Nicole Block, Author at SAM Stories

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Susanna and the Elders

Nicole Block on Aug 26 2024

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view.

Please note: The following article includes mentions of nudity, coercion, and sexual assault.

Like many works on view in Poke in the Eye at SAM, this painting’s vibrant colors and figurative style draws the viewer in, then flips expectations upside down.

From a distance, Susanna and the Elders (Novelty Hotel) (1980) looks like a cartoon, but the artist, Robert Colsecott (1925–2009), often used this visually appealing strategy to hook viewers and make them confront the more serious issues of race and gender that are in his works.

This intriguing painting is titled after a story from the Bible that perhaps wouldn’t be so well known if not for the many Renaissance artists who painted it. Although Colescott didn’t cite one particular artwork as inspiration for his work, he was familiar with this subject from historical artists like Tintoretto, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and many others who depicted the story.

In this tale, found in the Book of Daniel, two men are spying upon Susanna bathing in the garden of her home. They catch each other peeping and unite to coerce Susanna into having sex with them. They threaten to blackmail her, but still she refuses. They have her arrested and publicly accuse her of adultery. These two respected men are judges and elders in their community and Susanna is sentenced to death on their word until the prophet Daniel appears and questions them. He finds major differences in their stories and declares Susanna innocent.

Although a somewhat minor anecdote in the Bible, Susanna’s story became popular partly because it allowed artists to display their talent at depicting nude women. During the Renaissance, artists often portrayed Susanna lounging naked, sometimes unaware of the men watching, or other times, seeming to seduce them. Like the elders watching the oblivious Susanna, the patrons and viewers of these paintings also act as voyeurs of Susanna and lust after her with the excuse that the artwork depicts a biblical story.

Robert Colecott interprets this tale in his own way: a naked blonde woman emerges from behind a shower curtain, much to the glee of three ogling men and one rubber ducky. At the Novelty Hotel (a real hotel that Colescott visited in Paris), a bald white man in a red robe, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a Black janitor holding a mop are directly next to this Susanna, physically leaning on one another as they witness this scene. Another Black man peers in through the open window, a self-portrait of Colescott himself with his signature glasses and facial hair. The rubber ducky also seems to be looking up at her eagerly from the tub. None of them are touching Susanna or harming her, but they are intruding on the privacy of her hotel room and her body.

Much like the men in this scene, the viewer is also a voyeur complicit in this visual violation. With its bright colors and cartoonish style, paired with the towering seven-foot-tall canvas on which it sits, Colescott’s painting is unmissable. Visitors passing by can’t help but stop and stare at the intrusive tableau.

Susanna’s eyes appear closed as if she’s unaware of those watching her. Alternatively, Susanna’s facial expression could be interpreted as giving the voyeurs a flirtatious smile over her shoulder, as if performing for them. With all these eyes looking at her, it seems impossible that she wouldn’t notice these men around her, but is she to blame for their actions? By calling her Susanna in the title, she is aligned with the innocent and happens to be the unfortunate subject of this male attention.

Colescott grew up in Oakland, California and attended the University of California, Berkeley where he studied painting. He studied in Paris for a year, working with Fernand Leger. Colescott’s Night and Day, You Are the One (1969), also on display in Poke in the Eye, more closely resembles Leger’s Cubist-inspired, rhythmic style. Colescott visited and lived in Paris throughout his life, but returned to Berkeley for his master’s degree before becoming an art teacher in the Pacific Northwest, at a junior high school in Seattle and Portland State College. He later held other teaching positions in Cairo, Egypt, California, and Arizona.

From the mid-1970s on, Colescott was well-known for creating artworks that spoofed and remixed art history. He was a satirist, taking the serious subjects of the art world and translating them with critique, wit, and humor into offbeat commentaries.

Often, Colescott subverts artistic precedents by changing the racial makeup of the scene, substituting Black figures for the historically White main roles. Another work on display in the galleries of Poke in the Eye, Les Demoiselles d’Alabama: Vestidas (1985) plays on Pablo Picasso’s famous Cubist painting of sex workers, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Picasso’s original took direct influence from African masks, at the time regarded as “primitive” in the wake of ongoing colonization of that continent, but Colescott puts actual Black figures in this key moment in art history.

In Susanna and the Elders, the men overcome their racial differences to unite in their ogling of the modern Susanna. They are all complicit in this behavior and caught red-handed. However, Susanna seems to still have the upper hand—she stands tall, powerful, and unbothered.

By the 1980s, thanks to the previous decades’ feminist movement, American and European women received more recognition of their social and political rights and a degree of sexual liberation. Even with these men watching her in the hotel shower, she will not be accused of adultery and sentenced to death as the original Susanna was. These older men don’t pose a mortal threat to her in the same way that the biblical judges did. Colescott instead transforms the story into a comical episode that shifts the power in favor of the female lead.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Chloe Collyer. Susanna and the Elders (Novelty Hotel), 1980, Robert Colescott, American, 1925-2009, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 1/8 in. (213.4 x 183.2 cm), Mary Arrington Small Estate Acquisition Fund, 84.170 © Estate of Robert Colescott/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Double Poke in the Eye II

Nicole Block on Aug 6 2024

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view. Stay tuned for more object spotlights to come.

Did you know that Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture derived its title from one of the artworks on view in the exhibition? It’s true!

Created by artist Bruce Nauman in 1985, Double Poke in the Eye II features two faces made up of bright neon tubing. The figures look at one another while the hands in between them alternate lighting up. There is a slight delay between when the hands light up, but the two figures are always simultaneously poking each other in the eye, both at fault. Their pointed fingers just barely touch one another’s eyes and one face has its mouth open, seemingly arguing.

Nauman began making works in neon in the 1960s, often using wordplay and both text and figurative imagery, to address “pain, life, death, love, hate, pleasure” to quote the title of another neon work by him that puts those words into a never-ending circle. Neon is typically used for commercial advertising, attracting the consumer’s eye to a storefront, but Nauman’s signs twist this commonly recognized aesthetic to question philosophical and artistic ideas.

Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana and attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison to study mathematics, physics, and art, then the University of California, Davis for his MFA. UC Davis was a hub for artists who rejected abstract and minimalist aesthetics and boundaries of low and high art. William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson were among those who taught Nauman at Davis and are also featured in Poke in the Eye.

Nauman mainly studied sculpture, but after graduating, became known for his performances recorded in his studio space. Nauman captured himself doing repetitive tasks and exercises; for example, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967–68, is ten minutes of Nauman doing just what the title describes. Watching these mundane actions captured on film draws attention to the topics of surveillance and privacy, as well as the human body’s physical limits and abilities, and what qualifies as art. To Nauman, anything an artist does in his studio is art and one of the most accessible materials an artist can use is his own body.

Though Double Poke in the Eye II is not a performance piece, it echoes some of these themes. It mimics an endless, repetitive action as the figures go back and forth poking one another. Due to the way the lights click off and on and make the work change moment to moment, the viewer can get caught up watching this pattern repeat, trying to observe the whole sequence. In the way that viewers watch Nauman’s own body perform these repetitive actions, here we have people performing the same simple poke, again and again. Though the neon colors make this scene cartoonish, this piece illustrates a moment of pain and bodily harm that the viewer is forced to watch.

Yet, a “poke” has less serious connotations than a punch, a jab, or a stab to the eye. A poke is slightly silly. We “poke fun” at things to make light of them. The word choice for the title is significant because Nauman is also interested in the role of language in his art.

The gaps where language is imprecise are part of what Nauman wants to tease out. In 1989, Nauman said:

“When language begins to break down a little bit, it becomes exciting and communicates in nearly the simplest way that it can function: you are forced to be aware of the sounds and the poetic parts of words. If you deal only with what is known, you’ll have redundancy; on the other hand, if you deal only with the unknown, you cannot communicate at all. There is always some combination of the two, and it is how they touch each other that makes communication interesting.”¹

The work isn’t just a poke in the eye but a “double poke” which is a not a common phrase: Is it a double poke because of the two figures poking one another? Or because there are two eyes as possible targets? Or could they be poking twice in a row?

Besides the verb of “poke”, the emphasis on the eye in this work is key—damaging someone’s vision impairs a major way of interacting with the world, limiting the way they can perceive others, art, and everything around them.

Double Poke in the Eye II is open to interpretation and double meanings. When asked about what the title of this particular work means on a SAM questionnaire, the artist simply replied “It is what it is.”

For the exhibition though, this title represents the experimental modes that these artists used to depart from their contemporary artistic movements and seek something new. Many of these artists in Poke in the Eye depicted figures in their work (rather than abstraction); worked with neon, ceramics, and textiles (rather than paint and canvas); and were silly and self-effacing (rather than serious).

Artworks like these are a type of a poke in the eye—they stand out as offbeat and off-kilter from expectations of what art should be.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1 John Yau, “Words and Things: The Prints of Bruce Nauman”, in Bruce Nauman Prints 1970-89, ed. Christopher Cordes (Castelli Graphics: New York, Lorence Monk Gallery: New York, Donald Young Gallery; Chicago, 1989), 10.

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Red Hot Pot

Nicole Block on Jul 23 2024

Poke in the Eye is all about encounters with the odd and unusual as well as challenging expectations of what you’ll find in a museum. Patti Warashina’s Red Hot Pot (1969) embodies this spirit with more than just tongue-in-cheek humor.

The shape of Red Hot Pot is not a standard form like the ceramic vessels that we use everyday. The large, curved rectangular white base with a black bottom edge resembles a toaster. But instead of toast emerging from this form, a bright pink tongue pops out from a pair of large red-orange lips and teeth. The shiny finish on the surface makes the lips look picture-perfect, glossy, and red hot, as the title says.

Red Hot Pot is part of Warashina’s Basket and Loaf series where the forms (in this case a loaf) allude to themes of food and the kitchen, traditionally associated with women. Starting her career in the 1960s in a male-dominated art world and the rise of second wave feminism, Warashina often critiqued gender stereotypes and the sexualization of women’s bodies. Curvy vases have long been associated with women’s bodies and their reproductive capabilities, as vessels that can be filled. Warashina’s Faucet Pot (ca. 1966), also on view in Poke in the Eye, critiques this symbolism explicitly.

Likewise, the plump lips of Red Hot Pot mimic a seductively red mouth, but the tongue sticking out seems like an act of defiance. The lips aren’t blowing a kiss, but are drawn into a smile, poking fun at us for looking.

In isolating the lips and removing the rest of the face, Warashina draws attention to how sexualized a woman’s mouth can be, but also makes it more peculiar in this context. Warashina was inspired by Surrealist artists like Rene Magritte and Marcel Duchamp who are known for their strange, dreamlike scenarios that demand we inspect the mundane more closely.¹ Red Hot Pot is definitely dreamlike, or maybe nightmare-ish, adding a mouth to this inanimate object.

Talking about her work recently, Warshina said, “I like things that are not quite right, they’re kind of loony… The parts and pieces fit together and if they kind of go against each other that’s even better. You know, I don’t like things to be too logical. I like things that are kind of disturbed.”²

Warashina grew up in Spokane, Washington where her father, a Japanese immigrant, and her mother, a second-generation Japanese American, encouraged her education. However, they didn’t envision Warashina becoming an artist, and neither did she. Warahina attended the University of Washington intending to get a practical degree to work as a dental hygienist. When she took her first elective art classes, however, she fell in love with clay and experimenting with its techniques. Warashina returned to teach at the University of Washington from 1970 to 1995. In 2024, she received the UW Alumni Association’s Golden Graduate Distinguished Alumnus Award.³

Throughout her career, Warashina was inspired by her fellow artists, especially those on the West Coast like Peter Voulkos, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, and Howard Kottler, who were exploring different ceramic techniques, modes of humor, and figurative forms. Abstract art had become a dominant force in the art world, especially on the East Coast, with Abstract Expressionism from artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Minimalism from the likes of Donald Judd and Frank Stella. However, art departments at universities like the University of California, Davis, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington became hubs for alternative approaches, rejecting abstraction, and typical materials like paint and canvas.

Art history in Europe and the US has tended to focus on paintings and sculpture (usually carving from marble or stone), Meanwhile, more everyday and functional materials like textiles and ceramics have been relegated to the category of “craft.” But many of the artists in Poke in the Eye like Patti Warashina pushed ceramics, and other materials like fiber and neon, to new possibilities and built the art world of today that recognizes extraordinary artists in any medium.

When talking about the divide between what is art and what is not, Warashina defined it for herself: “When I come in and I see something that raises my blood pressure, then I know that there is something more than just a bowl or a sculpture or a painting. It makes me react to the painting chemically in my body. And that’s when I know—or music, you know. It makes my body react. And that is my way of judging whether, I guess, quote, whether it’s art or not… It alters your being.”⁴

Red Hot Pot, though it might cause confusion, discomfort, or even a laugh, provokes a reaction and that is what Warashina is looking for. To hear more from Patti Warashina herself, watch her recent SAM Talks conversation with Carrie Dedon, SAM Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1 “UW ceramic arts program is in good hands with Patti Warashina,” UW Magazine, December 1, 2007, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/the-wonder-of-patti-warashina/.

2 Airstream Turkey by Patti Wararshina, audio tour, Seattle Art Museum, 2024, https://www1.seattleartmuseum.org/tours/media/1544.

3 “Ceramic artist Patti Warashina Receives UW Alumni Association Golden Graduate Award.” UW Magazine, 2024, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/ceramic-artist-patti-warashina-receives-uw-alumni-association-golden-graduate-award/.

4 Doug Jeck oral history interview with Patti Warashina, September 8, 2005, accessed September 13, 2017, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-patti-warashina-12864.

Images: Red Hot Pot, 1969, Patti Warashina, American, born 1940, ceramic with glaze, 11 x 19 1/4 x 19 in. (27.9 x 48.9 x 48.3 cm), Gift of Lucy and Herb Pruzan, 2023.23.3 © Patti Warashina, photo: Scott Leen. Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: American Gothicware

Nicole Block on Jul 2 2024

Howard Kottler’s American Gothicware from 1972 spoofs the well-known painting by Grant Wood, American Gothic, made in 1930. By placing a decal of the image on four plates and adding his own twist to each one, dinnerware becomes Gothicware à la Kottler!

During the start of the Great Depression (1929–1939), Grant Wood painted this now-iconic couple (the models were actually Wood’s dentist and sister) looking somber and proper in front of their farmhouse. Many viewers interpreted Wood’s painting as satire of older generations and outdated traditional values, while others saw it as a reflection of the resilience of farmers like these in the face of tough times. Since then, this painting has been parodied and reproduced in many forms, symbolic of one particular view of what it means to be an American.

Howard Kottler, working 40 years later, was a ceramicist in Seattle who taught at the University of Washington. Kottler was inspired by Pop Artists like Andy Warhol who experimented with reproducing famous images from pop culture and the art world. After World War II when the American economy was booming, artists were fascinated with the way that consumer goods and images could be mass-produced and identically replicated. Along with that, artists were also drawing from earlier movements like Dadaism and the idea of the readymade to challenge hierarchical definitions of art.

Kottler decided to use an everyday material that one could easily overlook, ceramic dishware, to bring politics to the table. American Gothicware conveys Kottler’s subversive attitude toward American life by altering Grant Wood’s painting across four plates: Look Alikes, Personal Possession, American Minstrels, and The Silent White Majority. Each plate offers a visual confrontation of the original painting by Wood and with it mainstream American values.

Look Alikes duplicates the man’s face and places it on the woman’s body, transforming them into a gay couple of sorts, or identical twins. In Grant’s painting, each character is strongly associated with their gender roles—the woman in her apron with houseplants on the porch behind her indicating her role as caretaker of the home, while the man is in overalls and a coat, holding a pitchfork and aligned with the red barn over his shoulder. While their stern expressions already made these two look alike, Kottler adds ambiguity about gender and the relationship between the characters. Kottler himself was a gay man and often included these questions and hidden meanings in his artworks.

In Personal Possession, a painted landscape seeps into the bodies and faces of the two characters, covering everything except their facial features and hair. Their skin is the color of the sky and their clothes have been replaced by a forest scene with some signs of human development: a bridge in the background and a tunnel to the right. The pioneer settlers who took the land as their own personal possession now wear the land as part of their clothes. It has become part of their identity as farmers who tend the land, but Kottler seems to ask if it was ever theirs to claim, critiquing the history of Manifest Destiny that is often taught in US history.

American Minstrels also delves into more unpleasant parts of American history. This image subtracts color from the skin of the two farmers to make them appear as white as the plate itself, making their whiteness literal. The title implies this could be seen as whiteface, an inverse of blackface minstrel shows wherein white performers would dress up as Black characters and parody their speech and behavior. Black performers would also participate in these minstrel performances, exaggerating their differences from white society. Minstrel shows were popular entertainment throughout the 1800s and perpetuated stereotypes that still linger today. Kottler’s reference to minstrels leaves the work open to more questions—what is being performed here and in the original American Gothic?

The Silent White Majority also critiques whiteness in America, co-opting a phrase that President Richard Nixon coined in 1969 for the American voters who did not vocally join in the counterculture and political discourses surrounding the Vietnam War. Here, the pair’s faces are mask-like with white covering the mouths but leaving their eyes and noses exposed. Their literal whiteness again calls attention to race, but even in their silence, they have power as a majority to influence politics in their favor, maintaining the status quo.

By modifying the recognizable symbol of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Kottler subverted and questioned prevailing ideas about American identity in terms of gender, sexuality, race, and national history. Alongside these political messages, American Gothicware challenges the medium of art too, transforming the humble ceramic plate into an artwork that offers a visual and conceptual feast

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

SAM Celebrates Pride: Between Rabbit and Fox

Nicole Block on Jun 21 2024

In honor of Pride Month, SAM Blog features reflections by SAM voices on collection artworks that explore LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queer lives matter every day of the year, but this month is a particular opportunity to celebrate histories of joy, advocacy, and resistance. Check out more Pride-related content on SAM Blog, including another object spotlight and a list of queer film recommendations curated by SAM’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) foregrounds his Indigenous, queer identity in his artwork, often with bold colors and materials that make his personal history and intentions undeniable. As Gibson has noted in many of his interviews, he celebrates a state of “in-between-ness”: between cultures, between aesthetics, and between normative gender expectations.¹

Gibson is also in-between in a few places at SAM—Gibson’s 2017 work, Between Rabbit and Fox, is on view on the third floor, in the space between the modern and contemporary galleries and American Art: The Stories We Carry.

This large abstract painting on canvas depicts a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, refracted in a vibrant pattern. Although at first the painting seems like a smooth solid surface, its raised lines cut through different shapes and shimmery paints in the center to reveal the texture of the canvas. Looking closely, every diagonal is intentional, forming more and more triangles, and they create the effect of overlapping pieces and colors that change as they are layered.

As a painter, Gibson draws upon the major art historical movements of modernism and abstraction that explored minimalism and color theory, including the work of Josef Albers, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Al Held, and Barnett Newman, all of whose works are in SAM’s collection.

Yet abstraction has long been a part of Native American artistic traditions as well, adorning many types of functional and cultural objects, such as Navajo textiles and Osage ribbonwork.² Between Rabbit and Fox also references Gibson’s own earlier abstract paintings on hide, where he directly connected abstraction to Indigenous history by painting upon this culturally significant material. In the same room as Between Rabbit and Fox, you can see contemporary Tlingit/Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin’s work on deer hide, Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum) (2022).

Gibson grew up in Germany and South Korea, among other places with his father’s military assignments, but came back to the US to attend the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, for his BFA, and then the Royal College of Art, London for his MA in painting. While growing up abroad, he felt he was treated as an “American,” but back at home in the US, he was seen only as Native American.³

Gibson is of Choctaw and Cherokee lineage, but didn’t grow up on a reservation. Many Americans he encountered had assumptions about a monolithic Native American culture and artistic aesthetic. Facing these reductive stereotypes, Gibson felt limited by this necessity to explain Native American art and concepts to an unaware audience, but also wanted to make work that reflected his identity. He found there was even less acceptance for a queer Indigenous man and artist.⁴

Instead of trying to avoid representing these identities in his art, Gibson came to a realization that he needed to incorporate them all and create a new path for himself in the art world. Around 2011, Gibson began reaching out to other Native American communities to learn about and collaborate on artworks that involved beadwork and drum making.⁵ He chose to use these techniques and make works on animal hide rather than on canvas, and he incorporated text and pop culture references to make his messages more visible.

Gibson’s work often addresses US history and the government’s failings toward Native Americans as well as queer communities. His other work in SAM’s collection, IF I RULED THE WORLD (2018), is a repurposed punching bag covered with beading, fringe, and metal jingles, and embedded with the title of a song by the rapper Nas. Here, Gibson also uses abstract geometric decoration with bands of primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) interrupted by black triangles.

The punching bag evokes physical action and even a sense of violent masculinity, which is immediately undercut by the delicate and detailed ornamentation that Gibson applies. He questions gender identity by using techniques like beading that are associated with women makers, as well as integrating quotes from queer club and music scenes and performing in gender-bending costumes he designs. Combining popular culture, canonical art influences, and Indigenous art forms and materials, Gibson has forged a new way forward that combines his identities with activism. The Seattle Art Museum exhibited a survey show of Gibson’s work in 2018, LIKE A HAMMER, and this year, Gibson was selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, one of the largest and oldest international art fairs. Gibson’s presentation, the space in which to place me, was the first solo show by a Native American artist at the prestigious event. With this platform, Gibson has brought his queer, Indigenous identity to the forefront, raising issues and history that his communities and all of us have to face in making a more just world.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1 “Innovation and Tradition: Jeffrey Gibson Interviewed by Emily Zimmerman,” Bomb Magazine, May 6, 2019, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/innovation-and-tradition-jeffrey-gibson-interviewed.
2 John P. Lukavic, “What Should Have Been, What Is, and What Will Be,” Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Munich, London, New York: Denver Art Museum, with DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2019; p. 29.
3 David Pagel, “Jeffrey Gibson: American. Native American. Gay. An artist’s life outside labels,” Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-jeffrey-gibson-20171007-htmlstory.html.
4 “Material & Identity Merge in Jeffrey Gibson’s ‘Like A Hammer’ at Seattle Art Museum.” YouTube January 31, 2019. https://youtu.be/-RrqDSZKtLQ?si=1NN66Iigx6HO0685.
5 Anne Ellegood. “Jeffrey Gibson: Critical Exuberance,” Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer. Munich, London, New York: Denver Art Museum, with DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2019; pp. 83-84.

Consider supporting our Community Pass Program partners who serve queer communities:

Celebrate Pride Month in Seattle with these suggested events:

Sat Jun 22
Youth Pride Disco
Break out your disco wear for this LGBTQIA+ Pride party, planned for and organized by LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 22! Join us for drag performances, great music, friend-making activities, food and soft drinks, a quiet room, and more.

Through Sun Jun 23
Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales: Together Again, Again!
Experience the comedy, music, and saucy stylings of two of the Pacific Northwest’s standout drag entertainers, in this wildly hilarious extravaganza set in an apocalyptic future. Check the event calendar for information about performances for teens, ASL interpretation, captions, and masking.

Fri Jun 28
Trans Pride Seattle 2024
Started in 2013, Trans Pride Seattle is an annual event organized by Gender Justice League. Visit the Volunteer Park Amphitheater from 5 to 10 pm for live music, community speakers, performances, and a resource fair all dedicated to increased visibility, connection, and love of the Seattle-area TwoSpirit, Trans, and Gender Diverse (2STGD) community.

Sat Jun 29
PrideFest Capitol Hill
Spanning six blocks of Broadway and Cal Anderson Park, this all-day market features queer local businesses, beer gardens, family and youth programming, and three stages with an unforgettable lineup of live performances.

Sun Jun 30
Seattle Pride Parade
Spend the final day of June by taking part in the 50th annual Pride Parade led by grand marshals Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Then, head over to Seattle Center for the can’t-miss performances, hundreds of acts, beer gardens, food vendors, a new family area—and dancing in the iconic International Fountain.

Visit the official Seattle Pride website for even more suggested events.

Photos: Natali Wiseman.

Celebrate Women’s History Month With Five Artworks by Women Artists on View at SAM

Nicole Block on Mar 13 2024

Every March, the United States recognizes women’s past and present contributions to society with Women’s History Month. On International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8, we took to social media to highlight the five ongoing and upcoming solo SAM exhibitions by remarkable contemporary women artists. They include:

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map (Through May 12)
Anida Yoeu Ali: Hybrid Skin, Mythical Presence (Through July 7)
Elizabeth Malaska: All Be Your Mirror (Through June 16)
Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams (October 17 2024 – January 19 2025)
Bethany Collins: Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize Winner (November 14 2024 – May 4 2025)

Now, our celebration of Women’s History Month continues with this round-up of five artworks by women artists you can currently see on view in SAM’s galleries. The five artworks discussed below represent only a few of the many works by women artists in SAM’s collection, but show the range of different techniques, subject matter, and ideas they bring to their art. Women have always been artists and craftspeople, but they have not always been celebrated or acknowledged for their contributions. Plan your next visit to the Seattle Art Museum to appreciate these artworks in person and learn more about the historical and contemporary artists who made them.

Yunarla, 2010
Yukultji Napangati

The precisely painted dots of Yunarla form patterns and undulations that take on a meditative, entrancing quality. Curving lines radiate out from the central knot, suggestive of a topographic map in some ways, but also referring to the vines of the bush banana. Also called the silky pear vine, the bush banana (marsdenia australis) only grows in Australia and serves as food with edible fruit, roots, leaves, seeds and flowers. The name Yunarla also signifies a particular rockhole and soakage site where ancestral women camped to replenish their energy near these places in the desert where water is stored beneath the surface of the sand.

Yukultji Napangati (born ca. 1970) lived with her family in the Gibson Desert until 1984, when she and several others from her Pintupi tribe made contact with non-Indigenous Australians for the first time. The “Pintupi Nine” became a media sensation as a “lost tribe,” while they insisted they were not lost, as they were living as their ancestors had for millennia. While adjusting to culture shock, Napangati became aware of the Papunya Tula’s community art center, which established a thriving business for Australian Aboriginal people to create and sell their art in 1972. Women began painting in the mid-1990s, and Napangati quickly adopted the ethos of educating outsiders by conveying extensive knowledge about her community and culture through this restrained mark making. Don’t miss your chance to see this work in Honoring 50 Years of Papunya Tula Painting, which closes after April 14.

The First People, 2008
Susan Point

The First People was commissioned for the Seattle Art Museum and stands twelve feet tall, greeting visitors to the museum’s Native American art galleries. Prominent Northwest Coast artist Susan Point (born 1951) brings traditional Salish forms and techniques to contemporary and often public settings to share the history and culture of First Nation people. Point has been credited with single-handedly reviving a unique Salish style that laid dormant for nearly 100 years; she is among only a handful of Native female artists working in the media of woodcarving.

In this work, the eight faces connecting via flowing tendrils refer to the hereditary roots and extended families of the Salish people. These root-like forms also signify the fjords and meandering pathways that punctuate the traditional homelands of her own people, the Musqueam of the Fraser Delta in present-day Vancouver. These pathways are the lifelines that yield salmon and other foods for Salish people. Looking closely at the carving, we can see the perfectly smooth surface of the faces, in contrast to the visible chisel marks of the roots, both showcasing the natural beauty of the cedar wood itself, a material highly valued by First Peoples.

Dug Up from Kitchen Weeds, 2014
Ebony Patterson

In its barrage of color, pattern, and glittering textures, Dug Up from the Kitchen Weeds, on view in Remember the Rain, hides a more somber image. The black-and-white stripes at the center clothe a figure that is lying face down. Though this form is camouflaged within the pink floral background, rhinestones, and tropical birds and plants, it is also hypervisible. Once you notice the stripes, leopard print pants, and red shirt, you can’t overlook them.

Ebony Patterson (born 1981) cites bling funerals, an increasingly popular occurrence in Kingston, Jamaica, as a source of reference, as “the glitter and bling shines light on things.” These lavish celebrations held for working class people say, “You may not have noticed me when I was alive, but you will damn well see me before I leave.” Patterson is interested in bringing people on the margins into focus in her work—first by catching the eye with striking color and imagery, and then by asking viewers to look more closely and see what they find embedded within and protruding from the surface of her collages. Her aesthetic of ornamentation and ostentation often takes on qualities of both disguise and hypervisibility to engage with issues one might rather ignore, such as wealth disparity, high murder rates, and police-related deaths in Jamaica.

Codigo Desconhecido #5, 2015
Marilá Dardot

Marilá Dardot (born 1972) often works with text-based materials—including books, printed cards, and magazines—to explore ideas of language, communication, and memory. In Codigo Desconhecido #5 (which translates to “unknown code”), books are cut down to their spines, rendering them illegible. Instead of reading and accessing the books’ knowledge, the viewer is left to see these books as objects or artifacts. Each book is cut or ripped to reveal its unique paper and binding materials rather than its words, making its structure but not its content visible.

This work, on view in SAM’s modern and contemporary art galleries, is part of a series that Dardot began during an artist’s residency in Vienna, when she was surrounded by books in a language she could not read. Words are powerful, but here she removes them and in doing so, opens up many avenues for interpretation. Dardot’s work plays with books as our main source and conduit of knowledge—questioning which stories get told or repressed, how translation and language can limit our understanding of others, and possibilities for political resistance on the page and outside of it.

The Sink, 1956
Joan Mitchell

The Sink (1956) is nearly ten feet in length; its size engulfs the viewer in a range of colors, textures, and feelings. Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) was an artist who used her memories, experiences, and environment as inspiration for her abstract works, seeking, in her own words, “to define a feeling.” The Sink, also on view in SAM’s modern and contemporary art galleries, is an abstracted landscape of sorts, with its pools of green and blue interrupted by swirls, drips, and jagged lines in yellow and red and interspersed with thick applications of white paint. Rather than capturing a strictly realistic image of nature, this painting seems more like a memory or impression of a place built up with emotive brushstrokes and applications of paint.

Mitchell grew up in Chicago with strong interests in athletics, art, and literature, thanks to her mother, the poet Marion Strobel Mitchell. She studied art at the School of the Art Institute and then in France on a fellowship. She moved to New York in 1949 and joined the artistic scene there, becoming one of the few female Abstract Expressionists celebrated in her own time. About a decade later, she settled in France where she found artistic inspiration in Impressionists like Paul Cézanne and Claude Monet, continuing a long tradition of artists observing nature and finding her own unique visual language.

– Compiled by Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Jo Cosme, Chloe Collyer, and Alborz Kamalizad.

Celebrate Black History Month With Five Artworks by Black Artists on View at SAM

Nicole Block on Feb 15 2024

Every February, the United States recognizes Black History Month with a specific theme. In 2024, the theme is African Americans and the Arts.

African American art is intricately woven with influences from Africa, the Caribbean, and the lived experiences of Black Americans. In celebration of the rich history of Black Americans in the arts, we’re reflecting on five artworks by historical and contemporary Black artists in the museum’s collection which visitors can currently see in our galleries. Plus, scroll to the bottom of this post to learn about a few ways you can celebrate Black History Month this February and all year long!

Mitchell’s Point Looking Down the Columbia, 1887
Grafton Tyler Brown

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841–1918) was one of only a few Black Americans who made a living as an artist before the 20th century, first as a topographic artist and a lithographer and later as a landscape painter. Brown’s parents were freedmen living in Pennsylvania, but Brown decided to move West for greater freedom and opportunities in the 1850s, as many African Americans did. In the 1880s and 1890s, Brown traveled around the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, painting and selling images of his surroundings. This serene scene of the Columbia River, titled Mitchell’s Point Looking Down the Columbia and on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry, depicts smooth, reflective water framed by rocky cliffs, rolling hills with patches of trees, and distant mountains. The few Native American figures situated in the foreground serve more as indications of the remote-ness of this place, rather than detailed observations of particular Indigenous peoples.

Gwendolyn Knight, 1934–35
Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage (1892–1962) studied sculpture in New York and Paris before opening her own art school in Harlem, New York in 1931. She was devoted to sharing her skills and resources with her students and mentored many young Black artists including Gwendolyn Knight, depicted here, and Knight’s husband Jacob Lawrence, both of whom would later live in Seattle. This portrait depicts Knight in her early twenties with careful attention paid to her facial features and gracefully pulled up hair. Savage gifted this portrait bust to Knight, which she kept until her death in 2005 and bequeathed to the Seattle Art Museum, allowing this rare and fragile plaster work to survive while many of Savage’s other works did not. You can learn more about this bust and Augusta Savage’s artistic career in this 2016 SAM Object of the Week blog post and take an up-close look at its intricate sculpted details in American Art: The Stories We Carry.

Wounded Eagle No. 10, 1963
James Washington Jr.

James Washington Jr. (1908–2000) saw his animal sculptures as deeply symbolic and resonant with his spiritual beliefs. Born the son of a Baptist minister in Mississippi, he brought these beliefs with him when he moved to the Seattle area in 1941 for a job at the Bremerton Navy Yard. He felt that God was guiding him in his life and as an artist, calling him to create images that would communicate universality and truth about the world. His animal sculptures, such as Wounded Eagle No. 10 on view in Remember the Rain, showcase his close observations of the natural world, as well as his understanding of line, form, and medium. Washington was active in the arts community in the Northwest, taking classes at the University of Washington, exhibiting his work often, forming relationships with artists including Mark Tobey, Kenjiro Nomura, and George Tsutakawa, among many others, and starting a foundation for art scholarships.

In Case of Fire and In Case of Flood, 2014
Barbara Earl Thomas

In a striking and jarring confusion of black and white lines, Seattle-based artist Barbara Earl Thomas (born 1948) illustrates two related themes in this pair of linocut prints titled In Case of Fire and In Case of Flood on view in Remember the Rain. These scenes of people dealing with apocalyptic disasters—fire and flood—draw from Biblical sources, but also from folklore, literature, and Thomas’s own family history and experiences. Rather than creating scenes of pure fantasy, Thomas describes her work as chronicling real narratives from the past and our present day, compelled by the economic and racial inequity she witnesses. In a 2019 SAM Object of the Week blog post, Thomas was quoted as saying: “It is the chaos of living and the grief of our time that compels me, philosophically, emotionally, and artistically. I am a witness and a chronicler: I create stories from the apocalypse we live in now and narrate how life goes on in the midst of the chaos.” Thomas was a student of Jacob Lawrence at the University of Washington, who himself was taught by Augusta Savage, exemplifying a legacy of socially engaged and community-oriented artists.

Stranger in the Village (Excerpt), #7, 1997
Glenn Ligon

Glenn Ligon’s (born 1960) Stranger in the Village (Excerpt), #7 renders a powerful text by civil rights activist and writer James Baldwin nearly invisible by stenciling the black type on a black background and coating it with coal dust. On view in SAM’s modern and contemporary art galleries, the work’s unclear presentation of Baldwin’s words leaves viewers searching and straining to read the message. Baldwin’s essay published in 1955 recounts his visit to a remote Swiss village where he is the first and only Black person that many of the townspeople had ever met. In Ligon’s painting, the sense of hypervisibility that Baldwin describes becomes camouflaged and concealed. Ligon often uses text in his works to question the power of language, modes of engaging with visual art, and the legacy of slavery and racial stereotypes.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Celebrate Black History Month in Seattle with these suggested events.

February 1–29
Call to Conscience
Take a trip to the Columbia City Theater every Tuesday through Sunday this month to explore the Call to Conscience Black History Month Museum. Organized by Rainier Avenue Radio, the converted theater celebrates the achievements of the Pacific Northwest’s Black community with exhibitions about the Seattle Black Panther Party, the Black Heritage Society, the Hartsfield Family and Slave Quilt Collection, and more.

Sundays in February
Black Ice: An American Sitcom Improvised
Unexpected Productions Improv wants you to be a part of their live studio audience every Sunday this month as they perform an improvised television sitcom inspired by Norman Lear’s iconic 1970s sitcoms. And yes, they’ll be asking for crowd suggestions throughout the show.

February 15
Keynote Program with Dr. Doretha Williams
Our friends at the Northwest African American Museum are celebrating Black History Month with a keynote speech from Dr. Doretha Williams, Director of the Robert F. Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History. In her speech, she’ll discuss the importance of Black family history in America and genealogy.

February 16–17
BE Great Celebration
Celebrate Black Excellence at this free two-day event in Occidental Square hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association. This soulful celebration will bring together Black culture, arts, music, and food with live performances by local musicians, a pop-up night market featuring Black artists and creatives, and more.

February 24–March 9
X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X
As Black History Month comes to a close, the Seattle Opera is tackling the story of Malcolm X’s life through a series of biographical vignettes. Scored by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis, the three-hour opera fuses elements of modernism, minimalism, and jazz to produce a riveting interpretation of one of history’s most misunderstood civil rights icons.

Photos: Chloe Collyer & Jo Cosme. Mitchell’s Point Looking down the Columbia, 1887, Grafton Tyler Brown, oil on canvas, 18 x 30 in., Bruce Leven Acquisition Fund, 2020.26.

The Boys in the Boat: See UW Rower Robert Moch’s Vase Collection at SAM

Nicole Block on Feb 5 2024

Originally published in 2014, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown recounts the true story of how nine University of Washington rowers beat the odds to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Following the December 2023 release of the story’s film adaptation, we thought we’d take this opportunity to share about one of the rowers’ special connection to the Seattle Art Museum.

While browsing through SAM’s European art galleries, you may spot the name Robert G. Moch. Known as Bob and Bobby to those who knew him, Moch led the University of Washington rowers to victory as the team’s coxswain. Following his retirement from rowing and an illustrious law career, he and his wife, LaVerne Moch, donated several pieces of 19th century French glass to the museum.

These 10 vases, donated by the Moch family in 1995, were designed by well-known glass designer Émile Gallé (1846–1904) around the end of the 1800s and utilize the popular technique known as cameo glass. With their stylized floral patterns—like silhouettes layered atop the lighter glass—the artworks demonstrate the Art Nouveau style and the influence it derived from Japanese designs.

The 1936 Olympics in which Moch and his teammates competed were particularly notable as a result of increasing political tensions brought on by Adolf Hitler’s dictatorial rule. Although the city of Berlin had been chosen to host the Games before Hitler’s rise to power, he used the international attention of the Olympics as a way to propagandize Germany’s superiority and bolster his fascist and racist beliefs. The Nazi Party intended to ban Black and Jewish athletes from competing, but decided against enforcing these restrictions after the US and other nations threatened to boycott the Games.

Some Jewish members of the US Olympic team, including Moch, described feeling tense as they competed in front of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Moch had learned of his Jewish heritage shortly before making the voyage to Berlin.

Despite the fraught political and social circumstances of 1936, the story of the “boys in the boat” is inspiring in itself. The rowing team was composed of young men attending a public university to seek a better life and financial stability amid the hardships of the Great Depression (1929–1939). They beat out other Ivy League collegiate teams to qualify for the games and launched a public fundraising campaign to travel to Berlin. During the actual race, the team faced horrible crosswinds, one of their rowers was dealing with a severe bronchial infection, and Moch missed the starting call. Yet, the rowers managed to steadily pull up from last to first place in a nail-biting finish.

In addition to rowing, the US brought home the gold in many other events, including Black athlete Jesse Owens’s historic four gold medals in track and field.

The release of Daniel James Brown’s book brought renewed attention to this epic moment in American history. In 2016, PBS produced the documentary The Boys of ‘36 and in December 2023, a film adaptation of the book directed by George Clooney was released with Luke Slattery portraying Moch.

Ten years after donating his vases to SAM, Moch passed away. While we don’t know much about how he and LaVerne collected these glass vases, the museum is grateful for their donation to SAM and to retain a piece of Moch’s legacy. Many of the vases the Moch family donated are now on view in SAM’s fourth-floor European art galleries through March 2024 and will return later in 2024 when the museum’s European art galleries reopen!

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.