Contemporary glass artist Etsuko Ichikawa will exhibit her work at the Bellevue Arts Museum October 4, 2008 - March 8, 2009.

Etsuko Ichikawa. Traces of the Molten State [work in progress], 2008. Glass pyrograph and digital projection on paper. Dimensions variable.

While some artists turn to oil, watercolor or bits of smoky black charcoal for their creations, Etsuko Ichikawa opts for something more ephemeral: fire. The Seattle-based artist is known for her “glass pyrographs,” ethereal drawings made by literally painting with the fire and smoke emitted from hot molten glass. Her pyrographs are just one way in which Ichikawa captures fleeting moments – both in the physical and emotional world. Working with smoke, flame, molten glass, light, space and video imagery, Ichikawa has created two site-specific installations for her first museum solo exhibition.

• Free First Friday Lecture Series: Etsuko Ichikawa Friday, October 3, 6:30 - 7:30 pm

John Grade. Meridian, 2008. Cast polyurethane rubber, rigid submersible foam, cables and filament. 12 x 16 x 16 feet.

Davidson Galleries artist John Grade’s exhibition, Disintegration: Sculpture Through Landscape, continues through November 30th.

Allan Packer. Corvus Corax, 2006. Plastic. Dimensions variable (approx. 4 x 12 x 12 feet).

Never let the facts get in the way of the truth, a new exhibition featuring work by Davidson Contemporary artist Allan Packer, opens at The Western Front Thursday, September 4th with a reception at 7pm.

This exhibition brings together works by Nadia Myre, Allan Packer, Tania Willard and Suvinai Ashoona which look at the intersections between landscape, memory, and the built environment. In Suvinai Ashoona’s intricate drawings, the Arctic landscape is rendered fictive. At a stasis between construction and deconstruction, Allan Packer’s sculpture consists of nearly life size partially constructed igloo cast from clear plastic. A further mediation on history and temporality, in an animation by Nadia Myre a line drawing of a single canoe is continually erased and redrawn. Akin to Robert Raushenberg’s 1953 Erased De Kooning Drawing, Myre’s gesture, rather than an attempt to eradicate the past, re-imagines it. Willard’s series of silkscreen prints appropriate mappings of North America from the 1500s, a time when much of the land was unknown to non-Native explorers. In Willard’s work this “terra incognita” is rendered increasingly abstract, mimicking the hypothetical nature of the maps themselves.

The exhibit, curated by Candice Hopkins, runs through October 11th.

Davidson Galleries owner Sam Davidson was interviewed by Jen Graves for the Stranger’s In/Visible: Weekly Conversation with People in Art, a downloadable audio podcast.

Sam Davidson has run a gallery in Seattle for 35 years: He knows where all the bodies are buried. But he also deals in quiet art, often prints, generally the sort that doesn’t send a lot of journalists around to bother him. He’s an undertapped resource.

• Read more at the podcast’s page

• Jump straight to the podcast

Davidson Contemporary artist Samantha Scherer will be part of an all-star line-up of Seattle artists presenting work at GIMME: From Inspiration to Appropriation at Cornish College of the Arts.

The group show, curated by Suzanne Beal, explores how contemporary artists borrow objects, icons, images and sound from their surroundings, which reflect the culture in which they live, and reinterpret them in the works they produce.

Picasso has often been quoted as stating: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” The territory of appropriation is, at best, roughly defined. The current exhibit is not born of the suspicion that there is nothing new under the sun. On the contrary, in the right hands everything old is new again.

Featured artists include Brad Adkins, Gretchen Bennett, Leo Saul Berk, Sean Duffy, Victoria Haven, Tivon Rice, Samantha Scherer, Robert Yoder, Dan Webb.

The exhibition kicks off with an opening reception on Wednesday, September 3, from 5-8pm, and continues through October 17, 2008.

• Visit the event page for more information

SAM Gallery presents Innovation and Imagination: Work from the Kala Art Institute, including work by three Davidson Galleries artists: Amanda Knowles, Barbara Robertson & Jenny Robinson.

Exhibition invite, featuring detail of “Black Point” by Robertson

The pool of artists for this juried exhibit included artists-in-residence, fellowship artists and exhibiting artists from Kala, an innovative art center in Berkeley, California. Juror Barbara Shaiman, director of SAM Gallery, chose artists whose work shows the breadth of artwork produced at Kala—painting, printmaking, mixed media, digital media and installation.

The show features work by Inga Dorosz, Jackson Fahnestock, Sara Filley, Eunjung Hwang, Theodora Varnay Jones, Jeff Kao, Scott Kildall, Amanda Knowles, Lisa Levine, Laurie Polster, Endi Poskovic, Barbara Robertson, Jenny Robinson, James Sansing, Kazuko Watanabe and Mark Zaffron.

The exhibition opens September 11th, with a reception from 5-7pm, and continues through October 11, 2008.

September 5-27, 2008
Opening Reception with the Artists:  “First Thursday”, September 4, 6-8 pm

Davidson Contemporary will feature the new medium and large paintings of Seattle artist Mary Iverson and the new oil on paper works of Portland artist Sally Cleveland.

Mary Iverson Amass

Cluster, 2008. Oil and ink on canvas. 36 x 40 inches.

Although Iverson continues her study of container ports, a number of things have changed.  “New to my work this year is a more structured underpainting.  Formerly, the base layer of paint on my canvases was either white gesso or a gestural application of burnt umber.  Segments of these layers were revealed between the careful application of colorful shapes and planes.  Recently I began recycling old canvases through a process of adding paint and sanding down the layers.  The revealed texture resembles the weathered surface of shipping containers, and the ghosted shapes suggested aerial perspectives of a container port.  The sanded backgrounds have also influenced my color choices, inspiring a more saturated palette.”

Sally Cleveland Standing Still

Smoke Across the Field I, 2008. Oil on paper. 5 x 17-1/2 inches.

Sally Cleveland presents a group of smaller oils that focus on the urban landscape.  Apart from a small group of landscapes, most are city scenes of car repair shops, laundromats, parking lots, etc.  Cleveland continues to make effective use of the drawn line enriched with strokes of color.  Even working loosely she can convincingly render reflections and material surfaces,  striking a nice balance between careful observation and the looser color work.

This will be the final show at Davidson Contemporary in the Tashiro/Kaplan complex.

Contemporary Print & Drawing Center • 206 624.6700

September 5-27, 2008
Opening reception with the artists:
“First Thursday”, September 4, 6-8 P.M.

Sean Caulfield & Akiko Taniguchi

Return to the Surface

Caulfield Stream of Lethe, 2007

Taniguchi Cage 2, 2007

Sean Caulfield (b. 1967, Canadian) and Akiko Taniguchi (b. 1967, Japanese/Canadian) have each produced a body of related prints that look to classical mythology as motivation in order to explore themes of transformation, transience and regeneration. Investigating a common visual language the artists have developed compositions that utilize biomorphic and organic shapes that reference the natural world. Their images often move between abstraction and representation creating a shifting quality in which narratives and associations to the real world are implied, but are left in an open-ended and unresolved state.

Although Caulfield and Taniguchi have worked together closely, each artist has approached their work from a slightly different perspective. For example, Taniguchi’s work is more influenced by the natural world and her images, rendered in a bold, graphic language, have strong references to plants, and environmental phenomena such as wind, rain and water. In her most recent suite of prints she has utilized a cage form in order to explore humanities ongoing (and futile) effort to contain, control, and dominate the ever-changing forces of nature.

In contrast to this, Caulfield has developed a suite of prints that, in addition to classical mythology and literature, have drawn on the history of scientific and medical illustration for motivation. From this research Caulfield has created imagined landscapes populated by enigmatic objects that refer to both mechanistic and naturalistic forms in order to explore themes of mutation, metamorphosis and biology/technology dichotomies. Although the work looks to the past for inspiration, its merging of mechanistic and organic languages is intended to point viewers towards a contemporary context in which advancements in technology are rapidly changing our relationship to the natural world, biology, and our own bodies.

Despite subtle differences in approach and motivation, Caulfield and Taniguchi have created for their second exhibition at Davidson Galleries work that expresses their shared interest in exploring humanities changing relationship to the natural world.  Through poetic visual expression they have attempted to create prints that enable viewers “to see that the world is not simply a source of raw materials for our projects”, and to appreciate ourselves as “part of a larger order that can make claims on us.” Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Concord: House of Anansi Press Limited), 1991, 89.

Contact Cara at 206 624.1324 for more information.

Antique Print Department • 206 624.6700

Continuing through September 27, 2008

SMS: A Collection of Original Multiples

40th Anniversary Exhibition

SMS Portfolio #3, 1968

Released in 1968, the SMS portfolio represented a collaboration between some of the most important artists and composers of the 20th century.  Centered around  a loft on Manhattan’s Upper West Side rented and maintained by the American Surrealist William Copley, SMS (a coy abbreviation for “Shit Must Stop”) was an open-ended collective that epitomized the community ethos of the 1960s. Thoroughly utopian in intent, the six volumes of the SMS portfolio included meticulously editioned works by a roster of artists both world-famous and obscure, each of whom received $100 for their contribution regardless of reputation. Among the many artists represented are Marcel Duchamp, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Christo, John Cage, and Yoko Ono.  Davidson Galleries is proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary of SMS by exhibiting a complete set of all six portfolios.

left: Meret Oppenheim The Mirror of Genoveva

right: John Cage Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) continued 1968

Contact Emily at 206 624.6700 for more information.

Jen Graves reviews Davidson Galleries’ current exhibiton of the SMS Portfolio this week in the Visual Arts section of the Stranger. In addition, the SMS show caught the attention of Seattle blogger and art enthusiast Gurldogg, who responded with a thoughtful blog post on the subject.

The Antique Print Department has recently updated four areas of our website with new inventory. Click on a category below to view the new page:

French Prints, American Prints, 15th-16th century European Prints, and 17th century European Prints.

August 8-30, 2008
Opening Reception with the Artists:  “First Thursday,” August 7, 6-8 pm

Stephanie J. Frostad Lore

The Invention of Sorrow, 2008. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

Davidson Contemporary will exhibit the new paintings of Montana artist Stephanie J. Frostad.  The show is titled “Lore” and was inspired by folklore, proverbs, legends and parables.  “Through readings in folklore (collections, not commentaries) I’ve cast a wide net, pulling in all sorts of intriguing narratives from Aesop’s Fables, the Bible, classical mythology, and fairy tales.”  Seattle artist Gary Curtis will present new figurative works in cast glass and ceramic.  In addition there will be an exhibition of paintings by Vancouver Island artist Martin Honisch.

Gary Curtis Recent Works

Child 14, 2008. Glass, mixed media. 11w x 8d x 9h inches.

Martin Honisch Recent Paintings

Georgia Strait, 2005. Oil on board. 24 x 36 inches.