Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Red Hot Pot

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.

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

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.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore on Her New Book, Touching the Art

SAM is thrilled to host the official launch for queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s latest book, Touching the Art. At this free event on Sunday, October 15 in the museum’s Brotman Forum, Sycamore will read from her book, answer audience questions, and sign books. You’ll also be able to purchase your own copy of the book weeks before its official publication date by Soft Skull Press on November 7.

A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is Sycamore’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do. Manager of Public Engagement Jesse Jimenez spoke with Sycamore in advance of her appearance at SAM.


JESSE JIMENEZ (JJ): This new book has so many layers. How did you approach weaving together the different themes in this book?

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE (MBS): Touching the Art centers around my relationship with my late grandmother, Gladys Goldstein, an abstract painter from Baltimore, so I started by literally touching her art, to see what would come through. In this sense I began abstractly, on the terms of the art. But at the same time, what could be more concrete than touch? So it was the felt sense that guided me. 

I started with her handmade paperworks, taking them out one at a time and feeling all the layers, looking at them under the light, trying to figure out how she made these complex works that feel so sensual in their shifting geometries, the patterns that emerge and then disappear, the rips in the paper and everything that’s embedded inside, how these works can look so delicate but actually feel so strong, the way touch is always present in handmade paper too.

And then everything that came through—about watching her make the art when I was a child, about going up into her studio where I could imagine a creative life because I was living it. But also about the ruptures in our relationship, the trauma of growing up with my father—who was her son—who sexually abused me. And then I went from touching her art to the letters we wrote to one another, which mark our falling out when I was 19, 20, 21. My work became vulgar to her once it became unapologetically queer. “Why are you wasting your talent,” she would say to me, over and over, and so in the book I circle around this abandonment.

Then I moved to Baltimore for 8 months, to see what would come through there. It’s the surprises that guided me. And then after that I immersed myself in research about the artists of her generation, loosely the women of Abstract Expressionism, and then books about Baltimore, about Jewish assimilation and white flight, redlining and disinvestment. It all comes together through experience, I think. The felt sense of the work, and the felt sense of the world. We’re always told that we cannot touch the art, but what happens when we do?

JJ: I love that Gladys had strong opinions about art and creative practice. What do you think she would say about SAM’s modern and contemporary galleries? Are there any works that you’re particularly drawn to or call into question?

MBS: That’s a great question—Gladys was a loyal abstractionist who had no time for anything she saw as derivative, she always saw herself as a contemporary painter. So she wanted to experience art that was unfamiliar. Except maybe when it came to me.

I know that I’m really drawn to the Joan Mitchell painting that’s on display, The Sink. Every time I go to the museum I visit that painting first. There’s so much motion and emotion, and you can stare at any part and it looks like its own painting. Gladys’s paintings are like that too, not so much in style but in refusing a central form, and I wonder if she would have recognized a kinship. But she was a product of her generation, and she almost never mentioned female artists because only the men were important. There’s some story about how some critic said, “Gladys Goldstein painted like a man,” or something like that, and all of the women of that generation have that story because it meant they mattered.

I know that Gladys must have been aware of Joan Mitchell’s work because Mitchell is interviewed in the same issue of ARTNews where Gladys’s 1957 show in New York was reviewed. And Joan Mitchell is brilliant in that interview, she’s incisive about art and form and context. Wouldn’t Gladys have appreciated that? In Touching the Art, one of the things I wonder about is what the lives of these women artists could have been like if the men didn’t exist at all, or at least if they didn’t have to exist in their shadow.

JJ: The book touches on the effects of gentrification in Baltimore. I’m interested to know if you see any of these same issues reflected in Seattle?

MBS: One thing I noticed when I was in Baltimore was how artists were brandished so blatantly as tools of gentrification in neighborhoods that have been destroyed by decades of disinvestment. This happens everywhere, of course, but it felt more extreme in Baltimore because so much of the city is still in collapse, and in so many Black neighborhoods in particular you can go for block after block and literally half of the buildings have burned down or are boarded up. So the gentrification starts from the top, like the branding of a neighborhood as an Arts District and then boom, the real estate vultures swoop in, but still these are neighborhoods mostly in collapse. It’s a different scale, in terms of the extremity.

In Baltimore there is a kind of desperation to make a neighborhood alive again, and so people are drawn to the lure of any kind of investment. Seattle is so gentrified already, almost across the board. Here we have developers and government partnering to destroy amazing success stories, like Yesler Terrace, the first integrated housing project in the country, where hundreds of multigenerational families were living until it got sold off to the developers—gentrification is always violence, it just takes so many forms.

JJ: Queerness plays a pivotal role in your relationship with Gladys. How does the tension between family and identity inform your creative practice?

MBS: When I was a kid, Gladys nourished everything that made me queer, so a central paradox in the book is why did she reject everything that she had nurtured in me, once I fully came into myself. I saw her as an alternative to the path of upward mobility that everyone else in my family was obsessed with—upward mobility at any cost. Family as a way to camouflage violence. I thought she believed in something else, but I was wrong. She was the one person in my birth family who could have engaged with me as an artist, and she refused to. But still, looking at her art, I feel a sense of spaciousness, joy, an openness to the world. And this is something she gave me. 

JJ: I like the deep investment in artistic and personal truth throughout the book. How do you think this book teaches people how to engage with art?

MBS: One place where Gladys and I totally agree is in never telling anyone how to engage with art. It should always be on your own terms, I think. That’s what abstraction can offer us, right, a way into possibility or openness. But in the book I want to look at all the layers beneath this, I want to expose the silences, the silencing. I know I write on my own terms, and I think this is the best way to connect with the world, or I hope so. I want to look at the personal, the intimate, the familial, the historical, the structural, all of this at once. Maybe this is what it means to touch the art.

– Jesse Jimenez (they/them), SAM Manager of Public Engagement

Photos: Courtesy Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Installation view of The Sink at the Seattle Art Museum by Jo Cosme.

SAM Talks: Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems

One of the most exciting parts of hosting contemporary art exhibitions is the opportunity to welcome living and working artists to SAM to reflect on their artwork and careers directly with audiences. Throughout the three month run of Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue at SAM, we had the honor of welcoming both artists to SAM for conversations on their friendship, artistic processes, and collaborative exhibition.

If you weren’t able to get tickets to see their talks in person, you can now watch both conversations on our YouTube. Check out both conversations below for even more supplemental context following your visit to In Dialogue and be sure to catch the exhibition before it closes Sunday, January 22 at SAM!

– Lily Hansen, SAM Marketing Content Creator

Photo: L. Fried.

Sharing Talents: 2020 Betty Bowen Winning Artist Talk

Learn about the three Northwest artists selected as part of this year’s Betty Bowen Award. Dawn Cerny, Elijah Hasan, and Tariqa Waters were all selected as recipients of this annual SAM award. The annual Betty Bowen Award honors a Northwest artist for their original, exceptional, and compelling work. Dawn Cerny, the 2020 winner, is awarded an unrestricted cash prize of $15,000, and a selection of works will be exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum in the spring of 2021. In addition, Elijah Hasan, and Tariqa Waters, this year’s two Special Recognition Award winners, receive $2,500 to further their artistic practice. Hear from Hasan and Waters as they share insight and perspective into their work and practice followed by an audience Q&A.

2020 Betty Bowen Award Winner Dawn Cerny’s sculptures explore the idea of “home” as both a concept and a place, and as an arena rich for investigation. Her recent body of work examines ideas of furniture and mothers as metaphors: figures that secure value for their potential to hold, display, or be absentmindedly left with things. This pattern of holding as the creation of intimacy and belonging, pleasure, and self-preservation plays out repeatedly in her work.

Special Recognition Award Winner Elijah Hasan is a writer, filmmaker, and director. His projects lay bare the realities of systemic racism, social justice, and activism, exploring subjects such as the experiences of Black police officers in the Portland police department and the parallels between Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War and contemporary members of Antifa. He centers the stories of Black communities as they navigate these realities, all while on a personal journey of artistic and spiritual growth.

Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award Winner Tariqa Waters’ whimsical, Pop-inspired work references childhood memories where vanity and self-preservation collide to mask systemic and generational pain. Her work examines ideas of femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and inclusion. Using photography, videography, and sculptural fabrication, Waters attempts to create innovative ways to distort reality to the point where marginalization is impossible.

Intersections: Black, Woman, Art!

As programs continue to be offered virtually we are streaming Zoom talks to our Facebook page where you can watch them live. Or you can check back here where we are sharing select events to the blog such as this conversation between multidisciplinary artists Kimisha Turner and Takiyah Ward. Moderated by Priya Frank, Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at SAM, this dynamic discussion ranges from the roles Turner and Ward play as Black artists in our current moment to their recent public art projects including the Black Lives Matter mural created by the Vivid Matters Collective at the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). Watch along and consider how public art shapes your community. Also, get excited to see Kimisha Turner’s mural, It Ain’t Just a River in Egypt, at SAM when we can reopen—this artwork has just joined our collections!

Washington born and raised, Kimisha Turner is heavily influenced by diverse creative expressions. From murals, to sculpture, to performative work she loves working in varying mediums and processes to convey her conceptual vision. Although her work varies in application, there’s typically a familiar thread found among them. Bright colors and beauty combined with challenging subject matter is often a theme, allowing it to be easily digested by a varied audience. She earned her B.F.A. from Cornish College of the Arts after completing an Associates degree during high school. For over a decade she’s dedicated her focus to innovative ways of creating and interpreting the world as it relates to the human experience. Exploring identity, race, life, grief, and love while drawing on her personal life, her work aims to evoke empathy, perspective and empowerment. The Seattle Art Museum, Northwest African American Museum, Pratt Fine Arts, and Seattle Theater Group are a few of the organizations to collaborate with Kimisha for personal or community based events.

Takiyah Ward, artistically known as T-DUB Customs, is also a Washingtonian. Her Seattle upbringing played a pivotal role in her creative self-expression-from ballet to tap, basketball to custom sneakers–wherever the outlet was most fruitful, Takiyah was ready to learn and explore. During her high school years, Takiyah became extremely interested in clothing and sneaker customization. She began hand painting and airbrushing designs on her own clothes and those of her classmates, morphing her hobby into a successful business. Takiyah eventually left Seattle to study architecture at the New York Institute of Technology, where she honed her skills in technical drawing and design. Takiyah’s artistry reflects the perfect mix of learned skills and self-taught talents, making her the type of artist who shows up ready to perform, no matter the platform! Through T-DUB Customs, Takiyah hopes to be an outlet for all-artistically inclined or not- as it is her belief that our ability to ‘stay creative’ is humanity’s greatest asset.

Virtual Art Talks: Gather with Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn

The next time you are able to visit the Asian Art Museum you will be greeted by a new light installation. Gather by Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn was commissioned to celebrate the legacy of Asian artists working over generations and all over the world. Hear from Kenzan in this artist talk and look forward to gathering under this site-specific installation.

The renovation and expansion of the Asian Art Museum allowed SAM curators to rethink how the artwork would be presented. Previously organized by regions with Japan in one wing, China in the other, and South Asia in the Garden Court, we were limited in the selection of works on view. Now, with more space and the thematic reinstallation, we are able to represent more of our renowned collection from all over Asia. This also created space in the Garden Court to present this new installation.

Learn more about SAM’s history and the Tsutakawa family! Check out this article in the South Seattle Emerald about Gather written by Kenzan’s mother, Mayumi Tsutakawa. You can find out more about Kenzan’s grandfather, George Tsutakawa in this SAM Blog article contributed by the Tsutakawa family and see his work on view at our downtown location when we are able to reopen in Exceptionally Ordinary: Mingei 1920–2020.

We are humbled by the generosity of our donors during this unique time. Your financial support powers SAM Blog and also sustains us until we can come together as a community and enjoy art in the galleries again. Thanks to a generous group of SAM trustees, all membership and gifts to SAM Fund will be matched up to $500,000 through June 30!

SAM Talks With Valerie Steele

Do you consider yourself fashionable? Creative? Curious? Well, whether you’re the world’s next top fashion designer or, like me, just a compulsive shopper, SAM Talks this Friday, July 19, is sure to intrigue, inform, & inspire you.

This SAM Talks will be given by someone that I am particularly excited about, Valerie Steele. For those of you who don’t know, Valerie Steele is the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) in New York City… but that’s not all! She is also a fashion historian, and has been described as one of “fashion’s brainiest women” and a “High-Heeled Historian!” She has even been on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

… Ha! You thought I was done, didn’t you? Not quite!

Steele is also the renowned author of several books, including that which coincides perfectly with SAM’s current exhibition, Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion, Japan Fashion Now. Japan Fashion Now, both the exhibition and accompanying book, were completed in 2010, and explored what has been called Japan’s “fashion revolution,” beginning in the 1980’s.  From this “fashion revolution” emerged an innovative and radical notion of what fashion is, one that played with the unusual, both in terms of materials and design, and the imperfect. 

In this talk, Steele will discuss and analyze this movement by exploring the ingeniousness and influence of Japanese fashion designers, such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo! — These designers (and many, many others) are featured in Future Beauty – Don’t miss the opportunity to expand your knowledge, improve your style, or just hang-out and listen to one of the most interesting people in the world of fashion!

For More Information Visit: http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/calendar/eventDetail.asp?eventID=26286&month=6&day=19&year=2013&sxID=&WHEN=

Caroline Sargent, Communications Intern

Valerie Steele, Director & Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT).

SAM Talks: Nine Antico

We are excited to host French graphic novelist Nine Antico who will be speaking at SAM Downtown in the Nordstrom Lecture Hall as part of the SAM Talks programming for the exhibition Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris Thursday night at 7 pm. This should be a great chance for aspiring graphic novelists and artists in the community to hear a fellow artist speak about their work and meet other like minded graphic artists and novelists. As a fan and collector of comic books myself I am eager to hear a little about Nine’s creative process and how she constructs her graphic narratives.

Although her comic books are all written in French the content she writes about in her most recent work Coney Island Baby (l’Association) is unmistakably American and refers to our own cultural memory. Coney Island Baby features American Icons Betty Paige, Linda Lovelace and Hugh Hefner among other figures from pop-cultulre; the title itself refers to a song of the same name by Lou Reed. As her choice of characters suggests Coney Island Baby navigates the complexities of female seduction through the imagery of Linda Lovelace and Bettie Page through a feminist reading of their respective lives as told by Hugh Hefner to two aspiring Playboy playmates. Hefner attempts to deter the bunny ear-clad Playmates to reconsider their new jobs by showing them the dark side of the Playmate lifestyle by telling them the stories of Lovelace and Page, two women separated by time but similar in endeavors for fame whose dreams were shorted by becoming famous for being naked, rather than by merit of the acting careers they had set out to attain.

Tickets may be purchased online, at the Ticketing Desk at any of SAM’s three sites or over the phone with a credit card by calling the Box Office at 206.654.3121.

 

Ryan Peterson, Program Assistant

Out now on L’Association
SAM Stories