Tacoma Art Museum’s Northwest Biennial considers recent developments and accomplishments by Northwest artists. The 9th Northwest Biennial will focus on the current aesthetic and conceptual concerns addressed by regional artists. The Biennial is open to current residents of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Only work created since January 2007 will be considered. Artists working in a wide variety of media, including traditional forms, craft-based work, conceptual, performance, installation, and digital projects, are encouraged to apply. $25 entry fee.

Unlike previous Tacoma Art Museum biennial application processes, this year’s will be conducted entirely online via the CaFÉ (Call for Entry) application service. All applications must be submitted via the CaFÉ Web site (http://www.callforentry.org/) by midnight on July 26, 2008. Tacoma Art Museum will not accept applications directly.

Visit their site for more information, including important dates and prospectus.

Boston Printmakers 2009 North American Print Biennial will take place at Boston University’s spacious 808 Gallery in February/March, 2009. Roberta Waddell, curator of prints at The New York Public Library from 1985 until 2008 will jury the entries.

Applications open at callforentry.org
Deadline: Sept. 15th, 2008

• Download Prospectus PDF

Two artists currently showing at Davidson Contemporary, Richard Nicol and Mark Meyer, have been featured in the Stranger’s blog, Slog.

At one point, Nicol was using gunpowder in his drawings, and there is one of those works in the show. But it’s a trio of grid drawings done in pastel and neon colored pencil that hooked me. They’re called Rational Drawings, and that name is also the title of the show. It brings to mind the late minimalist grid master Sol LeWitt’s dictum that “irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.”

• Continue reading The Man Taking Pictures of Everyone Else’s Art is an Artist, Too by Jen Graves

• View Mark Meyer’s Currently Hanging Post

Amanda Knowles as been awarded a GAP grant, “to defray costs associated with creating a new body of work that journey into the sculptural realm. As opposed to previous installations, imagery will be cut into steel by a local metal fabricator, allowing the creation of larger and more detailed pieces. The larger installation will consider and explore a new type of interaction with the ground they hang over, investigating painted/stenciled backgrounds.”

In 2008, Artist Trust awarded $119,195 in Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) to 80 outstanding Washington State artists. The GAP program provides up to $1,500 to individual artists for various projects. In 2008, Artist Trust received a record 975 applications from artists working in all disciplines across Washington State. In addition Artist Trust awarded five residencies as part of the Artist Trust Centrum Residency Partnership and one residency as part of the Camano Island Residency.

• View all 2008 GAP recipients

Visual artists working in Washington, Oregon or Idaho are invited to apply for the Seattle Art Museum’s annual Betty Bowen Award. The deadline for submissions is Friday, August 15, 2008. The application is available online at callforentry.com. There is a $10.00 application fee. Entries must be submitted on-line. If you are an artist working in film or video, you are required to upload six film stills with your application and send a DVD or VHS of the complete work. Applications sent by standard mail will not be processed.

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of the Betty Bowen Award. In honor of this milestone, the Committee has raised the award amount from $11,000 to $15,000 to be given to a single artist. The PONCHO Special Recognition award winner will be awarded $2,500 and this year, one artist will be awarded the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition award in the amount of $2,500. In addition, the winner’s work will be on view at SAM in October 2009.

For more information about the application process visit seattleartmuseum.org/bettybowen.

• Download Postcard PDF (108k)

The Maude Kerns Art Center invites artists to submit to the 15th annual Día de los Muertos exhibit, October 17 - November 7, featuring two- and three-dimensional work relating to the theme of the Mexican Day of the Dead. The Día de los Muertos celebration blends the ancient harvest rituals of the Aztec god of death and the Christian holidays of All Saints and All Souls days. Submissions must be postmarked by Friday, August 29. Entries will be judged from five color images on CD. For a prospectus/application form, contact the Art Center at 345-1571 or visit the Center’s website at mkartcenter.org.

15th Annual Exhibit: October 17 - November 7
Deadline for Submissions: August 29, 2008

Contemporary print artist Jenny Robinson was interviewed by Eastside Editions printer David Avery:

David Avery – Perhaps the first thing to ask, given your background, is what drew you to printmaking, why did you decide to become a printmaker?

Jenny Robinson –When I did my foundation course in England, it was just printmaking, printmaking is what captured me, you know, because when you’re in foundation you do so many techniques, and we did quite a big block in printmaking. It was just the one thing that I found, that and photography, that I really found that I was creative. I enjoyed it and I really enjoyed sort of the detail orientation of printmaking.

DA – Given that you chose that, how do you select and develop your images? How did you get into the urban landscape image?

JR – Well, when I went to college I did a lot of traveling. And I took my watercolor sketchbook with me and I found that I was drawn to architecture and the way the light fell, especially in places like India. The light’s very strong there. And although the work I was doing then was a bit over romantic, I suppose, maybe not romantic, but it was more color orientated and detail orientated because although I was doing sketches I was also taking back-up photographs. And then when I got back to England and I would do the work, I would get too bogged down in details from the photographs.

• Read the full interview here

Contemporary print artist Cleo Wilkinson was recently awarded the 2008 Jurors Award - 1st Biennial Footprint International at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking - Norwalk CT (USA)

Seattle P-I’s Art Blog, Art To Go, featured Davidson Contemporary artist Samantha Scherer and her new body of work, These Are Their Stories:

Attracted by [Law & Order]’s focus on morbid crimes, I am almost powerless to ignore the endless reruns on cable and often find myself watching episodes that I may have already seen more than once. This has amounted to hours and hours of seeing vaguely recognizable character actors assaulted and murdered on a regular basis.

To think of her time as something other than wasted, she began a visual catalog of the show’s fallen.

Scherer will show the series in July at Davidson Contemporary.

• Read the full post here

July 5 - August 2, 2008
Opening Reception with the Artists: “First Thursday”, July 3, 6-8 pm
Closed July 4th

Paintings & Books by Ian Boyden

Habitations. Collaborative artist book with Sam Hamill. Crab Quill Press, 2008. 31 x 11-1/2 x 1-1/4 inches.

Davidson Contemporary is proud to release the newest Crab Quill Press publication, Habitations. This unique artist book of original paintings represents a collaboration of the artist Ian Boyden and the poet Sam Hamill (founding editor of Copper Canyon Press and Poets Against War). The artist sees this work as a major extension of ideas central to the “Northwest School”. The pigments used in the paintings contain fossilized whale ear bone, fossilized shark tooth, fossilized cave bear tooth, cuttlefish ink, freshwater pearl, opal, loess, basalt, granite, lava, and petrified wood. The words and images are deeply grounded in our region on multiple levels.

Samantha Scherer These Are Their Stories

04-070, 2008

Samantha Scherer’s 3’ x 6’ watercolor grid, drawn from her on-going series “These Are Their Stories”, is based on the victims of the TV show “Law and Order”. They represent her response to our information age …”sorting through limitless data to find personal truths.” “Here she has combed through multiple seasons, collecting video stills of various victims post-crime, rendering them in black watercolor on small squares of lightly tinted paper.”

Julie Alexander Works on Paper

Left Palm, 2008

Seattle artist Julie Alexander draws with graphite or watercolor for a cumulative effect. “I am interested in the repetitive line accumulating significance - the single gesture repeated into a flow of energy. Each gesture or line is the imperfect individual that accumulates to make up the group.”

Richard Nicol Rational Drawings

Rational Drawing #7, 2008

Richard Nicol’s color images show a related minimalist exploration of drawn lines in simple patterns transformed by varying the pencil color and the proximity of one line to another. Consequently, the same basic shape, in altering the color sequence the artist can dramatically transform the image, causing it to recede rather than to advance.

Mark Meyer Works on Paper

Lil Metro, 2007

For most of his life Mark Meyer has been involved with both art and science. His artwork shares with science an interest in experimentation, to explore, to imagine the question and then to find a visual solution.

David Stein Long Way From Home

The Birthday Party, 2008

“Long Way From Home” is Portland painter David Stein’s most recent journey into his imagination. These small, bizarre landscapes, inhabited by strangely clad characters, suggest narratives. The color, context, creatures and meaning are Stein’s own invention but the ambiguity of possible meanings allow for multiple interpretations.