Patti Warashina Archives

These Four Artworks by Women Artists in SAM’s Collection Embody the Spirit of Women’s History Month 2025

Sara Butler on Mar 20 2025

Happy Women’s History Month! March is a time to celebrate women’s many contributions to society, which are often overlooked and underappreciated. Over the next few weeks, we’re sharing artworks by talented women artists that dismantle gender stereotypes, honor family matriarchs, and celebrate the female body, among other feminist themes.

Woman Landing on Man in the Moon (1971)
Ann Leda Shapiro

Kicking off this list is Woman Landing on Man in the Moon, a bold watercolor from Ann Leda Shapiro (b. 1947), an artist based on Vashon Island in Washington State. In the 1971 painting, a female astronaut in a silver spacesuit stands tall atop the moon’s surface and shines bright against the cosmic void. Bucking NASA’s dress code, her space getup features three American flag patches with cutouts to expose her breasts…and penis. She stands tall atop the moon’s surface as six male astronauts topple off into the abyss.

Shapiro’s blunt and edgy humor exposes male privilege and highlights the barriers women face to reach the same heights. Through her art and activism, Shapiro has dedicated her career to feminist expression. In the ’80s, she was an early member of the Guerilla Girls—a group of rebellious women artists famous for wearing gorilla masks as they covered NYC with provocative posters, sharing information about sexism and racism prevalent in the art world.

Tiger Lily (1976)
Patti Warashina

Feminist themes radiate throughout the work of Seattle ceramicist Patti Warashina (b. 1940). Inspired by her grandmother’s religious shrines, Warashina created a 12-part altar series that injects the devious into the divine, unpacking the female dilemma.

Her 1976 sculpture “Tiger Lily” places a woman between two candles and a blooming flower, common altar elements associated with the Virgin Mary. Yet this woman is far from saintly. Surrounded by a ring of fire and clad in an animal print bodice, she embodies the rebellious Eve. She radiates power and resistance, transforming into a Tiger Goddess.

By utilizing ancient clay techniques, Warashina pays homage to generations of family matriarchs. However, the transformation of these sacred statues into statement pieces flips tradition on its head. Her piece acknowledges the demure behavior women have been expected to embody and seeks to empower them to challenge these gender norms.

Susanna and the Eldest (1981)
Honoré Sharrer

Painter Honoré Sharrer (1920-2009) marched to the beat of her own drum throughout her 75-year career. Tucked away in her rural upstate New York studio, she bucked trending art styles and sometimes spent years on a single painting. Known for her satirical work, Sharrer loved poking fun at female stereotypes and creating alternate realities. She was also drawn to the craft, themes, and metaphors of Northern Renaissance art.

Her 1981 oil painting “Susanna and the Eldest” is based a tale from the Old Testament about sexual violence. In the story, two men spy on a woman while she is bathing and attempt to force her into having sex, then blackmailing her when she refuses. Eventually, their lies are exposed.

In her reimagining, Sharrer gives Susanna unabridged agency. Instead of the demure victim, as she has been depicted throughout art history, Susanna splays out naked on the floor and stares directly at the viewer. An odd assortment of objects surround her to cultivate a dream-like state in the colorful room. This includes a skeleton in a top hat set upon a plinth that hovers above Susanna—a monument of death upon the leering men of her past?

Fun fact: “Susana and the Elders (Novelty Hotel)” by Robert Colescott is another famous piece found in our collection. In Colescott’s acrylic piece, men ogle at a woman stepping out of a hotel bathtub, showcasing the problematic idolization of European beauty.

Stillness #15 (1999)
Laura Aguilar

As a Chicana and lesbian photographer, Laura Aguilar (1959-2018) broke barriers by making herself and her community visible in the art world. Sometimes she did this by physically inserting herself into her artwork, as in “Stillness #15.” This 1999 photograph features Aguilar and another woman perched on rocky terrain, slouched over their naked bodies.

Often in the history of art, nude women with idealized thin, white bodies represent mythological figures or sexual objects. Aguilar complicated these norms by depicting herself and her models in unexpected poses and obscuring their faces. In this black-and-white image, the women become part of the environment—their curves, creases, and textures echo the rocks around them.

“Stillness #15” focuses on both the body and the mind. Aguilar explained that this series stemmed from her experience as a caretaker for her dying father; during this time, she began contemplating spirituality. Aguilar’s use of the female nude is not about beauty or ideals—it’s about reckoning with grief, mortality, and self-exploration.

Sadly, Aguilar passed away in 2018, but her powerful contribution to the art world lives on.

Photos: Woman Landing on Man in the Moon, 1971, Ann Leda Shapiro, American, b. 1947, Watercolor on paper, 20 x 14 in. (50.8 x 35.6 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Matthew Offenbacher and Jennifer Nemhauser with funds from the 2013 Neddy Award in Painting, 2015.2.3, ©Ann Leda Shapiro, Photo: Elizabeth Mann.

Tiger Lily, 1976, Patti Warashina, American, b. 1940, Low-fire ceramic with acrylic, 24 x 15 7/8 x 13 1/4 in. (60.96 x 40.31 x 33.66 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 89.78, ©Patti Warshina.

Susanna and the Eldest, 1981, Honoré Sharrer, American, 1920-2009, Oil on canvas, 41 x 30 in. (104.1 x 76.2 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Adam Zagorin and Perez Zagorin, 2012.16.1, © Adam Zagorin, Photo: Elizabeth Mann.

Stillness #15, 1999, Laura Aguilar, American, 1959-2018, Silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm), Seattle Art Museum, General Acquisition Fund, 2021.39.1, © Laura Aguilar, Photo: Scott Leen.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Red Hot Pot

Nicole Block on Jul 23 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.

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.

Playfully Irreverent, Intentionally Weird: An Inside Look at Poke in the Eye at SAM

Seattle Art Museum on Jun 26 2024

This summer, dive into an oft-overlooked chapter in art history: the aesthetics that emerged on the West Coast in the 1960s and ’70s as a counter to the prevailing artistic practices of the time. Reacting against the sleekness, formality, and coldness of New York minimalism and other dominant modes of abstraction, many artists on the West Coast, particularly in Seattle and the Bay Area, began creating artwork that was intentionally more offbeat.

Instead of sleek, hard surfaces, artists opted to make work that was lumpy, tactile, and boldly colored. Instead of pure abstraction, they depicted human figures, animal caricatures, and fantastical narratives. Rejecting industrial materials, they embraced traditional craft techniques, especially ceramics, subverting divisions between “high” and “low” art. In many cases, these artists refused to take themselves or their work too seriously, by intentionally employing an irreverent sense of humor and wit.

Taken together, these strategies represented a tongue-in-cheek anti-establishment rebuttal to the dominant art market engine. Though this genre of work is often described as “Funk art,” after the seminal 1967 Funk exhibition at UC University Berkeley that brought several of these artists together for the first time, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture takes a broader view. Here you’ll find that the aesthetic of this time and place was not a strictly delineated “movement,” but a moment: an organic and informal counterculture vision that continues to resonate today.

As one of the focal points of this West Coast aesthetic, Seattle is the ideal location to tell this story, and SAM has a particular strength in telling it—the depth and breadth of our permanent collection. Poke in the Eye is drawn primarily from SAM’s collection, mining works that visitors may have never seen before to uncover one of the legacies of our region. Experience collection favorites in a new light, discover new surprises for the first time, and learn a fresh version of art history in which SAM and Seattle play an integral role.

This article first appeared in the June through September 2024 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photos: Chloe Collyer.

Muse/News: Essential Summer, Hooked on Clay, and Pointed Playful

Rachel Eggers on Jun 10 2024

SAM News

The Seattle Times staff recommends “8 essential things to do during summer in Seattle,” including a visit to the Olympic Sculpture Park, especially during Summer at SAM. The annual free series of performances, tours, and activities takes place every Thursday night and Saturday morning between July 11 and August 11.

In South Seattle Emerald’s “Arts in the South End: June 2024 Roundup,” Jas Keimig recommends an upcoming show at SAM. Jacob Lawrence: American Storyteller features 13 works on paper by the celebrated modern artist; it opens June 28.

Local News

Via Catalina Gaitán for The Seattle Times: “Seattle now has two of the largest outdoor murals in North America.”

Artists Anida Yoeu Ali and Kamari Bright were announced as the recipients of the 2024 Arts Innovator Award. Both artists will receive $25,000 to continue their practices. You can see Ali’s work at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Hybrid Skin, Mythical Presence through July 7.

The June issue of University of Washington Magazine has a profile on artist Patti Warashina by writer Hannelore Suderman that reveals the ceramic artist’s original plan for her studies… click to find out just how lucky we are that she discovered clay. You can see examples in Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, which opens at SAM on Friday, June 21.

“She loved the tactile experience of throwing clay on a wheel and was hooked on creating, pushing the limits of clay and taking inspiration from her classmates.”

Inter/National News

Via Artnet: “A Major Restoration Breathes New Life Into Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Iconic Seasons.”

Holland Cotter of The New York Times recommends several shows to see in NYC galleries this month, including a solo show for Xenobia Bailey at Venus Over Manhattan. You can see the Seattle-born artist’s Afrofuturist fiber crochet work on view in Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, beginning Friday, June 21.

Art in America’s Andy Battaglia interviews Joyce J. Scott on the occasion of her retrospective, Walk a Mile in My Dreams, which debuted at the Baltimore Museum of Art and opens at SAM this fall.

“Time and again, Scott’s colorful creations stare down histories of racism, classism, and sexism with steely eyes and an impish grin. She takes a pointed and playful approach to bracing subject matter, the small-mindedness and absurdity of which she exposes as abhorrent and just plain dumb.”

And Finally

“Oh Happy Day” 30 years later.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Object of the Week: Airstream Turkey

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Nov 25 2015

Our global culture is pretty good at making visual associations. As kids, many of us grew up pointing to the sky, calling out animals and faces suggested by the eccentric outlines of the clouds. Now, we play the meme game: How funny is Ryan Gosling if we cut him out of a movie role and paste him into all these different come-on scenarios? How well does a scrunched-up, pouty kid face express all your life’s frustrations? So funny! So well! And for me, it’s hilarious how quickly and creatively we make these connections. If a movie star or a top athlete makes a crazy face one night, there’s a trending meme of her or him the next morning.

In art, too, visual associations go a long way. They can be poignant, suggesting parallels across time and across cultures, causing us to re-think our views about the world. They can be as silly as a Ryan Gosling meme, putting a sign or symbol or person into a new context and pointing out just how important context is for how we understand these things.

Patti Warashina’s Airstream Turkey was born out of a similar, this-looks-like-that approach to digesting the huge diversity of images we experience every day, bringing together the forms of a trailer, a turkey, a bread loaf, and a chafing dish lid. Warashina applied low-fire glaze and low-fire luster to the ceramic piece, giving it the shiny metallic quality of a vintage trailer. Wings and feathers morph into streamlined horizontal details; reductive legs jut into the air like maneuverable levers. Airstream Turkey pranks us visually and playfully, thoughtfully keeping the eye engaged.

With her idea of a turkey vehicle, Warashina seems to have been onto something. Just such an avian Airstream makes a notable appearance in Tom Robbins’ 1990 postmodern novel Skinny Legs and All, in which the First Veil opens:

“It was a bright, defrosted, pussy-willow day at the onset of spring, and the newlyweds were driving cross-country in a large roast turkey.

The Turkey lay upon its back, as roast turkeys will; submissive, agreeable, volunteering its breast to the carving blade, its roly-poly legs cocked in a stiff but jaunty position, as if it might summon the gumption to spring forward onto its feet, but, of course, it had no feet, which made the suggestion seem both empty and ridiculous, and only added to the turkey’s aura of goofy vulnerability.

Despite its feetlessness, however, its pathetic podalic privation, this roast turkey—or jumbo facsimile thereof—was moving down the highway at sixty-five miles an hour…”

Today, let’s do some associations around the word “Thanksgiving”: gratefulness—smiles—family—love—warm food—mashed potatoes and gravy.

Happy (postmodern) Thanksgiving from SAM!

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

IMAGE: Airstream Turkey, ca. 1969, Patti Warashina, American, 1940- , earthenware with low-fire glaze and low-fire luster, 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Anne and Sidney Gerber, 94.86, © Patti Warashina.

SAM Art: Tiger Lily

Seattle Art Museum on Oct 16 2012

While Elles has focused our attention on female artists, works by women have been on view in SAM’s galleries all along, sometimes in unexpected places. Tiger Lily is just one example.

According to Patti Warashina, Tiger Lily’s genesis was rooted in memories of her grandmother. “’At the time it was an interest in religious objects used in society. I used the format of the alter to emphasize personal moments which I had been thinking about,” said the artist in 1992.

Shaping humble clay into transcendent forms fit for the divine is a tradition as old as ceramics themselves. Drawing inspiration from the ancient vernacular of forms and techniques, contemporary artists work with clay to create sculpture that, to our eyes, is simultaneously deeply familiar and startlingly fresh. Central to all of the ancient cultures represented in the Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic art galleries, altars and shrines find their contemporary reflection in Tiger Lily. At the height of the Feminist Movement in the 1970s, Warashina created altars such as this, offerings of feminine archetypes and stereotypes for consideration.

Tiger Lily, 1976, Patti Warashina (American, born 1940), low-fire ceramic with acrylic, 24 x 15 7/8 x 13 1/4 in., Gift of the artist, 89.78, © Patti Warashina. Currently on view in the Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic art galleries, fourth floor, SAM downtown.

SAM Art: Tiger Lily

Seattle Art Museum on May 31 2011

Central to all of the cultures represented in the Ancient Mediterranean art gallery, altars and shrines find their contemporary reflection in Tiger Lily. At the height of the Feminist Movement in the 1970s, artist Patti Warashina created altars such as this, offerings of feminine archetypes and stereotypes for consideration.

Tiger Lily is part of a new installation of contemporary ceramics in the Ancient Mediterranean art gallery starting on Wednesday, June 1.

Tiger Lily, 1976, Patti Warashina, American, born 1940, low-fire ceramic with acrylic, 24 x 15 7/8 x 13 1/4 in., Gift of the artist, 89.78, © Patti Warashina. On view in the Ancient Mediterranean art gallery, fourth floor, SAM downtown, starting Wednesday, June 1.