That there is a line from the first chapter of Peter Plagens's brand-new online novel! I say again, Peter Plagens has written a novel!

Yes, Plagens of the criticism. Plagens of the paintings. Plagens has written a novel—called The Art Critic—and judging from the first chapter, which went up Friday on artnet.com, it's going to be a hell of a read. (It's quite the Roman a clef, but it's also written for people who don't know SoHo from Chelsea.)

The protagonist is Arthur, the critic who loves to shower, and who finds himself perplexed both by the squares and the cool kids of the art world. He's a perfect outsider. He can't even get a date because he's so involved in a world he's outside of. (I can completely relate to this; thank goodness for externally secured spouses.)

The first chapter is set largely on Arthur's gallery walk through Chelsea, which begins with this caveat:

Don’t misunderstand me, Arthur argued with himself while he put his coffee cup into the dishwasher in his compact but smartly appointed downtown apartment, it’s not the real estate bonanza nor the wussification of a formerly gritty Noo Yawk neighborhood that gets me down. (I’m il wusso del tutti wussi.) Nor is it walking up and down those Alphaville Streets in desperate search of art with feeling rather than strategy at its core; nor is it, particularly, the monotony of one deluded, aspiring David Thornton wannabe after another displaying -- to the accompaniment of laughably pseudo-enigmatic publicity material -- another artist they think to be the next enfant terrible. (I can usually assent to either half of the term, but hardly ever the whole.) No, it’s the art itself that gets me down.

How many paste & doodle shows am I condemned to see today? he asked himself as he plodded up the subway stairs at 18th Street. How many discarded supermarket flyers drawn on in attention-deficit anger spasms with crayons or Sharpies, à la Jean-Michel Basquiat, will assault my eyes? How many dentist-diploma pseudo-academic "texts" with every other word ending in "-ification," written by artists acting as their own theorists-at-law, embalmed on birch plywood under glossy layers of polyurethane, will I be forced to read while I stand on fucking cement? How many Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show-­meets-Fashion-Week performances will I be forced to endure? How many Granny’s-attic-on-crystal-meth installations need I stumble through? How many huge Cibachrome prints of exquisitely posed suburban-gothic banalities, produced with budgets that must have consumed whole trust funds in a single gulp, must I try to decode?

Obviously, I recommend it. It will appear "at the rate of about a chapter a week," Plagens says. There are 24 chapters. I love serials.

Ms Graves, I am a former grave digger, prom king and sergeant of Marines. I discovered truly hot by falling into the campfire at age 4 and have been to Winlock, Wa. to see the world's largest egg. Currently I'm an eastside parks maintenance worker and Artist's Trust Edge graduate who is pasting 20 photographs from a new body of work to the wall in Post Alley below the pig. I am pleased to invite you to view them on 1st Thursday, August 7 or whenever you're at the market. Thank you, Daniel Kencke

These photographs "of the daily commute," together titled Pedestrian will be on the poster wall on Post Alley below the Pike Place Market pig "until all images are torn/weathered off, posted over or otherwise assimilated."

A tiny book of them the artist sent me includes several alluringly blurry prints shot from down low, with these poignant and to-the-point explanations in the front of the book:

Tech: 2-5 second exposure, a loosely aimed camera at waist level, inspired by John Waters movie "Pecker"

Impression: personal interactions mostly with cellphone and ipod, very little eye contact, no spontaneous conversation, determined movement and agenda; sad, lonely

I say go.

Girl, if your precious gymnasts even looked like they heard the music while they were doing their floor routines, then your point would stand. As it is, your deafsters are about as "synchronized" to their music as baseball players to their at-bat theme songs.

And here is hilarious musical warmup to tonight.

^{The Adam and Eve page from the St. John's Bible project}

At Tacoma Art Museum. (Museum web site here.)

Several things make me uncomfortable about the traveling show of a contemporary hand-written and illustrated bible that's now at the Tacoma Art Museum.

First, almost all of the illustrations are terribly, terribly ugly, like this one of Adam and Eve. They are in the style of religious craft-fair materials, or mass-produced religious posters, the kind you saw hanging in the offices of progressive churches in the '80s. It is painful.

Second, and keeping that in mind, why is this show at an art museum in one of the least religious states in the union? When the Minneapolis Institute of Arts announced it was organizing a national tour for the show on behalf of Saint John's University, it boasted that the show was looking for audiences in major cities, including New York, LA, Chicago, Seattle, and Detroit. Instead, according to that same web page, the exhibition only found exhibition venues in Collegeville, Minnesota; Mobile, Alabama; and Tacoma.

The presentation at TAM is unquestioning. In sweeping script on the walls and in labels that came straight from the organizers and were not allowed to be altered, the TAM presentation supports the project's own elevated claims of importance.

But does this bible really matter to average Christians, or is this tour just a way to drum up money for the project? Is this bible really engaging any debates about the rapidly growing differences between fundamentalist and progressive Christian practice? If it has no art value—and believe me, it doesn't—then does it even have any religious value?

And on a more general note, why does the Tacoma Art Museum lately feel like a red state inside? The history of that museum is one of innovation, progress, and underdog successes. Recent shows of children's illustrators and quilters seem to send the message that the museum thinks Tacoma doesn't know from art and might be intimidated if the museum put some up. As a former Tacoman myself, I take umbrage.

The one thing TAM still has going for it is curator Rock Hushka. He's responsible for fighting to bring Janet Cardiff's "Forty Part Motet" to TAM simultaneously with this bible show, and because of his determination, a trip there this summer isn't a total loss. The spirit of Cardiff's show is to experience and question the gaps between individual and collective experience, and between hearing something and knowing its full meaning. Now those are subjects that give religious people of all types something to relate to and consider.

^{Leo Berk's River Full of Blood (2008), drawing in sparkly pen [photographed by Mark Woods]}

Here's the third and final view of the three-kilometer-long Mayan cave Naj Tunich at the Hedreen Gallery of Seattle University. In glittery ink drawings of tunnels that look like X-rays of fishnet-stockinged legs, and with sinuous, hand-sanded limbs of painted resin, Seattle artist Leo Berk has re-dreamt his wanderings in in the cave seven years ago, and leads you on a similar way-losing journey. Berk, it turns out, was inspired by Claude Zervas and a dinosaur:

To listen to the entire In/Visible podcast with Berk, click here.

FOR MORE INFO!: The artist will be at the Hedreen Gallery (901 12th Avenue, between Marion and Madison) to talk about this work tomorrow at 1:30 pm!

^{An ancestor of Stephen Colbert (see the resemblance?): a bust of Jean-Baptiste Colbert by Antoine Coysevox, 1677}

Most people don't even know that museums have libraries, and they contain treasures. Seattle Art Museum is no exception, and this Saturday from noon to 5, it's hosting its first-ever book sale—on the lower level of the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

I was curious about what's going to be for sale, so I called SAM librarian Traci Timmons, and she gave me the scoop.

Among the gems:
• The three-volume set "French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries," by Francois Souchal, published in 1987. Retails for $400; SAM price: $200.
• The rare "New Works by Claes Oldenburg" catalog from a show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1970. SAM price: $10.
• A Sam Durant catalog with an essay by SAM curator Michael Darling from 2002. SAM price: $15.
• Asian material galore, including "The Book of Snuff and Snuff Boxes" by Matton Curtis, a rare book from 1935. SAM price: $10.

In addition to art books from every period and style that SAM collects, exhibition posters and K-12 art education materials will be for sale.

SAM will take cash, check, and credit cards. Full details here.

I'll fight you for some of this stuff.

^{Mmm... snuff boxes.}

Remember the Carl Andre sculpture I posted about a couple of months ago that was, according to the artist, "RESCUED FROM MUTILATION AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART"?

Well, now this victim of institutional abuse has come to rest at the Seattle Art Museum (thanks to rescuers Virginia and Bagley Wright). 12th Copper Corner is one of many artworks in SAM's latest round of acquisitions, which the museum made public this week. Other highlights include works by Marcel Broodthaers, Victor Vasarely, Man Ray, Walter Oltmann, and Seattle artists Gretchen Bennett, Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon.

The full list is on the jump.

Continue reading "12th Copper Corner Safe!" »

Unknown artist's untitled work (2008), newsprint on concrete, 5 feet by 5 feet

Photo by Slog tipper Ronald

^{A detail of Leo Berk's Rattling House (2008) [photographed by Mark Woods]}

And one more view of this seemingly bemuscled, hand-sanded, surrealist object:

Yesterday I posted the story of how Seattle artist Leo Berk ended up in a Mayan cave on the morning of September 12, 2001. Now here's the short story (interrupted by a siren, so told in two audio files—sorry!) of how the cave made it out of his brain and into the gallery.

To listen to the entire In/Visible podcast with Berk, click here.

Here is a screencap from a video:

It is of a man who is lighting exploding bananas that are mounted on a mask on his face. I have absolutely nothing to say about this.

(Via The Inferior 4+1.)

^{Leo Berk's Dark House (2008), drawing in sparkly pen [photographed by Mark Woods]}

On the morning of September 12, 2001, as the United States descended into a pit of disbelief, Seattle artist Leo Saul Berk happened to be in Guatemala, descending into an ancient Mayan cave. Tourists aren't allowed in, but Berk and some others bribed the guards, who then conducted the tour of the dark, totally disorienting place—a place Berk was unable to get out of his head afterward.

Now it's finally come out of his head, and into the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University. The above drawing is one of three complex perspectives of the cave that Berk created this year, two drawn and one sculpted. He describes what it was like down there:

To listen to the entire In/Visible podcast with Berk, click here.

Back in 1962, the show [of the original 32 Campbell's Soup Cans] met with such derision that a rival gallery across the street stacked some actual soup cans in their window and printed a sign: "We Have the Real Thing for 29 Cents."

^{From Richard Polsky's book I Bought Andy Warhol.}

P.S. I learned while watching the documentary "The Birth of the Cool" "The Cool School" earlier this year that those first soup cans were not hung but displayed on shelves, theatrically, as if they were framed, but still in a grocery-store. I think it was the idea of Irving Blum. When I was at the Museum of Modern Art a few months ago, I noticed that they're displayed that way there. It's sort of like an early music performance on period instruments.

^{A production still from Kathy Slade's 16mm color film Tugboat (2007)}

(Formerly at Or Gallery in Vancouver, B.C. Artist web site here.)

I saw this looped projection a few months ago in a show called Hold On. In the silent film, a tugboat slowly chugs into view (the film was shot in Burrard Inlet in Vancouver) and begins to turn.

Before long you realize: It's doing donuts. This burly, practical thing has sort of, somehow, lost its shit.

The boat continues spinning, sending water radiating out from it in concentric circles. The mind is swallowed into turning along with it. Is this the way a tugboat plays? Or is this sorry boat languishing? Is this a mind that has gone haywire, an absent mind? Or are we seeing the effects of steely determination and singular focus? It's a sad, slow slapstick routine. Maybe it has something to do with the state of shipping, of the stuckness of the economy. Maybe not.

Finally, when the boat rights itself and chugs out of view, you miss it, and wish it would come back.

To me it's a reminder of how simple and easy art can be. I doubt it was simple or easy to commission a tugboat to do circles, but the result isn't afraid to appear that way.

While I wait my turn for the library to lend me the new book, "Spiral Jetta"—a travelogue of the earth art of the American West—I ask you: why don't any art pilgrims go to Mount Rushmore? Where's the love?

Not just that, but Rushmore is the very prototype of a contemporary art project, conceived and designed by a big personality, then executed by a horde of assistants while the artist is off doing other things. I've never seen it, but would love to.

At Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum was the big artist personality.

To give some more thought to the unloved Rushmore, go to Matthew Buckingham's current show at the Henry Art Gallery, where you'll find this 1923 declaration by South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson, who conceived the Rushmore project:

"God only makes a Michelangelo or a Gutzon Borglum once in a thousand years."

At the start of this year, I discovered Niki the Shooter. Now there's Dorothy.

Have you ever heard of Warhol's Shot Red Marilyn? I can't believe I hadn't. I discovered it reading Richard Polsky's book I Bought Andy Warhol last week. (An earlier post about the book, in which I do not recommend the full read, is here.)

Turns out a stack of Warhol Marilyns were, well, shot in the head as they leaned innocently against a wall. The woman reponsible was Dorothy Podber, an artist in her own right and all-around bad girl (pictured above, slumping and scowling in her animal prints). She died earlier this year. From her obituary:

Certainly the most outrageous [trick] was her unsolicited contribution to a few of Warhol’s “Marilyn” silk-screen paintings. In the fall of 1964 Ms. Podber, a friend of the photographer and Warhol regular Billy Name, visited Warhol’s Factory on East 47th Street in Manhattan with her Great Dane (named Carmen Miranda or Yvonne De Carlo, depending on the account). Ms. Podber asked Warhol if she could shoot a stack of the “Marilyn” paintings; he apparently thought that she wanted to take pictures of them and consented.

But she produced a pistol and fired at them, penetrating three or four. One of them, “Shot Red Marilyn,” with a repaired bullet hole over the left eyebrow, sold for $4 million in 1989, at the time setting a record at auction for a Warhol work.

“After she left,” Mr. Name told Ms. Bergmann, “Andy came over to me and said: ‘Please make sure Dorothy doesn’t come over here anymore. She’s too scary.’ ”

Warhol made the Marilyns shortly after Monroe died, based on a press image from the filming of Niagara, featuring her face in all its gobsmackingly constructed glory. In the name of cosmetic realignment, even the Shot Red Marilyn has been repaired, and, why, you can buy a print of that unblemished face here, with a frame to match the sofa.

^{Diem Chau's Boy and Girl, carved crayons and wood, 3 inches high}

This, or actually some just like it by the Seattle artist, are currently "hanging" in the September issue of Harper's, where they illustrate a story called "Tyranny of the test: One year as a Kaplan coach in the public schools." You can kind of see them here, but if you want to get a close look you have to pick up a copy or become a subscriber.

Judging from this web mini-view, though, which is appropriately Lilliputian, I especially like the use of the sculpture perched on the tip of a pencil, like some post-"Sesame Street" Giacometti.

And now, please enjoy a "Sesame Street" clip from 1972 involving Stevie Wonder, a vocoder, a vest, and a classic song that is marginally about counting.

(Thanks for the tip, Steven.)

This weekend, I finished reading Richard Polsky's 2003 book I Bought Andy Warhol, which is ostensibly about the second-tier art dealer's quest to purchase a great Warhol painting on a budget of $100,000—but which is actually just an excuse for Polsky to tell all the stories he knows about fellow art dealers behaving badly. Because Polsky himself is a few shades darker than schmuck—something like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, if that show weren't a comedy—the book is a little bit of an uncomfortable read, and feels a little bit like a waste of time. There are good bits, but overall, I don't recommend it.

But the view Polsky provides of the crassness of the upper-end art market is amusing, and put me in the mood to watch a little Ab Fab ("those frozen blood heads filled with blood").

Susan Robb's creepy, beautiful, black macro-follicles are back--they grow suddenly out of the grass at Volunteer Park rarely, on lucky sunny days, and they're stunning. Today is one such day. They've been up since 11 am and they're only going to be there until 5 pm. They look an awful lot like freakish, unasked-for accidents of nature, some sort of biological phenomena writ large--moving, sensing, aggressive, almost sexual. Or they look like an outgrowth of Earth's hairs, blowing languidly in the atmosphere. They're also kind of sausage-y, and it complicates everything to know they're made out of trash-bag lining, filled with the breeze, tied off at the ends, and powered by the sun: the sun heats up the air inside, the heat expands, the toobs move.

They are called Warmth, Giant Black Toobs and have taken the artist--who makes conceptual art about the natural world--to several states in the last month. See them while you can. It's free. Here's a map of where you can find them in Volunteer Park, courtesy of Lawrimore Project.

Here's a documentary video by the artist (taken at Volunteer Park):

For the love of god, I've been meaning to post about this for a couple of days. Sorry! This week's non-Slog work kept me from being diligent about reading comments, and it turns out that, as some people pointed out, the fireworks for the opening ceremonies did< happen, but they were substituted on the broadcast for ones not obscured by the foggy Chinese air. Fine. That's just dubbing (and not dubbing that humiliates a little girl). No big deal.

What is weird, though, is that I could have sworn that MSNBC's original story claimed just what I said when I linked to it: that the fireworks were completely nonexistent. (Anybody?) Now, the story looks quite different from what I remember it as. Is this just a case of online journalism being infinitely mutable? Wouldn't it be nice if corrections were handled as corrections, or as a new story? At least that way, I'd feel less crazy.

I guess when digital media gets involved, something somewhere gets erased or covered over.

^{Annika von Hausswolff's Self Portrait in the Studio with Flashlight and Pulled Down Pants (2002), C-print, 50 by 39 1/2 inches}

I have very strong feelings about that horrid Dave Matthews Band, and oddly, this photograph brings them out. Listen:

(*For the whole podcast with Callahan about the show of three Swedish artists, click here.)

^{Johanna Billings's Look Out! (2003), DVD, 5 minutes 20 seconds}

Standing in front of the video the above image is taken from, curator Sara Callahan talks about the threat of two worlds colliding:

(*For the whole podcast with Callahan about the show of three Swedish artists, click here.)

^{The Seniors Kinetic Sculpture Exercise Class; sculpture by Chris McMullen}

At Grey Gallery & Lounge. (Gallery site here.)

I somewhat enjoyed my first interaction with Chris McMullen's heavy-duty kinetic sculptures a few weeks ago. My favorite was an exercise bike that transforms the large-scale movements of a real person on one end into the baby turns of a miniature ballerina figurine on the other (you can't see her in the photograph). Seemed a great reminder of the way energy can dissipate, and because the ballerina's movement was so precise and so satisfying, I wondered about which end the dissipation was actually on.

But I didn't love the bike sculpture until I saw the above man on it. Before he was on it, the woman behind him was on it. They were having a very good time. Meanwhile, I was sitting at a nearby table by the window, where McMullen's black-ink (Sharpie?) blueprints on glass were steadily growing on me, too, as sun hitting them gave them shadowy dimension.

Next to another terrible sculpture! Poor Fremont. (Though surely the bronze runners at the exit of the West Seattle Bridge take the prize for Worst Figurative Sculpture in Seattle.)

Here's the brief item in today's Seattle Times. Celebrate with the governor at 1 pm on Sunday!

^{Nathalie Djurberg's In Our Own Neighbourhood (2007), clay animation, digital video, 8 minutes 32 seconds}

Standing in front of the video the above image is taken from, curator Sara Callahan and I narrate the destruction of an Old-World mansion (subtext: what's eating Sweden?):

(*For the whole podcast with Callahan, including sound from Djurberg's video, click here.)

Compared to the creepily faked footprints, this new revelation of fakery at the Olympic opening ceremonies just seems to me like garden-variety entertainment. What are the Chinese bloggers so worked up about?

^{Isaac Layman's Box Spring and Apple Tree (2008), video}

Standing in front of the image seen above, Isaac Layman responds to charges of mental masturbation by some jerk:

(*Click here to hear the entire In/Visible podcast with Isaac Layman.)

^{Alexandria Muller's Untitled (circa 1930), oil on board}

At Martin-Zambito Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

Everything that was ever out of style with the mainstream narrative of history, art history, or art commerce eventually seems to finds its way to the humble little storefront at 721 East Pine Street in Seattle: Martin-Zambito Gallery. The gallery specializes in forgotten regionalists, overlooked women, and excluded artists of color, usually from the first half of the 20th century. These are the castoffs, but the ones worth looking at. The above painting—the twisty tree trunk makes it—is by Alexandria Muller, an artist I'd never heard of before. According to the gallery, she lived from 1899 to 1977.

Are you a Northwest architect, interior designer, landscape architect, urban designer, or artist brimming with ideas and willing to be paid to live for free in an Italian hill town for a stretch?

It's your lucky day.

This morning at 11:30, I was invited to a performance I couldn't attend, but am still thinking about. Good thing there will be more of these public performances: Seattle composer Byron Au Yong has created 64 mini-operas to be performed by four opera singer/water-drummer duos, in fountains, reservoirs, pools, and lakes around Seattle and in in Auburn, Bellevue, Des Moines, Issaquah, Lake Forest Park, Redmond, Renton, Sammamish, Shoreline, and Snoqualmie over the next few weeks.

The series is called Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas, and more information about the specifics is here.

The idea reminds me of one of the classic works of contemporary Chinese art, from 1996: Song Dong's majestic exercise in futility, the Stamping the water performance, seen documented here.

^{Isaac Layman's Picture Framing Glass (2008), photograph of the glass used to frame the photograph of the glass, 29 by 23 inches}

Standing in front of the image seen above, Isaac Layman A. explains it, and B. explains why he took it (ie, why we love reproductions better than the real thing):

(*Click here to listen to the whole podcast with Isaac Layman.)

I'm probably not supposed to be stodgy about truthiness in the year 2008 at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in a totalitarian country. But this story, posted by MSNBC.com about an hour ago, still creeps me out.

Basically, the footprint fireworks—the ones that made it look like giant feet were walking across the city toward the Olympic Stadium, taped by someone in a helicopter—never happened. They existed only digitally, created in 3-D computer graphics.

Even the people inside the stadium thought they were real—because they watched the same fake footage that we did. Outside the stadium, people on the ground watching the broadcast and simultaneously looking into the sky might have wondered why they didn't see any feet overhead, but they also might just as easily have thought they simply couldn't see them.

It was a universal hoax.

There were some real fireworks going on outside the stadium. But the footprint display was “inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment,” the Daily Telegraph said.

“Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible,” the newspaper [Britain's Sky News] reported Xiaolong [Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony] as saying. “They sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing’s smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.”

“Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” Xiaolong said in comments that appeared in the Daily Telegraph. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live — so that was mission accomplished.”

The footprints and the boxes were my favorite parts, and now we know that both had trick reversals: The boxes looked digitally controlled, but were made by humans simply standing up and sitting down underneath them. (They revealed themselves at the end in a way that made my friends and I think of the soylent green reveal.) The footprints looked human—even going so far as to imitate a human body part moving across the land—but they were nothing but pixels.

I wrote a story about the explosion of Obama art in this week's paper. Now, it also has a slide show!

1. Last year's Stranger Genius Award winner for visual art, Alex Schweder, has decamped to Berlin for the time being. He's still keeping his studio here, and he'll be traveling back and forth for the next year, "mostly forth." In an email, he wrote, "There are many like minded thinkers here and heaps of opportunities. Mostly, though, I like being incognito for a while. There was no frustration with Seattle at all, I just needed to expand the reach of my practice."

2. Cat Clifford, one of five recipients of the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards this year, is moving to Houston. Her husband is going to graduate school at Rice. They may be back when he's finished: "We are hoping to come back to Seattle," Clifford emailed. "The Pacific Northwest is really our home."

The truth is, an artist's work can really only improve in the context of a new metropolis rich with art. Which doesn't keep me from crossing my fingers in both cases.

I just got an email announcing that for $250 a head, the LGBT community in Seattle is hosting an Obama fundraiser at Greg Kucera Gallery next Saturday night, August 16, starring Gray's Anatomy celebs Ellen Pompeo and Justin Chambers (you know, the troubled Alex). Click here for more info. (The Deborah Butterfield horses currently on display at the gallery—some call them "cash horses"—will be the backdrop.)

And in other Obama art news: No sooner than I'd written in this week's paper about the current explosion of nervous Obama "art" did I hear that there will be an Obama-worshiping art show—in something called the Manifest Hope Gallery!—at the Democratic National Convention later this month. (More here.)

^{Jesse Burke's Shame (2007), c-print, 14 by 11 inches}

It is one of my enduring regrets as a critic that I did not review Jesse Burke's show at Platform Gallery last year.

Burke's visions of New England and its men—they really should be considered as a soft, hulking total body of work, as on Burke's web site here—are like falsetto singing. A great and proper falsetto voice is a thick, proud thing, unlike its false brother, the lightly misogynistic wheeze used to mock wussery.

The real falsetto—this is something I learned by listening to my father sing—is remarkable for its departure from stereotypical masculine noise. It's a surprise when it comes out. An alternative. The same goes for Burke's portraits of guys in landscapes, guys with beers, guys with bellies, guys being affectionate with each other, guys to whom the camera is being affectionate. Maybe I'm being dim, but I have no idea whether Burke is gay or straight from these, which is a sort of triumph in itself.

Tonight at Platform from 5:30 to 8, there's a party to celebrate the release of the first book of Burke's photography, and the artist will be in attendance for you to ogle. The party is also in honor of two other new photography books by the gallery's publishing arm, DECODE Books, devoted to the work of John Jenkins III and Doug Keyes. Former Seattle contemporary curator Sheryl Conkelton (recall her terrific show What It Meant to Be Modern at the Henry in 2000, and her equally refreshing Northwest School exhibition and catalog for Tacoma Art Museum in 2003) will also be there.

Admission is free! Books, I believe, are $35.

^{Isaac Layman's Pool Table (2007), sculptural photograph: archival inkjet print mounted to Plex, painted wood plinth; 30 by 108 by 43 inches}

The man pictured above is not Isaac Layman, but in this audio, Isaac Layman is standing above this pool table photo-sculpture, talking about the ultimate luxury:

(*To hear the entire In/Visible podcast with Isaac Layman, click here.)

Toulouse-Lautrec's drink of choice was a concoction of his own invention, called The Earthquake. It was equal parts absinthe and brandy. (What color would that turn out to be?)

Granted, he did not live or die well, and one takes one's health into one's hands when one emulates his physical habits, but if you're feeling ... historical and slightly tragic, you know what to do.

^{One of my favorites. I think this visited the Portland Art Museum a few years ago.}

^{Isaac Layman's Medicine Cabinet (2008), 73 1/2 by 59 inches}

Standing in front of the above image of his and his wife's medicine cabinet just the way he found it one day, Isaac Layman talks about photography as a form of gossip:

(*To hear the entire podcast with Layman, click here.)

Back in November, I had a simple dream, when I heard that Seattle Art Museum curator Michael Darling was putting together a survey of Northwest video to be shown at Art Basel Miami Beach: My dream was to see the show of Northwest artists in the Northwest.

My first step in realizing this dream was to ask Darling whether he'd considered showing the art in its home. No, he hadn't, but yes, he would. I rejoiced.

Then, in April, I heard the glorious news that the survey would be shown at SAM itself, in that otherwise weird little space off the main lobby on the third floor. Sure, the lighting is not perfect. But walls can be built! And this is a FREE ZONE. No admission charged. Yes. You can imagine my happiness.

Yesterday morning I received an email from SAM spokeswoman Cara Egan about my dream. It said that the show I'd been waiting for all this time had opened Tuesday. Nevermind that this meant that I couldn't put the information in print because this week's paper had already gone to bed. I was prepared to overlook such trifles. For the good of the dream.

This morning I mounted my bike. I rode to Pioneer Square, where I saw several other shows. Then I hustled up to SAM for the big event.

The screen was blank. The guitar part to "Stairway to Heaven" was playing in the speakers, but nothing showed. Crazy artists, I thought—giving me audio when I expect video. Those wild-eyed mind-bogglers!

Except that this went on for at least 15 minutes, way past the end of "Stairway to Heaven." I began calling SAM staffers. The first one I got on the phone told me the show wasn't opening until next week. The next one told me the show had been working fine yesterday. The curator told me he'd noticed it hadn't been working earlier in the day, but apparently, he hadn't mentioned it to anyone. I was starting to feel like I should be on the SAM payroll: I'd asked for the show, I was scrambling to let people know about it because SAM didn't, and now I was motivating the AV department?

Two hours and 20 minutes after I arrived at the museum, the blown bulb in the projector was fixed, and I—and everyone else—could see the new show! (I did other things in the interim.)

Everything went so well for about 80 minutes. Then, at 5, the projector, on a timer set to shut off when the museum closes, shut off. By the time someone was called and got it back on, the last segment of the penultimate video, Shannon Oksanen's little boat (2007), and the entire final video, Terry Chatkupt's First Snow (2006), were scrambled beyond comprehension, and finally, the DVD just gave up and froze.

I've never had such a strong desire to look at paintings.

No, neither I nor anybody else at SAM yesterday got to see the complete new video survey at SAM.

But I have to say that what I saw is worth seeing. A few of the pieces are even instant classics.

I can also report that I had a serendipitous interaction with a fellow named Kevin Schwarz during those golden 80 minutes when I was actually viewing video.

Schwarz is an 18-year-old Marylander here on vacation, and he sat down right as one of the aforementioned instant classics was starting. The video was Kevin Schmidt's Long Beach Led Zep (2002), which involves the artist on a beach at sunset with a Marshall stack hooked up to a generator on a cart—playing the entire guitar part of "Stairway to Heaven," down to every note, to the last thrashing chords.

Schwarz happened to be wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt with the lyrics of "Stairway to Heaven" on the back. He was very deadpan, and very moved. "I'm feeling quite special," he announced, as someone else pointed out his shirt. "I was not expecting this."

When it was over, he said, "It was quite epic. The sunset, the beach—he brought the generator. I want an encore."

At which point Hadley + Maxwell's video 1+1+1 (2007), including footage from the studio recording of the Rolling Stones's "Sympathy for the Devil," started up. "'Sympathy for the Devil' is my favorite song by them," Schwarz said. "I'm having a good day."

The video after that one, Ron Tran's The Peckers (2004), involved a recording and video of pigeons pecking at musical instruments set down on a pier. Schwarz said: "My dad hates pigeons. He got a super-soaker, because they always eat out of his bird feeder." He reported that he did not like this video as well as the others. I had to agree that it went on a little long.

As I said, more later. But for now: THERMOSTAT: VIDEO AND THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IS UP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD* (*except for about 7 minutes at the end). AND IT'S FREE. (I'm trying to help you out here, SAM.)

Hallelujah.

^{From a work by Thom Heileson and Wyndel Hunt, seen last November at SOIL and headed to 4Culture's windows.}

The latest at 4Culture is e4c—an "electronic storefront gallery." This means four LCD monitors in a window facing Prefontaine Place South, with art playing on them from 7 am to 7 pm, starting as soon as September.

The artists chosen for the first round are listed after the jump.

More art is always good. I do not know why 4Culture's is obsessed with numbers attached to letters in combinations impossible to remember, but these things do not particularly matter.

What does matter is: What's going on with the roof! Spill it, Jeppe and 4Culte4c2hhkhsj!

Continue reading "And They Shall Have Art in Windows" »