USA: Seattle – Great Improvement Over Vancouver – Super City

I was punch drunk and reeling from my time in Vancouver, and Seattle was just what I needed. What a difference a hundred miles makes.

EL VEZ – Currently a Seattle Original, but originally from San Diego where he plays at least once a year. His Chicano riff on Elvis must be seen to be appreciated. The two Elvettes back him up in fishnets and matching outfits. His shows are always fun, he has been doing these politically infused and entertaining shows for a very long time. It was nice to se a familiar face when I first blew into town. It seems Seattle has really embraced him, and I am grateful for that.

 

 

PIKE PLACE MARKET – It opened August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest continuously operated farmers’ markets in the United States. It is Seattle’s most popular tourist destination and is the 33rd. most visited tourist attraction in the world!

ATHENIAN – One of the many good seafood restaurants in Seattle.

 

                                             S.A.M.

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

Robert COLESCOTT – Les Demoiselles D’Alabama: Vestidas – 1985

Robert Colescott’s paintings tackle the legacy of the European avant-garde, using irony and acerbic wit to deconstruct the canon of art history. Re-casting iconic Western paintings using black subjects as observers, agents, and narrators, he critiques a history in need of revision. In this work, Colescott reinvents Pablo Picasso’s celebrated painting Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907) which ushered in the Cubist style.

Colescott takes on the blind spots in the European avant-garde notably their fascination with exoticism and ideas of “primitivism”-and he presents Picasso’s appropriation of African art through the critical lens of American history and race relations.

Jackson POLLOCK – Sea Change – 1947

“Modern Art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we are living in. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.”

                                                             -Jackson Pollock,  1950

 

Robert RAUSCHENBERG – Octave – 1960

Andy WARHOL – Double Elvis – 1963/1976

Reminiscent of movies and mass media repetition, the serial image was central for Warhol, the choice of silver an additional reminder of the silver screen of the movies. Beginning in the 1960s, he combined celebrity portraits with a blank screen to emphasize absence and loss. The original image for this work is likely a publicity still from the Western film Flaming Star (1960), the movie’s title was clearly suggestive on a number of levels-it captured the fleeting glamour of celebrity, and also hinted at the singer’s sex appeal for women and gay men. In 1976, Warhol made a second blank panel to be paired with the painting.

 

Robert DELAUNEY – Rhythm No. 2 – 1938

 

 

Preston SINGLETARY – Killer Whale – 2003

 

Susan POINT – The First People – 2008

Mitjili Napanangka GIBSON – Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) – 2007

ASSORTED AFRICAN MASKS

Kane QUAYE – Coffin – 1991

Kane Quaye was a carpenter who decided that a coffin could be more than a rectangular box. He began sculpting coffins in the 1980’s using fanciful forms that evoke memories of the deceased. The dearly departed are carried around to visit their favorite places and people before being buried.

Torso of a Queen in the Guise of Isis – Egyptian 3rd-1st Century B.C.

Lucas CRANACH – The Judgement of Paris – 1518

Cranach treats this famous beauty contest as a deadpan comedy. Unable to rouse the attention of Paris, who is being shaken awake by Mercury, the three nude goddesses draw our gaze instead with their sleek bodies and coy self-confidence.

Claude MONET – Fishing Boats at Etraitat – 1885

Berthe MORISOT – Lucy Leon at the Piano – 1892

Music lessons, drawing, sewing and other creative pursuits were considered suitable activities for bourgeois girls before marriage. This unsmiling young lady “would have preferred to be playing croquet rather than pose at the piano,” according to the artist’s Julie, who observed the painting sessions. Yet by 1898, Lucy Leon had become a prize-winning pianist with a public career which was rare for a woman at the time.

Berthe Morisot was also exceptional, one of the few women artists to regularly exhibit with the Impressionists. The influences of her brother-in-law, Eduard Manet is evident in the loose, fluid brushwork of this study.

I personally would even venture a little dash of Renoir has been tossed into the mix.

Theodore ROBINSON – Day Dreams – American 1889

The countryfolk he encountered in Giverny, France, were as much a part of the appeal of that locale to Robinson as were the striking geometry of the agricultural landscape and the inspiring presence of French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, who made his home there. In Giverny, Robinson painted his first light filled Impressionist-style paintings in 1888, but they were, like this work, centered on a solidly painted figure, often one of the local farm girls.

Robinson believed that modern artists, even as they sought to capture the effect of shimmering sunlight with prismatic color and lively brushwork, must take care to preserve drawing as the foundation of “good painting” as he expressed it.

Louis Henry SULLIVAN – Elevator Facade from the Chicago Stock Exchange – 1893

Louis Sullivan, eulogized in The New York Times, in April 1924 as the “dean of American architecture,” had famously declared, “…FORM EVER FOLLOWS FUNCTION, that is the law-a universal truth.” Rather than hiding the elevators’ mechanical workings and shaft, Sullivan revealed them through his design of an openwork elevator cage.

SEATTLE’S CELEBRATED SPACE NEEDLE

 

 

BUMBERSHOOT – A Weekend Music Festival

Chihuly Flowers

 

 

Dalek

JIMI HENDRIX – Seattle’s Favorite Son

 

EMP MUSEUM

 

 

 

 

                                   Inside The EMP

FANTASY

 

Inigo Montoya’s sword and the six-fingered man’s sword and glove.

 

 

 

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES? – They breed faster than rabbits.

STAR TREK VOYAGER – Seven of Nine’s unforgiving skin-tight costume that Jeri Ryan wore so well.

Rumor has it that Captain Janeway played by Kate Mulgrew couldn’t stand her probably since Jeri arrived on the scene all eyes were on her and she sucked the oxygen out of the room leaving the rest of the cast with a case of hypoxia. Good gad, that costume might as well have been painted on. Now that’s Sci-fi with sex appeal and every straight male Trekkie’s idea of the ultimate wet dream.

The planet you see before you changes into all of the planets in our solar system. The ship you see in front of you is a model of  the Discovery One hovering over Jupiter. This is the very planet that the ship in 2001: A  Space Odyssey arrived at before things got a little strange.  Nice coincidence.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT – This is Leeloo’s costume which was designed by anti-Semite John Paul Gaultier. The gun was used by Bruce Willis who took it off a skeevy thief played by Amelie’s love interest in the French blockbuster “Amelie”. Amelie subsequently held it on Willis who kissed her without her consent.

Looks like the Trump effect is already being felt in the distant future in past Sci-Fi movies. Don’t let that get you down though. This movie was a family favorite, and we watched it together multiple times. Dina in her late twenties even lost a lot of weight and recreated the famous thermal bandage costume, and went as the minimally clothed but fully covered Leeloo for Halloween. It was a proud moment for us all.

DOCTOR – Dalek – Exterminate, Exterminate, Exterminate!!!

GALAXY QUEST – Sarris – A particularly unpleasant villain in the heartwarming and very funny satire of Star Trek. If you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend it. There is a stellar cast featuring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and Sam Rockwell. Even the aliens are comic geniuses. Fun for the whole family here, folks. I’m a trekker, and I must have watched this thing at least ten times. We often quoted catchy lines from the movie around the house.

MORK & MINDY – I have to admit that I was never drawn to this show, but I loved a lot of Robin William’s work. The man cared about people and had a good heart. It’s sad that he had to suffer so much throughout his life and at the very end. It is ironic given how much joy and happiness he brought into the lives of others.

TOWER OF GUITARS – You have to love an art piece such as this.

 

NIRVANA – Some paraphernalia from the band led by Seattle’s other favorite son, Kurt Cobain.

Some of the instruments that made grunge history.

Kurt crowd surfing in a beautifully integrated mural in the EMP Museum

 

Marjolein DALLINGA – Skin – Canada 2011

Gillian SAUNDERS – Inkling – New Zealand 2013

SHOULDER DETAIL

GLOVE

Xiao TONG GUO – Born To Die – China 2013

David WALKER – Lady of the Wood – United States 2009

Jane EWERS – Lunanoia – New Zealand 2013

Ding Lai KIT LING – In The Op – Hong Kong 2012

Lindah LEPOU – Le Tatau – New Zealand 2006

Hayley MAY & Fiona CHRISTIE – Second Skin – New Zealand 2009

Lynn CHRISTIANSEN – Horridus – United States 2010

Sarah THOMAS – American Dream – New Zealand 2009

This outfit would be as comfortable as gliding down Route 66 in a ragtop T-Bird. The body of this facsimile is made of cushioned vinyl. The shoes which take their inspiration from the car’s leather upholstery are also forgiving in that their heels are not over the top.

Now, that’s a shoe! The ladies in Southern California would be lining up around the block for a chance to purchase  a pair of these babies. In fact, I would advise Sarah Thomas to release a line of automobile oriented shoes. I think she’d make a fortune and fill the world with a huge quantity of wearable art.

Yuru MA & Mengyue WU – Delight Of Light – China 2012

 

EASY RIDER – “Captain America” Chopper – 1969

 

 

                         Chihuly Garden and Glass

GLASS FOREST – Chihuly installations are distinctive achievements in scale, composition, and form. Glass Forest, made at the Rhode Island School of Design where Chihuly was an instructor, is an early example of his commitment to the exploration of media and team collaboration. James Carpenter, an illustrator specializing in botanical drawings, approach Cihuly in 1971 to experiment with blowing botanical forms inspired by the Ware Collection of Blaschka  Glass Models of Plants at Harvard University. Glass Forest came out of that collaboration and explored the common ground between natural forms and the organic appearance of blown glass.

Northwest Room

 

MILLE FIORI – With the Mille Fiori – Italian for “a thousand flowers,” – Chihuly assembles gardens of glass that contain many of his series of works. First exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum, the techniques used to create the Fiori rely less on tools and more on the use of fire, gravity, and centrifugal force. The artist has said that memories of his mother’s garden serve as inspiration for these “gardens of glass.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fare thee well Seattle, and thanks for cleansing my psyche of the trauma that was Vancouver. Looking forward to putting the finishing touches on the job in Portland, Oregon.