Carletta Carrington Wilson: Object Lessons

 

 

 

 

 

Carletta Carrington Wilson’s large exhibition at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. “Carletta Carrington Wilson: Object Lessons” highlights all phases of her career!! It closes on Sept 20. The Museum makes a perfect day trip with a bus to downtown Seattle, a beautiful ferry ride and a short walk to the museum. She will be in the gallery on August 26 11-1

 

 

In the large window on the outside of the Bainbridge Museum of Art, Carletta Carington Wilson created a  two story  installation. If you look closely you can see the word “Utopia” spelled in giant letters ( It is hard to see in this photograph- the golden squares contain the letters. I sketched it in on the right))

 

Going upstairs to the Beacon Gallery we are greeted by a poem called “Lessons of Possession” It begins

“To make sense of the possessive tense it is crucial to understand that the object of an object is to be had held kept adhered to by right of possession . . .”. All of it is an ironic but heartfelt  statement about slavery.

 

The Feferman gallery downstairs creates a dazzling effect with multi colored fabrics, but as we approach the individual works we see there is much more at stake than aesthetics.

 

The works divide into distinct series: “constellation of shadows and leaves” (2006) the “Mingus Series” (2008) the “book of the bound,” (2011) in honor of slaves who could not read, “knot my name haint my house” ( 2015), “kNot free, kNot human,” (2023).

 

 

 

Wilson is a poet as much as a visual artist, and her wonderful sense of the multiple meaning of words flows through all of her art.

She creates stunning aesthetic objects to  educate us to the horrors of slavery. In this case the escape of a female slave

 

 

 

These are two works from the field notes series: “wrap my right hand tight” and “woke fore day”. We see the collage of many fabrics. Twisted and knotted paper lines constitute a unique form of connection between the field notes. Each letter-sized collage’s message is signed with an X, the universal signature of an illiterate person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On one wall hangs “the knotted line  of cloth cord, thread, bones, wire.  The knotted line is a genealogical chart of names of people listed as property from plantation records in the 19th century. Each embroidered name is preceded by the word
k/not.
The lines represent African, European and Native American bloodlines and how they are genetically knotted. These tangled  knots speak to the mixture of blood lines among slaves and the impossibility of tracing ancestry

 

Another pair of hanging works represent a male and female runaway.

 

“resist dying” describes

both the technique and the action; below it is a “blood knot,” a tangled rich red colored cloth.

 

“book of the bound”

 

 

There are six examples from the” book of the bound” series. above is one of the most powerful., actually called “book of the bound,”  closed with chains.

 

One of the covers is made of bones attached with lace called “abduction”

The artist comments “Most of my work is not distressing to the eye. “abduction” is one of the last books
In the “book of the bound series”. I thought about people who died on the way to the coast, died
in the forts, passed away in the ships or jumped into the sea, expired soon after reaching dry
land, were murdered and/or killed themselves. It is a memorial to those who lost their lives.”

 

 

Others emphasize cotton, as above “forget me not”.

Some are covered with beautiful fabrics. Carrington Wilson uses fabric as the means of suggesting the connection of trade, money and the “thread-bare body”:  the wealth of the traders was based on the bodies of the slaves.The fabrics throughout the exhibition are  decorative but painted with words that speak to the slave trade. Because European slavers often traded fine fabrics like silk and velvet in exchange for bodies, Wilson believes the stories of their bodies remain in the cloth.

Her collaged covers become a song to those who could not fill these books with their stories.

 

  

 

In this example we see an ad saying “speaks good English, French and Dutch” and  an illustration of slaves carrying an elephant tusk The artist explains “In the trade the term “black ivory” was used to describe Africans who brought elephant tusks
down from the deep interior to the coast. After they delivered, not only were the tusks sold,
but Africans found themselves sold into the trade.”

 

 

 

“I am bound to go there” Here you see a mother and baby elephant inserted as well as an image of two white youths inspecting a necklace on an African boy. The artist wants to bring attention to how enslaved African children and English indentured children

are a little recognized part of the transatlantic slave trade.

 

 

“letter to a laundress”

 

“letter to a laundress,” a letter to her great great grandmother, dominates the exhibition as a poem and a series of 1930s photographs mounted on fabric and hanging from a clothes line .

 

It has two texts, the large and the small

Here iin small letters it says “mothers of the blue blue waters who hung from those knotted lines” ( you can easily understand the multiple meanings here)

 

 

Written on the photograph below is one step in doing laundry: Wash, Soak, Starch, Wring, Boil, Pin, Rub, Scrub, Hang Press.

 

 

The WPA photographs of laundresses reveal the different background of the women, some are wearing rags, others are in dresses and heels.

As the artist explained

 

“Each photograph, dating from the late 19th to mid-20th century, reveals a woman frozen by the lens of time who has been, largely, unseen in works of history or photographic essay. In addition to its visual narrative of tools of the trade, architecture, geography, labor and clothing, history, this work reconfigures the figure of the laundress and the washerwoman as witness. It
sheds light on the unique position these women held as a result of their occupational tasks during an era where African Americans were summarily lynched throughout the United States.

letter to a laundress is an immersive installation that mirrors a ubiquitous and familiar form from a bygone era, the clothesline.

 

“Viewers enter this work, moving through time while, simultaneously, reading lines of a poem whose verses are written upon various
panels of photographs of laundresses and washerwomen”

 

 

 

 

 

“You taught her well they say she had the touch took wrinkled soiled shirts made them like new especially collars and cuffs”

 

 

 

 

 

“What to do with foul language, rank stench, some shadowy shame remais even after all that scubbing”

In these two examples you see differences in dress that suggest one woman is better off.

 

 

 

The layers in Carletta Carrington Wilson’s words inscribed and pasted onto these art works give voice to the silent women of the photographs. If you want more discussion of “letter to a Laundress” see my blog post

 

 

 

Carletta Carrington Wilson’s “letter to a laundress”

 

“Joe’s House” from the series “knot my name, haint my house”

We see a simple house evoked with collage on its walls.

 

 

 

In addition the exhibition includes recent work such as No Way Out, 2026. An ironing board covered with black fabric and bearing a vertical row of red x’s’ is paired with two irons painted with red hand marks. And the title of the” letter to a laundress” above

 

 

It is a powerful statement .  The x’s represent the signature of illiterate people but may also be a reference to writing in blood. The title and  shrouded ironing board honors

as the artist put it: “No way out is a memorial symbolic of six lives of unknown individuals lost by lynching.

 

 

Carletta is standing under a paper garland made by visitors who have written  on pieces of paper calling out to the distant slaves

 

 

An installation view of the exhibition suggesting its coherence and beauty. The many works come together as a powerful statement about slavery and a testament to Carletta’s strength as both an artist and a poet.

 

Here is another blog post about Carletta.

Carletta Carrington Wilson “Unchain My Heart”

Rising Voices Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia, and the Pacific

 

 

According to the Victoria

and Albert Museum these

artworks give us a different perspective on contemporary Asiam  art. Indeed I felt as I looked at them that they were entirely different from Asian Contemporary art that I have seen previously. The artists draw on

recent political events, mixing them with age old mythmaking, contemporary materials  and tradtitional practices.

Such as these pieces by Ken Thaiday senior,  they combine the idea of a headdress with a black bamboo hamerhead shark. The second piece shark with bait fish is also an elaborate headdress.

Hi

 

 

 

Amura gives us the llast royal family of Tahiti. It combines hand stiched applique and  nama”o a sewing technique inspired by woodworking, and taken from French Polynesia.bThis type of media experimentation is truly extraordinary, resulting  in the blending of various sources.

 

Matthew Kauge is an example of an artist who is innovative in his use of color and style, He is “a leading figure in the develoopment of contemporary art in New Guinea”! His stunning painting gives us the joy of independence.

 

Captain Cook By Elizabeth Kauge gives us a straightforward frontal representation of the Captain  Cook sailors on the top and the slaves on the bottom of the ship. The enslaved people who are not dark may represent the slaves on their way to Australia from England. They are wearing Melanesian ceremonial headresses. The artist is honoring the slaves.

 

John Siune looks at the Revolutionary Civil War caused by enrionmenatl damage  in Papua New Guinea by  the occupying force. extracting copper. The vivid painting depicts soldiers shooting and poorly armed PapuanNew Guineans .

 

 

 

 

this terrifying image of genocide ( Lamentation of the Innocents) uses Mughal forms to present a world of hate and death for both humans and animals.

 

 

 

Again a reference to war annd inhumanity through Mughal miniatures

This artist Adeela Suleman  refers to a specific painting  and medieval event as a metaphor of contemmporary violence.

 

 

The hero with wings, Rustam, here as seen from the perspective of an Hazari who had to flee as a persecuted minority in Afghanistan. He is suggesting that the Taliban took on t

his identiy of the Hero of the Book of Kings Shahnameh) Rustam

Boonma is actually familiar to me from  contemporaray art shows in the West. He is Thai and this piece evokes temple bells and lotus growing into enlightement. It has a spare aesthetic that fits with western artk although he is steeped in Buddhism.

 

 

Ah Xian moved to Australia after Tiananmen Square but then went beck to China to learn traditionsl porcelain techniques, These three heads are compelling and original  each one expressin a distinct emotion,

 

 

This work by Iwasaki Reflection Model Perfect Bliss is an iconic wooden temple with its reflection. in the Byodo- in temple complex in Kyoto, It is called the Phoenix pavillion perhaps because it looks like it could take off.

 

This is not all the works in the exhibition, there was other media and paintings . Since the museum did not send me a checklist I am relying on my own pictures. I included the extended captions because they are eloquemtly detailed.

As you can see the artists draw on many traditions to create strikingly original expressions. Some might say it has a folk look in some of the works.  I find all of them deeply compelling and worth more than a cursory look. They are complex and layered between myth and the contemporary world.

 

Ellen Sollod : An Intriguing Artist

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There were four distinct types of artworks in this exhibition.

That is what intrigued me.

It demonstrates Ellen Sollod’s experimental approach to photography

Above you see an overview of the installation. The large bw digital image below “La Flaneuse” has a ghost image of  the artist. the artist explained to us that ” I place myself in the scene and the shutter opens based on a time delay. I stand in the scene for about half of the exposure and exit while the camera continues to record the image. When the shutter closes, based on the time that I have set, my image is ‘ghosted’. ”

 

Flaneuse of course takes us back to the male flaneur of late 19th century, the idea of walking the streets of a city dabbling in this and that. In Sollod’s photographs the artist is invisible to others, a ghost that wanders freely.

 

La flanêuse (Hotel de Ville), 35 x 44”, archival pigment print, capture 2024, print 2026

 

 

 

The works below are taken by a pinhole camera . They are much smaller and have incredible nuances of shades of gray

 

See the bronze branch above!

 

And finally this amazing group of intimate photographs of flowers gel transfered onto old book pages.

 

Three completely contrasting works, different techniques, different scales, different sensibilities. And the bronze branch!

Hats off to Ellen for being willing to tryso many types of work

 

 

Below are public art works called“Collection and Transformation from the Brightwater Treatment Plant by Ellen Sollod showing yet another aspect of her work.

 

 

Ellen’s work is illustrated in my chapteron “Water Cycles and Water treatments included in my book Setting Our Hearts on Fire. I descirbed them as glass microcosms set into a stainless steel honeycomb structure incased in blue mirrored glass and lighted from above.” Pretty astonishing!

 

The great contrast to the works on exhibit demonstrates Sollod’s versatility as an artist.

 

During her artist convrsation with Liz Brown

Sollod is holding her small pinhole cameragla

Future Geographies at Vancouver Art Gallery

 

 

Teresita Fernandez Island Universe 2

 

 

This amazing exhbition at Vancouver Art gallery (BC) ( up until January 10) begins with this challenge and this image

 

“As new ecological realities reshape the planet, what role does art play?

Artists are not scientists, but they invite us to think differently and imagine new futures. Journalism too addresses the same territories. This exhibition offers no singular answer but rather a plurality of responses, from poetic to urgent.”

 

The exhibition had four themes; Consumed Earth , Living Knowledge, Material Memory, and Speculative Worlds

 

The art was more or less evenly divided but there was no sense of strong demarcations. Some of the artists were in more than one category.

The entire catalog for the exhibition is online at https://futuregeographies.nationalobserver.com/

 

 

This was addressing climate change by not using paper.

 

Included in the “catalog” are links to excellent videos about the individual artists. there seem to be many women of color, appropriate for an exhibition that was addressing the crises of the planet.

 

 

So each artist can be viewed often with in depth interviews  or articles in The National Observer, an online climate magazine. So the only glitch was that several of the exhibits refer to articles in  the magazine which we couldn’t read unless we subscribed to the magazine for $100 a year!

 

But this was part of the radicality of the exhbition that some of the exhibitors were actually climate journalists:  Rory White, John Woodside,  Cloe Logan, Natasha Bulowski, Jennifer Cole. Each of these writers were represented by a photograph of the issue they were addressing and a lead to their article in The Natioanl Observer

 

 

“Ontario First Nation battles Australian-owned company over Ring of Fire mine” by John Woodside

 

 

“World’s biggest carbon capture project could ‘essentially drain Alberta’, experts warn”  By Darius Snieckus & Rory White

 

 

One data centre or one million homes? Mapping Ontario’s proposed hyperscaler boom

 

 

 

 

 

Fish are flooding back into Toronto’s Don River
By Cloe Logan

 

 

 

Critical minerals an ‘ace’ in Canada’s hand ahead of trade negotiations.
By Natasha Bulowski

 

 

 

Massive mine expansion looms over calls to halt thermal coal exports
By Natasha Bulowski

 

 

Unpacking Big Oil’s fierce pushback against new truth-in-advertising rules By John Woodside

 

 

A US climate conspiracy has spread to Canada — and local politicians haven’t been warned
By Rory White

 

 

As ice road melts, a First Nation eyes solid ground
By Cloe Logan

 

this is only some of the articles. the combination of journalism and art was really effective. Clearly the imagery that went with the articles ranged from imaginary ( Trojan Horse) to  docmentary.

 

 

These articles with their single photograph did not eclipse the art at all rather they  expanded the breadth of the exhibition.

 

Theme 1 Consumed Earth

 

 

For Consumed Earth  it is easy to have photographs,  unfortunately. Edward Burtynsky, Oil Spill #10, Oil Slick, Gulf of Mexico, June 24 (2010)

Edward Burtynsky has been photographing the effects of industrial projects and thier impact on the land for decades. He was an obvious choice.

 

 

But my favorite work in Consumed Earth is by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun,

The Impending Fire Storms (2024)

 

 

This incredible painting gives us the full flames of destruction with animals afire and other creatures and trees about to be devoured shortly. But the wall of fire also suggests that the creatures behind it are resisting.

 

 

“These paintings are history paintings, and when you look into these paintings, you are looking into a mirror. The environment, land title, being native in this country, it’s all there.”

—Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun

 

 

Another work about consumed earth by Liz Larner, Meerschaum Drift (Blue) (2020–21), created from plastic, also speaks direclty to us clearly ( plastic is a particular obsession of mine)

 

 

this sculpture made from plastic waste assumes a lovely wave like quality from afar.

 

 

Judy Chicago ! is part of the consumed earth section with her multi part piece   The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction (2015–16). Here are three of them

Gorillas (Collected)

Frogs ( Disappearing) and Birds (Silenced)

 

 

 

 

 

John Akomfrah Vertical Sea ( three screens changing )

 

 

“The sea has its own independence, its own power and ontology, and it is ‘playing’ the space in which these dramas are unfolding…The sea is enormous, but it doesn’t care much who we are. It is not there to form a backdrop to our becoming or unbecoming.”

—John Akomfrah

 

Ths piece was shown a few years ago  at the Seattle Art useum as part of an Akomfrah show that closed after one day because of the outbreak of Covid.

 

 

La Toya Ruby Frazier

 

Also part of Consumed Earth La Toya Ruby Frazier

A Flint Community Member Holding Her Water Jugs at the Atmospheric Water Generator on North Saginaw Street Between East Marengo Avenue and East Pulaski Avenue, Flint, Michigan,

 

Frazier has been addressing the toxic effects of industry in Braddock Pa where she grew up and documentedher family there. In Flint there are huge toxic water problems.. She herself funded the water generator in the photo.

 

 

Also in the category of Consumed Earth

 

 

 

Reena Saini Kallat, River Drawing electric wires, nails and pigment

“Our connection to water lies both internally and externally, water being the origin of all known forms of life and our bodies primarily being composed of it.”

—Reena Saini Kallat

 

“River Drawing is an in-situ work that traces the borders of nations locked in conflict over shared river systems. Using electrical wires as a drawing tool, Reena Saini Kallat (b. 1973, Delhi, India) maps geopolitical boundaries that cut across waterways, revealing the tension between fluid natural forces and territorial claims. In her rendering, that typically separate seem to loosen and conjoin, echoing the flow of the river rather than the authority of the state.”

 

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Living Knowledge

Carolun Cayceda’s fishng net To Drive Away Whiteness/Para alejar la blancura with detritus attachedis in the category living knowledge

 

“created from handmade fishing nets collected by Carolina Caycedo (b. 1978, London, United Kingdom) along river communities in Latin America affected by the privatization of those waterways.

Each Cosmotarraya is linked to specific people, rivers, traditions, and cultures, just as each net is linked to the individual who wove it. The resultant sculptures are talismanic embodiments of local resistance to corporate and governmental attempts to control the flow of water.”

—Carolina Caycedo

 

 

 

we see the toxic bottles in the river here, but the living knowledge has to do with the people who fish.

 

Also in Living Knowledge is Andrea Bowers

 

 

Andrea Bowers, Eco Grief Deforestation Series (Old Growth Stump 2) (2024)we see the stump with the artist crouched inside it.

 

“This work calls attention to old-growth forest logging practices in Northern California, where the stumps of 1,000- to 2,000-year-old trees exist as shadows of a once-thriving rain forest. Bowers was arrested in 2011 for tree-sitting in Arcadia, California.”

Bowers is intensely politically active and sees her art as embedded in activism.Cerainly this image of her inside a tree stump gives us a sense of the intensity.

 

 

 

“Alberta gets its way in deal with Ottawa”
By John Woodside & Natasha Bulowski

is part of Living Knowledge

Is the phtograph is “art” ? but the comment as the lead of  an article refers to a crucial issue highlighted by all these ridiculously smiling faces as they decide to tear the earth apart further Alberta of course is alreadynotorius for their exploitation of tar sands, and the horrendous environmental conditions that have resulted.

So against these clean orderly smiling faces is the ghastly polluton in Alberta.

 

In another version of Living Knowlege you can just see the human body under the ricks

The artist is buried under there

 

asinnajaq, Rock Piece (Ahuriri Edition) (2018)

This is a still from a video

 

“The weight of the stones as they pile on your body is an opportunity. . . I refuse to let the weight keep me down. Pushing myself up from the stones slowly and carefully. As I rise from underneath the weight of the stones the stones fall and slide away. It takes effort from the body and mind to be out from under the pressure of the stones but, as they fall, my body I must accept that I’m in a cycle.

—asinnajaq

What we  heard was the rumbling of the rocks , but we never saw him emerge- this is certainly an example of living knowledge!

 

 

“Pathways Alliance’s flagship project looks like a big money loser
By John Woodside

Living Knowledge

This odd photograph is obviously constructed. I think it shows carbon exploding out of a pipe. The reference is to a carbon capture project and piping carbon to an underground stoage that is runnng way over budget.

 

Living Knowledge Teresita Fernandez’s work.

Teresita Fernández, Island Universe 2 (2023)

 

“I often use the word landscape because it’s a word that is perceived to be passive—as opposed to territory or country. But place is an entirely social construct, always attached to narratives of power and dominance. The places are named by the winners, by the oppressors. Maps are drawn up in the same way.”

—Teresita Fernández

The  map of the world created in charcoal invokes the continents but they are all connected and recognizable even as they have been rearranged and reshaped.

 

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Material Memory

 

Clarissa Tossin, Future Geography: Cosmic Cliffs (2023)

This work which gives the show its title is emtirely made from Amazon boxes. It is a very amusing title and to put it in the category of material memory is also funny.

 

The piece, like so many of the works in the exhibition, looks like an attractive abstract work until the meanng of the title and material sink in.So our future is Amazon boxes, creating lanscapes of rubbish.

 

 

Also in Material Memory is this piece, which I found fascinating

 

 

 

Firelei Báez, Unbound (one way ashore, a thousand channels), 2024

the large female figure in the foreground partially obscures

the print behind it which is identified as an “early nineteenth-century map—titled “Picture of Organized Nature as Extending over the Earth” and composed by British cartographer Charles Smith (1776–1854). Smith’s chart reflects the drive to categorize and contain the natural world, compressing the Earth’s oceans, polar ice, mountain ranges, flora and fauna into a single, totalizing image. ”

 

By placing a huge body in front of it, the artist contradicts and cancels that endeavor: the body is blue green, a marine color, her pose is temporary, about to go forward, so the overall effect is that we are with her as she balances on one knee.

 

 

 

Another example of Material Memory

 

Rebecca Belmore, nindinawemaganidog (all my relations), keeper (2017)

This unassuming image is a recreation of performance art work. the actor ( artists sister) is cleaning a clay floor with a claysoaked rag.

the artist is Asishinaabe ( a group of indigneous peoples from various tribes) from the Great Lakes area. The idea is labor, especially women’s role in caring for the land.

 

Another favorite from Material Memory

Jean Shin’s Huddled Masses

Guess what, they are all cell phones that have been discarded!

This really works as an indivual sculpture and a big comment.The Huddled Masses have also been referred to as Scholars Rocks!!

as in China.

 

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The final category is Speculative Worlds.

 

 

Rose B. Simpson Co Pilot  A

Another work with clay and other sacred materials, this proud guardian figure is going to lead withut fear.

Rose Simpson is from the Santa Clara Pueblo. and she has transformed the traditons there. There is a long tradition of transforation among Pueblo women, her mother is Roxanne Swetzell

another well known artist.

 

Another  Speculative Worlds

 

 

Josh Kline, Desperation (2024)

 

“Scientists and politicians do a very poor job of making people understand what sea level rise means for them. . . Art has the ability to place people inside a story and help them understand those connections emotionally.

—Josh Kline

 

 

 

we saw this piece with the video recounting two paople marroned without any place to go. The raft suggests the travel, the video gives us an imaginary situation of someone adrift on a raft, who have been turned back by immigration authorities. and are the victims of sea level rise ( two actors played the part).

 

Speculative worlds:

 

Huma Bhabha, Lifetime (2013)

“Monsters are beautiful to some of us, depending on how we were informed by different experiences in our upbringing. For me, I have always had a passion for extreme visual imagery which responds to the horror and science fiction films I have watched.”

—Huma Bhabha

 

 

By way of grand conclusion there was an installation ouside the four themes.

 

On another floor was this amazing full room installation

Sanctuary: the Ancient Forest Experience

 

Curated by Dr.T’uy’t’anat Cease Wyss with filmakers Damien Gillis and Olivier Leroux

Inside the replica  of the oldgrowth tree stump is a video that immerses us. the forest we see is on the Sunshine coast where some forests have survived since the last ice age, and others have been clear-cut.

In the video we see Dr.Wyss wandering through the forests and the clearcuts with the music of birds, and waterfalls as she narrates what she is harvesting in the way of small plants. Logging was stopped after a decade of activism in this foresst, but many other ancient forests still need protectiion

 

So what conclusion can I draw from the exhibition?

Future Geographies  is amazing in its breadth and detail. It covered so many approaches to addressing climate change.

But of course there is so much more to say.

 

 

 

Zadie Smith in an article titled “Art for Our Sakes” in the New York Review of Books started with “why talk about arts and letters when people are being gunned down in the streets?”

She concluded “Such art is made by us and for us. It is for our sakes. Its power is not the kind ths president recognizes, but it has its own kind of force. It will outlast both him and his regime. It will outlast us all.”

 

Don’t miss it Future Geographies. Or at least access the online catalog with the artists interviews. We can all take some steps to save our precious planet.

A Clockwork Raven: Preston Singletary

 

As we enter the exhibition of Preston Singletary’s  “A Clockwork Raven,” we  first  see  this extraordinary construction with Raven lying under a contraption that is dripping oil rendered from salmon heads, a traditional healing oil  for the Tlingit.

 

 

 

 

We  stand shocked as we  look  down on Raven and wonder what ths is about.

A Clockwork Orange was  a  film  about gang violence in  the early 70s. So how do we  see  it  applyig here.  Raven goes  through several iterations  in the  exhibition,  each of them  representing a side of R aven we have not  seen before,  enmeshed  in greed and violence.How can we understand it??

 

The answer lies in the stories that Garth Stein wrote to accompany  the exhibition. He begins :

“It began as a  way to save the world from itself. Or rather to  save the People of the world from  their own self destructive nature. For the People hd  groooooown sick  verily- they were pale, bloated, hairless  thngs covered  wth rashes, bags under their eyes…”

 

 

Raven’s plan was to provide healing for his people through feeding them rendered oil  from fish heads.

But the plan didn’t work.

 

Raven built a rendering faciltiy but when it was finished he lay under it and became intoxicated. “Raven lolled on his back, bloated, the fish oil pumping  ceaselessly into his belly. He couldnt move, couldnt  think and the contraption pumped .”

 

But  then he woke up and grabbed a seal who ignored  him  because he  was  so fat.

Lazy Raven/Strong Raven (below)  suggests  he is  regaining  his power

 

 

 

So he jumped  into the water and got hold of a log and floated and drifted.

 

 

“The sea carried  them”

Eventually they landed and dried  out and Raven flew  up and over Seattle where  he  has several adventures . First he meets a man who looks like a homeless man  who says he is Raven.

He is shadow raven  .

They are going between worlds!

Underneath Pioneer Square  is a whole world Raven and the shadow raven go into a nightclub  underneath pioneer square

 

 

 

 

 

Two other works give us the backgound on Raven . Both called “Upon the Mountain Top: Raven started as  a whie bird,  but as a  result  of  stealing the sun  ( Box of Daylight) he was singed  black.

Finally we have Inner Dialogue” This is a piece  that suggests the two sides  of  Raven, the trickster, the violent  and  the  greedy as opposed to  the caring. 

 

 

 

the final piece in the story is “noble truth” in which Raven talks to  Killer Whale. He says to Raven

 

“Raven the cycle of violence  can be stopped if the Will is present. If there is no will, the poeple will become like cannibals  and eat each other until there are  none left”

But raven slept on.

At te opening of the exibition Preston told more animalstories, not this one,  that encompassed the oter animals in the exhibition. while he was talking, the technology misbehaved,  but he never paused.He continued to tell his story.

It was a moving  experience.

The exhibtion ended this weekend, I am sorry to say, but the book with the story is available through the gallery.

Although Traver’s new gallery is not as atmosphereic as the old gallery on Pioneer Square,  the new expansiveness givess space for  each sculpture to breathe.

But I can’t resist ending wth ths photo of his last exhibition at the old Traver, about which I wrote on this blog.

 

AMcE Creative Arts Brings A New Vibe to Seattle

 

 

A.McLean Emenegger! That is the name of the dynamic director of the unusually titled AMcE Creative Arts gallery. As  I walked along 19th Street, its small storefront popped out with bizarre ceramics by Sonja Peterson.  The director herself was explaining the significance of several offbeat cookie jars by Ryan Kelly.

It was clear that this dynamic woman was articulate! She told me she came from Los Angeles and had worked in all aspects of art for over 20 years.  She began in  television, ran a gallery, curated, career coached artists, edited an art magazine, marketing, and she also makes art. And writes about it. Whew. Her goal is to bring people together for a shared human experience.

The current exhibition is edgy, although its title would not suggest that.

 

“Sacred” includes five artists: painter, Niki Keenan, painter and ceramic artist Kendra Larson, ceramic artist Holly Hudson, experimental mixed media photographer Christine Nguyen and mixed media, Io Palmer.

 

The theme of the exhibition is the intersection of humans and nature, but more than that the idea of sublime, the sense that nature is overwhelming and uplifting. The paintings in the exhibition seem to most directly express the sublime.

   

Kendra Larson’s Tree of Knowledge  Niki Keenan ‘s Sunbeam Marsh are both landscapes  but emphasizing trees with strange colors and  light.

Keenan’s painting in particular emphasizes the sun breaking through a forest that is dense with tangled trees . Larson’s Astral Slugs feels more like swamp trees. In the sky are “astral slugs” large slugs curling around the blue sky!

 

I just came from the new exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum “Mystic Modern” which suggests the intersection of especially surrealism with the earlier well known “mystics” like Mark Tobey and Kenneth Callahan. I see the same intersection here, only more removed from classical surrealism. These artists are surreal in their own original way.

 

Christine Nguyen creates magic with a unique technique. She draws and paints on both sides of a negative (her background is in photography). She overlays the two sides and photographs them, then prints it.  She then immerses it in a salt bath which adheres serendipitously to the surface The result is a sparkling image.   My favorite is Deer Spirit in which the deer’s antlers become a tree and echo in the tree-like form nearby. As articulately explained on the website “The pieces fluctuate between the micro and macro-worlds while connecting the flora and fauna to the celestial heavens of stars and planets as part of her ongoing investigations of our connection to the natural world.”

 

 

Holly Hudson  is a bigger stretch to connect to the “the Sacred” or the sublime. Her oddball ceramics are pure fantasy though:

 

Jerome’s Lion is a young lion covered in flowers No sign of a thorn as in the story of Saint Jerome.

 

Rooted featuresa ceramic foot with a thick tangle of roots growing out of its sole. G

 

The Seer is a large eye surrounded by flowers. What these ceramics have in common ( they are both glazed and unglazed) is a sense of eerie fantasy.

 

 

Io Palmer’s work achieves the “sacred” in an entirely different way. She creates a combination of glazed ceramic shapes that become clusters of organic forms as they almost seem to move in clusters across a wall. She has spoken of her open, winding forms as transforming and liberating, overcoming the restrictions she has experienced as a woman of color.  The work speaks of flowering branches that are clustered in segments. They do not relate to a specific natural form, but to a sense of nature as freeing. She lives in the Palouse ,a Professor of Art at Washington State University where the landscape is open and has few trees or shrubs: she seems to be providing that in her work.

 

To return to the gallery and its director, the location of AMce Creative Arts, far from other galleries, seems to liberate the owner to pursue her own path. She said people drop in all the time – her neighbors are her friends, but she does not participate in art walks because no one came.

 

In short, you are in for a treat when you visit this gallery. The next exhibition is a selection of artists with the title “Ad-Lib”

You can preview them on the gallery website. I am not familiar with most of them but it is clear that A.McLean Emenegger is bringing an entirely new vibe to our small Seattle art scene.

Esther Ervin

 

 

Esther Ervin: Sculptor, Jeweler,  Curator

Esther Ervin was born in a small town in New Jersey, but moved to California at the age of 16. Her house was near the Irvine ranch where she actually saw cowboys herding cattle, now, of course, developed with housing. She went to Palestine /Israel as an undergraduate in high school in California and after college with a BA in Biology she went into the Peace Corps for three years from 1977 to 1980. She was assigned to Columbia where she worked with street boys who were wild  and poor and sometimes homosexuals. She gave them language training in both art and science. From there she went on to work at a Catholic school and then to Bogota. Finally she was home economist part for the families of a coffee grower committee where they did food canning and created mats from fique ( a type of grass).

In 1980 she returned to California and went to Graduate School at Cal State Long Beach where she studied art and science medical illustration. In 1994 she came to Seattle where she pursued another career in insurance and securities. She connected to the Festival Sundiata where she had seen an art show and began  meeting artists  in the late 1990s. She first met Al in 1997. Meanwhile she began making jewelry.

 

She went to a Native American workshop where they used gourds to make art . She was inspired to make her own gourd art. (Her father was raised on a Cree reservation). She is holding one of her gourd pieces n the photograph at the top)

 

A major turning point in her career was receiving a residency at Pratt Fine Arts Center where she learned jewelry making, metalsmithing and welding.

 

Another important honor was a residency at the  Dr. James W. Washington, Jr. & Janie Rogella Washington Foundation where she made  sculpture  from materials that were in the house.

 

Ervin was also Acting Director of the Washington House 2013-2018.

In 2016 she collaborated with Doggett on the extensive Liberty Bank Building artist project. On Union Street near 24^th avenue  Esther created drum shaped seats with a tiled basketweave pattern and

 

above them transparent  window designs of the redlined area of the Central District.

 

In the central courtyard of the building are several bronze salmon struggling to go upstream. There is a sporadic flow of water that does not support them, a metaphor for the struggles of African Americans to succeed.

 

Ervin has created other public art works in the neighborhood, most visibly at Jackson and 23^rd street, an abstract design based on cowrie shells.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And at Boren and Yesler, in the Wayfarer complex. As Ervin explains “The Wayfarer building works are large jewelry art pieces with one having a cedar tree and the other having a Douglass fir tree. The works speak to the deforestation of the CD. They are made of glass and semi precious beads, potato pearls, bronze chain, steel support structure, laser etched wood trees.

 

Even as Ervin creates more public art, she also works as a curator for an exhibition with Black Arts West Alumnae Association and the Garfield Super Block. In addition she continues to create exquisite art in many media, ceramics, jewelry, metal, and sculpture. Her work is imbued with a sense of history. One of her missions is to celebrate the work of lesser known black artists and history .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beau Dick and Priscilla Dobler Dzuz : Two Artists Address Climate Catastrophe

 

 

 

“Beau Dick :  Insatiable Beings “ until January 18th Frye Art Museum 704 Terry Ave, Wed- Sun 11-5

When I first came into the Frye Art Museum and saw the mask by Beau Dick in the front gallery I was horrified and frightened. They seemed so aggressive and ugly. But by a stroke of good fortune I was able to see a long film about Beau Dick in the museum and it explained how his unique masks are created and animated with performances at gift giving potlatches at Alert Bay Canada.

As he performs he creates a magical atmosphere with the mask. Each mask has its own particular function and name and as you begin to get used to his incredible distortions and originality it becomes a fascinating exploration.

 

Beau Dick  belonged to a secret society called Hamt’sa. To become part of this secret society the young man must become possessed by and purged from the spirit of Bax wbakwalanuksiwe’, a cannibalistic giant. In the end they are cured of the disease to consume everything. Beau Dick’s subtitle of his catalog  is “devoured by consumerism.”  suggesting that most of society is not yet cured.

Consumption of animals as  well as the planet itself by humans is the driving force behind Beau Dick’s work. In 2012 he took  40 Atlakima masks from an exhibition of his work in Vancouver, brought them back to his home in Alert Bay and burned them as a strong statement to “short circuit the commodification of northwest coast ceremonial objects.” Valuable objects are traded not sold between the people of the Kwakwaka’wakw. By burning the masks the objects were returned to the ancestors. The Atlakima also known as the “Dance of the Forest Spirits” includes 40 different characters ranging from supernatural to human.

“Winalagalis The War Spirit Puppet” creates trouble wherever he goes. In the exhibition there were several examples of this disruptive spirit. Under the theme of Hamat’sa we  saw Moogums four masks representing the “bird henchman” of the cannibalistic giant. Another group are the ghosts who seem to be taking care of the giant and they can resurrect people from  the dead. Apparently there is also a reference to Dickens’ Christmas Carol ghosts! The layers of meaning and materials are complex and can only be touched on here.

 

A second exhibition by an indigenous artist  features multimedia work by Priscilla Dobler Dzul. “Water carries the story of our stars.” (Ja’e’ ku bisik u k’ajláayil k Eek’/El agua lleva las historias de nuestras estrellas”) (until April 19).

In niches in the wall outside the gallery blown glass vessels make reference to  various specific animals and activities with the collective title:

“’When the three armadillos arrived with the water, the lords of the underworld brought the offerings and vessels removed their thorns to weave the threads together.”

All of these vessels have unique forms with precise titles such as  “Turtle rabbit also known as armadillo has been called many names, knows many things that the water, land, and winds carry.”

The artist is a mix of Mayan and Mexican heritage as well as Scottish. She, like Beau Dick, is making reference to  the critical situation on the planet, in her case with a focus on water.

At the entrance to the gallery the artist has placed a large embroidery with the title “here is the beginning the lands of the Mayas.” Looking carefully we can see a myriad of traditional gods, headdresses, people dancing , animals running around and the river flowing at the bottom of the tapestry also filled with creatures.

 

 

A second embroidery facing the other way is titled our “skies were once filled with stars.” It shows the deterioration of the environment. All is chaos, fear and conflict. A white man in the foreground stands on a pile of bones.

A smaller work made in collaboration with Doña Chela (Maria Graciela Cante Peraza) references that Kulkulcan descends from the skies.

We see a feathered serpent deity who descends from the sky  and bridges earth and sky as  a symbol of protection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the center of the exhibition an installation large ceramic vessels suggest women’s  torsos. “The four winds gathered around Tree and her threads.” They contain whistles and are connected by backstrap weaving, a long tradition in Mayan culture, to a “tree” representing the Mayan tree of life.

In the last corner of the exhibition a video documents a performance that  Priscilla created focusing on polluted water in the Yucatan and Tacoma (where she also lives). Near it are guardian figures in clay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These two exhibitions are remarkable examples of contemporary indigenous artists that address environmental concerns in entirely different media. The Frye Art Museum shines as it gives us new ways to understand our contemporary crisis. We are indeed fortunate to have it in our neighborhood (and it is free!).

 

 

Alan Lau maker of dreams

Gaylen Hanson : our local Maestro!