Evan Blackwell's piece titled, "Vanishing Perspectives."
Last night, I spent time searching for art gallery socialites eager to discuss their favorite pieces during the First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square. While some found it hard to pinpoint one installation that took their breath away, others, like local artist Paul Natkin didn’t need any arm twisting.
“Carolina Silva’s work over at the Lawrimore Project,” he said quietly, standing in the corner of the Greg Kucera Gallery and looking around, “But, you know, I just don’t want to disrespect anyone here.”
He liked Silva’s abstract piece (part of her "Against Gravity" exhibit), a wooden chair teetering on its side against a desk while sand cascades onto it from a tiny opening in the ceiling. Her aesthetically pleasing construction, according to Natkin, was as intriguing as the tiny gallery it stood in.
Next door at the Foster/White Gallery, Lauren Ryman admired the work of her friend, artist Evan Blackwell. Holding her daughter Estelle in her arms, she struggled to peer in closely at the fragments of wood resembling clusters of honeycombs along the wall.
“I just love how he takes old picture and window frames and recreates them into works of art,” she said, turning to the large pentagon shaped structure that could easily engulf her and her entire family (pictured above).
Titled “Vanishing Perspectives,” the piece is the result of Blackwell stripping old door frames to their bare bones in order to construct his masterpiece, a project that took him thirty-six years.Turning toward his crowded exhibit, he explained, “It’s not about how long it took to build it, but rather, how long it took to get to this point.”
For View Ridge resident Francesca, the greatest work of art was a simple handwritten letter scrawled by a man known as "Sgt. Joshua Allen Little" who was passing through Seattle's Tent City 3. He left the note for its resident poet, Mimi Allin who submitted it to the Tether Design Gallery where it is now on display. With a U.S. Army badge hanging at the top of the paper, he wrote to a loved one about fighting each day only for the sake of seeing her again.
“It’s just so touching, and so strong,” she said. “And it’s just plain words.”
- Visual Art
