Articles

Art Walk

Maybe you go to Art Walk for the free sips of wine and small bites. Maybe you go to forget your troubles, our country’s troubles, the world’s. Hopefully you go to appreciate the artists’ work. Definitely you go to support them.

This evening, Art Walk is crowded. Everyone is out. And the reason, I think, is because as the news of the world rages and there is fear below the surface of a lot of us, we yearn to think about other things. Better things.

I can see by the way a crowd gathers mid-way down Winslow Way that a band is playing. And there, front and center, is Anna.  

If you’ve lived in King or Kitsap County for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed Anna. Anna is wherever the music is, her presence as much a part of the festivity as the ground on which she dances. Life is for living, her limbs seem to say, fun is for having, and it’s up to you to get right in there and enjoy yourself.

Regrettably, there was a younger time in my life when I thought an adult dancing on the sidewalk, alone and with abandon, was an attention seeker, perhaps, or even a little lost. But life has shown me that not only do I have zero interest in making this kind of assessment anymore, it doesn’t take long to realize how boring it is to think like this.

I appreciate Anna even more tonight because there are things, unbearable things, about our current administration that are getting me down lately. Honestly, some days, I could just lie down and cry.    

At first I blamed my not dancing on the fact that I had a book signing to do, but in the end, I couldn’t think of one good reason not to join in. I danced in place, but I didn’t hold back.

I like to tell my dance students that dancing was the original form of expression and that it’s easier to convey joy with our whole body than even with a smile. I also tell them: This is why dancers don’t need therapists.

Next to me, a teenager is recording Anna, but I don’t like the way she is laughing at her. But I don’t say anything. It always seems like the right thing to do in the movies, to scold someone for their tactlessness, but in real life, it just antagonizes both sides and nothing changes.

Sad but true.

I had hoped that Anna’s longing to dance would connect this girl to her own, but as she posts the video, I see another someone with the wild idea that we all need to be famous on the internet, who will spend God knows how many hours of her precious life trying. It’s not her fault. She’s grown up in a time when people value your number of followers over the level of your measured compassion.

As for me, memory serves. And better at connecting our brain to our heart. So I keep Anna in mind to remember why I dance. Not why anyone else does, or even exactly why she does, but why I do. As I see it, this need to dance is bigger than any desire some of us have, or have ever had, so we walk right up front to be near the music. And we dance.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli’s latest book, An Island Called Bainbridge: People, Places, Conversations, was recently released by Chatwin Books, from which this writing is an excerpt. She also works as a speaker and a master dance teacher. For more information visit www.marylousanelli.com.

IIluminando Caminos (Lighting the Way)

ArtX Contemporary • Seattle, WA

“I want my work to stand in contrast to these dark forces. I want to visually light the way.”— Fulgencio Lazo

Fulgencio Lazo fills the gallery of ArtX Contemporary with paintings that lift our spirits. They are constructed with intricate patterns that convey various moods through shifts in color and line. But the dominant mood is a celebration of life.

Fulgencio Lazo lives in the Central District of Seattle and Oaxaca, Mexico, two very different places in terms of mood and color. Oaxaca is known for its joyful festivals and imaginary animals carved in wood and decorated with bright colors. Seattle is dominated by blue and green of the sea and the mountains, while the mood here is understated.

Lazo’s art brings together abstraction with traditions based in his native Oaxaca, his Zapotec heritage, and his own personal journey between the U.S. and Mexico. He was trained in both countries, so we see in his work an unusual synthesis of Mexican and Modernist characteristics. The colors light up the room, as we walk among these works. 

But Lazo considers the challenges that immigrants face. While responding to the political and social tensions of our time, he gives us a way forward through his art that suggests the intersections of people in community.

“River of Whistles” suggests figures moving through a blue river with a bridge in the background. The repeated rhythm of the central figures rolling inside a circular whistle, suggests unstoppable but gentle movement.

In contrast, “Lighting up Rivers of Joy” is filled with blues and yellows, oranges and reds, as figures dance and collaborate on weaving a central motif. 

If we look closely at “Embracing Threads,” we see a woven line of blue that surrounds and unifies different parts of the painting. Within this line are other images in different shades of blue with many different patterns. Interspersed in the patterns are balls and heads. There is a sad quality—are the heads entrapped, are they stuck?

“Blue Water” is more upbeat—bright yellow and red intersperse with the blue. There is a sense of movement in the swirling form. The small figures seem to spin around with the flow of the painting, which also seems to remind us of a weaving.

A sense of escape is even more emphasized in “Lighting Up Rivers of Joy.” Bright yellow, red, and orange, the colors of Oaxaca are taking over and everything is moving. “I Sing” is even more joyful. A stand-up figure seems to hold two heads at her center. She is surrounded by bright yellow and wears red. Spools of thread come from the top of the painting and unwind, creating a weaving pattern.

Finally in “Lighting the Way,” the painting that gives the theme to the exhibition, the heads are aligned at the center in a pale blue ground with a woven black pattern. On each side are candles lighting the work. The hands reach out to make skeins of wool and spools of thread. 

Other paintings refer to weaving and music, two creative forms that create community. Creating joy with painting is Lazo’s declaration that we can continue, even in the face of so many difficulties.

Fulgencio Lazo has had over 40 solo shows throughout the U.S., Mexico, Japan, and France, and has numerous pieces in public collections. This fall he is an artist-in-residence for a month at the Seattle Art Museum Studio project, where he offers printmaking workshops two days a week and creating the tapete (floor covering) for his magnificent Day of the Dead installation at the Seattle Art Museum. He helped establish Day of the Dead celebrations at the Museum over 30 years ago.

Fulgencio Lazo’s work indeed does light the way for us, not only with his art, but also his commitment to our community!

Susan Noyes Platt

Susan Noyes Platt writes for local, national, and international publications and her website www.artandpoliticsnow.com.

This solo exhibition by Fulgencio Lazo is on view through November 14 at ArtX Contemporary, located at 512 - 1st Avenue South in Seattle, Washington. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For information, visit https://artxcontemporary.com.

Are My Hands Clean?

Western Washington University • Bellingham, WA

Western Gallery at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington  presents “Are My Hands Clean?,” a solo exhibition by American artist Rajkamal Kahlon. The exhibition also offers the university and community an introduction to the curatorial vision of the new gallery director, Kelly Lindner. In the press release announcing her appointment (dated October 24, 2025), Lindner stated that “The Western Gallery can play a significant role in broadening perspectives and giving us new ways to  view the world.” Kahlon’s exhibit directly aligns with Lindner’s goals for the gallery and its potential to educate the student population and regional community. 

“Are My Hands Clean?” brings together an impressive combination of two-dimensional work and installations, including one large-scale wall painting. Kahlon has worked to correct Western narratives for decades, specifically visual depictions of women and the impact of the Cold War as the United States and its allies stifled communist movements in what was then called “Third World” countries. 

One piece in particular is central to the thesis of the exhibition: “You Can’t Kill Us, We’re Already Dead.” In the mixed-media work, a female figure reclines across the entire canvas. The figure is dressed in a red skirt suit, and gathers multiple visual references all at once: Nancy Reagan’s infamous attire, Manet’s “Olympia,” Titian’s “Venus of Urbino,” and the meticulous visual language of American might. But the art historical references are only the beginning. In fact, Kahlon pulls together threads from across the globe and throughout history to bring these histories of oppression and objectification to the present day.

Understanding Kahlon’s source materials is an important part of understanding her process and goals. The physical underlayer and conceptual beginnings of many of the works in the exhibit, including “You Can’t Kill Us, We’re Already Dead,” comes from texts and images in historical ethnographical and anthropological books like Die Völker der Erde, published by Kurt Lampert in 1902. The book was part of a larger movement to document people across the world through an objectifying lens. Die Völker der Erde was published in the same period that Edward Curtis traveled around the United States to photograph Native Americans, and seven years before the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, Washington where people from cultures outside the United States were exhibited to the public. These books contained instructions for documenting the physical characteristics of people through photography, with the people often posed and naked or with minimal clothing. Women, in particular, are deprived of agency and presented for the male gaze. Kahlon works to disrupt and correct this lens.

Returning to “You Can’t Kill Us, We’re Already Dead,” we can notice examples of Kahlon’s interventions. The female figure lies on her side on top of what appears to be a leopard fur, another art historical reference. In one hand she holds a green grenade and, in the other, the pin. The figure’s eyes are closed and her head tilts upwards. White stars fill the upper left of the artwork against a blue background. Together the white stars, blue background, red suit on the figure, and white blouse reference the American flag. These interventions are characteristic of Kahlon’s process for this body of work. She reproduces pages from Die Völker der Erde and enlarges specific figures or photographs from the book. Kahlon then paints the outline of her subject, but also gives them clothing, tools, and agency by expanding on that initial outline.

“You Can’t Kill Us, We’re Already Dead” provides a wonderful example of the overall exhibition, but there are two installations worth pointing out here. 

“Die Völker der Erde (People of the Earth)” is an installation that includes pages from the book with Kahlon’s drawings and paintings on the pages. It fills the entire wall, and forces the viewer to confront these images head on. Directly across the gallery from “Die Völker der Erde (People of the Earth)” is “Untitled,” a large-scale wall mural of two figures from the book. Kahlon projected the image and painted the figures directly on the wall to make them larger than life, honoring their lives and presence over one hundred years later. 

Chloé Dye Sherpe

Chloé Dye Sherpe is an art professional and curator based in Washington State.

“Are Your Hands Clean?” is on view through January 23 at the Western Gallery at Western Washington University located at 516 High Street in Bellingham, Washington. Hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. For  information, visit https://westerngallery.wwu.edu.

Decades in the Making: Ten Years of SOLA Awardees

Tacoma Art Museum • Tacoma, WA

Decades in the Making: Ten Years of SOLA Awardees, reveals many layers like a slow burn. The collected works of artists recognized for tenacity and skill demonstrate both individuality and a subtle unity in this show.

SOLA (Support of Old Lady Artists) was founded in 2016 by two artists, Ginny Ruffner and Marge Levy. To say they had foresight misses a big part of the point. In much the same way that the Guerrilla Girls used radical data to illustrate the inequity of museum representation of women and people of color in 1984, SOLA’s numbers also tell a story. 

Thirty-two awardees from the past ten years are represented in this exhibition, along with the two founders, Ginny Ruffner and Marge Levy. The annual award goes to ten women artists, one of whom is Black, Indigenous, or a person of color. They must be over 60 years old and have committed to the practice of making their work for over 25 years. The cash award is $5,000, and its total worth is estimated at over $12,000. As of 2026, 41 artists from around Washington state have received support. Ten years since it started, the grant has invested over $200,000.

Even with such powerful quantitative evidence, the impact of this award reaches far beyond numbers. SOLA recognition points to values like reciprocity, care, and time that illustrate a kind of alternative, philosophicaleconomy. What is the sum of breaking ground and persevering multiplied by creativity? What is the net value of not giving up? Looking for answers begins in seeing the work.

Enter the gallery and the range is immediately clear. To the left, Tip Toland’s  hyperrealistic ceramic figures—first, the animated bobbing head and shoulders of an aging swimmer, and soon after, a lithe reclining figure on a cot with a harmonica held to her mouth—startle with their human scale and eerily muted color palette. The uniformly matte surface of “Love Song for Ukraine” (2022) doesn’t differentiate between skin and fabric. And yet the details of a single wrinkle in the shorts hitched at the protruding hip, the hollow, pink-rimmed eyes and the dirty feet of the camo-clad girl speak volumes. Such moments of focus plumb deep into the emotional realm.

On the right, MalPina Chan’s “Gui Shi Ghost Book” (2015) pulls the viewer inward by way of a translucent artist book. This isn’t a book with bound paper pages, but an intimate handheld object rendered through layers of printed, fused glass. Chan, who passed away earlier this year, involves her signature imagery in this piece: historic family portraits, diagrammatic patterns, waves, and spirals. The cumulative effect suggests whispers, or breath made visible, a translation of lived experience into to a dreamy narrative that is also materially rigid and weighty.

Evidence of humanity surfaces in many of the pieces in the show. As a wall label incants, “Cedar bark, color-filled clay, reflection, and moving image carry traces of time and touch. Forms built to unfold with a sense of continuous emergence; others explore reflection, fragmentation, and the shifting nature of memory itself.”

Norie Sato’s “Untitled” (1988) and “DIS/CONNECT” (2021) reverberate across the years, tugging between facets and fragments. The former, an ethereal diptych hung like a book, fanned out and adjacent along two walls, uses layers of powdered pigment edged with alternating jagged and straight lines to create an atmosphere. The latter combines light, video, sound, and the fractured face of the viewer in mirrors to make a whole.

In “Shawl” (2020) Gail Grinnell translated a blue tarp from an overlooked exterior, industrial world into a softened, protective  space. The actions of tending to the material by washing, fraying, draping, and drawing on it connect the viewer to unseen domestic work and to the invisible hand of the artist. Grinnell leaves the tarp intact for the viewer to see, but the poignance of her care is equally clear.

Imagination makes a path toward something that doesn’t yet exist. Ruffner and Levy imagined an award into existence that carried fiscal support as a counterbalance to hurdles faced by aging women artists. “Together, these artists create spaces that feel at once grounded in material presence and open to states of contemplation, movement, and change,” the show text concurs. These women and their ideas are bold and strong because they are artists with complex lives worth sharing and celebrating. In honoring women in the present, they also shine a light on past generations of marginalized artists who have lived thoroughly into their crafts in spite of inequities of gender and race.

Kristin Tollefson

Kristin L. Tollefson is an artist and educator based in Tacoma, Washington.

“Decades in the Making: Ten Years of SOLA Awardees,” is on view Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (free admission 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays), Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Tacoma Art Museum, located at 1701 Pacific Avenue in Tacoma, Washington. For information, visit www.tacomaartmuseum.org.

Woodmen: John Buck and Ed Wicklander

Greg Kucera Gallery • Seattle, WA

I grew up cherishing my great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch, but mainly for the fob, which had a crest for the MWA, the Modern Woodsmen Association. I just knew that my great-grandad was a feisty lumberjack in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, chopping trees and living large. It was only recently that I found out the MWA was a financial fraternal organization. The myth was shattered, but part of my personal history was developed around this myth. So, which myth matters? 

With this in mind, I relish the dual exhibitions that highlight two veteran storytellers at Greg Kucera Gallery. John Buck, born 1946, living in Montana and Hawaii, and Edward Wicklander, born 1952, living here in Seattle, are showing new work that reflects upon their earlier studies but continues to push forward. Both artists are consummate materials people—wood, glass, metals—and both are known for their eclectic sensibilities of subject matter and esoteric references. 

John Buck is showing thirteen ink-on-wood panel drawings. We best know Buck for his complex wood carvings and large-scale woodblock prints. Within this previous work, myriad references to societal woes and celebrations have been told to us in an almost rebus-like form. Objects take the place of words to make a mysterious novella. Many of the sculptures, carved primarily from jelutong, a light, soft wood, were based upon a figure, almost caryatid in form, with representational and abstract elements formally composed on and/or around it. They are unique in their vocabulary. His prints, also made on jelutong panels, usually have a central character (eagle, glass jar with a potato, abstract figure, etc.) surrounded by almost stream-of-consciousness line drawings that contrast and enhance the central character. The prints, made with master printer Bud Shark at Shark’s Inc., have intense color, in contrast to the usually bare wood sculptures. The prints and the sculptures can share imagery, sometimes quite directly (such as the aforementioned glass potato in a jar) and sometimes more tangentially and thematically. 

With this as a backstory, the new drawings are fresh, spare short stories. The complex lin work reflects Buck’s deep interest in self-taught artists, here notably Martin Ramirez, but also his former teacher William Wiley and perhaps a bit of R. Crumb. The strange landscapes, notably “Cape Disappointment, Washington State” (2024), make me think of Caspar David Friedrich and his sublime vistas, but the unmade graphic novel version. There is warmth to the drawings, the black ballpoint ink absorbing into the soft jelutong surface. Buck talks about how these images came from old engravings he found in books on the American West in his collection. They do have a period feel to them. They can be straightforward, such as “Gould & Curry Mine” (2025), depicting a Vanessa Helder-like mining camp, or they can be very odd, like “Polar Bear from the Cascades” (2025), fur doused and mangy, looking like it spent a night in the mosh pit. And then there is “Up the Missouri” (2024), with a band of hoodoo ghouls alongside the river. (Keep this in mind as we look at Wicklander’s work.)

The companion show is new works by Seattle artist Edward (“Call me Ed.”) Wicklander, his twelfth show with the gallery. Wicklander has an incredibly deep knowledge of self-taught artists in the U.S., and his works express that abiding appreciation. He went to school in Ellensburg when noted jeweler and bricoleur Ken Cory was there, and then decamped to Chicago for a period of study. The heady mix of West Coast Funk and Hairy Who is resplendent in Wicklander’s idiosyncratic use of media and image. 

I have been looking at his works for many years, and I really never know what to expect in terms of subject matter. 

Okay, I take that back. There will always be cats. in various states of anxiety, including “Pissed Kitten” (2026). I recognize my own coolness towards cats, but I am sure that these delightful pieces will find good homes. It may be the current season or the evening news that has me more intrigued with the three oval vignetted wall pieces. “Night Passenger” (2026), is Tim Burton adjacent but in a good way. The central character of the grimacing, garroted ghost is like an opening line to a horror story, or a memory of Buck’s hoodoo figures. The two “Affordable Housing” pieces should be placed in the Mayor’s office as they are less-than-subtle reminders of the woes of the big city.

Going back to the idea of myth-making, these artists create their own worlds and populate them with some real odd bodkins. The scenes they set and the characters they introduce us to make us more secure in our own strange normalcies. Their visions are perhaps a bit dark, perhaps a bit off-kilter, and perhaps they laugh a little too loud. But these days, aren’t we all feeling that too?  

Milton Freewater

Milton Freewater is an arts writer living in Seattle, Washington.

“John Buck: New Works” and “Ed Wicklander: My Labor” are on view Tuesday through Saturday, from 10:30 a.m.  to 5:30 p.m. until December 22 at Greg Kucera Gallery, located at 212 - 3rd Avenue South in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.gregkucera.com for information.

That’s When I know I Am Home

When I was younger, I don’t think I could have imagined myself saying, “I don’t want to travel again for a very long time.” The story I told myself then was that I wanted to travel forever.

And I have been traveling, one city after another, to teach master classes, though a few years back I decided to return to calling them dance workshops. Something about the word master has always embarrassed me.

But no matter what our class is called, as soon as the music begins, a certain feeling comes over me: that I was always meant to do this. Add this to getting to visit towns and cities I might not get to see otherwise and it says everything about what I enjoy most about my work.

But even when I’m enjoying myself, there’s a lot of comparing that goes on. I don’t mean I compare my class to anyone else’s. I’m talking about comparisons of a different nature.

In fact, comparing is pretty much all I do for the first day or so, especially when I take a walk through a new neighborhood and compare someone else’s life to the one I left behind with its doors and windows locked. I look around and I am charmed as much by the farm houses outside of Wenatchee as I am by the beach bungalows in Papeete.

And this is good. It’s all part of the traveling cycle, the complex set of questions that crop up in unknown terrain. Our inner appraisal of choices made and ones still yet to make. I can even drive myself a little crazy with all the comparing that goes on as I imagine myself living one life after another after another.

Not to worry. As the days pass, I realize there are amazing houses and terrible restaurants wherever you go.

And it all happens so fast (in hindsight) and then the tedious airport again, the tedious ferry wait again, before I pull my suitcase up the walkway that leads to my building where, now wait just a minute, doesn’t my home look fantastic?

I unlock my door, step in, and the life, the one I’ve worked so hard for, rights itself. I warm to my things. We grow cozy together. Their familiarity connects me. To me. And that’s when I know I am home. That’s when I know.

At some point, the refrigerator door will close behind me, and there it is, the sound I know so well, the sound only my refrigerator makes. I open the door and let it close again, wahoosh, just to hear it again. And I doubt, I seriously doubt, that I can pull off traveling again next month.

I wrote this back in July.

By mid-August, my travel bag was packed. I admit I was a little restless: restless to teach, restless to return to that part of myself. So. Off I went.

Only to Whidbey Island. Not far, but new to me. And the students were great, the students are always great. I treasure every class in hopes of inspiring them to find a way to dance forever. “Just look at me,” I say. I try to confirm how dance is a huge part of who we are by choosing both my words and choreography carefully. I told students in Oak Harbor how the night before I dreamt—it wasn’t a dream really, more of a must-say nudging my half-sleep—how it’s always been them I was meant to nurture. That’s why I love to teach them, and why I love to dance with them. In Langley, I shared how eager they are, how alive, is dance’s greatest gift to me. Even if that sounds too schmaltzy or whatever.  

Even so, it isn’t travel I need now, but my own bed, and I don’t want to travel again (I swear) for a very long time.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli’s latest title, An Island Called Bainbridge: People, Places, 

Conversations is to be released in the fall of 2026. Save the Date: She is celebrating this new title with a launch party at Eagle Harbor Book Company on October 8, 6:30 p.m.; at Elliott Bay Book Company on October 13, 7 p.m.; Third Place Books/Ravenna on October 29, 7 p.m.; and signing copies at Magnolia’s Bookstore on October 3, 11 am to 2 pm.  For more information visit www.marylousanelli.com.

Convergence & Divergence: The Family Aesthetic

San Juan Islands Museum of Art • Friday Harbor, Washington

Families are a funny thing. You assume that you share a common vision because that makes life easier and more productive. And, in retrospect, you can always knit together a thread. Curator Meg Partridge, daughter and granddaughter of three well-established artists, found a thin through-line to the works of her grandmother, Imogen Cunningham, her grandfather, Roi Partridge, and her father, Rondal Partridge. For better or worse, this line does hold, and makes for a very engaging, compact exhibition.

By far, the best known and most respected of the three artists is Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976). Briefly, she was born in Portland, Oregon, and raised in Seattle, where her father made her a darkroom in a woodshed. She attended the University of Washington, where she studied Chemistry, as Photography was not yet a thing there. She worked at a Seattle-based studio for Edward Curtis, learning more about the business and art of photography. By 1910, she had established her own photo studio in Seattle and exhibited nationally. In 1915, she married Roy (“Call me Roi”) Partridge (1888–1984), who had been studying printmaking, etching in particular, in Europe. Upon his return to the Northwest, his plein air fine-line renderings of the mountains and flora of the Cascades drew national interest. During one outing, Imogen made a photograph of Roi bathing in the mountain waters. “The Bather” was published in the Christmas issue of The Town Crier and further established her renown and daring. By 1917, the couple moved to the Bay Area, where the family grew to five with twins, Rondal and Padraic, joining older brother Gryffyd. Roi began teaching at Mills College in 1920. Imogen was at home with three young children and began her study of botanicals in her backyard garden, famously noting, “I had three children in two years, and what could I do?”

became part of the daily routine and exploration for Imogen—not only as models (foreshadowing the work of Sally Mann), but as studio mates. Rondal (1917–2015) appears to have been most interested, learning by his mother’s side. By the time he was a teenager, he was technically adept and soon worked for family friends, photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. Rondal absorbed their commitment to environmental concerns and our shared humanity.

And then, off they went. By 1934, Imogen and Roi were divorced. He taught for over twenty-five years at Mills, and she continued her upward spiral in the photography world. Imogen made her photos with large (and sometimes very large) format cameras, many times hauling around a heavy wooden camera on a tripod and viewing the subject from under the stereotypical black cloth. How she achieved the nuanced, introspective portraits of noted art luminaries such as Frida Kahlo, Ansel Adams, and Martha Graham is nothing short of miraculous.*

Rondal was a freelance photographer for West Coast architects but found his own voice through more observational works.

All this brings me back to the exhibition. The show condenses many pictures into a small space. It is overhung, with more breathing space needed. However, it also reads like a family album, stacked high with a photo of grandfather, next to pictures of the kids, next to friends, next to “trips we took.” It is hard to appreciate the subtleties of Roi’s finely textured prints and the quietness of Imogen’s flowers with this much on the wall. However, again, the compactness played to the show’s advantage with the well-demarcated groupings, such as “Shared Vision,” where the three artists are compared and contrasted through botanicals or landscapes.

Imogen’s work is crisply shown through new estate prints, with a good selection of her more famous and lesser-known images. The portraits of Frida Kahlo and Martha Graham and the closely cropped botanicals should be appreciated by all. A new image for me is the witty 1953 picture, “Nuns at a Calder Show.” The delicate modulation of line in Roi’s early work is seen here, especially in the almost drypoint-looking “Willow Pond 1”and “Willow Pond 2.” I am less familiar with Rondal’s work but found him to be a very astute observer of his teachers and parents. I saw Lange’s influence in portraiture, in Adams in landscape views, but also a bit of Diane Arbus in “Pave it and Paint it Green, Yosemite” and Duane Michals in “Airplane Bathroom.”

This is the first time that these three artists have been shown together and is the largest exhibition of Cunningham’s photography since her retrospective organized by the Getty Museum in 2022. I truly appreciate the thoughtful text and insights brought by granddaughter Meg, a local from Lopez Island. In an exhibition section called “Tools & Techniques,” there is a pasteboard film box with a handwritten note from Imogen, “Retouch to make her look like a Movie Star.” With what could have been a cluttered mess, Meg has made it shine.

*For a sense of scale of the diminutive Imogen, search for the photo “Imogen and Twinka at Yosemite,” by Judy Dater, when Imogen was 90. Twinka is the daughter of the late great painter Wayne Thiebaud, but I digress.

Milton Freewater

Milton Freewater is an arts writer living in Seattle, Washington.

San Juan Islands Museum of Art, located at 540 Spring Street in Friday Harbor, Washington, is open Friday to Monday from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, visit www.sjima.org.

The Art of Seeing

Cascadia Art Museum • Edmonds, WA

From September 23, 2026 through January 10, 2027, visitors to Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Washington have the opportunity to learn about the life and work of Zoë Dusanne (1884–1972), a Seattle gallerist and prominent art collector in the mid-twentieth century. The exhibition features work by artists represented by Dusanne, as well as a few artworks documented as being shown in her gallery through photographic evidence and personal narratives, in addition to ephemera and artifacts from her life, such as a marionette created during her time working at the Federal Theatre W.P.A. Marionette Theatre Workshop. The exhibition is built through the extensive family and artist relationships of the museum’s curator, David Martin. Under his care, the works of well-known artists such as Paul Horiuchi and Kenjiro Nomura, as well as artists that may not be known to museum visitors, like Carl Holty and Louise Lewis Gilbert, are on display in the museum to demonstrate Dusanne’s gallery program. The result is a thorough visual documentation of a gallerist who had a profound impact on the lives and careers of twentieth-century artists in Seattle; her legacy is not as well understood as it should be. 

The exhibition, “The Art of Seeing,” opens in conjunction with a significant publication about Dusanne by writers and researchers Beth Ann Whittaker and Richelle Munkhoff, the founders of Plain Sight Archive. The book fills a crucial missing piece in understanding the life and legacy of Dusanne, and therefore supports the mission of Plain Sight Archive, which is “to build an innovative relational archive that illuminates and connects traditionally obscured figures and creative communities. Our vision includes foregrounding narratives that highlight expansive representation in the arts, now and for the future.” The coordination of both an exhibition and book release this September is truly a significant moment in the art historical discourse in the Northwest. While the contemporary art market continues to fluctuate and the Seattle art scene grows and evolves, it is important to acknowledge the legacy of female gallerists who were central to the artistic community in the city and broader region.

Both the book and exhibition provide key details of Dusanne’s biography, which is woven into the history of the city of Seattle during a period of post-War upheaval and transformation. Dusanne lived in various locations around the Unites States in her early years, but she finally returned to Seattle in 1942 after nearly 15 years in New York; she opened her art gallery in her home eight years later in 1950. This is where the gallery remained until her home was destroyed to make way for Interstate 5, along with many other homes and businesses largely owned by communities of color and immigrants. On a related note, you can learn more about this moment in Seattle history through an exhibition developed by students at the University of Washington College of Build Environments titled “CITY ERASED: Mapping Seattle’s Highway Cut.” The exhibition was on display in May 2026, but more information can be found online.

Dusanne focused on modern artistic movements, and brought prominent artists in the New York artistic community together with Seattle-based artists. Unsurprisingly, abstract art played an important role in Dusanne’s gallery program. “Quiet Motion and Blue,” an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1961 by John Matsudaira looms large in the galleries at 60 x 80 inches. The contrasting colors of yellow and blue dominate the canvas as Matsudaira creates both tension and motion with black lines and swaths of brilliant color, with a particular focus on the center of the painting where the vibrant blue creates a landing place for the eye. The movement of the paint on the canvas is incredible to see in person, and visitors may remember the painting from Matsudaira’s solo exhibition at Cascadia Art Museum in 2016 titled “Against the Moon: The Art of John Matsudaira.” 

While Matsudaira brings your attention to the center of the canvas, fellow abstract painter Al Everett draws the eye all over the picture plane with sweeping brushstrokes of red, blue, white, and green paint. Appropriately titled “Passion,” this collage and oil-on-canvas piece is also be hard to avoid at 48 x 48 inches. Together, the groupings of abstract paintings illustrate the emotion, philosophy, and interest of Dusanne and her circle of artists and clients. 

It feels appropriate to end a feature about this incredible woman with words from David Martin, the exhibition curator who also operated a gallery in Seattle. Martin details his connection to and admiration for Dusanne in a statement for the exhibition, and in that statement he recalls the opportunity “to meet some of the artists that she represented such as George Tsutakawa, Paul Horiuchi, and especially John Matsudaira who often regaled me with stories of the Dusanne gallery and her exuberant personality. I loved the fact that she would dye her hair lavender or other colors to go with her couture outfits and had dogs and even a pet tortoise that had free reign in her gallery.”

Chloé Dye Sherpe

Chloé Dye Sherpe is an art professional and curator based in Washington State.

“The Art of Seeing” is on view September 23 to January 10, 2027, Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Cascadia Art Museum, located at 190 Sunset Avenue South in Edmonds, Washington. For more information, visit www.cascadiaartmuseum.org.

Hib Sabin’s Final Exhibition

Stonington Gallery • Seattle, Washington

The show running September 3-26th at the Stonington Gallery has an unusually blunt title: “Hib Sabin’s Final Exhibition.” It’s a statement so simple and direct you wonder if you missed something. Sabin’s Final exhibition? Really? Say it ain’t so! 

Sabin’s relationship with the Stonington Gallery has lasted nearly a quarter of a century, in which time he’s had fifteen solo shows. That’s a remarkable rate of production for any artist, and that rate has not fallen off with age. In fact, Sabin’s previous solo show at Stonington was just last year. Its title, “Raven and the Cast of Characters Bid You A Fond Farewell,” foreshadowed the finality of this September’s show. To echo one of Sabin’s favorite poets, Dylan Thomas, the sculptor appears to be going gently into that good night, contemplating the life cycle with curiosity and acceptance. Or at least that’s the impression one gets from the artwork itself.

Now 91, Sabin’s longevity is in the model of Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keeffe, two artists who remained artistically active into their 90s. They did that not by constant reinvention but by continually refining approaches they’d established decades earlier. Sabin, Martin, and O’Keeffe also have something else in common: each artist uprooted to Northern New Mexico in mid-life, and took their creativity in entirely new directions. It was in Santa Fe that Sabin took up whittling and then carving; his medium of choice was the native juniper that thrives in the high-desert landscape. It’s as if the land itself spoke through these artists. 

Sabin’s work resonates so well at the Stonington in part due to Sabin’s deep interest in world mythologies and shamanism. In particular he responds to the mythic figures present in Indigenous Northwest Coast artwork, and in oral traditions, Raven being the prime example. The influence of some Inuit artists is visible in his work, too, with its economy of form, strong silhouettes, and minimal detail.

Sabin has in the past immersed himself in diverse Indigenous communities around the globe, studying (and practicing) shamanistic procedures with the Hadza people of Tanzania, with Indigenous Australian peoples, and with curanderos in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Having spent years as an art historian in academic settings, Sabin has an experiential and intellectual grasp of how archetypal figures arise in widely different periods and places. In Ancient Greece, Raven is allied to the god Apollo, and in Norse mythology to the god Odin, who is usually depicted with two ravens. Sabin himself sometimes pairs ravens together in his work: in “Raven Spirit Rising,” he painted one raven black and the other white; in “The Offering” he depicts one raven alive and one dead. In “White Raven Dreams of His Brother” one raven is carved inside the other (whether that counts as two ravens or one is a nice ambiguity).

Owls too make frequent appearances in Sabin’s world. One of the stronger pieces in the new show, “Dreamers,” is unusual in that it pairs a raven with an owl in opposite ends of a boat, each turned away from the other. More often the owl stands in solitude. It seems relevant that several Northwest coastal nations consider the owl to be a conveyor of ancestral messages. In “Still of the Night,” Sabin presents an owl craning its neck and tilting its head ever so slightly, as if to get better reception for an in-coming message. Whether the message is from an ancestor or from some predator or potential mate is uncertain.

Other winged creatures, both birds and bats, become the focus on rarer occasion. There’s the raptor-as-vessel in “Small Vessel for Fleeting Thoughts and Hawk Vision.” In “Coming Home,” a bald eagle enfolds an older gentleman in its dark wings, as to say an abiding spirit attends the bodily self, and perhaps survives it.

One last visual motif to highlight is the row boat present throughout Sabin’s work. When figures occupy the boat, the suggestion is that they are passengers on a voyage. As such they are neither here nor there but rather betwixt and between realms. But in pieces such as “Small Vessel for Old Memories and Raven Dreams II,” the animal merges into or even becomes the vessel itself. Here again the imagery has a mythic, timeless quality. For as long as humans have constructed boats, they have carved animal forms into the bow, as if to wish for the animal’s guidance and hunting prowess. Nautical odysseys promise profound spiritual transformation—it has always been so, from the incredibly ancient Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories right up through Christopher Nolan’s latest film. 

Each figure Sabin carves is imbued with individuality, and to take them as mere stand-ins for an archetype or other abstraction is to miss an important personal quality. This artist may depict spirit animals but it’s always the human condition he’s exploring. Many collectors see their own condition reflected in Sabin’s carvings. And we trust that this sort of seeing and connecting will continue to occur, even if this really is, in the end, Sabin’s final exhibition.

Tom McDonald

Tom McDonald is a writer and musician living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Stonington Gallery, located at 125 South Jackson Street in Seattle, Washington, is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. “Hib Sabin’s Final Exhibtion” is on view through September 26. For more information, please visit www.stoningtongallery.com