one day to showtime and new Drizzle

Well, we’re getting down to the wire with the whole installing situation, insomnia going strong in the countdown to tomorrow evening’s opening at Shift. Stay tuned. There is actually a lot of stuff going on around town in the next few days, including the Bumbershoot Visual Arts gala tonight.

In the meantime, there is a new issue of N.W. Drizzle out and its editor Mark Anderson, was kind enough to let me file a report on my recent visit to the South.

As always, give Jeff Jahn’s critical I a read too to see what is going on with the folks down in Portland.
He has just curated a show opening tomorrow evening at Gallery 500in PDX (Inertia 2005) at Gallery 500, that features Seattle’s ownStephen Lyons among 12 other artists.

A in A – Report from Seattle

After ODing on art criticism, art rags and anything and all about art writing, I haven’t picked up an art magazine all summer- it has been a refreshing break. However, I was pleasantly surprised to note a fairly lengthy profile featured in the September issue of Art in America on my own fair city of Seattle. AiA hadn’t covered the Seattle art world in a feature since 1986, which is pointed out in the first paragraph.

“Plugged in and Caffeinated” reports: The city’s relative youth, its outdoor orientation and maybe even its distance from New York contribute to an intensity in work and an energy in the air.”

I’m apt to say there is enough in the article to provide Seattle has some great things going for it and I would have to agree one of the fine points is its far, far away location from NYC. A sidebar about Tacoma (Steve Miller’s favorite city) notes the cities art boosterism is giving it a good enough reason to make it its own destination for art.

(And yes, we all know AinA is a trade magazine, however I found this particular article a refreshing change from the usual tripe, even though of course there were a few oversights in the article it is a pretty comprehensive scoop on what is going on here right now.)

Garth Amundson at the Nordic Heritage Museum

September is shaping up to be an exciting start to the busy fall season. Next Thursday (September 1st) , Garth Amundson opens his contemporary work in photography at the Nordic Heritage Museum.

Garth Amundson – Articulations
Nordic Heritage Museum
Exhibition Dates: September 1- October 1, 2005
Artist’s Talk: Tuesday, September 20th at 7:00 PM

Reception at the Nordic Heritage Museum September 1, 2005 at 6:00

Garth Amundson’s exhibition entitled “Articulations” opens at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard on the evening of September 1, 2005. Spanning an arc of the past 10 years, the work includes new pigment digital prints and several photo/mixed media installations.

“Like a turn-of-the-century photographic historian, [Amundson] continues to pursue his fascination with the sculptural relationship between image and object by creating hand-sewn plastic lenses in order to leave his own imprint on the work. Through cutting and sewing, he investigates the notion of adapting the ordinary lens into a variety of ribbed, long and bulbous shapes. The fabrication of these types of three-dimensional objects allows him to expand on the use of distortion as a tool of invention, while also questioning the idea of originality.”

-Amanda Norenberg, “Who Wears the Pants?”, Afterimage July/August 2005

“Running the gambit from state-of-the art to antiquated and obsolete, Garth Amundson constructs compelling photographic images through a process of collection, definition, and declaration. Over the past five years Amundson’s artistic production has evolved into a more personal based practice, in both process and content. While continuing to address larger social, cultural, and political concerns, the locus of the work has narrowed to a more personal realm as the artist investigates and defines his household and ancestry. Cameras are often used to capture what is ‘out there,’ but Amundson uses photography to explore what is inside and who he is.”

-Merry Scully, Independent Curator

Amundson, who is of Nordic descent and spent a residency working in a studio at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Trondheim, Norway, brings a fresh eye to the challenges of modern photography. If you’ve never ventured to Ballard to visit the Nordic Heritage Museum, September is the time to go.

Fall Teaser

Dipping my little toe back into the blogosphere here to say in a week and some spare change the fall art season is upon us.
I’m getting ready to install a show this weekend at Shift Gallery, and for someone who normally curses the summer months, I’ve been thanking my lucky stars with the accelerated drying times the hot weather has been giving us. More soon!

[Distil] Bill new work by Carolyn Zick opens Thursday, September 1st, at Shift Gallery in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. More information can be had at the soon to be launched [Distil] Bill website found here.