• Ambach & Rice Gallery
• An installation view of Mitchell's work (left) at A&R, with wood sculpture by Dan Webb and painting by Joe Park

The marriage between Harris's elegant, minimalist aesthetic and the works of Mitchell and McMakin always seemed made in heaven, and Mitchell just closed a very successful show at the gallery.

So what happened?

I've been trying to figure that out for a couple of days. The closest I got was in conversations with Harris and McMakin today, in which both sides worked hard not to say anything "negative" about the other. (That word kept coming up.)

"I'm trying to focus more on bringing in work from out of town—next month I'm doing a show of a 95-year-old Argentinian artist and then I'm doing vintage photography with Akio [Takamori's] work. That does cut back on my showing some of my artists for a while," Harris says.

The two artists didn't show infrequently at the gallery, though. McMakin showed in 2003, 2006, and 2008. Perhaps sales were off (nobody wanted to talk specifics). The relationships aren't, Harris insists.

"I'm still friends with them," Harris says. "We're trying to make this cordial for everyone involved because change happens."

Mitchell didn't return a message left yesterday; McMakin describes it as an amicable divorce, "the kind of relationship where people say, 'They both could do better.'"

"I think a lot of it was personality-driven," McMakin says. "Charlie and Amanda could provide a great sense of possibility, and both Jeff and I had really liked working with Carrie when she was at Jim's. This was under careful discussion for a long time. It wasn't reactive."

McMakin and Mitchell have a show up in Portland now, Joy and Reffrey, that was reviewed on Artforum.com; they'll bring Joy and Reffrey, Part Two to Ambach & Rice in 2010, McMakin says. He plans a solo show at the gallery in fall 2010. Mitchell is part of a group show at A&R now.

Artists in Seattle have been itchy lately. There has been plenty of insidery gallery drama to go around.

In the case linked above, of Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen leaving Howard House, Hansen moved over to Lawrimore Project, where his arrival was heralded in a hilarious ad that ran quietly a few weeks ago in the back of this very paper—in which the gallery gave the artist the full pimped treatment. (No, I had nothing whatsoever to do with this ad.)

Click and look in the upper right corner to see Hansen perched in his temporary-shelter installation on Tacoma's best graffiti wall. Lawrimore Project advertises that the artist is available for "In and Out Calls."