Impulse

Street vendors - Usually there are several artists lining Occidental Ave showing off all manner of artwork. This month, there were only three artists, huddling together, braving the wind, rain, and cold. I commend them for their heroism, but I hope they weren’t out there long…

D’Adamo/Woltz Gallery had a very fun show: their annual exhibition of student artists from Pratt Fine Art, Cornish College of the Arts, Northwest College of Art and the University of Washington. The show shakes things up nicely: being students, they’re a little more rough & adventurous than you normally see in a gallery. Keeara Rhoades (UW) Gilliam-esque collages were intriguing. Being a font geek, I really liked Casey Curran’s (Cornish) latin characters over mechanical sketches. A few months back, I was commissioned to do a photo series of decayed food, but Derrick Jeffries (UW) photos of trump anything I had shot. Derrick Nobbs’ (Northwest) creepy paintings kept drawing my attention (and inspired my co-artwalker and I to think up similarly creepy fairy tales to go with them).

Grover Thurston Gallery had a series of paintings that my friend and I decided looked quite nice together, with people milling about looking at them, as seen through the windows from the street. Individually, well…

Continuing down Occidental, Davidson rocked with a great mezzotint show by Carol Wax & Fred Mershimer. This show is very well curated: the artists work goes so well together that I didn’t realize it was two artists. Mershimer’s prints of a nocturnal metropolis draw you into their gothic world. Wax’s prints of vintage mechanical objects - Underwood typewriters, sewing machines, clocks - were my favorite. Being a photographer, I loved the film-noir lighting she created as well as the gentle, smooth curves throughout. I have no idea how she creates such detail by sanding a plate of copper… You can see the prints online, but it’s just not the same.

Global Art Venue - one of my favorite galleries - usually has something really interesting to see. Usually. The abstracts on the main floor this month didn’t move me to even write down the artist’s name. Downstairs, though, they had Stanislaw Zoladz’s frighteningly realistic watercolors that always astound and confound me (they’re so meticulously made, and the light so accurate, that I constantly have to check the placard to remind myself that they are indeed water color). If you haven’t seen these, you should.

Another favorite - the Globe Gallery - is a tiny little photography gallery masquerading as the foyer of the building - or maybe a foyer masquerading as a gallery. Either way it’s cool and often has very interesting photography. This month, they’re showing photographs of Burma by Julie McMackin. This show confused me. The photos on display did not impress me. In the little anteroom, though, they had a catalog of the entire series of work - it was full of interesting images! Maybe I’m just simple, but I would’ve hung the best images on the walls & left others in the book.

Eastward, Greg Kucera was showing Tim Roda. I have mixed reactions to Roda - the more narrative photos I like. Others, like Untitled #41, leave me scratching my head.

Doug Keyes show of massively multiply exposed prints at G. Gibson also didn’t move me. His print of Chinatown signs made me laugh as they matched my first impression of Times Square in NYC last year, but 10 seconds later I was ready to move on. A single print or two, sure, but a whole series? Take a look online and let me know what you think.

Finally, the Trustee Building at 306 Washington is always a treat - this is the home of the Tashiro/Kaplan Artspace Project which filled the building with artists lofts and studios, brimming with curiosities. During artwalk, most of the artists throw open their doors to allow us to wander about and see their works. It’s like a big artistic candy shop - I got so excited I forgot to take notes on the artists. One studio had a creepy picture I just loved: taken from inside a basement, a girl outside stares across a police-tape border, through a window, right into our eyes as we lurk in the darkness. Another had an interesting tower of glass with emulsion photos of 9/11 ground zero inserted inside. I lingered in the Rock Editions gallery looking at Stephen Rock’s pencil sketches from “Pages from a Diary”.

In the hallways of the building, I found an excellent exhibition I wish were in a street-side gallery so that it could get more visibility. Amanda Koster’s Aids Is Knocking project documents the stories of orphans and widows of AIDS in Kenya. This show is a knockout. The photos are wonderfully composed with available light used to full advantage. The emotional element is much stronger than the technical: the subjects are relaxed and completely open. Koster’s compassion radiates throughout. She further illustrated the photos by hanging, next to each photo, excerpts of her interviews with that subject (she also made a documentary film). Find a way to see this show. A few of the photos are on her site, but they don’t compare to the actual prints.

Rounding out the evening, we adjourned to a brilliant little coffee shop/bar who’s name I can never remember, but is conveniently located on the eastern corner east of the Trustee Building - great atmosphere, drinks, and DJ Thalmer spinning some cool grooves that exactly fit the mood.