 | Zaha Hadid and Cai Guo-Qiang, ice and snow structure at the snow show in Rovaniemi, Finland. Photo: Helene Binet, 2004. Courtesy of thesnowshow.net. |
Zaha Hadid selected for architecture prize; Her recent scultpural work on the rocks at Finland's snow show Today, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid was selected to receive the esteemed Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2004. Hadid, 53, is the first woman to be honored with the Pritzker in its 25-year history, which will be awarded at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, in May. Currently working in London, Hadid has an emerging career whose previous structures include modest buildings and a ski jump in Innsbruck, Austria. Her present work includes Cincinnati's Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, recently completed last year. In both the United States and Europe, some of her anticipated new works in progress include the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Rome and the Price Tower Arts Center in Oklahoma. Hadid had also been a participant at the recent snow show held in Rovaniemi, Finland, this past February. In her collaboration with Cai Guo-Qiang, a pyrotechnical artist from China, Hadid created a massive ice sculpture that looms out of the snow like a colossal-sized igloo. But, wait, where's the fire, you ask? New York Times writer Alan Riding mentions in his article, "A frozen landscape of mysterious designs" (2 Mar 2004), that Guo-Qiang set fire to parts of the sculpture in a performance entitled "Caress Zaha with Vodka." For more info and stunning photos of this annual event, check out the snow show. Congratulations! Now if only Seattle were closer to the Arctic . . . | |
 | Gregory Blackstock, Petosa Accordian. 18" x 20", ink, marker, graphite, crayon on paper. Courtesy of Garde Rail Gallery. |
Gregory Blackstock: Outsider Artist at Garde Rail Gallery One of the more delightful shows on display this month is the exhibition of Gregory Blackstock’s drawings at the Garde Rail Gallery in Columbia City through Saturday, March 27. Blackstock, an autistic, establishes a kind of vibrant cosmology based upon categories of things both natural and man-made. These seem more than anything else to be attempts at containing, accounting for, and codifying a world of sensory and informational overload — a world familiar to autistics and non-autistics alike. The thick, bulging lines and heavy gray surfaces of his objects seem almost on the verge of bursting from the force of powerful energies contained within them. The whole gallery seems about to erupt into cacophony of wasps, propellers, drums, pianos, saws, bells, and patrol car sirens. The juxtaposition of subjects such “The Garden Pest Control Beetles” or “The Ants of the Americas” alongside “The Stringed Musical Instruments,” “The Historic Intercontinental Homes,” or “The Gold Age of Historic United Air Liners” suggests a sensibility strangely akin to that of Wallace Stevens. In fact, after viewing Blackstock’s debut exhibition, I was prompted to go home and read “Anecdote of the Jar.” It tells a similar story. | |
 | Gov. Howard Dean MD at the Young Democrats of America National Convention. Photo: John Pettitt / DeanForAmerica.com. |
Howard Dean in Seattle: Democracy for America Campaign Launch On Thursday, March 18, I went to the Westin Hotel to hear Howard Dean launch his new political organization — Democracy for America — out from under the rubble of his recent failed presidential campaign. I had been a Dean supporter, going to my Democratic precinct caucus to vote for him, but I had never seen him speak live before an audience. Hearing him talk, I was struck by how unorthodox a political figure he seemed and gained some insight into how he has been able to radicalize people who I have known for years to be among the most politically apathetic. Although he has been in politics for many years, serving as a moderate Democratic governor of the small, agrarian state of Vermont, he seems less a career politician than a middle-aged man from the upper ranks of society who, having undergone some sort of mid-life crisis, found himself engaged in a full-blown effort to change the priorities of a nation. His conviction, candor, and sense of indignation struck a chord with many people who have felt that the nation has been on the wrong track for some time, but never considered the political system a means of turning it around. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, asked by Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to define the legacy of Dean in the 2004 Presidential race, likened the governor’s role to that of John the Baptist in the New Testament. He was the first prophet to speak out — a lonely voice in the wilderness — but his head ended up on a platter, his message appropriated by others. Watching Dean electrify the crowd last week, I felt some sorrow that he will not be our president. | |
 | Roger Shimomura, Abercrombie & Fitch 2003. Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 24 inches. |
Roger Shimomura: Stereotypes and Admonitions Roger Shimomura’s pulls no punches in “Stereotypes and Admonitions,” his current exhibition on display through March 27 at the Greg Kucera Gallery. This is Shimomura’s most autobiographical and angry body of work to date. Never before has the Seattle-born artist used his characteristic juxtapositions of American pop culture and traditional Japanese art historical imagery so effectively to explore a subject always present, but until recently, only suggested in his work. As I wrote two years ago in a review of “Scenes from an American Diary” at Bellevue Art Museum, Shimomura’s decision to take on racism by exploring painful personal experience has given his work a new power, significance and sense of urgency. As in “American Diary,” paintings are accompanied by extensive wall text providing details of the story. In many of these works, Shimomura conflates racist stereotypes to present racism as an historical continuum in American life. In one of these paintings, three slanty-eyed, buck-toothed and yellow skinned figures — reminiscent of the familiar WWII-era depictions of Japanese — sport long white beards and black turbans of Islamic holy men. Above them, a Kamikaze pilot flies overhead; a previous generation’s fear-inducing suicide-bomber. The best works in this show, however, are the ones drawn directly from Shimomura’s own life. There is a complete book of these paintings available at the gallery. | |
I just read the New Yorker article on the anthropologist Franz Boas. It was interesting to read about how the scientific community was, at that time, dominated by men who were willing to distort objectivity to push racist social agendas that affirmed the power of ruling elites. It cast an interesting historical light upon a tradition that has been brought back into vogue by the current administration. I could not help but be reminded of their repeated denials of the existence of climate change and their firmly held belief that homosexuality is immoral and, for all intents and purposes, contagious. And then there are those weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be in Iraq.
If you have not yet read this article, I would encourage you to do so. Boas was a most remarkable American, and his contributions could be more widely known.
If you have not yet read this article, I would encourage you to do so. Boas was a most remarkable American, and his contributions could be more widely known.
 | Midge Williams, Viaduct Dream, chalk & charcoal on paper, 50" x 36". Photo by Bill Turner. Courtesy of Gallery 110. |
Dispatch: First Thursday — 4 March 2004 On First Thursday this month, there were several new gallery openings at Pioneer Square galleries. Of note, Roger Shimomura's vibrant and powerful new works comment on many instances of racism and racial hatred towards Japanese- and Asian-Americans at Greg Kucera Gallery. In his show Stereotypes and Admonitions, Shimomura presents a cariacature critique of his own personal experiences with racism, and depicts other events and specific incidents where Asians and Asian-Americans have been subject to racial prejudice around the U.S. — as recent as this past year. The exhibition, in its survey of American social history, reveals a gallery of ignorance, racial profiling and hate, including: World War II-era attacks on Japanese-Americans, the beating death of immigrant Vincent Chin, and the unimaginable Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt designs featuring the "Wong Brothers," among others. Also, this month, two artists explore the industrial areas and by-ways of the Waterfront, the Duwamish and South Seattle. Nancy Peterfreund documents the rusting industrial landscape along the banks of the Duwamish, focusing on one woman who was evicted from her home after residing there for 46 years. Peterfreund's photographs, in her collection On the Duwamish, are on view at the Globe Gallery, 105 South Main Street #100, Seattle, WA 98104, in Pioneer Square. Midge Williams' etchings and drawings of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and railroad tracks beneath and around the structure suggest reflective nuance in the space between architecture, location, and urban transition towards the city's southern industrial edge. On view at Gallery 110, 110 S. Washington Street, Seattle, WA 98104, in Pioneer Square. | |
