At Gabi Campanario's blog Seattle Sketcher.

Here's his whole Seattle Sketchbook on Flickr.

And here's Urban Sketchers, a whole blog devoted to artists from around the world making sketches of where they live.

Well, Americans for the Arts just announced that Ivey's been appointed as the leader of Obama's arts and culture transition team.

Justin Colt Beckman is turning Punch Gallery into a functioning honky tonk. Here it is under construction, with a view of the bar (with "fireplace"), and with a still from the video of him performing country songs. (In case you want to know, they're serving Busch tonight.)

At Howard House, there's Richard Barnes's photographs behind the scenes at natural history museums:

SOIL's got an installation devoted to Portland Goodwill stores.

And in SOIL's backspace, a small but interesting show of tactile photographs and a video of a nighttime construction site accompanied by the reading of a love letter, by Josh Tonsfeldt and Uri Aran (images arranged respectively).

At Gallery4Culture, dermatographia artist Ariana Page Russell takes a major step forward in glamor shots that use temporary tattoos made of photographs of her own blushing skin (and a wall covered in her skin):

One more: Angle Gallery, with photographs by Nick Hall documenting an Alaskan salmon run.

Note: Lawrimore Project is closed all day today, so don't walk yourself all the way down there in the rain!

Justin Colt Beckman is turning Punch Gallery into a functioning honky tonk. Here it is under construction, with a view of the bar (with "fireplace"), and with a still from the video of him performing country songs. (In case you want to know, they're serving Busch tonight.)

At Howard House, there's Richard Barnes's photographs behind the scenes at natural history museums:

SOIL's got an installation devoted to Portland Goodwill stores.

And in SOIL's backspace, a small but interesting show of tactile photographs and a video of a nighttime construction site accompanied by the reading of a love letter, by Josh Tonsfeldt and Uri Aran (images arranged respectively).

At Gallery4Culture, dermatographia artist Ariana Page Russell takes a major step forward in glamor shots that use temporary tattoos made of photographs of her own blushing skin (and a wall covered in her skin):

One more: Angle Gallery, with photographs by Nick Hall documenting an Alaskan salmon run.

Note: Lawrimore Project is closed all day today, so don't walk yourself all the way down there in the rain!

Philadelphia Weekly devoted its election-issue feature to photographer Zoe Strauss (here's the story), whose book America is coming out on November 7 and includes the above images—which are particularly perfect for today.

Here's a podcast I did with Strauss a few months ago when she was showing at Open Satellite in Bellevue.

^{Nola Avienne's amygdala (layered) (2007), iron filings embedded in paper created on a magnetic drawing machine, 2 by 8 feet}

Artist Nola Avienne knew that this piece of hers had gone into a public collection, but she didn't know it was at Elections HQ. I wrote to tell her this morning, and she responded that it gave the piece an unintended meaning:

I am delighted that all those circles made hundreds of "O"s for Obama.

I hope it hypnotized and subliminally swayed those undecided voters. I finally got a good night's sleep last night knowing we had hope.

O, Nola

This morning she voted at 7 am "with my siblings, grandma & folks in the DC area. I am now living here" (landscape by Georgia O'Keeffe):

I had a latecomer last night who's worth adding: Jeffry Mitchell. His choice is this 1964 seether by Vija Celmins.

Brad Biancardi (who's right there in Chicago): Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper

Claude Zervas: Salish basket

Anne Mathern: Canned Heat doing "Going Up the Country"

Margie Livingston: Giacometti, The Artist's Mother

Whiting Tennis: Nothing. No work of art is real enough, he said while driving on tour with his band (he was heading into Baltimore and has spent the last few weeks listening to the Christian radio stations of the south, which has been upsetting): "This is not about metaphor or aesthetics. I'm almost at the point of not breathing. It feels like a make-or-break thing for me. I don't know if I could handle it if [Obama] doesn't win."

Matt Browning: Dan Attoe's Lightning storm above timberline (says in tiny letters at the top, "You still have some time")

Sherry Markovitz: One of Francis Bacon's screaming popes

Drew Daly: The Butthole Surfers, "Moving to Florida"

Margot Quan Knight had already made her own Obama-related work:

Here's a photo I took recently. I was watching the Daily Show and they were joking about "small town values" and how "American" values change depending on who you talk to. I made a 3 x 4 foot glass quilt out of pieces of mirror. I hang it up vertically and photograph the reflection on the mirrors. The quilt is a blank, it only gets color from the surroundings. So I'm taking it to different people's houses. This one was a test, during the first presidential debate.

Jeffry Mitchell: Vija Celmins's 1964 seether

(This embed capture is showing Warhol, who follows Lichtenstein on the same video. Warhol is just Warhol. The anti-superhero. But if you click, you should get Lichtenstein first.)

This and other artist interviews here. (Via BoingBoing.)

Well, DO YOU HAVE ROOM FOR IT ON YOUR BUILDING OR DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES?

Because otherwise it's not going to get up there! Here's Damion Hayes, the owner of BLVD Art Gallery, who's behind bringing the posters to Seattle:

We had some issues with our building so I tried to find a new spot for it. The posters are huge - 8'x13' so in my search i tried to put it up on the side of Vain Salon downtown but because of the graffiti already there we were going to have to put this painting up above the mural. That of course did not work out because of the logistics. We then attempted to find another spot ... If you know of a location I would still like to get them up.

Can anybody help a fella (AND OBAMA) out? Email Damion.

At Howard House. Last day is tomorrow! (Gallery site here.)

Two things in one: As you're considering this sculpture-made-of-the-language-of-the-prophets, also add to your local art blog roll the new and strikingly intelligent translinguistic other, written by Emily Ann Pothast—where you'll find a review of the art above.

As for Emily, I've run into her several times at Davidson Galleries where she works, and it's great to have her voice out in public at last. The categories on her blog are "art," "fundamentalism," "reviews," "spirituality," and "uncategorized," and the blog "aspires to be ... about nothing less than the human experience of the ineffable source of experience itself(!). It is written and maintained by Emily Ann Pothast, who makes no claims at being any sort of expert on the ineffable but is nonetheless a huge fan."

Bookmark this woman!

Century 21: Dealer's Choice is a display of the 49 Washington artists that Seattle art dealers (with the exceptions of Scott Lawrimore and the fellows of Platform Gallery) believe are the best. It is intended to be a historic occasion. The membership of the Seattle Art Dealers Association has never created an exhibition before, but beyond that the show turns out not to be particularly historic, or even particularly meaningful. It is conservative, narrow, and doesn't come close to capturing the dimension or ambition of what's happening on the ground. ... There's nothing new here, but how could there be? The youngest artist in the show is 33; 26 of the 49 artists are over 50. From this bias one can presume, whether or not it's true, that Seattle dealers have not been doing their homework for a very long time, which is a depressing thought.

What I didn't have space to write about was the panel discussion about the exhibition that took place last week. It was easily the most depressing and, ultimately, frightening art event I've been to all year.

It felt like a small-town meeting, with everybody congratulating everybody else on the installation of a new four-way stop. The panel included Matthew Kangas, whose biggest sin, I've realized since I wrote about him a few years back, is not shaking down artists for free art, but his sense of total self-satisfaction. At the panel discussion, he twice compared the exhibition, for which he wrote the pamphlet notes, to the Whitney Biennial. He predicted that this exhibition would become the new biennial for the Northwest.

Kangas has been writing about Northwest art for more than 30 years and this is his vision for it? A weird, scattered array of artists, some of them totally irrelevant and many of the greats missing, including not a single artist under 30 (and more than half over 50), and organized by a trade group of art dealers? Yikes.

Worst of all was the air of importance that presided over the whole thing. There were references to "us" as the Seattle art world, which is a little like taking Ballard for the whole city.

There was almost no conversation at all about the art on display. The conversation instead turned to how to manage a public collection, whether corporations should collect local artists, whether print criticism is dead, whether the Northwest has a signature style, how Matthew Kangas became the writer he is today, and other cul-de-sacs and cliches. Nobody pointed out that the show they were seeing was dull and small compared to the wealth of activity out there. An older woman stood up to say how excited she and her husband were with what's happening in Seattle art. I was angry: That's defrauding the elderly.

I considered standing up and say something, but I didn't know where to begin. I also wanted to march into the back office of the Wright Exhibition Space, where the show is, and drag Virginia Wright into the gallery to stare at some of the worst works on display. What's the deal with the Wrights these days? Back in the day, Virginia Wright had the best eye in Seattle. She didn't just bring great national names to Seattle; she brought great examples of their work here. She knew the difference between first-tier and everything else. Now her space is devoted to this? An inchoate group show making bold claims that are backed up by association with her name?

AAAH!

"This is why I am so excited to be living Seattle right now. I just hope those &**&^&%&^$%# don't steal the election."

[Last year, I carved a peace sign jack-o'-lantern at a pumpkin-carving party. I was very pleased with it and myself; no one had the heart to tell me until days later that I'd actually carved the Mercedes Benz logo.]

^{Thank you, Becky!}