"Male and Female Figures," wood, paint, Ivorian, Baule & "Pair of Harps," wood, skin, fabric, Congolese, Ngbaka. Photograph by the Author. Taken 4/13/12. JPEG file.

Two Sculptural Pair & A Next 50 Affair

There is a display in SAM Downtown’s Wright & Runstad Gallery for African Art holding two pairs of sculptures that provide a transcendent view of “togetherness” and what it means for the spiritual to be connected with the earth. The first is a pair of “Male...

Link to Designing Memories

Designing Memories

We’ve all been swept away by the ability of an album to evoke memories, ideas, or particular moods. How does the design of an album cover relate to the music and how do music and cover together evoke these memories, ideas, and moods? In the...

faye and mike

Lumber-Made Listening

Theaster Gates’ Listening Stools, one of the sculptural forms in the exhibit The Listening Room, have helped transform SAM’s Knight-Lawrence Gallery into an open space for music and ideas. Their design may be simple and made from recycled wood, coming from the floorboards of a...

Joe Lencioni, shiftingpixel.com

Vinyl Records: A “Comeback” Reinterpreted

I’ve had many conversations about the supposed “comeback” of vinyl records throughout my time interning at the Theaster Gates: The Listening Room installation and the Seattle Art Museum Record Store project that was located in Pioneer Square from December 13, 2011 to January 31, 2012 . Being from a younger generation who came of age in...

Tumba Francesca Album Cover

Faith In Analog

Until recently my attachment to records has been more or less superficial, but when I started buying ethnographic records a couple years ago I began to see how they are loaded with cultural significance for both the listener and the cultures producing them. On one...

Record Store Listening Party Schedule for January 16−19

Record Store Listening Party Schedule for January 16−19

TUES | January 17 6:30 PM – Cancelled due to weather concerns! Selectors: Jason Plourde and the Three Dollar Bill Cinema Family Join Jason Plourde, the Programming Director for Seattle’s own Three Dollar Bill Cinema, for an evening of that you will never forget. Three...

Record Store Listening Party Schedule for January 10-13

Record Store Listening Party Schedule for January 10-13

TUES | January 10 6:30 PM Selector: Joshua Kohl, Degenerate Art Ensemble Co-Artistic Director/Co-Founder Joshua Kohl has created original works for dance, silent film, concert ensembles, “classico-punk-big band” shows and street performances and has collaborated extensively on the creation of invented instruments used in DAE...

Record Store Listening Party Schedule for January 3-6

Record Store Listening Party Schedule for January 3-6

TUES | January 3 6:30 PM Selector: John Gilbreath, Earshot Jazz and Seattle Art Museum Art of Jazz Calling all jazz heads to the Record Store for an evening of intense listening, great conversation about jazz and the vinyl record with Seattle’s own Jazz aficionado...

Link to Listen Up: Record Store in the Business of Ideas

Listen Up: Record Store in the Business of Ideas

I recently volunteered at SAM’s Teen Night Out, and one of my favorite moments was watching the youth interact with the record players in Theaster Gates: The Listening Room. This exhibition features a collection of thousands of records from a defunct record store in Chicago...