Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Visual Art Who Is Henry DePosit?

Posted by Jen Graves on Tue, May 19, 2009 at 1:03 PM

Why, he is the winner of the 1996 Betty Bowen Award and the maker of this, which is entirely wood.

a9b0/1242762561-new_forestry_module.jpg

DePosit (more images on his web site here) is an unknown to me, one of those missing links from history—but knowing about his ongoing work enriches the local puzzle of artists doing similarly minded work, from Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen to Chris Jordan, Jack Daws, and Dan Webb.

The reason I'm finding out about Henry DePosit now is thanks to a great new publication: the 30-year-anniversary catalog of the Betty Bowen Award. The award has been Seattle Art Museum's greatest gift to single artists for years, and now there's finally a historical document of all the winners (and a list of all the nominees, too), published by Seattle Art Museum and to be released at a free launch party at the museum on Thursday night.

Yay for history!

7c73/1242763336-bettybowen_01c_copy.jpgHere's a photograph of the woman who started it all, Betty Bowen herself, with her pet squirrel skunk (photographed by Mary Randlett, who has been everywhere in Seattle art, all the time—click to enlarge).

AND AS A SIDE NOTE: In search of the artist's page for Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen at Howard House in Seattle, where they've been showing, I found nothing. A call to HH let me know that they're no longer represented there, and that, according to Billy Howard, they're simply not interested in Seattle. Really? That is a d-r-a-g.

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Comments (14) RSS

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Bauhaus I 1
Um.....that's a skunk.
Posted by Bauhaus I on May 19, 2009 at 1:06 PM
2
Squirrel?
Posted by Sikes on May 19, 2009 at 1:06 PM
3
C'est Pepe LePew.
Posted by PC on May 19, 2009 at 1:08 PM
Cracker Jack 4
Why squirrel hate me?
Posted by Cracker Jack on May 19, 2009 at 1:08 PM
wench 5
That's one musky squirrel, there.
Posted by wench on May 19, 2009 at 1:12 PM
krzysz 6
No squirrel was ever that cuddly.
Posted by krzysz on May 19, 2009 at 1:13 PM
7
I'm concerned that Jen is an art critic, dependant on her eyesight for a living, and she confuses a skunk with a squirrel.

Painter Vanessa Helder, also had a pet skunk in the 1940s--must have been a fad at one point..
Posted by dj007 on May 19, 2009 at 1:17 PM
Hyzenthlayk9 8
@7: I was hoping that she was referring to the skunk being a squirrel due to an unfortunate captioning incident, rather than it being a result of her own species identification skills.

You may be on to something about pet skunks being a fad - there are methods for de-scenting them (mentioned in some animal husbandry books dealing with 'exotic pets' and published before the 1970's) and some communities have laws regarding keeping them as pets.
Posted by Hyzenthlayk9 http://oystermind.blogspot.com/ on May 19, 2009 at 1:29 PM
9
Know thy varmints.

Damn city people....
Posted by Le Grande Fromage on May 19, 2009 at 1:50 PM
10
Like the cat in the Pepe LePew cartoons, this squirrel had the misfortune of being painted to look exactly like a skunk. C'est magnifique!
Posted by PTrig on May 19, 2009 at 1:51 PM
11
CLEARLY I DO ACTUALLY KNOW A SKUNK FROM A SQUIRREL. However, I mistyped, then left the office for an hour to do the aforementioned KUOW interview.

But remind me to tell you one day about an ACTUAL species confusion I once had, involving Edward Albee's play The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? about a man who has sex with a goat.
Posted by Jen Graves on May 19, 2009 at 2:14 PM
12
Mary Randlett is awesome. Thank you, Mary, for decades upon decades of beautiful images.
Posted by Longtime Northwesterner on May 19, 2009 at 2:49 PM
13
Why is everyone caught up on squirrel-gate? Brilliant post, amazing artwork, totally fascinating.

Also, side point, my mom had a pet skunk in the '50s (the smell was somehow removed).
Posted by Strath http://pacific-standard.blogspot.com on May 19, 2009 at 10:09 PM
Greg 14
Henry DePosit? Sounds like a stage name for scat porn.
Posted by Greg on May 20, 2009 at 9:09 AM

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