Joe Feddersen Archives

Muse/News: Spotting Calder, The Other Curtis, and Smith’s Curation

Rachel Eggers on Nov 20 2023

SAM News

“Seattle Art Museum Becomes the Alexander Calder Destination with Shirley Family Collection”: Chadd Scott of Forbes tells you everything you need to know about Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection and the future of Calder exploration at SAM.

“By any standard, Calder is an essential. He’s one of the few artists who most people have seen, even if they don’t know it, or his name. They’ve seen his work on the street or in a museum or in a book or on TV. And once introduced, they’ll never forget it–‘oh, that’s a Calder!’”

Ann Binlot of Galerie highlighted the journey of Jon Shirley’s collecting of Calders.

“‘He created a whole new art form,’ said the collector. ‘He created sculpture that’s open to hang in space and incidentally move. There’s just something about how my brain works that I really enjoyed being with the works.’”

José Carlos Diaz, exhibition curator and Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, appeared on New Day NW to fill host Amity Addrisi in on this exciting moment at SAM when you can see both Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence and Calder: In Motion.

And at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, you’ve got just two weeks left to see Renegade Edo and Paris! Here’s Bob Knetzger for Boing Boing’s take on the prints exhibition.

“It’s a real treat to get to see up close the amazingly precise and exquisitely small Japanese woodcuts—and have them right next to the GIANT lithographed posters advertising Parisian shows and entertainers.”

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Tat Bellamy-Walker—along with videographers Kevin Clark & Lauren Frohne—sits in on a rehearsal of the Jafra Dabke Team, a Seattle-based Palestinian dance group, who performed at LANGSTON this weekend as part of a cultural education and community event.

“Ties that bind”: Shannon M. Lieberman for Oregon ArtsWatch on a new gallery show of works by Omak, Washington-based Joe Feddersen.

Knute Berger and Stephen Hegg revisit an earlier Mossback Northwest episode, “The Other Curtis Brother,” examining the regional photographer Asahel Curtis. It turns out that the episode generated many new Curtis finds from the public, which the Washington State Historical Society is working to digitize.

“The digitization is going well but slowly, Berger reports: ‘They can do about a hundred images a day.’ But amazing discoveries are being made already: ‘They’re finding everything from news photos [to] promotional photos of landscapes, pictures of all kinds of people in all walks of life.’”

Inter/National News

Via Brian Boucher of Artnet: “Help! 7 Times People Got Trapped Inside Artworks—Whether by Choice or by Accident.”

“Meet the African Artists Driving a Cultural Renaissance”: Dive into this New York Times multimedia project by Abdi Latif Dahir and Veronica Chambers, part of a larger series on “how Africa’s youth boom is changing the continent, and beyond.”

ARTnews’ Alex Greenberger on the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition of contemporary Native art, “organized with grace” by the artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. (Hot tip: you can see Smith’s dazzling retrospective at SAM next spring!)

“[The exhibition] proves that Native American artists cannot be pigeonholed into one aesthetic—or even one medium—and that their output has taken up the painful remnants of colonialism via a range of subjects. Smith’s exhibition also demonstrates that the struggle for land rights continues to impact not just the objects these artists make, but their outlook on the world as well.”

And Finally

Still digging in the archives thanks to the Calder Foundation: “Sculpture and Constructions, 1944 by Herbert Matter.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection, Seattle Art Museum, 2023, © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Plateau Artists’ Book on View at Bullitt Library

Traci Timmons on Mar 6 2015

In conjunction with the exhibition, Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection, this installation features the Native American artists’ book, Terrain: Plateau Native Art & Poetry.

Cover of Terrain: Plateau Native Art & Poetry. Olympia: Self-published at Evergreen State College, 2014. SPCOL E 78 C64 F43 2014.

Terrain: Plateau Native Art & Poetry is the print portfolio/artist’s book that was curated by artist Joe Feddersen, Evergreen faculty emeritus and member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Corwin Clairmont, Salish and Kootenai, was responsible for printing the works’ monotypes and creating the embellished folio cover.

Elephant Rock, monotype by Vanessa Enos.

As one reviewer described, “[Terrain] presents a visual and verbal journey through physical, emotional, and visionary landscapes.” Feddersen, in the volume’s introduction, explains:

“Defined by the crest of the Cascades to the Continental Divide, touching northern California extending far north into British Columbia, Terrain speaks of the textures of the earth—the homeland of the Plateau people. This compilation of expressions, relief prints and poems, breathes the life of ongoing cultures inherent to place.”

HomelessTerrain.info, monotype by Ron Carraher. By moving a QR code scanner over the image, the viewer can connect to Carraher’s website.

In a phone interview, Feddersen impressed upon me the importance and purpose of this project. It was a chance to shed some light on artists of the Plateau area, who don’t often receive the attention that artists from the Northwest Coast and Plains regions receive. It was also an opportunity to bring people together. More than half of the participants were present at the printing: older artists working alongside younger artists; well-known artists working alongside emerging ones. It became a very multigenerational experience. Editions were produced for museums, the artists themselves, and people who volunteered on the project. When the artists came to Evergreen State College in the spring of 2014 for the exhibition component of the project, they got to exchange prints with one another. Feddersen described it like a “coming home week”—a time when people came back together after being dispersed in their various locales, away from their Native culture.

Unnecessary Housing, monotype by William (Bill) Passmore.

The portfolio is comprised of prints and poetry by thirty-four Plateau artists and writers: Leo Adams, Sherman Alexie, Neal Ambrose, Gloria Bird, Ron Carraher, Vic Charlo, Corwin Clairmont, Cameron Decker, Alyne Watamet DeCoteau, Debra Earling, Vanessa Enos, Carly Feddersen, Joe Feddersen, Ryan Feddersen, Jennifer Feddersen, Frank Finley, Ric Gendron, Cheryl Grunlose, Michael Holloman, Van Holloman, Rochelle Kulei, James Lavadour, Miles Miller, Ramon Murillo, Ed Archie NoiseCat, William Passmore, Lillian Pitt, Lawney Reyes, Susan Sheoships, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Kirby Stanton, Toma Villa, Ramona Wilson, and Lizzy Woody.

The SAM Libraries are grateful to have this distinctive work. Artist’s books by Native artists are unfortunately rare. Feddersen hopes that projects like this will continue. We do too.

– Traci Timmons, Librarian, Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library

Terrain: Plateau Native Art & Poetry is on view just outside the Bullitt Library on the fifth floor of the Seattle Art Museum, during the library’s public hours: Wednesday-Friday, 10 am-4 pm. During the run of Indigenous Beauty, we will rotate the selection of prints and poems being displayed.