
I just got word:
On Thursday, Feb. 16 tickets become available for general public purchase for Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, opening at Pacific Science Center May 24, 2012.
Let the mother of all blockbusters begin.
Paul Rucker, the Seattle-based interdisciplinary cellist/digital media artist/filmmaker, has won a Creative Capital Grant to work on a project he's titled Recapitulation:
Recapitulation is an installation demonstrating the parallels between slavery and the contemporary prison industrial complex through animation, digital stills, sculpture, original music compositions, interactive sound and video.
Rucker recently left his post as community arts liaison with the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, where he'd worked since 2007. Receiving this grant, he joins the company of Seattle artists including Byron Au Young, SuttonBeresCuller, Lead Pencil Studio, Trimpin, James Coupe, and of grantees this year including Janine Antoni, Theaster Gates, and Jesse Sugarmann.
Congratulations, Paul!
I like this little project, Double Vision, by Amy Heather and Ellie Lonardo.

Congratulations, JENNY HOLZER, MOM.

Carrie M. Becker is a photographer and installation artist living in St. Louis, and Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse is her series detailing the dark hoarding life of America's plastic sweetheart. Just like the actual Hoarders, Becker's project draws you in with fascination and soon becomes depressing. This is as it should be. Good work.
See more of Becker's work here.
Repeated pleas to the consultant and the board of trustees have gotten nowhere—I sat on this story for several months, not wanting to make things worse, hoping for some progress. It didn't come. (I also requested a financial document the same consulting company completed a few years ago, reportedly recommending that Youngstown divide from its parent organization, DNDA, but the consultancy did not send the report. Perhaps someone out there has it?)
More than a hundred people have officially asked for a meaningful audience from the consultant and the board for months. Will they get it? What's to come of Youngstown?
Paint a simulated living space in an art gallery a brilliant white...

...then give hundreds of thousands of colored stickers to children who visit the museum. (Via Tim Minchin.)
This is kind of a big deal: For the first time ever, the Modern Language Association is having their annual conference in Seattle, from Thursday, January 5th to Sunday, January 8th. If you're in the academic or arts fields, you probably know why this matters: the MLA is an organization devoted to the sharing of scholarly research, and their conference is the best opportunity to share and discuss that research in person. (Read more right here.)
Why this matters to you is that the conference makes a number of programs available for free for Seattleites: You can find a list of all the free programs right here, and I've also posted the list after the jump. The talks I'm most excited about include "Democracy, Language, and Literature;" "A Creative Conversation with the Chinese Poet Xi Chuan;" "The Lost Years: African American Literature and Culture, 1940–60;" and "The New Dissertation: Thinking outside the (Proto-)Book." Other discussions include a conversation with David Shields, a reappraisal of Charlie Chan, and a talk about Northwest poetry. Admission to the conference is pretty expensive, but these free talks are a great way to get a taste of all the intellectual stimulation Seattle will be hosting that week.
These two events should also be on your radar: The New York Review of Books is having a meetup party in the beautiful Fireside Room of the Sorrento Hotel on the night of Thursday the 5th. This is a great opportunity to meet literary minded folks who don't often make it out to Seattle. And! Town Hall is hosting a MLA-themed reading, in which 60 authors, many of whom are in town for the MLA Conference, read for three minutes each. Both of those events are free.
Usually, the first couple months of a new year in Seattle are slow-going as far as intellectual pursuits go. But the MLA Conference is kicking off a year that feels unusually packed with exciting new books from Seattleites that should gain national attention. Let's start 2012 out right, by showing the MLA folks that Seattle can throw down brainy conversation with the best of them.
Now that the end of the year is here and I’m taking stock, I have a regret: I regret not writing about the new collective Saint Genet, the one risen from Implied Violence. I’ve loved Genius Award winners Implied Violence. Loved. I did not love Saint Genet. I was left with a bad taste, even.
At the time I saw the performance, I didn’t write anything because I only saw one of three parts of the series. That means that a caveat has to hang over this response. This is not a formal review.
But because Implied Violence has been such an important presence, and because Saint Genet involves largely the same group of super-charged performers, it’s worth raising a few questions that didn’t get raised in public discourse back then.
1. Why were the female performers so grossly underused?
2. Is the Jonestown massacre/cult an interesting reference point at this moment in history? Is Jean Genet? Which parts of their legacies are being drawn on, and why?
3. Is there enough irony in the world—or even in the art world—to make an image of white-male-artist-as-cult-leader interesting?
4. Almost the entire event was performed to the song “Black Baby.” Jim Jones also used the song. But what is the history of the song? What is Saint Genet’s racial analysis?
5. What is the relationship between “Black Baby” and the hip hop that blasted on the sound system the second the performance was over, almost like a victory song, a release?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. That's what 2012's for.
According to the SPD's account, the raid was in response to a 911 call that afternoon that alerted them about "multiple male and female subjects who had unlawfully entered and occupied a residence. ...Preliminary investigation indicates that the suspects entered the house and subsequently damaged the interior of the house with graffiti. They also left garbage, open containers of food, and were cooking inside the house on a portable, gas-operated stove."
The house had been bought out of foreclosure in August by Mountaincrest Credit Union, according to CDN. The way the CDN story reads, the house was under renovation and the occupiers were interrupting progress and damaging it—and they'd broken in.
They held up the house key. An anonymous "elf" had come by the Occupy Seattle encampment at SCCC a few weeks ago and handed them the key and the address, they said. (A different anonymous donor also gave them a sailboat that they'll begin using and painting in the spring.) Inside, they'd begun painting a forest landscape, and planned a waterfall down the staircase; they titled the house "Water." They denied doing damage or being a haven for any kind of destructive activity and said they didn't know of any complaints from neighbors. Instead, they saw the house as a home base for adding art to the immediate neighborhood. To that end, they'd completed a mural nearby yesterday, on Fir Street between 14th and 15th, on a garage wall offered to them by a resident. Also yesterday, another donor gave them furniture: a futon, bookcases.
Two of their fellow occupiers are still in jail, set to be released on bail this afternoon. The third person arrested was not part of the occupation and never had lived in the house, they say. He, along with about 50 other protesters against the raid, had come to show his support, and when he stepped onto the grass, he was arrested, the occupiers say. He is the one charged with weapons violations, they say: He had a pocket knife in his pants pocket, which he then offered to the police, for which they booked him on the weapons charge.
"This house wasn't about anti-police at all," Morgan says. "Our intention was to show that we could give back to the community. It wasn't about having a roof over our heads—we're all pretty resourceful. We were excited to use the house as a pathway to create art for everyone. We'd offered to touch up the fading murals at the food bank at Saint Mary's. I wanted to offer guitar lessons at the boys and girls club near there."
Neil Vandervloed, creator of the cartoon hand signs that have been the most visible graphic for Occupy Seattle, was bringing community dinners cooked by his wife to the house each night.
"I'm really disappointed," Vandervloed said. "Especially this type of reaction. There were something like 13 cop cars and 30 cops there, with assault rifles, shotguns, and handguns out and drawn—to arrest two artists on Christmas Eve. The neighbors made us hot coffee and stood in solidarity with us as the police raided."

From the Fantagraphics blog:
In a year-long wind-up to the end of all time (according to the Mayan calendar), Elysian Brewing Company and Fantagraphics Books, both of Seattle, are planning a series of twelve beers, issued on the 21st of each month in 2012 and featuring label artwork by Charles Burns. Taken from Burns's weirdly apocalyptic work Black Hole, the labels will adorn Elysian's "Twelve Beers of the Apocalypse," featuring the creativity and unusual ingredients for which its brewing team is known.
I loved Black Hole, remembering it not so much as a book but as a great movie I saw, and I look forward to seeing it on beer.
"Could you please please please mention this in the slog today?" asks a Slog tipper. "Help local artists and craftspeople pay rent!"
You work hard for that money, and you should spend it on stuff that kicks just as much ass as you do. At the Bizarre Bazaar, you’ll find uniquely bizarre wares for your holiday shopping pleasure. The Bazaar features gifts to fit many budget levels: jewelry made out of hardware, sexy men’s underwear, survival bracelets, badge bling, va-va-voom inspired flirty wear, delicious PacNW-inspired & -sourced snacks, gorgeous handmade wedding & party details, kusadama, puppet art (and/or art puppets), and very much more. Plus! A well-stocked mimosa bar and other beverage refreshments, as well as something for the holiday sweet tooth!
Parking is available on the street, or at any various neighborhood lots. (Favorite cheap one is the Seattle Central lot, at the corner of Pine & Harvard.) Also, you will not starve on Capitol Hill—grab a bite and come shop!
Bizarre Bazaar
Saturday 12/17
11 AM-4 PM
@ the Erickson Theatre, 1524 Harvard Ave. (On Capitol Hill, between Pike & Pine.)Avoid the mall! Buy local! Admission is free! Come early! Bring cash!
As we were going to press with our 99 Percent Holiday Guide—full of advice about where to spend your money (and where to definitely not spend your money) this year—we got word from some local theaters about discounts on tickets that didn't make it into print. Obviously, supporting local theaters and local performers is a very direct way to support the local economy.
So here are those deals:
· ACT has set up a 15% discount for Stranger readers for their 8:30 pm performances of A Christmas Carol on December 13 and 14. Allison Narver is directing and Bob Cratchit is embodied by Stranger favorite Ian Bell. You can get the discount by calling the box office or using the code STRANGER when you buy tickets online.
· All tickets to Black Nativity at the Moore on Tuesday, December 13 and Tuesday, December 20 (and also TONIGHT) are just $25, down from the regular price of $55. No code required.
· And children under 17 are FREE with a $25 adult ticket to Bach's Christmas Oratorio by Orchestra Seattle/Seattle Chamber Singers.

In this week's Theater Lead, I get to spill some ink on the specific brilliance of Edie Whitsett, the Seattle scenic artist who passed away last week. Most of the heavy lifting is done by Ming Cho Lee, the American theater legend/Yale School of Drama professor who I phoned in New York and who was eager to fill me in on what made Edie so special:
Where you can tell if a scenic artist is a good artist is when you have a backdrop that involves a lot of figurative painting. People who've strictly learned scenic painting know all the techniques—marbleizing, wood-graining, architecture—but when it comes to drawing people, they fall apart. For [Pacific Northwest Ballet's The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet], we had a backdrop with a lot of human figures, and [PNB] didn't think Seattle had artists who could do it, so it was farmed out to a well-known scenic painter in Canada. We spent a lot of money to have it painted by this famous scenic artist, and he did a wretched job. We were at a loss of what to do, and someone suggested Edie as a person to correct it. And she corrected it! It was remarkable. She can paint things in all periods and styles, and it will be better than anyone else can do it.
In addition to a top-tier artist, Edie was a deeply beloved human, as this lovely personal remembrance by Jim Jewell on Seattlest makes clear.
You can read my whole Edie piece here.
Congratulations are in order to ceramicist Akio Takamori, filmmaker James Longley (already a Stranger and MacArthur Genius), and choreographer Donald Byrd. The three Seattle artists are among this year's 50 USA Fellows, each of whom receives $50,000 (making the award one of the biggest out there).
Roger Shimomura, another artist with many close ties to Seattle despite living in Kansas, is a winner this year, and so is Carolee Schneemann, whose wild, anarchic, terrific retrospective is currently at the Henry Art Gallery.
The Chicago-based artist is in Seattle this week for the opening of his exhibition, The Listening Room, at Seattle Art Museum.
Unlike most artists, he'll be out in public constantly while he's here, giving talks and organizing conversations about how we use and plan for culture in our city. He once lived here, so he cares about this place—more than just as a drive-by place for exhibition—but he also cares about places in general. He's an urban planner as much as an artist. It seems like failure, for him, could mean leaving a city exactly the way he found it.
Tonight is a talk and a panel discussion about how to create new and better space for culture in Seattle, at Town Hall, starting at 6:30. It continues tomorrow morning with a working session. Thursday night he'll talk at the museum at 7:30.

Here's what I wrote about Edie Whitsett earlier this year in the Genius Awards issue:
Edie Whitsett is that rare and wonderful thing: a world-class theater artist who's stayed deeply engaged with her profession while remaining in Seattle. Whitsett's calling card is painting—Ming Cho Lee, the legendary set designer, has praised her as the best scenic painter west of the Hudson—and she did years of exquisite work during her tenure as lead scenic artist at Pacific Northwest Ballet. At that time, she was executing other people's designs, but next spring she'll return to PNB as the scenic designer for Snow White. Now she's primarily working in three dimensions, serving as prop master at Seattle Children's Theatre, where amazing props are mandatory. When I press one of Whitsett's former colleagues for specifics on what makes her a great scenic artist, I get this: "She is joyfully involved with every aspect of her designs, gives clear and detailed drawings, paint elevations, and prop research and instructions, without ever being a vainglorious dick. The amount of work she is willing to do for each show, joyfully, is what sets her apart. She loves theater enough to always do it properly."
Last night, after an extended battle with cancer, Edie Whitsett passed away. Along with being an extremely well-regarded artist, Edie was a deeply beloved human. Today is a terribly sad day.
More pictures here.
Arts leaders are usually lifers. So it's a surprise that Fidelma McGinn, who's been head of Artist Trust for 6 years and executive-directing arts nonprofits for 15 years (including 6 years at 911 Media Arts Center), is heading over to become Vice President of Philanthropic Services at The Seattle Foundation. She'll make the switch in mid-January.
"I have very strong relationships and friendships" in the arts, she said in a phone conversation late yesterday. "At Seattle Foundation, I hope to be an advocate and a voice for the arts, because I do believe that the arts should be part of the holistic planning of a city."
She emphasized that her departure doesn't indicate anything negative about Artist Trust, which enters its 25th year in 2012 and supports artists directly with grants, services (including health care), professional development, and other resources.
"Artist Trust is such a bedrock of an organization," McGinn said. "I'm the fifth ED over 25 years of the organization. It's just the right time for a changeover."
What will AT be looking for in its new ED? "Someone who is not just empathetic (to artists) but has walked in the shoes," McGinn said. (She is a filmmaker and animator.) Someone who's "strong, and able to articulate why artists need support." And, of course, a "persuasive fundraiser."
The job posting will go up after Thanksgiving break on Artist Trust's site.
Congrats to McGinn, who began her arts work in Seattle volunteer teaching at Coyote Central—a great little organization, if you don't know about it. Full press release on the jump.
Did you go to school for art or painting?
I double-majored in Painting and Communications Journalism at the University of Houston, but dropped out my junior year to write and promote rock shows full-time.
When did you live in Seattle?
I moved from Chicago to Seattle in 2003, and to Portland in 2008.

More in next week's paper.
Her name is, amazingly, Xenobia Bailey.

Who is she? Where did she come from? What does she want from us? Jen Graves has the whole story, beginning with that name.
Now, the collective that runs Pun(c)tuation will continue to stage events and do behind-the-scenes production work in music, movies, fashion, and pretty much anything else that falls into the category of an "experiment in sustainable consumption" of culture. But the gallery on Pike is closed.
One note: The collective behind Pun(c)tuation is run by people of color, so at the gallery, you could always rely on a spectrum of perspectives that most other Seattle art venues lack. If you're looking for more of that, check out this spot.

That makes three Seattle arts individuals/organizations who got national accolades in D.C. yesterday—Speight Jenkins of Seattle Opera, the Young Shakespeare Workshop and now 826 Seattle:
826 Seattle founder Teri Hein and Ballard High School student Meron Kasahun joined First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House today to receive the 2011 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.
Chosen from a pool of more than 470 nominations and 50 finalists, 826 Seattle was one of 12 after-school and out-of-school programs across the country to receive the award, which is the highest honor such programs can receive in the United States. The awards recognize and support outstanding programs that lay new pathways to creativity, expression, and achievement outside of the regular school day. 826 Seattle was honored for its effectiveness in developing learning and life skills in young people by engaging them through the power of the written word.