living room we are immediately immersed in a feeling of multi dimensional creativity. From the ceiling, the walls, the floor, strange flowing shapes appear everywhere. As the artist reaches for a stack of fiberboard cut with wavy edges we see an art form appear as the artist puts them together. But this seemingly simple radiating shape around a center is actually what the artist calls a radiolarium, a single cell structure with radiating symmetry.
On the wall are twelve mandala-like carvings; two of them rise up into three dimensions. This shift to three dimensions while maintaining radial symmetry is what the artist’ s new works explore for an upcoming solo show at ArtX Contemporary opening in April.
June Sekiguchi grew up in Arkansas in a large family. In school she and her siblings were definitely seen as the “Other”, a traumatizing experience. But June left with her older sister to go to school in California while still in high school.
But of course the experience stayed with her. Although initially she embraced her Japanese background in California, soon she was exploring world cultures. Her focus has been patterns, looking at the extraordinary patterns of Muslim art for example.
From her public art to installation to intimate pieces, Sekiguchi explores patterns.
The patterns are embedded in various metaphorical forms. In a 2008 work Stacked BuildingBlocks she scroll cut patterns in wood and painted them inspired by shapes in Southeast Asia and North Africa. The planes were put together to form three dimensional shapes that can be moved around to suggest a gate or a building. Or simply a modular form.
Sekiguchi was inspired by children’s building blocks and would like adults to play with these oversize blocks.
A 2016 installation the Pulse of Water, focused on a river, really a specific river, the Mekong River that she deeply experienced floating down it slowly in a boat in Laos. We see the water here invoked by energetic forms, white circles on top suggesting foam and dark brown patterns underneath, suggesting an accumulation of debris. Actually the river is both a history and a lifeline. The artist spoke of the dams that cut off the fishing there. But her focus in the installation was a bamboo bridge that the fishermen build across the river every year after it gets washed out by Monsoon rains. This sense of repeated actions, of feeling the pattern of life, is evoked by the installation.
Radiolarian 5, 2024 Scroll-cut wood 9.25 x 9.25 x 2 in
Sea Star, 2024 Scroll-cut wood 21 x 21 x 5.50 in
The current exhibition, still in progress in the artist’s studio, goes beyond the surface to the micro structures of radiollaria, a one celled organism that can absorb silica and create intricate skeletal patterns. These are the basis for Sekiguci’s current work.. Her patterns developed in both two and three dimensions are imaginative, inspired by the pioneering observations of 19th century scientists.
But one cannot visit Sekiguchi for long before the idea of meditation appears in the conversation. Her mandalas based on geometric patterns that represent harmony and peace, have long been a source of spiritual meditation. The geometric pattern represents according to one source “the cosmos or deities in various heavenly worlds.”
scroll cut saw
But Sekiguchi speaks of her creative process as a meditation whether it be with a scroll saw that cuts intricate designs into medium density fiberboard which the artist stated “cuts like butter.” Then she sands all edges of the sculpture, another meditative act. The three dimensionality of some of the works literally rises from the two dimensional mandalas.
Tentacles, 2024 Scroll-cut wood 14 x 33 x 33 in
Visual Looming Syndrome, 2024 Scroll-cut wood and acrylic paint 13 x 13 x 5 in 9604
Mourning Cloak Butterfly Egg, 2024 Scroll-cut wood and acrylic paint 22 x 22 x 3.75 in
These artworks based on the natural world are a direct result of two artist residencies: on Willapa Bay and Vashon Island. There the artist observed barnacles and sea anemones, what are called sessile creatures that attach themselves to a surface. Sessile creatures have radial symmetry, they cannot move independently, if a creature moves it has bilateral symmetry.
Caterpillar, 2023 Found wood and scroll-cut wood 16 x 1.25 x 2.75 in
Conifer, 2023 Found wood and scroll-cut wood 26 x 5 x 7.50 in and Poppy Pods
There is a sense of intense curiosity and exploration in Sekiguchi, she does not keep repeating ideas. She picks up a stick from the beach and with a slight addition it becomes a sculpture.
She also is embedded in her larger community as a curator for several organizations, including the Asian Pacific Cultural Center in Tacoma, which includes 40 different countries. They will be opening a new space next year, in which Sekiguchi plans to begin their exhibition program with the work of the founder of the Cultural Center, Patsy Surh.
So as June Sekiguchi intensely explores the inner structures of nature, she also supports her fellow artists in a larger exploration of the connections of people and community
Sekiguchi’s show The Geometry of Resilience is on display April 3 – May 24, 2025at ArtX Contemporary, 512 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104. A reception will be held at Pioneer Square Art Walk on April 3 & March 1, 5-8 p.m., and an artist talk on April 26, 1 p.m.
Exhibition Photos
Octopus, 2025 Scroll-cut wood and acrylic 8 x 32 x 32 in
Seaweed, 2025 Scroll-cut wood and acrylic paint 96 x 96 in
First, we think that these two artists, Alexander Calder and Thaddeus Mosley, could not possibly be more dissimilar in this new iteration of the Calder donation curated by Catherina Manchanda. “Following Space,” the title of their joint exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, captures the central feeling of the exhibition. As we walk through the galleries, we do indeed feel we are following the spaces that both of these artists carve and cut and slice in their sculptures. But how different they are!
Calder’s mobiles are light and constantly moving with many small pieces of metal hanging from fragile wires. Mosley’s work is heavy, made of chiseled tree trunks. Calder uses industrial materials like sheet metal, Mosley uses only wood, Calder emphasizes lines created by wire and light shapes of metal, Mosley chisels carefully on solid shapes.
Thaddeus Mosley, Following Space, 2016. Cherry. Overall: 117×28×28in.
But we must look again at this provocative pairing. In the first gallery we see White Panel 1936 by Alexander Calder and First Port, 2008, by Mosley. Calder’s work descends from on high, while Mosley’s work reaches up. The carefully chiseled wood creates a sense of liberating the wood from itself. Following Space, 2016 in the center of the gallery, gives the exhibition its title, and is even more clearly rising up from its base.
Mosley works with wood that he finds in the forest, cherry and walnut. The wood is chiseled carefully to highlight the given shape of the log, then he connects separate pieces by inserting it into a notch or large hole in the wood. This use of notches means that the pieces balance with no outside support, unlike Calder’s mobiles which balance with carefully calculated lengths of wire and the weight of the small pieces of metal. Calder’s mobiles seem to almost flutter like clouds sometimes.
Mosley is entirely self- taught, his rhythms drawn from jazz seen in the abstraction of his shapes. But he has also looked at African sculpture from Dogon, Senufo, Banum and Mossi. He has his own collection of African sculpture. The African artists also carved wood with many different results. Often they were figurative, but also they sometimes allowed the shape of the wood to speak on its own, making an abstract shape. Mosley also learned from looking at Giacometti and Brancusi who work in bronze and stone. Mosley’s work brings together these inspirations in an original composition in wood.
Some of Mosley’s pieces seem to sit solidly on the ground, like Oval Continuity, 2017 that appears to be a carefully cut large oval ball. But the more we look at it, the more we feel it is about to burst forth into some magnificent vertical shape. Next to Mosley’s Oval Continuity is Calder’s Bougainvillea, 1947. It has a base on the ground, but it bursts forth in delicate flowers in all directions.
Other examples of pieces that appear to be grounded, but also rise up are Little Escalation, 2018 and Bended, 2018 (center and right in picture). They are single pieces of wood, with no insertions or extensions, but they too seem to be straining upward with an accordion pleat or a twist.
Mosley is 99 years old! He has been making sculpture since the 1950s. But only in the last few years has he achieved real recognition. He readily admits that is because he is Black. The current situation for artists of color is more open and accepting. But if we were to see one of these muscular sculptures without knowing the artist, we would still be overwhelmed by their beauty: the artist’s respect for wood as a material shines through as we look at his careful chisel marks and his surprising shapes and juxtapositions. It is sometimes tempting to anthropomorphize his shapes, an animal, a bird, a face, but look again and it is gone.
Fortunately, you have time to see this show, (it ends on June 1) but don’t put it off. I have been three times and each time I experienced it entirely differently. Hats off to Catharina Manchanda for this wonderful idea.
This entry was posted on February 3, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Raven, the creator in the Tlingit mythology, rescued humans from darkness by stealing the sun.
“He was a white bird and the world was in Darkness. Raven decides he will try and do something about the darkness, for himself and for the world. As he follows the Nass River, he encounters the Fishermen of the Nights … They tell Yeil ( as Raven was then called) that Nass Shaak Arankaawu ( the Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River) has many treasures in his Naa Kanidi ( Clan House)including beautifully carved boxes that house the light,” So Raven having disguised himself as a human baby, took the moon and the sun out of their boxes and liberated them.
Preston Singletary wondered what Raven has been doing since mythic times, so in his new series of glass works he brings Raven back, he wakes him up to our disastrous world. This exhibition (which unfortunately closed on June 1 but there is a free catalog you can get ) includes many versions of Raven as well as a new story about Raven written by collaborator Garth Stine:
“I Dream Therefore I am Raven.”
The exhibition is contained in the smaller room at Trevor Gallery, a low lighted space with a large photo of the forest at one end. Interspersed throughout the room are the new Raven sculptures, it feels like we are walking into the forest with Raven all around us.
Just outside the entrance is “Blue Light Spirit Mobile” suggesting blue spiritual light floating in the air. On the other side is “Communicating with the Spirits” two children riding on a composite bird/animal who seem to be joining us. So, the stage is set for a special event.
At the entrance a sign says, “Please Feed the Raven.” In these stories Raven is constantly in pursuit of food, as he realizes how degraded the salmon and berries he is given have become.
We see a white Raven. Raven was originally white, but when he rescued the sun, the Chief was so angry that he threw ashes at him and turned him black. But after sleeping for such a long time Raven grew new feathers and turned white again. As he arrives among people all glittering and white, they stare at him, so he decides to rub himself with ashes and turn black again so no one will notice him.
Preston Singletary’s “Ashes from the Fire,” 2024, blown and sand carved glass.
Preston: “In my interpretation of what is happening now I want to believe that Raven is battling climate change, protecting the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, or helping discover the Boarding School grave sites.
So the first story tells us about Raven’s Dreams of the World Before with clear skies, clean water, uncorrupted animals, “magnificent salmon, berries ripe to bursting, and roe hurling themselves up river to spawn. “Before the world turned on itself with contempt and tore itself apart.”
Altogether there are sixteen pieces that reference Raven’s efforts to heal the world, each accompanied by a story written by Garth Stein.
They include Raven using ashes from the fire to change himself back to black from white. Crying to unfreeze the frozen river, and purify the water to liberate the fish there, protecting the children who have died at boarding schools, and taking on a fog hat and a fighting hat. The final piece is “Wolf sitting on a Rock “observant, cunning, ruthless, merciful, the spirit he would need to lead People into the Future World.”
Preston Singletary’s “Frozen River,” 2024, blown and sand carved glass.
It is hard to overstate how creative this collaboration is between Stein and Singletary. The sculptures each convey the poignancy of the stories. They are all subtly colored, red, yellow, blue and created with blown and sand carved glass compressed within a larger shape and the form lines of traditional Tlingit sculpture, Stein’s stories seamlessly bring together the mythic and the contemporary in narratives that both tell us of the degraded state of the world, and the possibilities for healing it.
Yet in the end we see how much must be done.
For a brief moment the lush landscape turns brown
How ironic that white colonial settlers tried so hard to obliterate native culture, but now we increasingly realize that Indigenous knowledge may be the only way forward for our planet.
This entry was posted on January 27, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
I have known Lillian for many years, since way back when she visited Washington State University while I was teaching there in the mid-1980s. I bought a pair of her earrings that I still cherish!
Along the years I have acquired prints, a Stick mask in ceramic, and a small standing Shadow Spirit in ceramic. I first wrote about her when she had a major exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum in 1999, an article published in Art Papers Magazine and my book, Art and Politics Now.
Pitt has created many series of works. In “Celestial Ancestors,” she introduces the Star People:
In Native American legends, the Star People are often associated with advanced knowledge, spiritual insight, and the ability to traverse space and time. They are seen as benevolent helpers whose wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. In some traditions, the Star People are revered as ancestors. In others, they are regarded as beings who came to Earth to teach humans essential skills of sustenance, such as planting and healing. Alternatively, they may be seen as guides who assist individuals in finding their way home.
These stories hold a special place in my heart, and it brings me great comfort to have a skilled sculptor, Ben Dye, bring my version of the Star People to life.
~ Lillian Pitt
As we enter the gallery, we immediately encounter a large red glass mask of the iconic Tsagaglal (“she who watches”) who benevolently presides over all of the star people. Tsagaglal is an actual petroglyph on the Columbia River and has been Lillian Pitt’s lodestar for decades. Behind her, six feet tall painted steel sculptures of Star People based on outlines and patterns, rather than a solid form, lead us through the exhibition with titles like Pondering his Direction and Protected from the Dawn.
On the back wall hangs a smaller Tsagaglal. Facing walls include clusters of other Star People, each one offering us a different mood through a specific title.
Many are painted on fragments of wood, a new material for Pitt with the color alone suggesting the title. For example, Star Person After Visiting Hawaii’s Hot Spots, has some pink striations; Star Person Fully Dressed for the Big Dance suggests an elegant outfit with an edge of bark as a wrap! They are almost miraculous, I felt guided and comforted as I looked at them. There is both humor and reverence in these works.
The exhibition also includes some of her jewelry in various media, including jasmine rings and silver earrings, blown glass with embedded imagery, and a large Spirit Watcher, with huge feathers surrounding his head, and a painted raku face. He reminds me of the great headdresses worn by youth at a recent Powwow here. Stick Indians have been a subject for Pitt for many years and this large figure seems to be the grandfather all those smaller Stick Indian masks, much larger and more dominating.
One of the wonders of Lillian Pitt’s work is that she is constantly evolving with new media and subjects, even as all of her work is unified by her particular view of the world. Barry Lopez expressed it beautifully in the catalog of her exhibition Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home (1999):
One of the hardest things to hold together in modern American culture–a rice paper house in a hurricane–is a community founded in memory, in imagination, in moral relations with the land. Lillian’s Pitt’s work tells us at least one woman among us won’t quit. She hasn’t given up, And so each of us gazing at her work has a place in the community of which she is a working part We’re standing together because of Lillian.
This entry was posted on January 24, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
The larger than life Zodiac heads by Ai Weiwei that are coming to Volunteer Park this fall( too bad not there for the summer) represent the following animals in the usual order: Pig, Dog, Rooster, Monkey, Goat, Horse, Snake, Dragon, Rabbit, Tiger, Ox, Rat. Each of these Zodiac animals have specific traits which you have if you were born under their sign. My (1945) sign is the rooster : it says “Those born under the rooster are profound thinkers. Talented and capable they can also be eccentric and may have difficulties in their relationships with others. Highly observant and analytical they are strong decision makers who speak their minds freely.” How about that. You can look up your year online in 12 year cycles.
Suchitra Mattai: She walked in reverse and found their songs
“A Rich Life Lived” has a similar format but the central cape motif is constructed of clothespins. The artist honors domestic labor and rewrites the colonial narrative to honor workers.
n the back
This photo is a recreation of that action.
Another series of works are based on the bell shape made into a pan in which a community meal was cooked. The Belltown cafe was a community gathering place that traded food for art.
