Claire Cowie’s Unreliable Source is an installation of new sculpture, works-on-paper, and photographs rooted in folklore and personal mythology. Through surreal and dreamlike imagery, this exhibit addresses issues of family, community and culture, and how we make meaning and understand the world. Can we trust what we know or what we are told? Is there any veracity to memory, and what if our memory has disappeared? How can we navigate the waters of this life? Her investigation has produced a multifaceted installation, dense and rich with complex references, including family photographs, African and Native American sculpture, and folktales. Fingers beckon from the walls of the gallery. Delicate washes of ink, watercolor with elements of collage upon paper speak to an imaginative narrative. Masks question who we are supposed to be. Like any good folktale, there are moments of darkness and elements of hope in this body of work. What gives the work its seductive power is that the story is left open for the viewer to construct his or her own narrative.
Claire Cowie attended both the North Carolina School of the Arts (Winston-Salem, NC) and Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO). She received her MFA from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA). Cowie’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including shows at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA), Takeda Biennial (Oaxaca, Mexico), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Frye Art Museum (Seattle, WA), Shenzhen Art Institute (Shenzhen, China), Art Gym at Marylhurst University (Lake Oswego, OR). Her work is included in the collections of the Henry Art Gallery, Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA), Safeco (Seattle, WA), and Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), among others.
Michelle Ross Symptomatic
Jun 6 - 29, 2013
New Paintings and Photographs
With ‘Symptomatic’ Michelle Ross examines the relationship between abstract painting and digital photography, a medium used to record, disseminate, and contextualize painting. In this exhibition she conflates the reception of both by presenting photographed paintings on paper alongside paintings on panel. The project is an exploration of the values we assign to the language of materials, to original and copy, and the mutability of meaning. Using pages from W magazine as a foundation for constructing abstract images, typographic design and fashion photography are translated into idiosyncratic formalism. As with her work utilizing fabric and collage, she continues to use abstraction as a method of transforming the ubiquitous and familiar.
Ross received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR) and her MFA from Washington State University (Pullman, WA). Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including those at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), The Art Gym at Marylhurst University (Lake Oswego, OR), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), and Rome International University (Rome, Italy). In 2012, Ross was named as a Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts. Her work is held by a number of collections including the Rhode Island School of Design Special Collections (Providence, RI), the City of Portland, Willamette University (Salem, OR), Saks Fifth Avenue and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR) in both its main collection and in the Gilkey Print Center.
Barbara Sternberger Confluence
Jul 3 - 27, 2013 Reception: Wed Jul 3 6pm - 8pm
Christine Bourdette terra mobilis
Jul 3 - 27, 2013 Reception: Wed Jul 3 6pm - 8pm
Isaac Layman Funeral
Aug 1 - Sep 21, 2013 Reception: Thu Aug 1 6pm - 8pm
Photographic Constructions
Known for his large format, hyperreal images of spaces and objects within his home, Isaac Layman’s exciting new body of work includes not only photography but chosen objects. These works honor the idea of loss and hint through multiple perspectives to the possibility of the afterlife. Layman’s work has appeared in Lifelike, at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN) second nature: abstract photography then and now, at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA), and Paradise, a solo show at the Frye Art Museum (Seattle, WA). Layman’s works are included in numerous private and public collections, including the Frye Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA), the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse (Miami, FL), the Monsen Collection of Photography (Seattle, WA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL), the Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), the Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA) and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN). Among the artist’s awards and honors are the Betty Bowen Award from the Seattle Art Museum and this year’s Contemporary Northwest Art Award from the Portland Art Museum.
Dinh Q Lê Fixing the Impermanent
Sep 26 - Nov 2, 2013