During the temporary closure of SAM locations, we hope you can safely continue to enjoy the Olympic Sculpture Park, carefully following physical distancing guidelines by staying six feet away from other park visitors. SAM will continue to align with any City guidance on parks usage.
Stay Home with SAM continues to take your imagination outside. Last week, we investigated “The Case of the Weeping Buddha,” got macro with the photography of Imogen Cunningham, and offered a virtual curator talk of the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition with Theresa Papanikolas. Join us!
KOMO’s Seattle Refined and Seattle’s Child both share resources for online experiences and homebound art activities; Stay Home with SAM is featured.
Local News
Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne on the fight to fund Seattle arts, focusing particularly on nightlife and performance venues who are particularly reliant on people in seats.
Rich Smith of the Stranger reports on the forthcoming launch of Northwest Arts Streaming Hub (NASH), a “Netflix for local performances” created by a coalition of Seattle art world heavies.
Crosscut’s Brangien Davis takes in ever-retreating horizons as Seattle’s art world responds to a situation with unknown ends; finally, former Seattleite Yann Novak’s video piece Stillness: Oceanic offers a more substantial anchor.
“The congregational aspect of the arts scene has been boxed up for later. Stillness abounds. But, just as in Novak’s video, the atmospheric conditions are causing changes. Artists are shifting slightly every day, in ways we might not perceive until we see the composite picture.”
As part of “Art on Video, a collaboration with Art21, Artnet jumps into world-building with Jacolby Satterwhite, who once found escape with video games like Final Fantasy.
“For Satterwhite, world-building is a form of self-care. Speaking to Art21 back in February, his words ring true today: ‘Art became a form of escapism for me to reroute my personal traumas. And now I think I’m trying to pursue something more present.'”
SAM’s temporary closure has been extended until further notice, in our effort to do all we can to safeguard the health and
safety of the community.
We hope you are enjoying Stay Home with SAM, which connects you with art through videos, interviews, art-making activities, and art spotlights. Don’t miss the latest post, featuring digital and analog art-making experiences for Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstract Variations.
“What do you create or do in life that brings you
happiness? The question we asked locals — just before Washington state’s
stay-at-home order — takes on new meaning now that individuals and communities
are coping with the coronavirus crisis.”
Inter/National News
Last week, Congress
passed a $2 trillion aid package in response to the coronavirus. Cultural
organizations had requested $4 billion; Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella reports on how “they
got, well, less.”
“A fridge full of seafood, a cabinet full of beans, and
regular trips to the coffee shop while we still can. Prepping for the worst,
but can’t leave this city! So far, pizza is still delivering, so totally OK.”
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Artwork: Georgia O’Keeffe, American, 1887–1986, Music, Pink and Blue, No. 1, 1918, oil on canvas, 35 x 29 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.161, photo: Paul Macapia
Your next chance to experience the Olympic Sculpture Park through the Indigenous lens of SAM’s winter resident is tonight, February 27 from 7 to 9 pm! Architectural designer and artist Kimberly Deriana (Mandan/Hidatsa) has spent the last two months working in the park researching, offering workshops, and constructing a temporary installation. Deriana has used her residency as a space for sharing Indigenous knowledge surrounding the many uses of cattail materials. The temporary cattail and cedar structure she has created is a space where everyone is invited to gather and experience cultural celebration. The event will include performances by Aiyanna Jade Stitt and Hailey Tayathy, and storytelling and song by Kayla Guyett and Paige Pettibon.
Kimberly Deriana specializes in sustainable, environmental Indigenous architecture, housing, and planning. Deriana’s methodologies focus on incorporating Indigenous lifestyle practices in relation to past, present, and future, designing for the 7 generations. We sat down with her to learn a little more about her experience as SAM’s artist in residence and to learn more about her creative process.
SAM: What goals do you have for your residency at the Olympic Sculpture Park?
KIMBERLY DERIANA: I want to activate the park through an Indigenous lens. As an architect designer and somebody who loves urban design, I’ve been drawn to this park since I first moved here. Part of creating visibility is bringing other people along in the process and giving them opportunities, too. I really try to include people and families who have been doing this work for years while giving new urban Native people outlets in every project on which I work.
This residency is a learning opportunity for me; the way I enjoy learning is to involve others. It’s about the way we learn as a community, the way we make as a community, and the way we approach being in the world and sustainability. When you’re gathering cattails, there’s an appropriate time to gather and there are appropriate places to gather. Learning all of that protocol has been really eye-opening. Because I grew up as an urban Native and wasn’t always shown those protocols, I try to make a conscious effort to create space and time for the protocol knowledge as an adult.
Tell us about the workshops and youth that you
worked with to include Indigenous communities.
I’ve always done art and design but being in
the art scene is a new space for me; I wanted to explore the co-creation
process. Sharing resources is an important component of the process, I believe.
This space has a very educational, institutional vibe and it lends itself to
the scope needed for community workshops. The scale of the work required to
enliven the space needs many hands. The piece itself is practice and healing work.
The collaborators and I were here most
weekends in January and February. Since we are on Suquamish and Duwamish
traditional lands, one weekend we had Indigenous teachers from Suquamish. These
amazing women who are educators for and from their community—Tina, Jackson, and
Kippy Joe— and the amount of information and knowledge that they share in four hours is just indescribable. You
can’t get that on YouTube or from a professor. You have to experience their
oral teachings to begin to understand the richness and depth of the knowledge.
We had three Indigenous youth that day, and then we had a couple visitors just stop by who were interested in what we were doing. We had time to teach them and they got to learn. Every weekend I’ve had at least one Indigenous teen come in and help work with us through a partnership with yəhaw̓.
What are some of the historical uses of cattail mats?
In this region, mats were traditionally used as sheathing for summer structures. Mats are used all over the world, globally and indigenously for different surfaces. In the Plateau, Plains, Woodlands, and Southeast regions, mats are used for protection and warmth on their architectural structures.
Cattails have a multitude of uses. They protect us. When they’re just in the ground they clean the water and remove toxins. They can be food; they can be shelter; they can be water. When gathering cattails in the right spots, their uses extend beyond those listed so that one can understand the sustainability that the plant provides. Plant knowledge leads to understanding sustainability; sustainability leads to healing; healing leads to understanding their sacredness. I want everyone to know this.
I’m trying to make paper with cattails because
I think that’s a more respectful use of them since they were gathered in the
late fall season. I am super excited to do more scientific research on the
sustainability of cattails, learning more traditional knowledge about them, and
weaving. I realize you can approach a project and commit to working with a
material, but then all these other sacred teachings come up, such as how to work with other materials and plants.
It’s not homogenous when we’re learning about our plant relatives.
Why have some of the cattails been cut and
others left long and uneven?
As I started the process of creating this temporary installation with cattails some teachers said it was okay to gather now. When we made some mats, I knew they were not ideal materials and then, in the middle of the month, I learned that you should gather cattails at the end of summer for making mats. For this reason, some of the mats are trimmed and others are raggedy, in order to reveal the imperfection of the process. I like to break things apart until they become abstract, so that even though I’m using really traditional materials, the way I use them means you can’t necessarily tell what it is. For example, maybe your eye reads it as hair or as a bone or antlers. The raggedy mats—having them be more than one thing–helped convey that abstract concept. I think that process was kind of successful.
My architectural background makes me interested in exploring this building and wall system and I started to research and dissect like I normally do for a project. In architecture, you’re always researching and then drawing your theory. In art, you’re fabricating your theory. That’s when all this new information appeared to me. When you start to source your material and put it together, like, “This is why you have to harvest at a certain time and why you have to know where to gather and to get the reeds that are a certain height.” There are just all these little steps that make the process more efficient and that our ancestors knew and had good engineering minds for. I’m still doing it by trial and error and trying to find mentors.
The description of the temporary installation
mentions that the structure is a portal for healing. How is this present in the
work that is in the PACCAR Pavilion?
The sculpture forms a circular arbor and basket-like space. It incorporates some of the knowledge of the medicine wheel into the directions of the space and the layout. The teachings of the medicine wheel helps to orient our bodies with the land, plants and animals, nature and natural forces. In Plains tribes, you enter from the East like the sunrise. Here, in the West, a lot of structures face the water. All of the weavings that we made with Tina and Kippy are on that side and create filtered views to the water as much as possible since the water is so special. The North can reference the future, moving on, and death in some ways, too. The northern, open view gives people the opportunity to see that beautiful view of the park. The cattail threshold symbolizes a doorway into the future. A sustainable future holds the promise of healing.
– Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, SAM’s Content Strategist & Social Media Manager
The
Seattle Asian Art Museum is officially reopen! Thank you to the thousands
of people who streamed through the reimagined galleries at the free
housewarming event last weekend. The museum starts regular hours on Wednesday,
February 12.
“I felt freed, well, just to look”: Stefan Milne examines Boundless at the Asian Art Museum and The American War at ARTS at King Street Station, which both “explore how we see Asia.”
Seattle Refined shot a recent episode from the museum, including a fantastic segment
with SAM curators Foong Ping and Xiaojin Wu (starts at :40).
The Stranger’s Charles
Mudede on the
work of Marisa Williamson, who has two shows on view in Seattle at
SOIL Gallery and Jacob Lawrence Gallery.
Crosscut’s Margo
Vansynghel on the
new local documentary, Keepers of the Dream: Seattle Women Black
Panthers, which premiered last Friday at Northwest Film Forum and will
screen again on February 20.
“Women were
critical to the survival of the organization,” [Robyn] Spencer says. “They were
the movers, the shakers, the theorists, the thinkers, the organizers — they
were keeping the party going.”
Inter/National News
Artist Beverly Pepper
died this week at 97. Two of her works grace the Olympic Sculpture Park. Here’s
Artnet’s obituary
for the legendary sculptor.
“Your eyes and mind
enter them easily and roam through the different layers of brushwork and narrative
suggestion. There’s an unexpected optimism to all this. The paintings also
dwell in silence, slow us down and hypnotize.”
And Finally
Did you know that the Asian Art Museum will screen this film on February 26? Well, we will!
– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations
Amada Cruz, SAM’s Illsley
Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, was interviewed
by Puget Sound Business Journal. She shared her vision for museums,
her morning routine of café con leche and public radio, and other fun facts.
“We should think of
museums as civic spaces where all kinds of people can meet, convene, have a
shared experience and celebrate our shared humanities. That’s more important
now than ever.”
“She speaks five
languages — ‘three of them badly.’”
How’s your holiday
shopping going? The Seattle Times recently shared their Holiday
Gift Guide; among their recommendations for gifts for men is a SAM
Shop-exclusive, a Seattle edition of the chic reusable water bottle,
Phil the Bottle.
“It was community,
and a bunch of women sharing space and time, and doing something together,”
Giller said. “It was different every time, but it was always a good feeling.”
“Scrambling up a
fig tree vine, he found his way into a small grotto. Its far wall bore a panel,
painted with a red ocher pigment. When Aubert saw it, he was astounded. ‘I
thought, wow, it’s like a whole scene,’ he says. ‘You’ve got humans, or maybe
half-human half-animals, hunting or capturing these animals … it was just
amazing.’”
“They recreate a surrealistic landscape with the long shadows and I love them, they are all the time changing.”
– Regina Silveira
Brazilian artist Regina Silveira takes us through Richard Serra’s Wake at the Olympic Sculpture Park to share her love and appreciation for how it connects to her installation Octopus Wrap at the PACCAR Pavilion. Listen in as she recalls Richard Serra’s statement on his childhood memory of visiting a shipyard and how it influenced his work throughout his life. Visit the sculpture park in any season to experience the shifting shadows of this monumental sculpture, it is always free. You can see Silveira’s immersive installation at the park through March 2020.
Don’t miss the
Seattle Times’ full fall arts coverage—which recommends getting out
of the house to experience art, with recommendations for music, theater, books,
and more.
Press got to visit the
new Burke Museum recently. Seattle Met’s Stefan Milne wasn’t overly impressed
with the mastodon and T-rex skulls, but loved
the labs.
“All over the
museum—sometimes behind glass, but also out in the open—you see people doing
the actual work of keeping natural history and science alive.”
Here’s Artnet on a
weathered oil painting depicting Saint Jerome that turned
out to be by Anthony van Dyck. Art collector Albert B. Roberts
picked it up at an auction for $600; it’s now on view at the Albany Institute
of History & Art.
Megan O’Grady for the
New York Times Style Magazine on
Beverly Pepper, the sculptor whose Persephone Unbound and Perre’s
Ventaglio III grace the Olympic Sculpture Park.
“Public art can
sometimes feel ponderously corporate or impersonal, but the unroofed splendor
of Pepper’s site-specific works can prompt unexpectedly potent encounters . . .
They are framing devices for wonderment.”
“The humans of our
times are so used to kitsch. But for the Victorians, it was completely new. It
was radical. This is the mind-set the exhibit wants us to enter: one that had
no past, only the future. The Victorian age is the cradle of our
post-post-postmodern times.”
“Why see one sculpture
when you can see nine acres of them?” Business Insider on popular US tourist
traps and
where to go instead—like SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park.
Local News
Crosscut’s Misha
Berson on “The Bar Plays,” two
plays set in bars presented in a real-life “venerable gathering
place,” Washington Hall.
“The thing that
we’re living under doesn’t seem to be working for us, so maybe we need to
imagine a new thing,” said Pruitt. “Myth, science fiction, all of that is a way
to kind of for me to think about another kind of way of living.”
Now on view at DC’s
National Gallery of Art: The Life of Animals in Japanese Art, featuring
“300 works drawn from 66 Japanese institutions and 30 American collections” that
are all about animals (!).
“Together they
outline a more fraught view of the art of the last century, in which the
refugee is not an outsider looking in, but a central actor in the writing of a
global culture. ‘Refugees,’ Arendt wrote in 1943, ‘represent the vanguard of
their peoples — if they keep their identity.’”
“[The installation]
creates a stunning dialogue between the historical ‘porcelain room’ and our
modern attempt to reckon with the colonialism and institutional racism that
necessitated the creation of these beautiful objects.”
“Obviously, Transforest can’t capture certain things about trees—their smell, the
sound of leaves rustling in the wind, their sense of knowing. But as I stood
underneath it, sweating under all that sun, trying to figure out this
sculpture, I realized I was missing something simple, easily capture-able about
trees—their shade.”
“Almost 132 years later, the intrepid reporter will
return to the scene of the story that made her a hailed heroine of journalism
as a permanent monument.”
