Megane (eye glasses)

Cloud Appreciation

2011-11-16T13:58:00.000-08:00

A nice section of an interview with Cullom Gallery artist Binky Walker in Charles Mudede's article today in The Stranger, The Cloud Appreciation Society. When I showed Binky's ethereal drawings of clouds in 2009, the gallery was still new as was this blog. If you missed them then, here are a few images of the artist's beautiful meditations on the ephemeral nature of clouds.

Binky Walker. Triptych no. 1. Graphite on paper. Each panel: 8 x 8 inches.

Binky Walker. detail, Triptych no. 1. 8 x 8 inches

Binky Walker. Triptych no. 3. Graphite on paper. Each panel: 8 x 8 inches.

Binky Walker. detail, Triptych no. 3. 8 x 8 inches

The exhibit at Cullom Gallery was titled, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, in a reference to the original pictures of the floating, or fleeting, world that were Japanese woodblock prints of the 18th and 19th centuries. You can read more about the exhibit here, here, and here.

Recently, Binky is hard at work on a new suite of single drawings, which we hope will be ready for exhibit at Cullom Gallery in late 2012. The artist's new body of work continues her close observation and meditation on natural phenomena, this time looking at the transcendent properties of light. I have been watching her progress with great excitement; the suite is perhaps her best work to date!

Finally, on what is a windy and rainy day here in Seattle, I couldn't resist including this short study for one of Binky's video projects in progress. Title is Seeing the Wind. Please stop by the gallery to see more by this talented artist.

Seeing the Wind from binky walker on Vimeo.

Cutting Edge: Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka & Qiao Xiaoguang

2011-09-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

This month and through October 15th Cullom Gallery is showcasing the work of two contemporary paper cut artists: gallery favorite and Tokyo native, Ryohei Tanaka; and Beijing-based Chinese artist Qiao Xiaoguang. The exhibit, Cutting Edge: Contemporary Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka and Qiao Xiaoguang, offers two decidedly different takes on contemporary paper cutting from two cultures with deep roots in paper cutting traditions. Below are a few installation shots. You can also see the complete online exhibit here. Tomorrow, October 1st, Qiao Xiaoguang's Beijng gallerist, Jan Leaming, will give a talk at Cullom Gallery at 2 pm. Jan will offer insights into the rich history of paper cutting in China, the role of mythology and folk art in Professor Qiao's paper arts, and the future of contemporary Chinese folk art. More on Jan's talk and other US events for Professor Qiao coming soon.

Qiao Xiaoguang (b. 1957) (left) Food Recipe (right) Humans and Animals.

Qiao Xiaoguang (b. 1957) several paper cuts from Qiao's Urban Landscape series

Ryohei Tanaka (b. 1977) Cutting Edge... Installation view

Ryohei Tanaka (b. 1977) (left) Iroha (right) The Myth.

What's So Japan About It? Part 2

2011-05-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

During the month of May, in conjunction with Cullom Gallery's current exhibit, East by West (highlighting work by eleven different artists who draw on technical and aesthetic traditions of Japanese art on or of paper) participating artists are invited to comment on the question, What's so Japan about it?" as the question relates to their own work. In the second installment of the series, Northampton, MA artist, Annie Bissett talks about her embrace of the technical properties of Japanese woodblock printmaking, and her departure from their historic content. B.C.

This thing I do, moku hanga, is very Japanese. The term moku hanga is Japanese for woodblock print -- moku means wood and hanga means print. Woodblock printing was brought to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhists from China and was first used to reproduce religious texts. After a time colors began to be added by hand and then, as woodblock printing became the primary form of commercial printing in Japan, printers began to carve blocks for each color. Japanese woodblock prints, also called ukiyo-e, are known especially for their intense use of color and for the fact that the pigments are water-based rather than oil-based. Although admittedly I am a Japanophile, I didn’t start working with moku hanga because I wanted to do Japanese art. I learned moku hanga because I was trying to find an artistic medium that would suit my way of working, that was neither toxic nor messy, and that would be easy and compact enough to do on the side in my small home-based studio while I continued to serve my freelance digital commercial illustration clients. If you’ve ever seen a genuine Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print, you know that the Japanese brought this art form to unimaginable heights of perfection. Because of this, working with the Japanese method of waterbased woodblock printing can be a difficult burden to bear. Not many of us 21st century western artists could hope to achieve the degree of perfection attained by the great 17th and 18th century ukiyo-e masters, nor do we need to try. Unfortunately, though, that type of work is what many people think of when you say "Japanese woodblock," so that's often the silent standard in their minds. I try to avoid this association by saying “woodcut,” “moku hanga” or even “woodprint,” a term I'm growing fond of.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) The night is still... From 100 Aspects of the Moon. Date: 1888

Like many moku hanga beginners, my first few prints were Japanese-y. I did a triptych of the Kamakura Buddha statue and a few tai chi figures. But after a year or so I began to find my voice. I realized that I could take liberties with the tradition, and the technique became a vehicle for the subject matter I was interested in. I'm an artist who is topic-oriented rather than process-oriented, so all my ways of working are in service to the idea behind the print. I make moku hanga maps from views of the earth I find on Google Earth, I imitate western printmakers when referencing western historical material, I do whatever I need to do to bring my idea to life using moku hanga.

Annie Bissett. Borders #1: U.S. Mexico. Date: 2008. 14 x 22 inches

I'm often conscious of the Japanese-ness of the method as I work, however. How can you do a bokashi (color blend technique) and not compare yourself to the ukiyo-e masters? Making a bokashi connects you to Japan. Using washi connects you to Japan. The carving tools, the brushes, the process itself are very Japanese in their simplicity, their beauty, their form. I don't mind that. I love it, in fact, because I love Japan. Yet I find that I am able to make very American art using this very Japanese art form. That paradox is somehow part of the work and is often amusing to me. One print I made in my recent "Pilgrims" series needed to show two Pilgrims as an American Adam and Eve, and I wanted to show them making love. I couldn't resist referencing Utamaro's beautiful shunga (erotica) work, so I copied one of his poses and I think the little inside joke worked well.

Annie Bissett. American Bible Story. 2009. 11-5/8 x 13-5/8 inches. Japanese woodblock print.

As an artist, the work I want to make is about my life, my country, my world, my worries, my cares and concerns. If I could paint I would do it with paint, but I can't paint. The transparent color overlays inherent in the moku hanga method somehow make sense to me after a long career as a commercial artist, so that's how I've chosen to express myself. I try to take the support of the beauty and elegance and history of the method without letting go of my own voice and identity.

The Washington Project - Update, Day 8

2011-05-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

Since touring and sketching locations throughout Washington State during April 2011, artists Eva Pietzcker has returned home to Berlin and is busy carving woodblocks for a number of views. She tells me that Soda Spring and Steamboat Rock are in process. Things got busy in Seattle at the same time, and I've been aware that the last chapter of Eva's tour with C.G. booster, Joe Kaftan, was missing from the story, sorry Joe. Now that I'm on vacation for a week, I finally have time to catch up on some of these things. So here it is, Day 8 of The Washington Project in Joe's words. More to come, no doubt. B.C.

Day 8
We rose in Forks, WA and went straight to the nearest dinner, per Eva's request. Over hash browns and coffee, we talked about similar childhoods, and how for both of us, creativity, the value of new experiences, and even Star Trek were all emphasized in our up bringing. Eva said she was taught that art was sacred - a belief that still completely impacts her life. She wondered if the creative life, by definition, is one of openness and exploration.

Our fist stop was First Beach in La Push. I mentioned that I was immediately taken by the scene of the village with huge sea stack islands just off shore. 'Why do you like this view?' Eva asked. 'I love places where you can see peoples' first attempts to connect with the landscape, like this village on the edge of the country, and old barns, or decrepit docks and wooden bridges in the country.' Eva said, 'For me, there is so much evidence of humans here. I prefer what is wild, and fresh. Working with the untouched landscape, I want to relate this to these areas in us, that are maybe fundamentally good in themselves, or at least untouched.' Eva smiled at me looking at the sea stacks and the ocean and said 'So could we go have a look at second beach, next?'

As soon as we arrived at second beach, Eva quickly moved toward a muscle encrusted boulder that lay in the path of a low stream, took a seat, and dove into a sketch. She was in front of a broad sea stack island, that was just off shore. Pacific rollers crashed around the island, and seagulls glided off to the side of the rock edges, just above the surf. This was the sunniest and brightest I had ever seen the Washington coast.

After pleasant lunch in Forks, we drove south and then east along the Hoe River toward the Hoe Rain Forrest. About 10 miles up the road, Eva very excitedly said, 'Stop the car, stop the car! I know we are going to see rain forrest, but the river is like none I've ever seen! With these enormous logs, bigger than I thought possible, I must have a look'. I obliged and watched her do her survey dance, until she settled on the pebbled bank of the river. She was posed in front of a tree trunk that was 150 feet long. The river basin was flat, wide and mostly made up of rounded gravel, with the sinewy streams cutting in and out between massive logs and fallen trees. A birch tree grove was beyond the river with pines behind them, leading back to snow covered mountains. It was an awesome scene. After returning from an long exploration climb on downed logs, I noticed Eva was no longer working, but was aggressively throwing rocks into the river. I waved her toward the car, and waited for her there. After a while, she approached, and said. 'I am done making art. It takes a lot out of me, and I can't give anymore'. 'Forever?' I said with a smile. 'Yes,' she responded, 'You broke me, you took me to too many places, now I'm broken.' I apologized and asked if we still might have a look at the Hoe Rain Forrest. 'If you insist.' she said with a fake grimace.
As we drove, she said. 'You know there are painters who paint 8 hours a day, but for me I have to hold all the plates in my mind, and I have to create something that is challenging and interesting, because this is only the beginning of the process, as I will cut and print for around 3 weeks for each sketch. And then it is very important that I am never repeating myself, because that is boring, so I really have to concentrate, and all that concentration can hurt, or at very least be very exhausting.'

When we arrived at the Hoe Rain Forrest, Eva perked up at the sight of the long drapes of moss hanging from the Spruce branches. We walked to the Hall of Mosses. We found ourselves standing next to a large beautiful owl, that was hiding on a lower branch. We continued into the great hall, and were surrounded by the layers of back-lit yellow moss, looking like so many golden tapestry. We were both quieted by the sight, and just slowly turned in circles, looking up, looking down taking in the illuminated richness of this wholly unique wonder forest. I didn't know their were so many shades of green in the world.
I whispered to Eva, 'If ferries exist, they definitely live here.' After a moment, I asked Eva if she was in the spirit to sketch here. She paused and said, 'Perhaps not. This is more of an etchers setting, so many lines in these trees, thousands and thousands of lines. This is magical, but it is not for my sketch pad I think.' With that she turned back on the path toward the entrance and said, 'Beside I am pretty sure we are on vacation now.' So we left the forest and headed to the coast for a nice walk on the beach.

What's So Japan About It?

2011-05-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

Saskia Lehnert. Looking into the Sun: The Appearance of the Artist Imagining Herself as a Japanese Warrior in a Kurosawa Film. Japanese woodblock print. 22 x 15 inches.

The piece in question is a self-portrait entitled, “Looking into the Sun: The Appearance of the Artist Imagining Herself as a Japanese Warrior in a Kurosawa Film.” The image used to create this woodblock print comes from a photograph, distilled through a line screen pattern in photoshop, carved with a dremel tool in woodblock, and printed in the traditional Japanese style, known as moku hanga. This print was originally conceived as a kite print, and in fact an artist's proof from the edition was mounted and exhibited as a kite in Japan. The subject and title of the print contains many ukiyo-e references, and was originally inspired by traditional Japanese kite prints of the Edo period (1603-1868): namely the 'big head' kites such as the Daruma kites and those depicting close-up, enlarged head shots of famous actors of the day or great warriors from Japanese history. During that time period in Japan, the government under the Tokugawa Shogunate kept tight control on every aspect of people's lives, and everyone was expected to keep to a very specific place and role in society. As John Stevenson notes in the book, “Japanese Kite Prints”, during the seventeenth century, “kite-flying itself could be a mild form of rebellion against a strictly stratified hierarchy. Commoners loved to fly kites over the compounds of noble families in Edo: though not specifically forbidden, this was considered a way of thumbing the nose at social superiors.” Indeed, it was this very idea that provided the main inspiration for this print: the power of flying symbolically through the sky over the heads of society below. I decided that the 'big head' in my version of a kite print needed to be mine. Not that my ego is currently so enlarged as to need to fly above everyone else, but I felt that a bit of self-empowerment through art- making would certainly be in order for my own personal time and place in the world today.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) “Mutsuki (the New Year's Festival)”. From the series, Five Festivals (Go sekku no uchi) c. 1845

The title of my print gives a nod to Yoshitoshi's famous print series, "32 Aspects of Customs and Manners (32 Aspects of Women)," produced at the end of the nineteenth century. These prints, with titles such as, “Looking sleepy: the appearance of a courtesan of the Meiji era”, or “Looking weighted-down: the appearance of a waitress at Fukagawa in the Tempo era”, depict women from various time periods in Japanese history caught in every-day moments of their lives. I adopted the naming conventions of these titles to draw a comparison between Yoshitoshi's depiction of women and my own contemporary depiction of my female self outside the Japanese tradition. Although Yoshitoshi shows a sensitivity to the women he depicts, which in my mind exceeds many of his ukiyo-e predecessors, I still hope to highlight the difference in the way his women 'look' and the way I 'look' as both the subject and the artist of this print.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) “Looking relaxed: the appearance of a Kyoto geisha of the Kansei era” (1789-1801). From the series: Thirty-two Aspects of Women published by Tsunashima Kamekichi, 1888

Yet not only have I muddied the gender role in this reference by 'imaging myself' into a heroic Japanese male role, unlike Yoshitoshi, it is not a role from a specific time and place in Japanese history that I take my inspiration from, but more, from my rather removed impressions of Japanese history as gathered from the movies and cultural artifacts exported from Japan, like what I absorb from watching a Kurosawa samurai film. More layers, more degrees of separation, but perhaps instead of being a romanticizing, exoticizing force, I can turn that distance into an advantage and not a disadvantage.

from Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, The Seven Samurai

Additionally, by using myself as the subject of the print, and then imagining myself into a typical ukiyo-e subject, it gave me a chance to examine more closely my unique connection to the ukiyo-e tradition, and the ways in which it and the larger picture of Japanese artistic and aesthetic concerns inform my own work. It became a means to highlight the contradiction of a Western, American, woman artist in the twenty-first century with minimal real-life connection to modern Japan working in the tradition of Japanese woodblock prints. Also, it was a way to find the resolutions inherent in that contradiction. And so, there I am, looking heroic, looking fierce like a traditional samurai warrior. I am looking into the (Rising) Sun, both literally and symbolically; it's nebulous, it's slightly blinding, it's hard to describe what I see, but I'm still seeking to find that insight, perhaps an insight that only an outsider can bring, that only an outsider can take away. After all, the technique, content, and inspiration used in my prints exists just as much outside the ukiyo-e tradition as in it; It's quite an interesting hybrid indeed.

Add Your Voice - Free Ai Weiwei

2011-04-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Please join me in signing this online petition calling for the release of Ai Weiwei. If you are unfamiliar with the events of Weiwei's recent detention, here is a description courtesy of change.org. "On April 3, internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. Ai’s whereabouts remain unknown and due process under Chinese law has been denied him. We members of the international arts community express our concern for Ai’s freedom and disappointment in China’s reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity...."

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

The Washington Project - Days 6 & 7

2011-04-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

(A series of posts from Cullom Gallery booster, and avid Northwest outdoors man, Joe Kaftan, who is escorting Eva Pietzcker on the next leg of her sketching trip for the Washington Project.)

Day 6

After a ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, we had lunch in Anacortes, then drove the few miles to the coast to Salt Creek Park at Crescent Beach. The tide was at a two-month low and the creek was barely wet. The beach was expansive, and stretched beyond the small island in the bay. I had never seen that before. We walked over jagged rocks that are usually under water to the line where sand and gravel begin. I pointed out geoduck and horse clam holes. On the sand we inspected the manila clam siphons. Eva walked back and forth in front of the stranded island, pausing and looking. She said she would like to work here. She sat down on the clear sand, and got right to work. I nodded off then woke up to Eva exclaiming that the tide was taking our beach back. We jumped up, I grabbed the gear while Eva stood in the rising surf, and finished her composition. She looked over at me holding the blanket and bag, and said, "This is exciting, we almost got caught!"

In the late afternoon we drove around Crescent Lake. Cars passed as Eva looked over the road edge and through the trees, waiting to feel the right spot. She spoke about the importance of finding beauty in a scene, but the need to not grab at the most obvious compositions. "That's the job of a postcard" she said. About a mile before The Lake Crescent Lodge, on Hwy. 10 1 west, Eva said, here. The spot was on a hairpin turn with no shoulder or guardrail to keep us from driving into the lake. So we went to the next pullout, turned around. I stopped and Eva jumped out and flung herself over the guard rail, with gear, onto the wooded lake edge. She worked for some time, and I drove by every 10 minutes to check. When Eva jumped back in the car, she was delighted. She said she had found a classic composition, but one that was subtlety compelling.

Salt Creek, Olympic Peninsula, WA

Day 7
Woke up at a lodge in the mountains then quickly headed for the northwest corner of the state - Cape Flattery. On the way, we talked about why I am excited for Eva to experience this part of the country. I told her that I am drawn in particular to places where land meets water, and this state has so much of that, and it comes in such surprising and stunning forms. For me, Eva's work gets to the essence of the beauty of an outdoor scene. When I look at her work, I realize I may not have ever seen the place she is representing, but I have felt it many times.

We arrived at Cape Flattery and scouted out the 5 or 6 view decks. Eva stood at each looking, moved around, sat down at different parts of each deck. At the farthest point, she declared that this was a stunning view: a large island and several small cliffy islands in close, and dramatic bonsai-like trees growing from the rocks in front of us. But after a long look she could not make a composition that included all these elements, so we kept looking.

She moved to the only deck that faced north, and started painting a series of branches in front of rocks in the water that were surrounded by swirling bull kelp. Curved cliff faces rose behind the rocks, looking like so many ship bows in a line. Eva worked quietly as one group of hikers after another stopped to take in the view, and to peek at what she was working on. As time passed, it became colder and windier. At one point Eva said, "this is too big, too much to look at, I need a second sheet." She asked me to hold her pad, as it fluttered in the wind, and she placed a fencing sheet above it and made markings to show were each element of the composition crossed from the original page to the new one. Then she secured to old sheet in her canister, and the new one to her black board. She worked in the chill a good time more, and then wrapped up her work, saying, "maybe it was too much, you could work all week on such a view."

We paused for a break on our walk out and I noticed Eva was sitting in the sun on the edge of a cliff, facing the slender rock islands just to the south of the point. I realized she had already begun another sketch. When she finished she sat next to me on a log and said, "You see, I need to come to a place, walk around it, maybe nap a little in it, breath it in, be with it, then I start to know if there is a composition there for me."

Back in the car we drove through Neah Bay passing Hobuck Beach to stop at Shi Shi Beach. This would be a new place for both of us. An hour-long walk through gnarled woods, over miles of muddy puddles, a few hundred yards down switch backs, and we slipped out of the thick woods onto a bright sandy beach. Immediately we noticed several house-sized sea stacks just to the north, but what caught our eye was a skyline-like set of sea stacks a mile or two away on the south end of the beach. The waves were crashing, the sun was sparkling on the water, and we both lay in the sand and relaxed, enjoying our arrival at this gorgeous place. We discussed how low the sun could get before we would need to turn back into the woods. We wanted to walk to the southern stacks, but that wasn't possible. Instead Eva zig zagged the beach we were on and settled in front of a huge weathered log and worked until the sun hit its mark. Eva wrapped up her work, and we ascended to the jungle, lumbering through the puddles back to the car. It was fine ending to a full and exhausting day.

Eva Pietzcker at Cape Flattery, WA

Shi Shi Beach, WA

Eva Pietzcker, Shi Shi Beach, WA at sunset

The Washington Project - Days 4 & 5

2011-04-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

Day 4

Tuesday was spent getting back to Seattle for an evening event at the gallery -a show and tell of Eva's sketches from Eastern Washington, completed prints from her 2010 summer trip to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, and a chance to share ideas forming around this project. Eva and I received a lot of good feedback from our audience, specifically that revealing the process of making this series of prints is in fact, interesting. So that was good, a hunch confirmed. Some questioned whether the political boundaries of Washington State were too come-lately and arbitrary when dealing with landscapes that were shaped over vast geologic time and by natural cataclysmic events, like the Missoula Floods. Maybe it's about the Northwest in broader terms, and about commonalities and differences shaped by these natural events. Others suggested that we expand the project: more artists, and more documentation, maybe a documentary? All this makes my head spin. It's exciting to imagine a much bigger scope, but how to grow the project and get the work done that this would require? A huge thank you to everyone who has participated, in person and in blog comments, in this first stage of The Washington Project. Everyone of you is part of the process. Your comments and feedback have been so valuable.

Watching some video clips


Eva shows sketches of Eastern Washington

Day 5
Eva was scheduled to leave for the Olympic Peninsula, but gallery friend, Joe Kaftan called late on Day 4 to say that he was in bed, sick with a recurring bout of strep throat! We regrouped and #1 Gallery Volunteer, Mark Minerich offered to escort Eva to Paradise, at the foot of Mt. Rainer for the day. Another huge thank you to Mark, who kept the project going (and provided Eva with wool and rubber to keep the deep chill away as she sat sketching on 19 feet of snow. Based on the sketch I saw this morning, there is no question that Eva's handling of an iconic location is in no danger of looking cliche. I can not wait for this print. It is going to be really something.

Eva Pietzcker at Paradise, Mt. Rainier, WA

Sketching Mt. Rainer in clouds - a quintessential view

The Washington Project - Day Three

2011-04-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Day Three
12:04 pm, Soda Spring, just east of Rimrock Lake and at the southern foot of Goose Egg Mountain. There is a throng of sound from the frogs’ chorus; of course not one is visible. The winter cattails are silver beige in the middle of the spring, amazing clear water reflecting everything. This is the B-side of the view from Reflection Lake, a view we will probably not see. This makes me think about one of the main questions of this series: if and when to look at iconic views. Our sense of the landscape of Washington is replete with our pride of these views. What to do with them? They are really undeniably commanding of our attention. It seems stupid to ignore them, the way a teenager’s affected disregard is for something that is so clearly amazing. Do we go to Paradise, to Chinook Pass, to the Columbia Gorge? (I already know we will do this today.) [P.S. 7:15 pm and no, we will not make it to the Gorge; keep reading.] and where on the Gorge? Do we look for the ‘most Washington’ Washington? Yes, we will do some of this probably, though it's a walk on a tight rope of potential clichés. So far though, we are going to places like Little Soap Lake and Soda Spring. There is an essential Washington in these places too. And interestingly, Eva is not always aware of what in the landscape is the essential Washington, rather it all seems essential to her. How much of my native sense of the State do I divulge? Is that helpful information?

Before Eva decided that we would stop and sketch here, we talked about lodgepole and Ponderosa pines vs. Douglas fir trees. Why one grows largely on one side of the state, the other on the other side - and the dividing line you could almost walk at the top of the passes. As a kid of the West Side, I know the Doug firs too well. The pines seemed like Martian trees on the rare visits we made to the tinder-dry side of the state. After two days of wide spaces and big rock, today, I was looking to show Eva the transitional places between the basalt and shrub-steepe and the forest. I didn’t think we’d find it at a marshy spring.

It is now 1:10 pm. Soda Spring looks like a sheet of mica you peel with your fingernail. The clouds are quintessential cotton puffs against a cornflower blue sky. The breeze that has not stopped since we arrived is blowing the 5-inch pine needles on this stand then this one. This feels like an iconic view. I don’t think it's the wrong thing to train a gaze upon. Reminds me of a conversation I listened in on last month between Deborah Paine (Curator, Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs) and Seattle art critic, Suzanne Beal, as they traded opinions about the existence of a Northwest aesthetic. Suzanne said undeniably there is one. Deborah wasn’t so sure. Suzanne sited instances of artists who had focused on various subjects prior to relocating to the Northwest, and who after a few years here, began to all incorporate the land somehow into their work. Is this self-important talk? Do all artists who live in a particular location train their eyes on the land around them? How does the location affect the art? What is Eva – German born, living in Berlin – seeing here? Will she, as I hope she will, show us a new vision of our state, or is that too much to ask of someone only beginning to look. Or do the first impressions give us something that cuts to the essence?

2:08, still Soda Spring. Sun changed to cold and clouds and it just snowed briefly. Eva is still sketching. Now the sun is back full. I am listening to Glen Gould in the car, clearly not made of the same metal as Eva. It is so cold outside that the pavement, which has absorbed some small amount of energy from the bright sun, is sending up head ripples, when it meets the 30 -something degree air. Never have seen this.

6:50 pm, Hause Creek Campground. The Japanese phrase, “it was all Yaji and Kita” was true for Eva and me this afternoon, again. We busted it up to this spot, late in the day after naps for both of us at Tieton, got turned around leaving Tieton (I know. How do you get turned around in Tieton?) then after not quite remembering the place we’d scouted out this morning, finally found our way here. The late afternoon/early evening light looked so different that we spent 45 minutes stumbling around with our heads pointed up, looking for The Pine Tree from this morning. Eva is now lying on her back, her sketching board raised over her chest. The sun is going down and she has many, many pine needles to figure out. The creek is saying its never-ending prayer. Otherwise it is very still. Reminds me of childhood days camping. The end of the day, the smell of dinner cooking and the promise of its warmth, and the promise of more warmth when we crawled into sleeping bags in the dark, to listen to the murmur of our parents voices barely audible over the texture of the creek, and then to fall asleep to inner visions of the majesty of the land we had witnessed.

7:15 pm. Eva just got up, thinks it won’t work. I ask if she can still try. This will be the last sketch of this leg of the Project. Maybe it will bomb and she will have spent some serious energy, mental and muscular on a failure. But maybe it will be a new design, an unusual iconic tree. I hope she can go for it and not be steamed at me for asking her to keep going. This will be touch and go. Another hour I’d say at least. She may be really mad and exhausted at the end.

Six minutes later, 7:21. Eva says, “I stop.” No more video clips, no questions from me. I think we are going. Yes, we’re going.

Soda Spring, WA


Eva Pietzcker at Soda Spring, WA

Eva preparing to sketch The Pine Tree

The Pine Tree (that was not to be), Hause Creek, WA

The Washington Project - Day Two

2011-04-18T02:03:00.000-07:00

Day Two

There is no theme today, at least not yet and it's already 4:20 p.m.. We are on a slope up from the east shore of Little Soap Lake. Eva and I had our mornings alone after staying up late again talking all-things-art. I walked around Tieton in the early morning and stopped to talk with Ed Marquand, who was already at his shop and office, Marquand Books, on the main square of town. We talked about the state of galleries in Seattle and the missing piece in the ‘art ecosystem’ as he called it, which these days is the buyer. Also traded some good ideas about messaging and marketing, or more to the point of what Ed and I require with our micro-niche arts enterprises: finding the specific audience for our special fields.

When I explained what Eva and I are doing based on my still-forming ideas and hunches, Ed cut past the fat to wonder aloud something like, “I don’t know how much people are into knowing about the process, especially if they don’t yet know what the end result is.’ Yes, and ouch. Something to think about (as I type about thinking about it.) I don’t know yet. Like I said, this is a hunch. So, are you interested in the process? If the buyer knows more about the process is he or she more likely to buy a work of art? Do buyers feel like they are a part of the art process? I hope so. I want them to feel that they are.

We passed through some of the Channeled Scablands today. Saw fields strewn with rocks that look like dinosaur eggs left there by the cataclysmic Missoula Floods that raced across parts of Eastern Washington during the last ice age, 15,000 to 13,000 years ago. I am realizing that Washington has a truly weird geologic history and tattoo. This strikes Eva too, though those aren’t always the things that encourage her toward a sketch. I watch and wait and drive the car.

We were on the way to Steamboat Rock (turns out its only 3, not 6 hours, away. But passing by Soap Lake, here are these massive carved cliffs that descend to the edge of the shallow and much smaller Little Soap Lake, just north of its larger namesake. The western sun was hitting the skim of water intensely, sending up silver ripples in shards, pushed along by a breeze from the north. Brown basalt scree topped by rugged horizontal striated cliffs across the water. New scrub brush is blooming in a spring green that looks like the moss Eva will see next week in the Hoh. We really aim to get to Steamboat. I feel pressure to keep us on task, but that’s not how this trip will go.

Left Little Soap Lake and went around the corner, up the canyon past amazing basalt columns cantilevered over the road in humps. Past Lenore Lake and boom, there was Alikai Lake and three craggy geode-like aggregate rock humps, each one bumped above the surface of the small lake. White pancake hardened silt holding rocks and sage bits all along the shore. Symmetrically high bluffs on either side, making a reverse fisheye effect on the eye. It’s 6:01 p.m. now. I don’t know if we will make it to Steamboat, the Shangri-La of our trip so far. But what we are seeing is amazing and truly weird stuff. I grew up in Washington and know for sure that I have never made it up this road before today.

7:05 pm. We made it. Steamboat Rock. A vaguely formed thunderhead threatens to eat the last clear rays of the sun, but Eva is out of the car, sitting on the narrow side of the road with the full mountain of Steamboat in silhouette across the eastern stretch of the north end of Grand Coulee. It is another dramatic, monolith. How will it look as a print? Will it make it to print stage or be rejected by her for any number of reasons. I won’t know until Eva goes home, reads the notes she has added to all the sketches tonight, and considers what to spend the time on to hand-carve and hand-print and what to set aside as only a memory of these days. I can say that the process is tenuous and ruled by weather and light conditions that are out of our control. I for one am finding it very interesting to be let in on part of the process.

(Eva said some very interesting things in the car today. Things I can’t organize well enough to write about so I will need to train the video camera on her tomorrow.)

Sketching Little Soap Lake, WA

Eva Pietzcker at Little Soap Lake, WA

Basalt Scree at Little Soap Lake, WA

Little Soap Lake, WA

Spring foliage at Little Soap Lake, WA

The Washington Project - Day One

2011-04-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

After completing a residency in Ucross, Wyoming earlier this month, Cullom Gallery artist, Eva Pietzcker is in Washington State this week to begin sketching on location in places across Eastern and Western Washington in preparation for a new series of views of Washington State. The Washington Project, which began with a summer 2010 trip to the San Juan Islands, this month will take Eva to the canyons of the Tieton River, the Channeled Scablands, the Columbia River, the Hoh Rain Forest and Olympic Peninsula. The April leg of the Project will be chronicled in a series of blog posts by myself (Beth Cullom, owner and director of Cullom Gallery) and Seattle graphic designer and gallery booster, Joe Kaftan (who will accompany Eva on the Western leg of the Project.)

Day One

We were caught in a bizarre karmic eddy this morning getting out of Seattle. A maze of detours in the Sodo neighborhood as we tried to get to Daniel Smith Art Supplies for more paper and paints, led to my own detour over Beacon Hill and finally to Dan Smith. Then a mundane trip to an AT&T store for a new SIM card for Eva and a phone car charger for me. All so we could head into the silent spaces of Eastern Washington. Do we really need the technology? (as I sit in the car, 7:10 pm along the Tieton River, and watch blue clouds blot out the last orange rays of sun, notice that the breeze is noticeably colder, listen to the natural white noise of the river.)

After settling in at Ali Fujino’s condo in the apple warehouse in Tieton, WA (huge thank you to Ali and Matthew for being our housing angels for this leg of the Washington Project – couldn’t have do this without you), we’ve been scouting out spots, several, and all but this one striking out. Eva has been talking about fore, mid, and background. And how she likes light against the composition to allow carving of “the white spaces.” Lots of the sweeping, monochromatic stuff of this landscape may not fit the bill. Eva is a woodblock print artist, not a photographer, or an oil painter. And the medium she works in may effect the subjects she chooses, I’m realizing. (Gray basalt is turning to purple in places, nicely set off by the sage green of scrub covering the cliffs.)

The plan and the actual, that’s part of art making, I’m thinking. I’ve been planning the places we'd go, albeit with some (my) geographic disabilities always there. So today my husband called to ask if I knew that Steamboat Rock was over 6 hours away from Tieton - someplace I’d hoped to take Eva. Did I know this? No I didn’t. Did I also know that Eva and I would talk till 1 am last night, looking at her new sketches and prints from her 2 weeks at Ucross Foundation? Nope. Which also meant that I didn't know that our actual leave time would be 12 noon - far from the plan of 9 am. So here we are, only a few miles from downtown Tieton, but the clouds are now that gray blue and peach pink. The river looks like celadon milk glass. Black and dead Garry Oaks are blending with the scars of dark basalt on the other side of the river. 7:50 now; also thought we’d have dinner with Ed Marquand and friends, but nope, we’re here instead. We are here.

April 16, 2011, Eva Pietzcker sketching on the Tieton River, WA.

Eva PIetzcker sketching along the Tieton River, WA.

This Thursday - Mugi Takei & Seattle's Small Press Festival

2011-03-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

As I posted last week on Cullom Gallery's Facebook, one of my arts dreams is poised to come true this week - a poetry reading at the Gallery! Cullom Gallery is pleased to host this evening event this Thursday night, 3/24 at 7 pm. Natural Verges: Poets on Visual Art, will feature poetry and prose by Mugi Takei whose drawings are on view at the gallery through April 30, along with several poets connected to Capitol Hill's Pilot Books. This event is one of several that make up the month-long, 2nd Annual Small Press Festival, organized by Pilot Books and its great owner, Summer Robinson. Readings are hosted by nine Seattle venues including Elliott Bay Book Company and Richard Hugo House.

I hope that each of you can make it, meet Mugi and see her exhibit that includes over 120 gouache and pencil drawings and several drawn stop-motion short films. I think that her writing, considered in the context of her drawings and films, is going to be dynamite. The other featured poets - Meredith Clark (of Ballard Farmer's Market Poem Store fame), Debra di Blasi (Publisher-in-Chief at Seattle's Jaded Ibis), and Lisa Radon (regular reviews and writings on the nexus of visual art and writing at lisaradon.com) will bring some serious literary chops to the event.

This is a free event. The public is welcome. Please contact Cullom Gallery (info@cullomgallery, 206-340-8000) or Pilot Books (pilot@pilotbooks.com, 206-229-7181) for more information.

Seattle's Aaina Festival

2011-03-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Dovetailing nicely with the strong female themes of Mugi Takei's drawings currently on the wall at the Gallery, is the upcoming the Aaina Festival at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, March 25 - 27, which showcases artistic work of South Asian women through performances, film, art and workshops. The festival includes performances of Yoni Ki Baat (an adaptation of The Vagina Monologues). I will not miss it. Here's the press info I received this morning.

YONI KI BAAT 2011 (inspired by The Vagina Monologues)Presented by Tasveer in collaboration with the Gardner Center for Asian Arts & Ideas at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, March 25-27
SEATTLE, WA, March 8, 2011 - Tasveer is proud to present Yoni Ki Baat (inspired by The Vagina Monologues) during the 6th Aaina festival, at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, March 25-27. Yoni Ki Baat, directed by Shahana Dattagupta, is a collection of authentic, bold, and powerful stories that are sourced, written, and narrated by local South Asian women.
Yoni Ki Baat will showcase 16 stories that connect the dots to form a master narrative, which asks important questions about gender, patriarchy, abuse and oppression, and also paints a bold vision for exercising choice and celebrating body, sexuality and love. The narratives are as much daring questions and challenges posed to the world, as they are baring reflections of ourselves in the mirror, in the true spirit of Aaina. Visit www.yonikibaatblog.com to preview the program and meet the performers.

A complete schedule of events for the 6th Aaina can be found at www.tasveer.org.Tickets can be purchased through The Seattle Art Museum website (www.seattleartmuseum.org).
Though Yoni Ki Baat will illuminate issues relevant to South Asian women, we hope to draw a diverse audience since issues discussed are pertinent to women and men from a range of cultural and geographic backgrounds.
ABOUT TASVEERTasveer, “picture” in Hindi/Urdu, is a Seattle-based grassroots community organization that is committed to bringing independent progressive South Asian films and artists to the Pacific Northwest. Visit www.tasveer.org for more information. Aaina is produced by Tasveer in collaboration with the Gardner Center for Asian Arts & Ideas.

Like a Specter

2011-03-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

I must confess that the print below, or many like it I have seen over the years, was the first thing I thought of on Friday morning as I watched with horror the tsunami wave, full of splintered homes, chicken barns, wood piles, giant ships and tankers, and car after car, gush with terrifying ease over the flat farmland and cities of Tohoku.

In case anyone thinks that Japanese ukiyo-e are unrealistic, I would encourage you to do some Google searching for similar ukiyo-e of earthquakes and tsunami. In the case of this print by Utagawa Kokunimasa (1874-1994), its psychological and emotional terror predates the numbing horror of video clips we are all watching of the Tohoku quake and tsunami by 115 years.

A Japanese woodblock print illustrating the June 15, 1896, tsunami that struck Iwate, Aomori, Miyagi Prefectures. The tsunami destroyed more than 5000 houses, killed approximately 30,000 people. The wave reached 30 m (nearly 100 feet) in height in some areas. The Meiji Sanriku Tsunami remains one of the largest natural catastrophes in modern Japanese history. Information courtesy of artelino.com

Japan, Japan, Japan

2011-03-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Like everyone I have talked to in the past two days, the devastation endured by Japan on Friday is consuming my thoughts, and anxieties, and prayers. It is hard to comprehend what has happened. A sickening awareness grows though as I watch from a helpless position behind the computer, as a trickle of reports from deeper inside the destroyed area are posted at the BBC or Asahi Shimbun's online coverage. I am grateful for some amazing coverage there and many other sources. I am especially thankful for the science and environmental desk at BBC for their level-headed interpretation of information about the overheated Fukushima nuclear reactors. Again, praying that that second disaster is contained.

I have spoken to or shared email with all artists who show at Cullom Gallery who either live in Japan or have family there. I am so relieved to report that all are personally safe. Please keep your thoughts with the people of Japan.

Here is a blog post from Annie Bissett that is a sad delight to read - photo memories of her trip with Lynn to Tohoku in 2004. My sense of grief is magnified by a new awareness of the beauty and majesty of the region and its people, a place I never got to before this hell passed through it.

From the blog, Woodblock Dreams by Annie Bissett

Mugi Takei "I Waited A Long Time For You" Opens Tonight

2011-03-03T12:03:00.000-08:00

We have been busy, busy installing over 120 drawings by Seattle artist, Mugi Takei, and re-purposing the closet as a screening room for her stop motion animations, which together make up the new exhibit, "I Waited A Long Time For You": Drawings by Mugi Takei, running March 3 - April 16, 2011. The opening reception tonight, March 3rd, is from 6 to 8 pm.

Richard Heisler, another Cullom Gallery artist, so very kindly came in yesterday and filmed some of the installation and put Mugi and me in front of the camera, then distilled it all into this short film, which gets nicely at the content and tone of the show, I think. I am Richard's beta lab gallery as he considers making a side enterprise out of shooting films like this for gallery marketing. More on that to come.

The web exhibit for this show will launch in stages as I do not have enough room on my current website to show all 120+ drawings at once. The first installment will launch tonight at 6 pm at cullomgallery.com. I hope many of you will be able to see this amazing group of drawings in person this spring. I am very pleased and proud to be representing this talented artist!

Mugi Takei - "I Waited A Long Time For You" at Cullom Gallery March 2011 from Gallery Videos on Vimeo.

Day (or Night) Off

2011-02-17T00:12:00.000-08:00

Spent some time tonight looking at contemporary Japanese ceramics as part of vague, long-term planning for next year's NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Conference in Seattle in March, 2012. Museums up and down Puget Sound will host ceramic exhibits and most of Seattle's downtown galleries will give over their spaces to ceramic arts as well. Planning and gallery exhibit selection is officially in the very capable lap Marjorie Levy, co-chair of NCECA Seattle. It will be a fun departure and discovery for me since my knowledge of ceramic arts starts and stops with the pinched clay bunnies I made when I was 6 and the plate I made at the PLU ceramics studio with my aunt back when she was a ceramics major in 1974ish, right Barb?

Anyway I stumbled onto a nice set of links to graduating class exhibits at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. The work below was maybe my favorite. Ceramic feathers by Eriko Ueda.

Ceramic Feathers by Eriko Ueda

Heisler | Starr on ArtDish

2011-02-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

As seen on ArtDish this morning. Thanks for the mention, Jim and Eric! If you haven't seen the show, you have until February 26th.

Tyler's Talk

2011-02-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

A big thanks to everyone who made it to Cullom Gallery to hear Tyler Starr last Saturday. Here are some photos of the event. Tyler walked us though some interesting passages in his creative process. We saw jet engine diagrams from his father's career as an engineer, unintentionally comical pictures from a Japanese illustrated children's Bible, snap shots of cultural events in his Tokyo neighborhood, Japanese naval bases, and bigger public works projects across Japan, particularly dam construction and resulting protests. The later has become the source material for many of Starr's newest works, including a small illustrated pamphlet, which I have available through the gallery. I found his description of these dam projects to be the most interesting and blackly comical portion of his talk. As he described it, the building of new dams in Japan is largely conceived as a way to support jobs projects. Their consequences both unavoidable (the flooding of centuries-old towns and villages and resulting displacement of some of Japan's oldest citizens) and unintentional (like the reservoir made largely useless as a result of Tokyo's massive effort to install low-flow toilets), have sparked wide spread protest across the country. All the parts of the dam stories are the stuff that fascinates Starr. As he says in his statement for this show, There is a gap in manmade things between the idea and the actual realization of the idea. This gap is a result of many things including unintended consequences and contradictory intentions.

But whether it was his telling of the facts surrounding these dams, or the machinations of neighborhood festivals and protests, or the national conflict around U.S. bases in Japan, I was struck by Starr's thoughtful and respectful, even distant, approach to his subjects. Though the circumstances he lays out are often the stuff that makes you smack your forehead in disbelief, still he takes a look at all angles, the history, cultural aspects that affect these projects for better and for worse, and the how often the solution is not seen as a failure by the recipients. Like that dam full of water. It's now a tourist stop to watch the artificial waterfall released from the sluice gates twice a day, and a light show projected against the dam's massive concrete wall on summer evenings.

Miyagase Dam. Photo courtesy of Tyler Starr.


Tyler Starr at Cullom Gallery, January 29, 2011


Tyler Starr at Cullom Gallery with (left) Structural Props (right) Infrastructure.

Illustration from a Japanese children's Bible. Photo courtesy of Tyler Starr

The Bottom of the Earth

2011-02-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

This came past my in box today. The 50th anniversary of the first manned dive to the deepest point on earth - the Mariana Trench off the coast of Guam - was earlier this week. I don't know what day. But I loved this animated video celebrating the experience.

I also ran into an image of this amazing sculpture by American artist, Robert Longo. The sculpture is 87 inches high by 108 inches across and 16 inches deep. It would fill the biggest wall in our home; I wish it would. Here is the link to details of the three panels. For me, Longo's work is some part WPA mural and other parts Gates of Paradise or the Sistine Chapel's Last Judgment. But the judgment coming down in punches and elbows in a dog-eat-dog kind of purgatory. I'm out of time to consider the link between the two works, but in my mind there is one perking. The best and worst in us? The straining for existence (at the bottom of the sea or the economic wasteland?) or something much more optimistic?

Robert Longo (b. 1953) Corporate Wars - Walls of Influence, 1982.

Artist Talk with Tyler Starr

2011-01-28T21:14:00.000-08:00

I spent a good day with Tokyo artist Tyler Starr today, showing him some of the architecture and history of Seattle's neighborhoods. I also had a chance to preview some of the images he will use to illustrate his talk at the gallery tomorrow afternoon. Looks to be a very interesting presentation. Please join us at Cullom Gallery tomorrow, 1/29, at 1 pm for this rare chance to meet Tyler and hear more about his observations of historic and contemporary events in Tokyo that shape his work.

Artist Talk with Tyler Starr

Saturday, January 29, 2011, 1 pm

Cullom Gallery
603 S Main Street
Seattle, WA 98104
map
This is a free event and open to the public.

Tyler Starr at Fishermen's Terminal, Seattle

Tyler Starr at Kerry Park, Seattle

Opening with Richard Heisler

2011-01-25T22:39:00.000-08:00

Some photos of Opening night of Richard Heisler | Tyler Starr: Tokyo Paintings & Mixed Media Works. We had a great turn out, though by the time I thought to grab the camera, things had mellowed to a nice hum. Thanks to everyone who came out to make it a special night!

Mark your calendars for this Saturday, January 29th, at 1 pm, when Cullom Gallery will also host an artist talk with Tokyo-based artist, Tyler Starr. Starr will be in Seattle to talk about his work hanging in the current show from the series, Attempted Fixes and the Wallowing Series, as well as recent work from his doctoral program final exhibition at Tokyo University of Fine Arts. This is a free event and open to the public. I hope to see you at the gallery on Saturday!


Richard with Ginza # 5 from 100 Views of Tokyo


Richard and Mom


Cullom Gallery Opening Night

Ginza #3 (left) & Akihabara #2 (right)

Richard Heisler | Tyler Star Opens Tonight, 6 to 8 pm

2011-01-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Top: Tyler Starr. Attempted Fix: Phantom Recovery. Mixed media with ganpi paper, gouache, and pencil on paper. Bottom: Richard Heisler. Roppongi #1. Mixed media on panel.

If you are in Seattle tonight, stop by the gallery from 6 to 8 pm for the opening party and reception for the new exhibit: Richard Heisler | Tyler Starr: Tokyo Paintings & Mixed Media Works. Below is the press release for the show. I hope to see you tonight!

Richard Heisler | Tyler Starr: Tokyo Paintings & Mixed Media Works
January 21 - February 26, 2011
Opening Reception with Richard Heisler, Friday, January 21, 6 to 8 pm
Artist Talk with Tyler Starr, Saturday, January 29, 1 pmBoth events are free and open to the public.

Two American artists consider contemporary views and events within Tokyo's urban neighborhoods. Seattle artist, Richard Heisler's photorealist paintings from his ongoing series, One Hundred Views of Tokyo, quietly reference the landmark 19th century woodblock prints, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). Selections from two of Tokyo artist, Tyler Starr's mixed media series, The Wallowing Series and Attempted Fixes, look at political, military, and municipal constructions and events in present-day Tokyo.

Heisler's dense paintings contrast with the vast empty spaces of Starr's mixed media works, yet the meticulous requirements of both artists' chosen technical approaches lead to a similar close focus on their subject. Heisler's precisely chosen layers of color and perfect lines are carefully laid in over many months; Starr applies intricatly cut layers of thin, decoupaged ganpi paper, gouache paint, and tight graphite details. The artists' labor-intensive media draw the colors, angles, and real events of Tokyo into a sharper focus.

Richard Heisler was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1973. He was a student at Seattle Central Community College and Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA. Heisler is represented by Cullom Gallery as well as Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts, Binghamton, NY; MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa OK; and Galerie Persterer, Zurich, Switzerland. His paintings have been shown in numerous solo and jurried group exhibits including the 2008 Biennial National Exhibiton, La Grange Museum of Art, LaGrange, GA; the 2008 Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Realism, Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, IN; the CPSA Explore This 5 Exhibition, where he received the Award for Excellence; and solo exhibits at Anthony Brunelli Gallery, Binghamton, NY. Heisler's paintings have also been featured multiple times in Southwest Art Magazine.

Tyler Starr was born in 1974 and lived in Connetiticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota before moving to Tokyo several years ago. In 1999, Starr was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, Poland. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. He is currently a PHD candidate at the Tokyo National Univerisity of Fine Arts, Ueno, Japan. His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibits and jurried biennials, most recently, the International Biennial of Contemporary Prints, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Liège, Belgium; the 2nd Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing Exhibition, Excellence Prize,PSG Art Gallery, Silpakorn University, Bangkok Thailand; and Tokyo Wonderwall 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Japan. His work is in the permanant collections of the Corcoran Museum, Washington, DC; Univerisity of Connecticut; and Pozan Museum of Fine Arts, Poland.

For more information please contact Beth Cullom, Cullom Gallery, 206-340-8000, info@cullomgallery.com.

Yoshitoshi Tonight

2011-01-06T18:45:00.000-08:00

If you are in Seattle tonight, Cullom Gallery is open late for the First Thursday Gallery Walk. The exhibit Yoshitoshi Monogatari: Tales of a Grand Past & Uncertain Future is up through January 15th.

The word and concept of monogatari in Japanese literature is fairly commonplace, though it's not a word tossed around much in the West. Some may be familiar with it as part of the title of the famous and original novel, Genji Monogatari, or The Tales of Genji, written by the great Heian Period poet and novelist, Lady Murasaki (c. 973–c. 1014 or 1025). A monogatari is basically a literary form for fictionalized versions of epic Japanese stories. My use in the title for this show, I hope, serves to frame the historical and mythical woodblock prints of Japan's last great ukiyo-e artist, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), as the artist's own artistic spin on the legends and tales of Japan's grand past, which as a body of work produced at it's particular time, also served as a cultural tether for a nation embroiled in the upheaval of the rapidly changing and culturally unsettling Meiji Period (1868-1912).  

Lunacy, from One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1889

Yoshitoshi's short life of fifty-three years coincided with five decades of the most dramatic and raid cultural change theretofore experienced by Japan and its people. A young man in the waning years of the Edo Period (1615-1868) Yoshitoshi witnessed the fall of his government's self-enforced period of isolation, and by all accounts, anxiously considered the flood of Western invention, ideas, and institutions that made quick inroads into Japanese society with the transfer of power from the dynastic Tokugawa Shogunate to the pro-west Emperor Meiji. For Yoshitoshi this official drive to modernize and westernize threatened the very fiber of his nation's identity. He responded with ukiyo-e designs that on the surface recount ancient folktales, heroic legends, and epic battles, but on a deeper level, are a cultural touchstone for a nation, he felt, in danger of forgetting its past.

Ushiwaka (Yoshitsune) and Benkei duelling on Gojo Bridge, 1881

Okubo Tadanori rescuing Tokugawa Ieyasu on the battlefield, from Twenty-four accomplishments in Imperial Japan, 1881

Chang Fei on Chohan Bridge glares back at the multitude of soldiers, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1885

I also wonder, though I have not teased out proof it it, if the historic themes in the prints of the later part of his life also contain Yoshitoshi's own veiled commentary on the political events of the Meiji Period, rife with its own power struggles and insurrections. For me, considered en masse, Yoshitoshi's historic ukiyo-e read like a visual monogatari, telling a Meiji-era rendition of Japan's ancient beginnings. This exhibit includes 19 single sheet prints, diptychs, and triptychs from some of the artist's best-known series, including Yoshitoshi's Courageous Warriors, New Selections of Eastern Brocade Pictures, Mirror of Famous Commanders of Great Japan, Twenty-Four Accomplishments in Imperial Japan, New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts. I hope to see many of you here.

Year End Wrap Up 2010

2010-12-31T01:53:00.000-08:00

I have been hibernating this week between Christmas and the New Year, spending time reviewing the business end of the past year, and thinking about goals for the coming 12 months. There were a number of gallery highlights for 2010, one of the biggest being the successful move and reopening in our larger, ground floor location in Japantown. I am humbled by the history and peaceful beauty of my new home. The 100-year old fir floors, the old steam pipes that pop and groan, the sound of the piano through my shared wall with the Panama Hotel Teahouse, and my many new neighbors (some of whom I am getting to know by name and others only by sight and a wave while passing by the window), all of it feels very right. I cross my fingers and think of the hard work still ahead that is required to ensure that I remain a part of Nihonmachi going forward into the next decade.

I am also proud of the strong exhibit schedule we offered through the summer and fall. The gallery's second exhibit of Ryohei Tanaka's awesome papercuts was followed by our second show of German moku hanga artist, Eva Pietzcker's atmospheric landscape prints, and Annie Bissett's suite of Japanese woodblock prints of the American Pilgrims was also the gallery's second exhibit of the work of this rising talent. Right now, though January 15, 2011, we have on view a great group of prints by Japan's last great ukiyo-e artist, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892). As the economy improves, I hope to increase our exhibits of ukiyo-e and 20th century hanga, which still remain a vital interest of mine, not only for their fascinating beauty, but also as links to the work of artists working in Japanese print & paper media today. In the coming months we will also be introducing through exhibits and adding to the gallery's growing stable, the work of several new artists whose work encompasses drawing, painting, paper cutting, collage, and Japanese woodblock printmaking.

My deep thanks to all of you for your support this year. I have felt it in many and very real ways over these months. I hope that Cullom Gallery can hold your interest in the coming year as we continue to refine and stretch the edges of the Gallery's focus.

With my best wishes for your Year of the Rabbit,

Beth Cullom

Cullom Gallery

Snow Day - Gallery Closed

2010-11-23T15:50:00.000-08:00

I am sorry to anyone who braved the icy sidewalks downtown to visit the gallery today. I am home with Julia whose school was closed for the day, along with all Seattle Public Schools and most neighboring districts due to snow and ice. I am planning to be open tomorrow from 12 noon to 5 pm. See the complete list of holiday hours below.

If you are in Seattle, have a happy safe day in the snow!

Weather & Holiday Closure Days
TUES 11/23, Closed due to local weather conditions
WED 11/24, Open 12 noon to 5 pm
THURS 11/25 & FRI 11/26, Closed. Happy Thanksgiving!
SAT 11/27, Open 12 noon to 5 pm. Last day to see We Are Pilgrims!

Last Week for We Are Pilgrims

2010-11-20T17:11:00.000-08:00

There are just three more days left to see Annie Bissett's woodblock print series, We Are Pilgrims. Stop by Cullom Gallery (603 S Main Street, Seattle map) next Tuesday or Wednesday, Nov. 23 & 24, or the show's final day, Saturday, Nov. 27, and see this strong suite of Japanese woodblock prints that dig much, much deeper than the grade school myths of black hats and buckle shoes. Bissett's series explores the real hopes, anxieties, mistakes, irrevocable impact, and real life personages of the American Pilgrims from many different angles.

John Alden, 1621 & Priscilla Mullins, 1621.

Annie recently shared with me a lay-sermon she delivered earlier this year at her own Congregational Church, an old Pilgrim church, close to her home in Northampton. Here is a passage that I think gets at some of her kernel thoughts. (bold is mine, not Annie's).

They Looked Behind.

for two years I studied everything I could find about the first Europeans who settled here in New England, especially in those first 50 years, when nothing was certain. I read about them, I thought about them, I tried to imagine this land as they encountered it, and I made these 15 woodblock prints about the stories that most intrigued me. I discovered many surprising things in my research. Did you know that of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, only 37 were members of the separatist congregation coming from Holland? They called themselves not "Pilgrims," but "Saints" and they called the other 65 "Strangers." Did you know that the first brick building on the Harvard campus was a school for native American students? Or that the first Bible printed in North America was an Algonquin Indian translation? Or that two homosexual men were tried in court in Plymouth colony way back in 1637? Some of the stories amazed me, but what was even more amazing to me was that many of the things we're grappling with today were there right at the beginning: the role of religion in government, the question of who belongs in society and who doesn't, the role and rules of family life and marriage, and always a spirit of seeking, a pilgrimage to find home.

Honey, I'm Worried About the Kids.

Caleb & Joel Wend to Harvard.

As a child of the Pacific Northwest, the story of the Mayflower was a distant, self-contained, and contrived tale that resonated little with me. It was covered as a requisite part of third grade then pushed to the back of my mind with the rest of the lore of early America. The complicated, rich, proud, and later tragic history of Northwest coastal and Great Northern Plains tribes, their great pre-contact societies, and their violent snuffing-out at the hands of European Americans, this was the real, dirty story or my ancestors' interaction with the native people of North America. Growing up in Puyallup, WA, I also witnessed the abject poverty and the effects of ghetto/reservation life on the original Puyallup people. In my mind it was arrogant at best and worse, dangerously retro-revisionist to accept the notion of shivering Pilgrims taken into the warm embrace of the wise Indian, never mind what we Europeans did to them once we got our strength back. That is all to say that through my own engagement with Bissett's prints and her words of discovery, I have made a slow but profound turn-around in my understanding of the relevance the Pilgrims' experience as an American creation story, a story that we are it seems inexorably tied to. As Annie points out the same hopes, tragic misunderstandings, and steadfast (some would say intractable) beliefs first manifested by the Pilgrims are the same issues we wrestle with today. Sometime this summer Annie mentioned that Nathaniel Philbrick's book, Mayflower: a Story of Courage Community and War, had been a valuable resource for her while researching her series. I wish I had started this book earlier, but finally did only this week. Here is a passage from the preface: The Two Voyages.

Vast Unpeopled Lands.

...the Pilgrims (I thought) were the stuff of holiday parades and bad Victorian poetry. Nothing could be more removed from the ambiguities of modern-day America, I thought, than the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.

But, as I have since discovered, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and their children maintained more than fifty years of peace with the Wampanoags and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling, and complex. Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we need to know.

I certainly needed to know. I see now that I must spend some time engaged with this story of the origin of our country, and I am guessing that it's especially those magical 50 years -- before the fighting and division tore our country apart for the first time -- that have a lot to teach us about how to be American today.

Help stop a bad idea

2010-11-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

In a rare departure from things art and Japanese, I have to use this forum to urge you to tell Washington State's Building Code Council to reject an amendment up for a vote in just 2 days, November 19th, that would delay implementation of a piece of previously-approved legislation requiring carbon monoxide detectors in residential buildings in Washington State. My cousin, Lauren Johnson, was killed by CO poisoning in January 2009, so this is personal for me. But beyond my own family's grief, it's important to note that unintentional exposure to carbon monoxide is the most common type of accidental poisoning in the United States, with 40,000 emergency department visits made each year because of the effects of the colorless, odorless gas. Here's the letter I wrote to the council:

Dear Washington State Building Code Council,

I urge each of you to please do the right thing on November 19th and reject the proposal before you that would amend legislation already in place requiring installation of carbon monoxide alarms in residential facilities in Washington State. My cousin, Lauren Johnson, was killed by carbon monoxide while reading in her apartment in January of 2009. Her rented apartment did not contain a $30 CO detector, a device which would have plain and simply saved her most amazing life. Property owners don't get to delay doing this simple, morally right thing, just because they think it's a pain, or they don't want to take on the cost of detectors. I can tell you it is a really REALLY BIG pain to have someone you love killed in such a stupid, preventable way. (It is also a pretty big pain for property owners to deal with the legal fallout of such egregious negligence toward their tenants or new property owners.) Don't bend for property owners on this one. Make them do the right thing and save lives. It has already been debated and passed into law. So its time for everyone to follow the law, not sometime in the future, but now.

I am letting all my Facebook friends and all my Twitter followers know that this is in your laps. So you'll probably be hearing from a few of them too.

Sincerely,

Beth Cullom

Here is the email list to mail to:
jcochran@speakeasy.net, kristynatghe@yahoo.com, rallshouse@shorelinewa.gov, drbault@charter.net, jchelminiak@comcast.net, david.dewitte@pacificwoodtech.com, mhamasaki@hces-llc.com, a.homola@co.island.wa.us, rkoch@co.franklin.wa.us, DKokot@spokanecity.org, mkulaas@wenatcheewa.gov, mj_mueller@rezmail.com, peden@coffman.com, tpeng2009@yahoo.com, dale@seattlepipetrades.org, fulr235@lni.wa.gov, ormsby.timm@leg.wa.gov, tom.rodney@leg.wa.gov

If you'd like anymore information about Washington's CO legislation, or a full list of council members, please let me know. Thanks for considering lending your voice to this important issue.

In the News - We Are Pilgrims

2010-10-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jen Graves at The Stranger for the shout out about Annie's Bissett's show. The Curtis Erlinger photographs she also mentions are on view just down the street at Punch Gallery in the Tashiro Kaplan Building. Stop by and have a look here and there, then have a cup of tea at the Panama Teahouse next door. Antidote for the wind and the rain.

Day off, Collaborating with Julia

2010-10-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

Fall has hit Seattle hard this weekend! Big winds and lots and lots of rain. I spent today both inside and out with my daughter Julia, who turned five this month. We spent the morning on a 'wind walk' picking up fall leaves, then stopped by Top Pot for a doughnut, and the grocery store for more apples for apple pie. Tonight, we got busy on some watercolors to use for Julia's birthday thank you notes. We started each doing our own thing, but it got more interesting when Julia asked if she could work on my painting (sure!) and then suggested that I do the same on hers. Collaboration. I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Wishing for more at times at the gallery since I am virtually on my own there. Thinking of its place in the story of the rise of modern Japanese prints. And wondering what would happen if more moku hanga artists were to collaborate. Some of these thoughts perking in preparation for my presentation at the 1st International Moku Hanga Conference, in Kyoto and Awaji next June. I am delighted that a number of friends and colleagues will also be traveling to the conference and contributing their thoughts to the discussion, including the Drachen Foundation's Ali Fujino, and both of Cullom Gallery's own Annie Bissett and Eva Pietzcker! Hard to think of the warm summer days of June on a day like this, but the months will tick by, I know. (Apologies for the poor photos - taken with Photobooth on my Mac.)

Annie Bissett at Cullom Gallery

2010-10-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

I was so pleased to have Annie Bissett and her partner Lynn in Seattle for the opening of the show of her new series of woodblock prints, We Are Pilgrims. Here are a few photos of the opening reception on October 15th, and Annie's talk and demonstration the next afternoon. My thanks to everyone who came by. I especially enjoyed listening to Annie's thoughts on Saturday and hearing about the historical discoveries she made over the course of the 2+ years it took to complete the suite of prints. The complete show is up on line at cullomgallery.com along with Annie's commentary about the underlying facts behind each design. We also have copies of Annie's very fine illustrated catalog, We Are Pilgrims. Contact the gallery if you would like to order a copy.

Dorothy May Two Ways

2010-10-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I noticed that Annie Bissett had blogged about artist Sara Peters' show at Winkleman Gallery in New York, on view though today(!), October 9, 2010. In black and white, cross-hatched drawings and bronze bust portraits, Peters delves into the experience of the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, and as Annie calls it, the American creation story, in a very different way, but with one startling overlap: Peters' focus on the tragic death of Dorothy May Bradford. Here is Annie's post. It is really worth reading. And if you are in NYC today, go see the show at Winkleman Gallery, and tell me what you think. I wish I could myself. Woodblock Dreams: Artists On the Mayflower

Getting Ready for Annie Bissett

2010-10-08T11:42:00.000-07:00

We are putting the finishing touches on Cullom Gallery's next exhibit - a new suite of woodblock prints by Northampton, Massachusetts artist Annie Bissett. Come meet the artist and celebrate the opening of this beautiful and insightful show on Friday night, October 15, from 6 to 8 pm. (Cullom Gallery, 603 S Main Street, Seattle map). The Gallery will also host a talk and printmaking demonstration with Annie Bissett on Saturday afternoon, October 16, at 1 pm. Both events are open to the public. Come and bring a friend!

Here is some information about Bissett's series, taken from our press release, and a sneak peek at a number of the prints. We look forward to seeing many of you at the gallery next Friday night!

We Are Pilgrims is a suite of fifteen Japanese-style woodblock prints that centers on the lives of the earliest settlers of New England. The suite is both a personal exploration of Bissett's legacy as a Mayflower descendant and a critical look at the contemporary impact of the pilgrims' arrival in America almost 400 years ago.

Annie Bissett employs the Japanese woodblock printmaking method known today as moku hanga, which is characterized by Japanese papers, water-based inks, self-carved blocks, and hand-printing, to complete the series. All prints were realized over a two year period in 2008 to 2010; the artist has also recently published a full-color 72-page catalog that illustrates all 15 prints and in an essay by Bissett, weaves historic facts that she uncovered with her thoughts on the farther-reaching implications of the pilgrims' actions, beliefs, and institutions.

In her essay for the catalog, Bissett notes that the Mayflower was a small ship, estimated to be only 113 feet long. Traveling at a rate of 2 miles per hour across 3000 miles of the Atlantic it reached the eastern shore of America in 66 days. Several prints in the series consider both the hope and desperate anxiety felt by the pilgrims aboard the first ship, as recorded by Plymouth governor William Bradford.


Dorothy Bradford Comes to America.

With a Prosperous Wind.

In the catalog's cover image, "They Looked Behind", Bissett has carved a quotation from Bradford's ship diary in which he recalls, "If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world." Just two months earlier on the morning of their departure, Bradford had noted that they left under "A Prosperous Wind," the title chosen by Bissett for her twin views of the Mayflower under a starlit sky.
In one of the most dramatic prints in the series, "Dorothy Bradford Comes to America", Bissett has imagined the accidental or suicidal drowning of William Bradford's wife, Dorothy May, as the ship sat anchored in Provincetown Harbor and Bradford was ashore on a scouting mission.

Honey I'm Worried About the Kids.

Themes of corruption also weigh heavily throughout Bissett's series. In another pair of prints, the artist uses the same carved block for a group of pilgrim men, women and children, overlaying it across two different backdrops. In "No Friends to Greet Them" the group walks cautiously though a moonlit night; in "Honey, I'm Worried About the Kids" bare branches and shadows are swapped for a concrete wall covered with the balloon letters of graffiti tags. Moral corruption trades places with the physical ravishes of disease in "10 Little 9 Little Indians." In a nod to the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a central Indian figure stands with an arrow pointed down in a symbol of peace as the words, "Come over and help us" float overhead.

Bissett's version however replaces the seal's circular outline with the rosette of a smallpox virus, a disease that had been spread by even earlier European immigrants, and by the time the pilgrims arrived in 1620, had killed an estimated 90% of the local Wampanoag tribe, as she notes in her catalog essay.

God Blesses John Alexander and Thomas Roberts.

Still other prints in We Are Pilgrims look at the impact of institutions - educational institutions, and the institution of Christian marriage and its presumed heterosexuality. Bissett's print, "Caleb and Joel Went to Harvard, 1665", imagines a portrait of the first two native graduates of Harvard Indian College. Their bare chests show through gossamer versions of the pilgrim black frock and white collar and cuffs, behind them, a naive rendering of the college's original buildings. Another print considers the historic and contemporary legacy of sexual bigotry as revealed through court records of the trial of John Alexander and Thomas Roberts, lovers who in 1637 were found guilty of homosexual acts with each other and each variously sentenced. As Bissett notes, Alexander was whipped, branded, and banished from the colony;

Roberts was whipped and, as an indentured servant, returned to his master, and barred from ever owning land. Bissett's gentle and familiar portrait of the two men posed with hands touching and one's arm over the other's shoulder, as well as the title of the print, "God Blesses John Alexander and Thomas Roberts, 1637" defies the image's red hot S-for-sodomy iron that reaches from the sky and the bigoted comments carved like wall paper behind the men, text the artist gathered from letters and emails sent to the Episcopal Church Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003 when the openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, was elected bishop.

As the current national debate struggles with questions of what it means to be American and who gets to be American, We Are Pilgrims, explores the American creation story from many angles, imagining what the lives of these early immigrants might really have been like, and what their lives mean to us now, almost 400 years later.

Born in Springfield Massachusettes, Annie Bissett spent two decades as a professional illustrator, working for the Washington Post, National Geographic Society, and TimeLife Publications, before turning her attention to Japanese woodblock printmaking in 2005. She is an active member of Zea Mays Printmaking Studio in Florence, MA. Her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions and biennials including the International Print Center of New York's New Prints 2009/Autumn, the 2009 Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Annual Exhibition, New York; the 2009 Los Angeles Printmaking Workshop Annual Exhibition; the Hunt's Prize at the Boston Printmakers 2009 N. American Print Biennial; the exhibition Violence at the Jundt Art Museum, Gongaza University, Spokane, WA; and Printed Matter at Giant Robot Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Annie Bissett has been represented by the Seattle gallery, Cullom Gallery since 2007, where her first solo exhibition, Far Away Up Close, was mounted in 2008. Annie Bissett is also a leading voice in the growing American moku hanga printmaking movement; Bissett's blog, Woodblock Dreams, which she began in 2005, counts over 9000 views and hundreds of regular readers. Her prints are part of the permanent collections of the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS; and the Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga Univeristy, Spokane WA.

Tanaka Paper Cuts Added to Two Museum Collections

2010-10-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce that the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene have each selected a number of Tokyo artist Ryohei Tanaka's paper cuts for their permanent collections! The Jordan Schnitzer Museum has said that Tanaka's work will hang in a survey of Japanese arts in the coming months. We await news from the Spencer about exhibition of their new Tanakas. A big congratulations to Ryohei for this important success!

Images top to bottom:

The Zanies, The Great Pretender - Collection, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR

Into the Dream, The Outer Space Man and the Plant Girl, Not Bad People - Collection, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

All paper cuts by Ryohei Tanaka.

Exhibit Wrap Up - Eva Pietzcker

2010-10-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to everyone who helped make Eva Pietzcker's show - Revealing the Root such a success! Your response was tremendous. We will certainly have Eva back to Seattle for future shows. She enjoyed her visit to Seattle and even managed to tag on several days sketching views on Orcas Island in the San Juans before leaving for Maine to work on a collaborative project with the artist and recent Guggenheim Fellow, Daniel Heyman. That project is scheduled for exhibit sometime next summer. So between her time in Seattle, coastal time on Orcas and northern Maine, and a residency in Bozeman, Montana earlier this year, I anticipate a beautiful show of U.S. views a year or so from now.

If you haven't made it to the gallery yet to see Eva's prints, you have 2 more chances. We are open late tonight, 10/7, until 9 pm for Seattle's monthly First Thursday Gallery Walk. Otherwise stop by Saturday, 10/9 for the last day of the show.

Eva Pietzcker River 1 (Rhein), 2009. Edition: 30, 9-1/2 x 26-3/8 inches

Eva Pietzcker River 2 (Rhein), 2009. Edition: 20, 9-1/2 x 26-3/8 inches

Eva Pietzcker Baltic Sea - Moving Trees, 2009. 9-1/2 x 9-7/8 inches

Eva Pietzcker kayaking Lake Union, Seattle

Eva Pietzcker with Beverly Pepper's Perre's Vantaglio, Olympic Sculputure Park

Opening night, Revealing the Root - Moku Hanga by Eva Pietzcker

Eva on opening night, Revealing the Root - Moku Hanga by Eva Pietzcker

Moku Hanga Demo with Eva Pietzcker Today

2010-08-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who turned out last night for the opening of Eva Pietzcker's new show. A reminder that Eva is back in the gallery today for a talk and demonstration of the traditional techniques of Japanese-style woodblock printmaking. It's raining in Seattle, so a perfect afternoon to spend sipping wine and getting to know this talented, thoughtful artist. Pictures soon to come.

In the Night Kitchen - with Tabaimo

2010-08-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to artist, Wuon-Gean Ho, for turning me on to this great hanga-esque film. Enjoy with a bowl of ramen.

Eva Pietzcker at Cullom Gallery this Weekend

2010-08-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

Moving Trees. Moku hanga (Japanese-style woodblock print). 9-1/2 x 9-7/8 inches. Edition 20

We are getting the finishing touches on what is proving to be a beautiful exhibit, Revealing the Root: Moku Hanga by Eva Pietzcker, which opens at Cullom Gallery this Saturday, August 21st. Stop by for the opening reception from 6 to 9 pm and meet Eva who is making her first trip to Seattle for the occasion! The sixteen ethereal woodblock prints on view are all hand-printed with water-based inks in the traditional Japanese moku hanga manner. These prints, even more so that those in last year's show here, truly reduce the landscape to its very essence. In her statement Eva has said that she seeks to "reconnect to the root and reveal a vital energy" (as embodied in) "foundational elements...like stone, waves or mountains." That's what I see in these prints too, thus my title, Revealing the Root....

Winter Lake. Moku hanga (Japanese-style woodblock print) 26-3/8 x 18-1/2 inches. Edition 20.

Eva bases her prints on plein air impressions rendered in sumi-e sketches and gathered during travels, most recently in and around the Baltic Sea, the Rhine River, Crete, Ontario, and her homebase of Berlin. Lately Eva has also shared with me her new-found affinity to the lighter-than-air landscape paintings of 14th century Chinese painters of the Yuan Dynasty. Kind of a twins-separated-at-birth feeling for her it sounds like.

But wait! There's more. Eva is sticking around after the Saturday opening and on Sunday August 22nd, she will give a talk and moku hanga demonstration at Cullom Gallery at 1 pm . In the last few years Eva has been called on frequently as an instructor and Visiting Artist. In 2009 and earlier this year, she was a Visiting Artist at Montana State University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Institute for East Asian Art at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Please pass this on to all your printmaking friends. I expect Eva will treat us to a clear and insightful demonstration.

Revealing the Root: Moku Hanga by Eva Pietzcker

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 21, 6 to 9pm

Artist's Talk and Moku Hanga printmaking demonstration, Sunday August 22, 1 pm

See the show online beginning August 21 at www.cullomgallery.com

Cullom Gallery

603 S Main Street

Seattle, WA 98104

206.919.8278

info@cullomgallery.com

Map

Too Sexy for Their Own Paper

2010-08-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hirokatsu Hijukata | Poster for a fashion show presenting paper dresses
Graphis Annual 68/69

I found this illustration on the wonderful blog, Aqua Velvet, in a post by Portland-based mid-century design expert Sandi Vincent. I could eat this and all the amazing posters she highlights by 1960s Japanese graphic artists . I will certainly be looking for more on those she has mentioned: Hirokatsu Hijukata, Hiroshi Tanaka, Hisami Kunitake, Tadanori Yokoo, and more. Yum!

Busman's Date Night - Print Zero Highlights

2010-08-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

It was a good, hot night on Saturday for the opening of Print Zero's Print Exchange #7. Dan and I started with dinner - Catfish Po'Boy, Brisket Sandwich, and ice cold margaritas - on the patio at Hudson, then headed up to the show. As his fans would expect, Brian Lane (2nd from left) had found the perfect tee-shirt for the occasion and as promised, 227 prints in all manner of media, hung in the halls of Print Zero. I find that in these occasions I am often drawn to non-woodcut prints. Though I have a reasonable background in the history of all print media, more recently I've spent my print time considering the finer points of woodblock prints alone and the wide range of possibilities that the form offers print artists. But when faced with dozens of stylistically different silkscreens, digital, and intaglio-based prints, I react much like the other people browsing the walls, "Wow! how did she do that?" Also, its not often that you get to experience such a large and diverse group of prints in one close setting. A few of my favorites below:

Carolyn J. Leicht. Sidewalk Naturalist. Screenprint

(Center) Wuon-Gean Ho. Fractured Mask III. Silkscreen.

Richard Repasky. Vow-Murder, Death and Other Funny Things. Photopolymer Intaglio

Bouchei Marina. Untitled. Collograph

Peter Foucault. Hyperbola. Found letterpress, digital relief

The dedication and amount of work that Print Zero founders, Brian Lane and Jeremy Cody have put into their print exchange is inspiring. Lately I've also been talking to Richard Steiner, founder of the KIWA collection of contemporary Japanese woodblock prints and associated print exhibits in Kyoto, and there too I am struck by KIWA's success at shining a light on and effectively fostering the growth of moku hanga printmaking worldwide. Things like this come together a lot quicker than museum exhibits, and show us growth and trends in printmaking in a more raw, and I think sometimes more exciting way.

(Second down on right) Annie Bissett. Lost in Translation (Wampum). Japanese woodblock print.

Print Zero Exchange Opens Saturday

2010-08-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

Michelle Brownridge. "5:30" Stone Litho and Inkjet

After I drink beer with everyone at my gallery on Saturday, I am headed to Georgetown for the Opening Party of Print Zero Studio's Print Exchange #7. Founders, Brian Lane - artist and overall hub/magnet/man-on-the-street for all things print in Seattle, and the equally stellar Jeremy Cody, started Print Zero Studios in 2003 as a small print exchange. Since then is has grown to a fully-operating print studio with space for rent. And the print exchange has blossomed and grown like an August zucchini, this year including the work of 227 artists from 15 countries (one being a print by Cullom Gallery's own Annie Bissett from her recently completed series, We Are Pilgrims, which will show here in October & November, 2010). In years past the exchange has toured venues in Seattle WA, Portland OR, Miami FL, Homer AK, Laramie WY, Buffalo NY, Madison WI, and Naestved, Denmark. Check out their site for information about this year's exchange including the tour schedule and catalog orders. Plus I hear these guys put on a really good party. See you there.

Exchange 7 Opening: 8.14.10, Time 5 to 10 pm
PrintZero Studios Seattle [map]
4810 Airport Way South #C
Seattle, WA 98108

Ryohei Tanaka, End-of-Show Party, Tomorrow

2010-08-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the show, tomorrow is the last day for Ryohei Tanaka's amazing paper cuts in all their glory on the walls of Cullom Gallery. Stop by between 4 and 6 pm on Saturday, 8/14, and enjoy a cold beer and sample some crunchy shrimp snacks picked from Uwajimaya's vast selection of this popular Japanese munchy.

CUTTIN' IT UP:
Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka

CLOSING PARTY, SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 4-6 PM

Cullom Gallery

603 S Main Street

Seattle, WA 98104

Map

Our Summer Ephemera Show

2010-08-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

Swing by and see our 3rd Annual, Summer Ephemera Show, now on view in the east window through September 4, 2010. This year I've found a group of 1950s matchbox labels chock-full of juicy graphic designs of the time. We also have a small stash of vintage black & white and sepia tone photos, some titled and dated in the negative as images taken on a world cruise in 1928, and others from the 1930s and 50s. And I found another copy of the pro-wrestling poster from last year, from a match-up between Japanese hero, Rikidozan, and various international strong men in masks and tights.

Taisho-era woman, with blown-glass fish bowls, $45. framed

1950s matchbox label, $30. framed

(left) 1930s matchbox label with Nagoya Carp and biplane $35. framed
(right) 1950s photo of new train line to Ningyocho $55. framed

1950s matchbox label advertising Kogabo Cameras $30. framed

Another beautiful 1950s matchbox label $30. in the frame

1930s postcard advertising medical thermometers $45. framed

A Few Photos

2010-08-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

In case you can't make it to Seattle, here are a few shots of Ryohei Tanaka's current show at Cullom Gallery, which runs through Saturday, August 14th. I was really happy with the way the show came together, and the aerial paper cuts (as we are calling them) added another great layer to the show.

I can't say enough about this great and creative, if slightly elusive artist. Being surrounded by his amazing papercuts these many weeks has been like getting to know someone through reading their dream diary. Wish you all could be here. Cuttin' It Up: Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka.

Praise for Ryohei Tanaka

2010-07-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Lots to report today. I was psyched that The Stranger's Jen Graves highlighted Ryohei Tanka's paper cuts on The Slog this week. If you haven't seen the show in person yet, swing by the gallery next Thursday for the monthly First Thursday Gallery Walk, from 6 to 9 pm. I am also putting up a good selection of matchbox labels, vintage postcards, black & white photos of Japan in the 1920s, old commercial goods and hotel luggage labels, and one cool Pro Wrestling poster, all part of Cullom Gallery's Third Annual Summer Ephemera Show, which will run only through Saturday, August 14. The International District is also hosting JamFest this summer on every first Thursday of the month through September. The music lineup and ticket info can be found here.

First Thursday Gallery Walk

August 5th, 6 - 9 pm

Cullom Gallery

603 S Main Street

Seattle, WA 98104

Map

On View:

Cuttin' It Up: Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanka

Third Annual Summer Ephemera Show

Both through Saturday, August 14, 2010

Ryohei Tanka Exhibit Online

2010-07-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

It's up! A selection of 36 of the nearly 70 amazing hand-folded and cut kirigami, featured in our current exhibit, Cuttin' It Up: Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka continuing through August 14, 2010. Stop by on the First Thursday in August, 8/5, for the monthly Gallery Walk, to also see our 3rd Annual Summer Ephemera Show, a short run from 8/5 - 8/14, so don't miss it!

Breath In Breath Out.

Praying Angry Man.

Bon Odori in Seattle this Weekend

2010-07-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

Bon Odori is a centuries old Japanese Buddhist festival, which celebrates and honors the lives of deceased family members and friends. Loved ones are remembered through folk dances performed to traditional and contemporary Japanese music around a central platform (middle of South Main Street at 12th Ave S). Bon Odori offers many cultural exhibits such as Ikebana (flower arranging), mizuhiki (paper cord art), and demonstrations of judo, aikido and taiko. Traditional Japanese foods such as teriyaki chicken bento (lunch box), niku domburi (beef & rice bowl), somen (cold wheat noodles in broth), kori (shaved ice) and many other delicious selections can be purchased. Beer & sake garden with live music by Deems Tsutakawa on Saturday evening and Emerald City Jazz Ensemble on Sunday evening. Location: South Main Street at 12th Ave S.

Saturday, July 17, 2010
4 PM Food booths, exhibits, cultural demonstrations open
5:30 PM Obon Service in the Temple
6 PM Dancing begins, Deems in the Beer Garden
10: PM Dancing ends

Sunday, July 18, 2010
3:00 PM Food booths, exhibits, cultural demonstrations open
4:30 PM Obon Service in the Temple
5:00 PM Dancing begins, Emerald City Jazz Ensemble in the Beer Garden
8:00 PM Dancing ends

Cullom Gallery at firstthursdayseattle.com

2010-06-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

If you live in, or are passing through Seattle, and need a quick look at current and upcoming gallery shows in the downtown area, check out firstthursdayseattle.com. As many of you know, the first Thursday of every month marks the opening of new exhibits for many of Seattle's retail galleries and studios. I just updated the site with my lineup of summer exhibits, which includes new work by Ryohei Tanaka, Eva Pietzcker, and a slew of recently found Japanese paper ephemera. Stop by and see the new Gallery!

Jammin' in the ID

2010-06-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Nice start last Thursday night for the Seattle International District's new JamFest. Called "happy hour with a sound track" by Seattle Times writer, Doug Knoop, JamFest offers a wide range of music (June lineup included Dirty Scientifx, The Killer Bees, and my favorite, The Toy Boats) every first Thursday of the month this summer in a variety of ID locations. Runs through September. Get more information including next month's bands at http://www.wingluke.org/jamfest/.

Annie Bissett at the Eric Carle Museum

2010-05-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

If you live in and around Amherst, MA, make sure to stop by the Eric Carle Museum on Saturday, June 5th at 1 pm, to hear Annie Bissett and a panel of 4 other artists talk about sustainable printmaking methods. Following the discussion, Annie will be demonstrating woodblock printmaking techniques. Stop by and say hi and see the Museum's new exhibit of prints by Antonio Frasconi. Here is Annie's blog post on the same.

Woodblock Dreams: Join Me at the Eric Carle Museum?

Ryohei Tanaka - Awesome

2010-05-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

For his fans, and who isn't one, here's Ryohei Tanaka rockin' it at Rowan Morrison in Oakland, CA during his recent residency there this spring. Awesome.

Get ready for more Ryohei papercuts at Cullom Gallery this summer. Details soon to come.

Open house for Kristina at Sidereal Press Tonight

2010-05-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

If you are in Seattle tonight, come down to Sidereal Press, just south in nearby Tukwilla, to celebrate Kristina Hagman's recent completion of the woodcut suite, 36 Views of Rainier, and wish her well as she prepares to move with her family to Los Angeles next month. This is a special opportunity to see all 36 prints hanging at once - a beautiful sight to see.

We will sorely miss Kristina in Seattle, but can't wait to see what drives up and down the California coast line inspire by way of new print series. Word is Kristina is considering a landscape series based on views from Highway 1.

Saturday, May 15, 2010, 4 to 8 pm

Sidereal Fine Art Press
4261 South 144th Street Tukwila, Washington 98168
t: 206.298.9803

Refreshments provided. Parking is available in the press parking lot or across the street in the Foster High School parking lot Sidereal Fine Art Press is located 10 blocks North of the Tukwila Link Light Rail Station and across the street from Foster High School.

(photos left to right, top to bottom: outside at Sidereal Press; inside Sidereal Press with Sheila Coppola; Kristina Hagman and Sheila Coppola)

And if you can't make it tonight, prints from Kristina's Rainier series are also currently on view at the venues below:

Lake Forest Park Towne CentreApril 14 – May 29, 2010
Artwork by Susan Brown, Kristina Hagman and Mary Bess Johnson

The Gallery at Towne Centre
17171 Ballinger Way NE, Lake Forest Park WA 98155. Located on the inside, lower level of the Mall.

Kirkland Arts Center

May 14 – June 5, 2010
Ten: Seattle Print Arts 2010 Anniversary Exhibition
Juried by Seattle Art Museum's Michael Darling
620 Market Street, Kirkland WA 98033
(425) 822-7161

Moku Hanga News

2010-03-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

This just in courtesy of Annie Bissett. The 1st International Moku Hanga Conference will take place in Kyoto & Awaji, Japan next summer, June 7 - 12, 2011! Not many details on their website yet, but check back often. I know I will be making plans to attend. Thanks to everyone who will work hard to make this happen.

Rainier - 36 Ways

2010-03-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

This is the last week to see Cullom Gallery artist, Kristina Hagman's, recently completed color woodcut suite, 36 Views of Rainier, on view at Seattle University's Kinsey Gallery, through March 19, 2010. Deborah Burns put this video slide show together along with this article for the Daniel Smith blog.

Kinsey Gallery
904 12th Avenue (Corner of 12th and Marion)

Open Mon – Fri 9:00am-4:00pm
206.296.2282

The complete series is also available at Cullom Gallery, and soon online. email or call with questions and inquiries. info(at)cullomgallery.com or 206-919-8278.

The Big Seattle Print Fair!

2010-02-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

If you are in Seattle today, stop by Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave S. (map), and browse through thousands of original prints by American, European and Japanese artists, covering the 15th century to the present. This year eleven dealers from the U.S. and Canada are participating. For much more information, check out seattleprintfair.com. Stop by and say hi. I'm upstairs in my usual spot.

Cullom Gallery in Ibuki Magazine

2010-01-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

Check out this month's issue of Ibuki Magazine, or see it online ibukimagazine.com for a nice write-up of Cullom Gallery! The link to the article is here.

How Green is Your Alley?

2009-12-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Last week I met Todd Vogel, owner of Livable Walkable LLC, a Pioneer Square architecture and urban planning firm, and a member of the International Sustainability Institute. He is working with loads of other urban planning professionals and the City of Seattle, to develop a comprehensive plan for Downtown that would 'activate' in his words, dozens of the alleys of downtown Seattle, starting with those of Pioneer Square (and the first, just around the corner from my Gallery), by adding art, retail businesses & cafés, and pedestrian amenities to these untapped spaces, hopefully making them the latest addition to the City's list of urban green spaces. Vogel and his team have the City behind them and grant money to boot, so hopefully this will fly. This won't be the magic pill to pull Pioneer Square back from the brink. But it might help. To this end, they are launching a design competition for artists. You can sign on to get more information at green_alleys@yahoogroups.com. Stay tuned.

A Local Famous View

2009-12-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the Holidays, Kristina Hagman had these nice blank cards made of six of her woodcuts from the series, 36 Views of Rainier. Actual prints from the series can be seen here. Cards are $15 for the set of 6, plus $1.50 to mail in the US. To order please send email to info(at)cullomgallery.com.

Japan - What's Art, What's Not

2009-12-05T17:37:00.000-08:00

This morning I heard Cynthea Bogel speak at the Seattle Asian Art Museum as part of the lecture series, No Passport Required: Saturday University Lecture Series, Asian in Focus. Her lecture, What's Art and What's Not in the History of Japan was full of new insights for me. Bogel looked at the history of Japan's National Treasures: how the process has favored certain types and periods of art over others, and how the distinction has done much to shape Japan's regard for it's art and artifacts.

A couple take-aways I got: 1. that the list of National Treasures currently includes not a single Japanese ukiyo-e print or painting. That's right, not one. No Great Wave, or Ohashi, or Kambara, or anything by the mysterious Sharaku. 2. that the People in Charge decided in 1950, to wipe clean the list of National Treasures and start over, bestowing the honor on only a fraction of the works of art that were previously included on the list, and 3. that the word for 'art' in Japanese, bijitsu, was coined, along with new words for painting, sculpture, textiles, and handicraft, around the time of the 1873 and 1876 World Expositions in Vienna and Philidelphia, in order to better market Japanese art to the West. Particularly in the case of Buddhist iconic figures, the new term 'sculpture' chokōku, allowed these sacred figures to be regarded as art, which allowed for their removal from temples, and later exhibition in Japanese halls and subsequent sale to Western collectors and museums.

If you have attended any of the lectures this fall, there will be one more round table discussion next Saturday morning at 9:30. Thanks to SAAM for putting together this great series!

Introducing Sara Tabbert

2009-11-18T14:12:00.001-08:00

Cullom Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of color woodcuts by Sara Tabbert. For her first show at Cullom Gallery, Tabbert has incorporated her characteristic attention to the elemental beauty in natural forms of wood, water, ice, and stone, into a new series of prints based on the artist's recent trip along the famed Great Northern Railway, nicknamed The Highline. Tabbert's series of ten reduction woodcuts considers the ‘little pieces of something’ sprinkled my human life amidst the stark topography and grandeur of America's Rocky Mountains and the Northern Great Plains.

In a nod to ukiyo-e landscape designs by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), Tabbert's views from Glacier Park, Montana to Fargo, North Dakota, along a well-known and linear route, recall the ukiyo-e master's Famous Views of the 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road. Also in keeping with the format of many of Hiroshige's prints, Tabbert's Highline uses the tall and narrow paper size known as tanzaku or 'poem strip' (roughly 14 x 5 inches). Whether hinting at a view through a cracked shoji screen, or capturing what the eye sees in a flash through the window of a speeding train, a landscape (by definition in the West, a horizontally-oriented view) seen in tanzaku format challenges our notions of perspective, scale, and scope, instead emphasizing the strata of a landscape's fore, mid, and background, as seen bottom to top.

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Sara Tabbert received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Grinnell College, Iowa, and her Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she studied with Karen Kunc. Sara Tabbert's prints and wood carvings were showcased in the solo exhibit, Near Water, at the Anchorage Museum, from December 5, 2008 - January 25, 2009. Her prints are among public and corporate collections including the Anchorage Museum; Swedish Medical Center, Seattle; and Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska.

The Highline & other new work

November 5, 2009 - January 2, 2010

Cullom Gallery

313 Occidental Ave S

Seattle, WA 98104

206.919.8278

Map

Email for more information

American Bible Story, More Praise

2009-10-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

In addition to the Robert Blackburn Exhibition mentioned in the previous post, I am pleased to announce that Annie Bissett's recently completed, American Bible Story, has also been selected for inclusion in the International Print Center New York (IPCNY) New Prints|2009 exhibition, which will coincide with the IFPDA Print Fair in New York next month. The 150 to 200 prints chosen for the IPCNY exhibit are selected from a group of over 2000 entries, so another big congratulations to Annie Bissett.

New Prints|2009 at the International Print Center New York (IPCNY) opens October 29 and remains on view through December 12, 2009.

International Print Center New York (IPCNY)

New Prints 2009/Autumn

11 am - 6 pm

526 W. 26th St,.Rm 824

New York, NY

(212) 989-5090

Website ipcny.org

American Bible Story and several of Annie Bissett's recent prints from her Pilgrim series are available at Cullom Gallery and through the Gallery's website.

AMERICAN BIBLE STORY

Japanese woodblock (moku hanga)
Paper size: 14.75" x 16" (37.5 x 40.6 cm)
Image size: 11.625" x 13.75" (29.5 x 34.9 cm)
5 shina plywood blocks
14 hand-rubbed impressions
Paper: Nishinouchi
Edition: 21

An excerpt from Annie Bissett's blog, Woodblock Dreams.
I've been thinking for a long time about the way that present-day Americans of every political persuasion call upon "the founding fathers" to justify all sorts of theories about what America is and how Americans should behave. This quoting of early colonists has always reminded me of the practice of quoting the Bible to add legitimacy and authority to one's own ideas and feelings. Then, reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem about John and Priscilla Alden, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), I noticed that Longfellow alluded to Bible love stories -- Ruth and Boaz, Rebecca and Isaac -- so I started to work with the idea that the early European settlers of America have become a kind of American Bible story.

The stories I included are pretty obvious -- Noah's ark, Adam and Eve, the pillar of clouds, the city on a hill. I also threw in a nod to Utamaro and his shunga prints. I had very much wanted the serpent to be saying "join or die" as it says in the original woodcut by Benjamin Franklin, but in my research I discovered that there's an artist named Justine Lai who is making extensive use of that phrase in her work. Lai is making a series of paintings that depict her having sex with each of the 44 presidents of the United States. I decided to omit the "join or die" text in my piece so as not to jump on that bandwagon.

Kudos to Annie Bissett!

2009-09-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

This just in...

I am very pleased to announce that a print from Annie Bissett's recent body of work exploring the experience of the American Pilgrims, has been accepted for the 2009 Annual Exhibition at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York. The exhibit was juried by David Kiehl, Curator of Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition will coincide with the IFPDA Print Fair and New York Fine Art Print Week coming in November. A big congratulations to Annie Bissett!

2009-09-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

Here is the third and final portion of my email conversation with Binky Walker, my thoughts in gray, hers in black. The exhibit of her drawings, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world continues at Cullom Gallery through October 31st.

The pun is literally your floating ukiyo - clouds - and the pictures (the 'e' in ukiyo-e) you have produced of them. But further, the ideas you have turned around in your mind are much the same as those originally attached to ukiyo: the beauty found in sadness. The coming awareness that we and all things are temporary. You are finding peace with this I think. And certainly you are finding beauty in these ideas and teasing it out for all of us to consider.

Seems you teased out not only the title for this show and its reasons, but something more subtle. That these drawings reflect a contemporary interpretation of ukiyo-e as a re-appropriation of the original intent of ukiyo: to remove the profanity and experience fully the profound beauty and underlying sorrow of our own transience.

The moments (days, months, years) drawing the clouds I rested in a state of intense awareness of that sorrowful beauty. Both the sorrow and the beauty were almost more than I could bear. Simply looking into the sky brings me to tears, knowing what I see will only happen this once in all of eternity. It felt a blessing and responsibility to have been chosen by the clouds to bear witness. This intensity is overwhelming and brings a desire for the profane . . . for "stylish pleasures." To escape what I cannot escape, to disregard that I am bound to the floating world.

The twisting of the ideas of ukiyo that occurred during the Edo period in many ways makes a mockery of its original ideas. By the 18th and 19th centuries it had come to mean a blend of hedonism and laissez-faire. And the contrast between its old & new meanings I think, only heightens the poignancy of the idea in its nascent form; in the heyday of ukiyo-e, the period saw incredible growth of urban centers, industry, politics, and a refinement of decoration and pleasure seeking. In the end these are just gaudy diversions from the true beauty of impermanence.

Your last sentence says it all so beautifully.

More conversation with Binky Walker

2009-09-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

Here is the second installment of my conversation with Binky Walker, whose graphite drawings are on view at Cullom Gallery through October 31, 2009 in the exhibit, ukio-e: pictures of the floating world. Her words are darker, mine are lighter. One more installment will follow tomorrow. And a reminder that Binky will be speaking at the gallery tomorrow, Saturday, September 19th, at 3:00 pm. Please join us and bring a friend. Cullom Gallery, 313 Occidental Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104. 206.919.8278. map.

At a certain point in my work I left narrative, emotions, and even representation and became interested in series, meditation, and looking more deeply at what is here. The discipline necessary to accomplish a project like the clouds is in fact a years-long meditation. Working in this way opens my mind to enter other levels of consciousness, other ways of knowing what is here. I like to be here because it is a very peaceful place and also seems a more truthful experience of existence. My hope is that someone looking at the work can enter that same realm from the other side, through the act of surrendering their attention.

My artistic trajectory prompted an exploration into Buddhism and the mystical branches of other religions. The truth explained in these readings often reflects similar observations I make during the course of my drawing meditations. Japanese Buddhism, its focus on enlightenment as coming through nature and the natural world, closely resembles my experiences as an artist. I do not consider myself a religious person, however I am a very spiritual artist. I also read a lot in science, which I find in its deepest sense to be grappling with issues of spirituality.

I had to chuckle at the literal pun that comes to mind when I consider your personal process along side the century's-old turn-of-phrase that came to define much of woodblock print making and the zeitgeist that predominated in the major Japanese cities from the 17th century to the turn of the 20th century, that is ukiyo, or 'the floating world' and ukiyo-e, the popular 'pictures of the floating world' that were born out of (some world say the twisting of) this phrase.

The floating or sorrowful world . . . the singularly human recognition of my own transience here and the fear I feel face-to-face with the prospect of (imminent) death. Death itself having no more permanence than winter summer spring fall, another season of an existence I am forever part of, as I disperse from this bodily form into other forms. Like clouds, I have no discrete moments. To hold this in awareness: being here sublimely beautiful, and supremely cruel. Ukiyo as you explain it encompassing the whole of these seeming contradictions, existence one sorrowful beauty. More sorrowful for being beautiful, more beautiful in the sorrow that the death of each moment brings.

"Ukiyo in early Japanese poetry is the floating, transient, idle world. As originally used in Chinese poetry, the term is resonant with the pessimism and melancholy of Buddhist philosophy." – taken from a text on ukiyo-e.

Only our human minds – not the conscious universe – find the death of the body more real than death of a moment. The discrete divisions of past, present, and future are human constructs upon which to rest a continuously changing present. The definition of time as the ancient Jewish mystics saw it: the measure of difference as perceived from our human eyes. The truth is, we are eternity: perpetual motion of form to form, with no end to a transformation we are forever part of. Seen in this light - the Buddhist light - transience is permanence, optimism in this beautiful sorrow. The clouds taught me this.

New Ideas at SAAM

2009-09-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

This summer, I have been excited to learn a little bit about the formation of the Seattle Asian Art Museum's new, Center for Asian Art and Ideas. Spearheaded by recently-retired director of SAM, Mimi Gates, the CAAI, will offer program-based opportunities for dialogue on a broad range of topics related to Asian art and culture.

To that end, CAAI has announced their first lecture series, "Saturday University: Asia in Focus." Here is the run down. A one-hour Asian exercise class (yoga, tai chi, etc.) at 8:30 am is part of your ticket (but not required), then lectures start at 9:30 until 11 am. Tickets by phone: 206-654-3121 or by email at boxoffice @seattleartmuseum org. Hope to see many of you there!

October 3
India and the World: Ancient to Modern Times
Anand Yang

October 10
Trysts with Destiny: India After Independence
Sunila Kale

October 17
Contemporary Art in India and Its Global Futures
Sonal Khullar

October 24
China in the 21st Century: Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same
Stevan Harrell

October 31
China and the World
Madeleine Yue Dong

November 7
Why is Calligraphy the Most Respected Art form in China?
Haicheng Wang

November 14
Why Has Japan Only Had One Dynasty?
David Spafford

November 21
The Troubled Spirit of Modern Japan
Kenneth Pyle

December 5
What's Art and What's Not in the History of Japan
Cynthea Bogel

December 12
Roundtable discussion

About the process

2009-09-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

In lieu of an artist's statement for the exhibit, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, the artist, Binky Walker, and I prepared excerpts from our correspondence leading up to the show. We felt that it might be interesting for those not involved, to have a glimpse into the collaborative process engaged in between gallery and artist: me, toward an understanding of her artistic process; she, toward an awareness of her indirect connection to centuries-old Japanese ideas; and for both of us, through this back and forth, an intriguing acknowledgment of a convergence of ideas, across cultures and centuries. I will post segments of our conversation to this blog over the course of the next week.

Why do I muse on clouds, or attend to what is fleeting?

The impulse of my mind is to grasp onto what I believe will not change, transfixed by what I hope will never leave me. Impermanence is too frightening: I cannot fathom a self this precious and so determinate. Yet in comparison to the billions of light-years that are but a moment in the heavens, my human life is more fleeting than I experience the clouds.

what I believe will not ever change
what I hope will never leave me
determinate
interior resonance

determinate - what does this word really mean?

precisely determined or limited or defined;
not continuing to grow indefinitely at the apex;
being final or conclusive

All our human measures are determinate - years into seasons into days into hours into minutes into seconds - subdivided infinitely to make smaller and smaller measures of permanence. Clouds defy language, remain unfixed in their beauty. Despite these increments and measures, clouds cannot be pinned down in time. Perhaps it is a condition of humanness to be shocked by mortality.

Is this your struggle? It seems to me that you have found peace in your exploration, in the real self of the clouds, and your real self.

Are you still struggling?

When I understand muself as part of...as cloud...there is nothing to struggle against -- only peace. But my mind does not rest here. Even with all this evidence, even in peace.

ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world

2009-09-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Binky Walker. Triptych no. 3, 2008. Graphite on paper. Each panel: 8 x 8 inches on 15 x 15 inch paper

Cullom Gallery is pleased to present ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world by artist Binky Walker, a series of 15 graphite drawings in the form of triptychs, each of which chronicles a brief passage in the ephemeral life of a cloud. Walker’s contemplative process and resulting drawings conjure the 16^th century Buddhist idea of ukiyo, or floating world: the stark and sorrowful beauty experienced as we become aware of our transience in this temporal, or floating, reality.

Over the course of two years, Walker performed daily meditations through the act of drawing. Contemplating on paper the minute shifts of clouds, she bore witness to the infinite differences that occur within their slightest movement, allowing an instant to suspend itself across the long duration it took to complete each image. These quiet, exquisitely rendered drawings question Western notions of time - our absolute belief in divisions of past, present and future - and beckon viewers to deeply consider their place in the ukiyo of a perpetually changing present.

By the mid-17th century in Japan, the meaning of ukiyo strayed from its austere Buddhist origins and came to define the decadent urban vitalization of the Edo period, marked by a ubiquitous pursuit of fleeting pleasures such as the kabuki theater, or the company of celebrated courtesans. Ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world, became the common name, still in use today, for the popular woodcuts that recorded the myriad amusements of the nouveau riche merchant class.

With this exhibit, Walker offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the centuries-old Japanese tradition of ukiyo-e by re-appropriating the original intent of ukiyo from the trivial. Her reverent treatment of the ephemera of clouds makes palpable the beauty and underlying sorrow of our own transience, summoning the viewer to experience the profound intensity inherent in every moment of this temporary, floating existence.

The exhibit, ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world is on view September 3rd through October 31, 2009. Cullom Gallery will also host an artist’s talk and discussion with Binky Walker on Saturday, September 19th at 3:00 pm.

Cullom Gallery, located in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, focuses on the tradition and influence of Japanese woodblock prints and works on paper. The gallery is open Tuesday through Thursday, and Saturday from 10 to 5, and every first Thursday until 8 pm.

Cullom Gallery
313 Occidental Ave S
Seattle, WA 98104
206.919.8278
info@cullomgallery.com
Map

Binky Walker. (detail) Triptych no. 3, 2008. Graphite on paper. 8 x 8 inches on 15 x 15 inch paper

Summer Ephemera Show

2009-08-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons that Japanese prints intrigue me so much is that they, and really fine prints in general, always tell a story: a story about a moment in history, or popular culture, or civic debate, or industrial invention, or fashion trends, or even technical developments in printing itself. And in many ways ephemera: paper stuff and collectibles not generally considered fine art, like postcards, menus, posters, product labels, boxes, and travel guides, contain even more more potential for an interesting back story.

When I started my gallery almost two years ago, I had in mind that I would like eventually to have an ephemera show. I was interested in ephemera though I didn't have much knowledge of it as a collecting field. But planning an exhibit, I thought, would give me a chance to learn more and to be a collector, albeit short-term, of all the weird paper stuff that I often saw while searching for Japanese prints, at least until it was ready for sale.

So here it is, the first annual, Summer Ephemera Show (over at cullomgallery.com.) Included are old matchbox labels from the late Meiji period, paper fans from the Taisho period, a pro wrestling poster and a Japanese horror movie poster, some Japanese baseball menko (children's playing cards), and many many postcards from the late 19th century to the 1940s.

In the coming days, I will try to highlight a few pieces from the show along with bits of related unearthed history.

Big Man Japan

2009-06-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

This just in from my friend Saskia in Kansas via Bad At Sports (browse this too if you haven't before.) Opens this Friday in Chicago at Facets Cinémathèque. Wish I could be there, but I'll have to settle for putting it on my Netflix wait list, or driving across town to Scarecrow.

From Facets:

“A middle-aged slacker living in a rundown, graffiti-ridden slum, Daisato’s job involves being shocked by bolts of electricity that transform him into a stocky, stick-wielding giant several stories high who is entrusted with defending Japan from a host of bizarre monsters. But while his predecessors were national heroes, he is a pariah among the citizens he protects, who bitterly complain about the noise and destruction of property he causes. And Daisato has his own problems – an agent insistent on branding him with sponsor advertisements, an Alzheimer-afflicted grandfather who transforms into a giant in dirty underwear, and a family who is embarrassed by his often cowardly exploits. A wickedly deadpan spin on the giant Japanese superhero, Big Man Japan is an outrageous portrait of a pathetic but truly unique hero. Directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto, Japan, 2007, 35mm, 113 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles.”

Making their Mark: Japanese Prints by sosaku hanga artists, 1930-80

2009-06-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

Through July 18th, I am showcasing a group of 25 woodblock prints and print folios by a group of 18 artists who were part of the modern Japanese print movement known as sosaku hanga, or the 'creative print' movement. The sosaku hanga movement started in the very early years of the 20th century. Sosaku hanga artists rejected the techniques and prescribed content of traditional ukiyo-e prints. They were interested in exploring their own individual artistic expression rather than following in the footsteps of a teacher, or catering to the commercial motivations ukiyo-e publishers. These artists instead, looked around, and took subjects from their surroundings: a view out a kitchen window, a pet cat, or these peaches.

These artists also believed that everyone could be a printmaker - and in the beginning years, it seemed everyone was. Encouraged by each other, or a bona fide artist-friend (often a painter-turned-printmaker), or even by the general wave of interest in 'individualism' sweeping through Japanese society at the time, hundreds of neophyte printmakers tried their hand at carving and printing. Some produced only a handful of images. For others it was the beginning of decades-long printmaking careers.

This period, particularly sosaku hanga produced before WWII, I am finding to be one of my favorite periods and styles. I like it because of its emphasis on urban life, and the glimpse it gives into an emerging Japanese modern graphic style. I also love the challenge of tracking down some of these obscure artists, or finding early work by artists who are better known for their later prints. Truth be told, there are some bad sosaku hanga; when everyone thinks that they are an artist, there are bound to be some dogs in the final heap. But there are also so many fine prints that emerged from this period. I've enjoyed pulling together what I hope you will think is a good group. You can see the whole show here.

prints illustrated top to bottom: Peaches, 1925, by Tomoo Inagaki (1902-1980); Mars, 1968 & Morning of New Year's Day, Ginza, 1958, both by Toshi Yoshida (1911-1995)

3 New Paper Cuts

2009-04-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was happy to add these three paper cuts to the gallery show and online exhibit, Panic Attack(!) (Don't Panic): Paper cuts by Ryohei Tanaka, that continues at Cullom Gallery through May 30th. Blow Fish Girl and Oscar's Cousin were done by Ryohei during his visit to the Gallery.

Good Night & Thanks

2009-04-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

A big thanks to all who made it to the Gallery Thursday night. Watching Ryohei cut on-the-spot portraits and answer questions was a lot of fun. I appreciate all your support! A few follow up things:

If you haven't found it on your own, here is a link to Ryohei's own website. His painting and illustration work is not to miss. Also, for those in Los Angeles, through May 2nd, you can see more of Ryohei's paper cuts in the 9-artist group show, PaperShapers (at Scion Space (3521 Helms Ave, Culver City, CA 90232). More info about that show at www.scion.com/space.

If you were there Thursday, you may have also met Rob Sato, a friend of Ryohei's, who is an amazing artist and illustrator himself. Check out his work & see a schedule of his upcoming shows at http://www.robsato.com/index.html.

Thanks again for your support!

Ryohei Tanaka in the Gallery Tonight!

2009-04-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

My exhibit of paper cuts, Panic Attack(!) (Don't Panic): Paper Cuts by Ryohei Tanaka, continues at Cullom Gallery through May 30, 2009, but tonight is a special treat: Ryohei is in Seattle and snipping away in the gallery until 7:30 tonight. I met Ryohei while browsing an online group show at Giant Robot Gallery in San Francisco last year. I was delighted by what I saw as a mixture of old and new in his paper cuts. Clearly urban, youth oriented content done using a very traditonal medium of Japanese art/craft called kiri-e, or cut pictures.

The exhibit features 57 new works. Tanaka’s intricate, hand-cut paper cuts are cut into both unaltered white paper and papers prepared with spattered colored pigments. Like the stuff of dreams or a drug trip, their intertwined elements bounce from caricatures of Tokyo "types:" the school girl, the jug-headed Yakuza, the anime geek, to images of urban malaise and economic anxiety, to titillating riffs on sex, drugs, love, and violence.

For over twenty years, Ryohei Tanaka has been spinning his own version of the traditional art of hand-cut Japanese paper cut designs known as kiri-e, which date back to the early 17th century. What started as a solitary childhood game of paper heroes vs. paper villains (born of, and then snipped to pieces by the same genius boy and his scissors) has grown to wide-spread recognition for the artist in Japan and the West. Tanaka’s paper cuts have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibits in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and multiple Tokyo venues.

If you're in Seattle tonight, come on down!

Cullom Gallery
313 Occidental Ave S
Seattle, WA 98104
P: 206-919-8278
www.cullomgallery.com

First Thursday & Eva Pietzcker

2009-03-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

Eva Pietzcker's show of 18 color and black-and-white Japanese woodblock prints continues through March 30th at Cullom Gallery, and we're kicking off it's second month with a reception tonight at the Gallery, from 6 - 8 pm during the Pioneer Square Gallery Walk.

In addition to Pietzcker's great prints, there's a lot to see this month in Pioneer Square. Downstairs at Davidson Galleries is an encyclopedic collection of posters and many woodcuts by America icon, Antonio Frasconi. Greg Kucera Gallery continues with quilts and etchings by the quilters of Gee's Bend. And G. Gibson Gallery opens a group show focused on birds and habitat including the Narnia-like photographs of Nealy Blau.

Grab an umbrella and come on down. (and after, go sip and nibble something at my new favorite aprés-Walk spot, Elisian Fields - just down the street at 1st and King.)

Untitled (Glade big), 2005 38 x 21 inches

Kuniyoshi

2009-02-25T15:15:00.000-08:00

Fresh from my Inbox, is this mention of what looks to be an incredible up-coming show of woodblock prints by ukiyo-e master, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861).

"LONDON - The Royal Academy of Arts will present an exhibition on one of the greatest Japanese print artists, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797 – 1861). Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition will present Kuniyoshi as a master of imaginative design. It will reveal the graphic power and beauty of his prints across an unprecedented range of subjects highlighting his ingenuous use of the triptych format. The majority of the exhibition will be drawn from the outstanding collection of Professor Arthur R. Miller which has recently been donated to the American Friends of the British Museum. This is the first major exhibition in the United Kingdom on Utagawa Kuniyoshi since 1961, on view 21 March through 7 June, 2009." (photo caption - "Sakata Kaido-maru wrestles with a giant carp" c. 1837...American Friends of the British Museum (The Arthur R. Miller Collection) More information at the Royal Academy and Art Knowledge News.

Introducing Eva Pietzcker

2009-02-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

I'm so pleased with my new winter exhibit at Cullom Gallery of Japanese woodblock prints by Berlin artist, Eva Pietzcker. This show of 17 color and black and white landscape prints (and one delightfully domestic still life of apples and geraniums) will open tomorrow night, February 5th, with a preview from 6 - 8 pm. If you are in Seattle, please come down and see Eva's prints in person!

With the new year, I'll be adding several additional contemporary artists to the mix at Cullom Gallery. As I've mentioned here before, I am keen to show my audience, though my exhibits and general offerings, artistic links from the present back to the olden days of Japanese prints and from the old back to the present and everything in between.

In Eva's prints, I see an exciting buzz between traditions of composition found in ukiyo-e landscape prints (and as a client suggested last week, maybe Huan Dynasty landscape painting?) and Eva's own modern and minimal, sometimes stylized, approach to landscape.

This group of prints covers the years 2003 to the present and includes prints produced during the artist's residencies in Japan and Canada, along with scenes of her own Berlin. (Pietzcker also spent some time in China on an independent study of traditional Chinese paper making techniques and in Indonesia for an artist's residency - both trips inspiring additional print designs.)

In a statement for Toronto's Open Studio's webiste, Eva wrote, "I try to omit 'unimportant' parts and to reveal the essences while reducing information- without killing off the vibrancy of the work. I try to achieve that by oscillating between simplicity and complexity, black-and-white and colour, abstraction and narration."

In 2001, she established the printmaking studio "drucktelle" with partner Miriam Zegrer (the studio has just recently closed) for the purpose of research into and teaching courses on printmaking techniques, with the aim of using non-toxic material as much as possible. Pietzcker continues teaching printmaking courses independently and at several art academies in Germany. Her prints have been shown in solo and group exhibits throughout Germany, the United States, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Poland, Canada, Japan, and Indonesia. Most recently in 2008 she was part of the California Society of Printmaker's exhibit in Pacific Grove, CA, (she's been a member since 2006); and exhibited as a member of the artist group ' Nagasawa Ten' in the exhibit, "A Time and a Place" which traveled to both Amsterdam's Grafisch Atelier, and Deco Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia. In 2007, Pietzcker served as visiting artist at Open Studio, Toronto, Canada, and at The Print Studio, Hamilton Canada. In 2003 and 2004 Pietzcker was Artist-in-Residence at Nagasawa Art Park, Japan and Tsuna-Cho, Japan, respectively.

The show will be featured in a special online exhibit (by tomorrow afternoon) one the gallery's website at www.cullomgallery.com. The exhibit will continue on the gallery walls through March 30, but hopefully, Eva's prints will become a perennial offering at this gallery!